Time to Reform

Welcome the revolution! Say “hello” to Reform, Astute Graphics’ latest blockbuster for the creative community. Not only transforming Adobe Illustrator, it changes the way vector designers will work to the core.

Game changing

It’s a rare event when professions experience a real game changing moment. In 1886, Karl Benz turned equestrian activities from essential to leisure. In 1928, Otto Rohwedder revolutionized journalistic idioms when he invented sliced bread. 1976 saw Concorde convert high-fliers into astronauts.

Closer to reader’s minds, it was 1987 when Adobe Illustrator emerged into the design software market starting a near-25 year domination for all vector artists.

Along the way, milestones have included the addition of PathFinder—try living without boolean operations!—and the first truly variable width stroke technology.

Astute Graphics has contributed to quiet revolutions for digital creatives with VectorScribe’s ever-evolving tool chest. Think Dynamic Corners, many years before Adobe considered them, and Smart Point Removal.

Around five years later, VectorFirstAid became an overnight hit and is now a staple presence in so many workflows the world-over.

Today, Reform can rightfully take its place at the head table, offering path editing and reshaping like never previously experienced.

Based on technology unique to Astute Graphics, after more than 5 years of intensive research and development, culminating in 9 months of testing and fine-tuning, Reform offers unparalleled advantages to all vector creative workflows and to all levels of user experience.

Read on to learn how you will benefit...

Controlling Béziers as never before

Bézier curves, points and handles are at the very foundation of long-established 2D vector design. Reshaping a series of curves has always been a time-consuming and fiddly activity best suited to experienced users. Yet, it is one of the most common requirements in any design process.

Reform brings intuitive sculpting and reshaping to any vector shape. Not only does Reform reject the need to professionally edit every path point-by-point, handle-by-handle, it positively allows users to thrive from operating in a much more organic fashion. Being able to accurately push and pull the direction of a shape with simple markers wherever a designer feels it would benefit, ensures users can concentrate on wider-reaching tweaks and changes.

Keeping delicate curves and forms organic, or parallel offsetting a defined range of a path in one operation, without have to ungroup, cut, move, join, trim and more, saves hours of work. And even though Reform does not inflict archaic Bézier controls on the user, it understands these curves like the best professional where results are clean, points minimal and logically placed.

Examples of workflows that benefit

Logo design. Freely and quickly experiment with contours and forms without having to think about the process of changing shapes.

Imported artwork. When receiving a file where all paths are expanded, strokes outlined and points appear to scatter-gun the artboard, let Reform take the strain in tweaking and cleaning simultaneously.

Font design. Wouldn’t it be nice to see what a slightly bolder element of a glyph looks like? Are you avoiding it as it would mean very carefully modifying 10's of handles? Reform comes to the rescue.

Watch professional creative, Dave Watkins, demonstrate the transformational Reform workflow...

Try it today

All current subscribers to Astute Graphics can download, install and benefit fully today! Simply quit Illustrator, open your Astute Manager and install the latest updates.

New to Astute Graphics? Reform is the 20th plugin to appear in the continuously-evolving Astute Graphics subscription. Start your free 7-day full trial today and experience all plugins that work beautifully together.

If you are a lapsed Annual Service Plan customer, log into your Astute Graphics account to restart your subscription and benefit from Reform and the latest Illustrator 2021 (v25.3) updates straight away!

Learn more

Visit the Reform product page for more information, links and technical speciations.