Digital Home Thoughts: Adobe's Creative Suite 2 Premium Reviewed

Illustrate My World
According to Wikipedia, "Adobe Illustrator was first developed for the Apple Macintosh in 1985 as a logical commercialization of Adobe's in-house font development software and PostScript file format...Illustrator was a reliable, capable product, however, and its relatively low learning curve let users quickly appreciate that the new paradigm was not only better, but finally solved the problem of imprecision from existing programs like MacDraw. It also provided a tool for people who could neither afford nor learn high-end (and perhaps overkill) software such as AutoCAD. Illustrator successfully filled a niche between painting and CAD programs." And several revisions later (this is considered version 12), we find ourselves here (Figure 6.


Figure 6: As it name would suggest, Illustrator allows you to take your illustrations to the next level.

One of the most useful new features I found in this version of Illustrator is the context-sensitive Control Palette (Figure 7). By reducing the number of tools that are spread across the screen, life becomes much more manageable and therefore, the software doesn't seem nearly as daunting to learn. I do understand if some of you existing power users may not care for this change, but thankfully, if you don't like it, you don't have to use it - all the toolbars you are used to are still available (smart thinking Adobe).


Figure 7: To reduce clutter and improve the overall workspace, Adobe has introduced the context-sensitive Control Palette.

Another new feature (Figure 8) can be found within this new Control Palette, that of the ability to change the stroke location (internal, external, or centered). Missing from the Control Palette, however, is the ability to preview fonts. You can preview from the Type menu, but one would think that with the importance being placed on the Control Palette, this sort of functionality would be present.


Figure 8: New stroke options are also available in this newest version of Illustrator.

Live Trace (Figure 9) and Live Paint (Figure 10) have also found a home in this version of Adobe Illustrator. What are these new 'Live' tools? Well, let's look at the figures below. In Figure 9, we see on the left my original bitmap image (copied from an older software application, cropped, and then resized to pixelate). On the right is the same bitmap, but one that has been processed through Live Trace, converting it into a much more usable vector image. Then, in Figure 10, we take the same converted image (on the left) and we can start painting the parts as we desire (on the right, for example), thus eliminating the need to paint by hand each individual pixel. This may not seem like much at first, but I've had to do a lot of pixel-level editing, and these features are a real treat, considering how much time will be saved.

Now, I did try to convert some scanned hand-drawn art without much luck. But the results I was able to produce made me feel like I needed to just try some different options, and I would probably see a significant gain in the future.


Figure 9: With Live Trace, I was able to convert the bitmap image on the left and turn it into scalable vector art.


Figure 10: Using Live Paint, I can take the now Live Traced image and color the bits as desired.

As with any new application, the help and tutorial sections are very important. And since I was completely new to Illustrator, there was an even greater need. I am happy to report that the help and tutorials filled the gap nicely, and I quickly found myself using the tools trained on with some proficiency (Figure 11). Of course, there is a lot to be found in CS2, so I am in no way an expert at this point, but it is nice to see such a good help base.


Figure 11: After a quick look at one of the Illustrator tutorials, I was able to quickly start using new (to me) tools, such as the Pathfinder.

So far, two for two in Adobe's favor. Before Illustrator (which has a lot of tools that I normally wouldn't have access to), I would have been using a combination of Paint Shop Pro and PhotoDraw. Workable, but much simpler within Illustrator in a lot of respects.