If you work with curves in Illustrator, then you definitely need BetterHandles.

BetterHandles is an Adobe Illustrator tool plug-in for working with the direction handles of Bezier curves.

The BetterHandles tool is used to click on or drag direction handles, anchor points and path segments; it can also be dragged on a blank area of the document as a marquee to select handles or points. When the tool is selected and held over a blank area of the document, the cursor looks like an inverted "V," similar to the Convert Anchor Point tool, but thicker, so as to distinguish it.

The cursor automatically changes to give you feedback, depending on several factors: whether you are dragging or not, what lies underneath and what modifier keys are being held down.

Here are some key features of "BetterHandles":

· Select multiple handles, and collectively move, extend, rotate, or retract them
· Extend or retract handles without changing their angles
· Edit points numerically: anchor, in handle, out handle
· Convert multiple points from corner to smooth or vice versa
· Automatically extend new handles on multiple points
· Intuitively reshape path segments, optionally constraining handle directions
· Use slow-drag to divide the cursor movement for extremely precise moves
· Equalize a point's handles
· See all the handles on a path while editing it
· Split a path at one or more points
· Delete one or more points and close the path around them
· Remove all redundant points on multiple paths
· See when the cursor is over a handle, point, or path - without having to use Smart Guides.

Requirements:

· Adobe Illustrator 10, CS, CS2 or CS3

What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]

· Improvement: Document-specific units setting is now honored, as well as Application-wide setting (CS3 and higher).
· Bug fix: Pasting a single handle now properly changes the anchor point type to corner.
· Bug fix: Changing units now properly updates the Info Palette.