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This article is from May 10, 2010, and is no longer current.

Review: Adobe Illustrator CS5

Pixel-Perfect Web Design
Illustrator has a bad rap when it comes to Web design. All too often, GIF, JPEG, and PNG images created in Illustrator seem soft or blurry compared to similar artwork created in Photoshop or Fireworks. This difference is due primarily to how Illustrator aligns strokes to paths by default, and how antialiasing affects strokes that don’t align perfectly to the pixel grid.
In Illustrator CS5, a new Align To Pixel Grid function forces strokes and artwork in general to snap perfectly to the pixel grid, ensuring a crisp and sharp appearance for all Web graphics. You can apply this setting (found in the Transform panel) to an entire document so that all artwork you create always looks perfect, and the Web profile you can use to create new documents already has this setting enabled by default.
Figure 8: With the Align to Pixel Grid setting in the Transform panel, a click of your mouse turns soft and blurred artwork (left) into designs that appear sharp and clear on digital displays (right). Click the image below to open a larger version in a separate window.

Ensuring that text is readable on a Web page is equally important, and Illustrator now contains antialiasing settings in the Character panel (similar to Photoshop) so that your text appears at its best.
If you use slices to generate Web graphics from Illustrator, you’ll be happy to know that there’s a new command that lets you export selected slices directly from your document, without having to open the Save for Web dialog box.
Illustrator is also the perfect companion to Adobe’s new Flash authoring tool, Flash Catalyst CS5. Not only can you bring native Illustrator content directly into Flash Catalyst, you can also use Illustrator to edit components from within Flash Catalyst.
CS Live Services
Over the past few years, Adobe has been experimenting with online services that include Kuler, Acrobat.com and Photoshop.com. With CS5, Adobe is officially releasing a package dubbed CS Live Online Services that includes the following:
* Acrobat.com, offering a variety of sharing and document services
* Adobe BrowserLab, which allows you to preview how your websites look on a variety of Web browsers
* Adobe CS Review, which gives you the ability to easily conduct reviews with your coworkers or clients
* Adobe Story, a script-writing tool for video professionals
Purchasing a CS5 product gives you a one-year complimentary subscription to these four services. Of the four, only CS Review integrates directly with Illustrator, although BrowserLab and Acrobat.com are useful for virtually anyone. CS Review gives you the ability to kick off a review directly from within Illustrator, and perhaps more impressive, you can view the review feedback within Illustrator. However, anyone who wants to participate in the review will need an Adobe ID (available free).
Should You Buy Illustrator CS5?
There are some things missing. While Illustrator gets incremental speed enhancements with each release, it would still be nice for Adobe to blow us away with a really big performance improvement. I would also welcome a data-recovery feature in Illustrator (InDesign has one). Another gripe: Why are custom rounded corners and smart drawing tools (a la Fireworks and now even InDesign CS5) still absent from Illustrator?
But even with those complaints, Illustrator CS5 is worth the upgrade. The Beautiful Strokes features are worth the price of admission alone — they’re that good. If that was all Adobe would have added to this release, I would give it a solid thumbs up. But Adobe did give us more, and the welcome improvements to working with artboards, rulers, drawing modes — and especially the new paste commands — are things you’ll use every single day. After a solid week using the shipping version of Illustrator CS5 (and a lot more time spent with various betas), I wonder how I lived without it.
I’ll admit that when it came to rating this release, I was torn. If not for the usability issues that plague the perspective grid feature, I’d crank Illustrator CS5 all the way up to eleven. But I’m giving Illustrator CS5 an 85 out of 100 as an overall grade, taking all features into account. As an individual user however, you should look at what features Illustrator CS5 matter most to you. In my opinion, Adobe hit this one out of the park — it’s a stellar release.


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  • Anonymous says:

    I think that any new version of illustrator was worth upgrading beacause every upgrade brings us some greate and innovatine features liek Perspective drawing this time. Many different tools that can produce things that were extremely time-consuming in the past.

  • Anonymous says:

    I will definitely have to give it more of a go… just haven’t warmed to the shapebuilder as yet, still keep returning to the pathfinder functions.. but after your comments, will try a little harder to get used to it.

    Other than that, Illustrator CS5 is a great release.. the width tool is superb, perspective is very useful, the bristle brushes fine..
    Andrew

  • Anonymous says:

    Thank you for this informative post. I am very excited about this new version of Illustrator. Especially the variable width strokes. The other new main features are a bonus, but I have found that making use of Actions actually takes away most of the tedious steps – like applying the pathfinder tools, and even drawing objects in isometrics. Still, can’t wait to get my hands on it! (or rather get my boss to buy it for me, to get my hands on it!)

  • Anonymous says:

    For some reason I can you muttering, “finally!” after every sentence.

    And if this shitty installer is the result of Adobe completely rewriting something, then maybe Adobe should get out of the software business, because it’s still crap. Is Adobe aware that Apple provides a simple, fast, intuitive installer that’s free and doesn’t require me to quit my browser?

  • Anonymous says:

    I never understood the whole Illustrator-not-rounding-corners-easily thing….I always thought that would be one of the easiest thing to do…..but it’s not! Weird….definitely looking forward to having that feature integrated :)

  • Anonymous says:

    Sounds more like a sales pitch than a review.

  • Anonymous says:

    At least your home number is still featured*

  • oriongraphics says:

    As an old FreeHander, it gladdens my heart to see old FreeHand commands come back to play: Easy arrowheads, clicking through to select elements, and pasting inside are all back. Thank you Illustrator!

  • Anonymous says:

    What else is there? This program is still difficult to use and very clunky but, there’s no other alternative. With Adobe’s vast resources they should concentrate on putting out something that makes doing design work fast. This pig has WAY too much lipstick on it.

  • Anonymous says:

    I am liking the shapebuilder, and the perspective tool certainly makes my life a little easier. However, I will get carpal tunnel from the way they changed the smart guides. The fact that you have to hold command or ctrl to get CS3 and earlier smart guide behavior is frankly ridiculous. I spent hours being freaked out and depressed that I could not snap anchors to angled paths and other anchor points. I finally stumbled across the technote that explained how to do this. And we only have so many fingers!

  • Anonymous says:

    “While Illustrator gets incremental speed enhancements with each release”

    What? How much did they pay you to write that?? Illustrator is in dire need to a complete overhaul! It just keeps on getting more and more bloated and clunkier with every release!

  • Anonymous says:

    Illustrator is the lamest buggiest Vector Drawing App there is.
    On a Mac it certainly isn’t a smooth experience.
    Freehand ist still running a lot faster that Illustrator CS5 and it’s not even Cocoa.
    Adobe, I will boycott every release, until you guys come to your senses and fix Illustrator instead of adding new crap to it that is even buggier than the crap that’s already in there.
    I want a lean, mean vector illustrations program, nothing more.

  • Anonymous says:

    Great tips on Adobe Illustrator CS5! Another tip: You can collect and package Adobe Illustrator files with Markzware FlightCheck.

  • Anonymous says:

    the paint that i draw with keeps going behind the picture and it says its on normal what do I do? there is no link to show me so please try to figure it out.

  • Anonymous says:

    Hi,

    I have a problem with illustrator cs5 if someone can help me pls.

    I am using illustrator since a year but from the last few weaks there is a problem actually it doesn’t give me the resize and rotate option by using selection tool. everytime i want to rotate an object i am forced to select it first using selection tool and then rotate it by rotation tool.

    Can anyone help me pls.??

  • Anonymous says:

    Hello! I just would like to Palio give a huge thumb up for the great info you have here on this post. I will be coming back to your blog for more soon.

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