<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: possibly the definitive drawing program
Review: Illustrator is probably the BEST product around for anyone seriously creating drawings and artwork on a computer. It packs in all the usual features, Bezier curves, color models, line and artwork control, and it has dozens of nifty new features. These include a powerful macro facility (direct or via Applescript), a rubber stamp like "symbol" facility, artistic styles that can be applied to surfaces, filtering "effects", gradient meshes for creating shaded surfaces, and the ability to define your own keyboard shortcuts.Yes, it has a serious learning curve. No, it is not a paint program. Yes, it has some flaws and a few bugs. No, you still have to have some artistic ability to use it. I've tried Freehand, Expression, Corel Draw and several other rivals. They are not bad programs, but they lack the completeness, the immediacy, and the sense of control that you get in Illustrator. If you are serious, you would be hard pressed to do better.
Rating:
Summary: Great, but not without flaws
Review: Seeing as the other "review" here is not particularly helpful or easy on the eyes, I figured I'd write a brief one of my own that will hopefully be useful to someone. :) Illustrator is, simply, an extremely powerful piece of software. It has some amazing features, both in terms of power and in terms of usability. There are multiple ways to do just about everything, depending on what suits your style of working. You could also spend hours customizing the interface and setting things up the way you like (this could be a pro or a con, depending on how much you value your productivity). While Illustrator gets high marks for raw power, there is one area where Adobe needs to improve it: stability. I've experienced a few crashes running it under Mac OS X, often while doing very simple operations (i.e. switching between Illustrator and another running task). Illustrator is not multitasking friendly, from my experience. It also doesn't seem to take very good advantage of having a dual processor machine, which is a bit of a shame. Honestly, though, the stability issues are not enough to warrant less than 5 stars for Illustrator. You can do some amazing stuff with this software, given enough time to learn how to harness all the tools... and given the creative talent to do them justice. Artistic ability not included. :)
Rating:
Summary: Great, but not without flaws
Review: Seeing as the other "review" here is not particularly helpful or easy on the eyes, I figured I'd write a brief one of my own that will hopefully be useful to someone. :) Illustrator is, simply, an extremely powerful piece of software. It has some amazing features, both in terms of power and in terms of usability. There are multiple ways to do just about everything, depending on what suits your style of working. You could also spend hours customizing the interface and setting things up the way you like (this could be a pro or a con, depending on how much you value your productivity). While Illustrator gets high marks for raw power, there is one area where Adobe needs to improve it: stability. I've experienced a few crashes running it under Mac OS X, often while doing very simple operations (i.e. switching between Illustrator and another running task). Illustrator is not multitasking friendly, from my experience. It also doesn't seem to take very good advantage of having a dual processor machine, which is a bit of a shame. Honestly, though, the stability issues are not enough to warrant less than 5 stars for Illustrator. You can do some amazing stuff with this software, given enough time to learn how to harness all the tools... and given the creative talent to do them justice. Artistic ability not included. :)
Rating:
Summary: BEST VERSION YET
Review: THEY HAVE ADDED PROCESSES TO THIS VERSION WILL MAKE ADJUSTMENTS WITHOUT HAVING TO GO BACK AND FORTH TO PHOTOSHOP...
<< 1 >>
| 
