Gesture-Driven Annotations in Adobe Illustrator

By Michael Peters · Published April 8, 2026 · 1 min read

The Client

SMART Technologies is the company behind SMART Boards — the interactive whiteboards used in classrooms, meeting rooms, and collaborative workspaces worldwide. Their hardware supports hand gestures and touch input for natural, intuitive interaction.

The Problem

SMART wanted to extend the collaborative, gesture-driven experience of their whiteboards into professional design tools. Specifically, they needed a way for users to:

• Add annotations directly onto designs within Adobe Illustrator
• Use SMART whiteboard hand gestures — the same natural touch and swipe interactions users were already familiar with — to control Illustrator

Out of the box, Illustrator had no support for SMART's gesture input or for the kind of freeform annotation workflow SMART envisioned. This required a custom plugin that could bridge the gap between SMART's hardware and Adobe's design environment.

The Solution

Mapsoft developed a custom Adobe Illustrator plugin that integrated SMART whiteboard functionality directly into the application:

• Annotation tools — users could add freeform annotations, notes, and markup directly onto Illustrator documents
• Gesture recognition — the plugin translated SMART whiteboard hand gestures into Illustrator actions, allowing users to navigate, annotate, and interact with designs using the same natural gestures they used on SMART Boards
• Seamless integration — the plugin sat within Illustrator's native interface, so users didn't need to leave the application or switch between tools

Watch the Demo

Technology Used

• Adobe Illustrator SDK for native plugin development
• SMART whiteboard gesture API integration
• Custom annotation rendering engine

Need a Similar Solution?

If you need to integrate hardware input, third-party systems, or custom workflows into Adobe applications, Mapsoft has the expertise to make it happen. We've been building plugins for Illustrator, Acrobat, InDesign, and Photoshop for over 30 years.