Customer Reviews

Adobe Illustrator 9.0 [Old Version]

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Illustrator is a solid vector graphics program but in my opinion slightly over-rated. It isn't as good as Freehand or CorelDraw (but this version certainly closed the gap). Many of the "new features" aren't so new. For example, transparancy and soft drop shadows (a couple of features that weren't in the previous version) have both been around for several years/versions of both Freehand or CorelDraw.

If you are aspiring to be a graphic designer dealing with print graphics, you definitely should learn this program. It is the industry standard (required for most print graphic jobs), and, as history shows, no matter how far the technology falls behind it will stay the industry standard.

If you don't want to become a professional designer but need a good drawing program, take a look at CorelDraw--you get way more bang for your buck, besides it's more intuitive/easier to learn.

For web graphics Freehand may be the better choice (it works better with Dreamweaver & Flash).

Don't get me wrong, Illustrator is a very good product and this is a good upgrade (I frequently use it in my work), but unlike Photoshop, it isn't the hands down best product of its type as other reviewers may lead you to believe.

Adobe's Illustrator 9 has made some smart leaps in Vector Graphic Design with its new Illustrator 9.0. For years Adobe has been the industry standard in graphic design software, and Illustrator 9 helps Adobe to stay on top. New support for Flash and SVG help make Illustrator a standard and a Must Have for any Graphics Professional.

Adobe's intuitive user interface helps the newest of users learn the fundamentals of Computer Graphic Illustration. Along with Illustrator 9 any new user should get Adobes Illustrator 9 Classroom in a Book. The book will walk you step by step showing you the basics of Computer Graphic Illustration, beginning, intermediate and some advanced features that Adobe Illustrator 9 has to offer.

A Must Buy!

If you're wanting to pursue a career in graphic design or would just like to dabble, Adobe Illustrator is one of the most basic tools you will use! The program itself is not difficult to understand or learn, besides there are many books to help people who can't seem to make the program work! Almost all of the job opportunities in the graphic design field require basic knowledge of Adobe Illustrator.

I've been using Illustrator 9.0 for some months now and the more I do so, the more I wish the program designers had paid a lot more attention to how the program manages memory usage and how it arranges the placement of its various toolbars on the computer screen. I happen to work with very large vector-graphic files, with up to 20 or more layers, and this program has a bizarre way of handling them, I've found. Particularly for any layers with heavy detail on them, the tiny thumbnail views I'm forced to endure in the layers toolbox slow the refresh rate and use of the layers toolbar itself so much that I might be waiting as much as a minute or two for these totally unnecessary thumbnails to refresh themselves after every change made on the unlocked or highlighted layers in question. Minimizing the layers toolbar, of course, speeds things up, but sometimes you can't do that, especially if you are working with more than one layer at once and you are copying or transferring a graphic or image from one layer to another, then you're stuck with the agonizingly slow speed. ....In any case, I STRONGLY RECOMMEND IT IN THE NEXT UPGRADE. Even with the Preview mode turned off so that you are only looking at simple vectored lines of your artwork instead of the complete, final image to help speed things up is only handy on occasion. My next beef: toolbar management. For me, I want to have as much available screen space to see and work on my artwork as possible, and though the toolbars are useful, quite often they are just in the way. Furthermore, the main image-editing toolbar that always appears on the left side is simply too much of a screen hog, especially if I'm dragging a graphic object from one part of the artwork somewhere to the left off the screen -- I always have to drag the graphic object down and around the bloody thing to get to the left side if I want to do any off-screen dragging. A real pain. .... Next beef: styles. The program comes provided with some fancy premade graphic styles, a kind of clipart pattern that appears in full color and in amazing colors, a number of which I'm quite impressed with. One I liked was a representation of rippled blue ocean water (in fact, it was called Cartographic - Ocean Basin). I had planned to use it in some of my artwork, but I soon learned the way they designed the program left it more and more of a problem than any help. The way the program allows you to manipilate swatch colors and gradients, to add textures and glass effects also has inherent drawbacks, I've found. .... A lot of the features in Illustrator 9 *are* great, however, you just have to learn how to use them. It would help if the provided manual was a little less brief and esoteric in its language but explained things a little more explicitly about many things. Learning Illustrator is NOT for the casual graphic artist. It takes patience, a lot of reading, and even more trial and error with the toolbars. And the way the manual explained the main toolbar menu itself was quite a pain. For a long time I had no idea how to access half the toolbar's cursor-tools because the manual wasn't explicit in explaining that I had to hold my mouse-pointer over an arrowed tool-icon for about a second before the other tool-icons I'd read about would appear and be accessible. .... My experiences with Illustrator 9 come from someone who has never used Illustrator or PhotoShop before, so naturally I notice things that an experienced Adobe user may not consider very much. There are a lot of good things in Illustrator, the vector graphics themselves being a huge plus, but if you're a beginner or want to just do quick and dirty (but still very detailed) graphics, maybe you should consider a different product with a faster learning curve (and that manages memory better). So, these are just a few things I've experienced with Illustrator 9.

I am a digital graphics designer/printer here in Orlando FL. I have worked with many professional designers and firms. Although Corel and Freehand are being used often, Illustrator is still the industry's standard for ALL professional studios. Especially for digital/prepress printing, stick with Illustrator. Corel causes a lot of problems in Raster image processing /digital printing. Most of the tools in corel and freehand can create pretty cool effects, but it will not print properly and slow your CPU! If you ever worked for a professional large format print company, you will findout why Illustrator is the best. In Illustrator, it is like walking and running. But in Corel, it is like walking on your hands. If you are a good designer and know how to use your tools, 50% of features in corel will never be used. Illustrator can do it all. btw, the software interface design in Illustrator is more efficient and logical comparing to corel and others. The software seems a bit faster. As far as the ICC and CMS management system, it just does not work !! So don't bother ! Even QuarkXpress can't manage ICC.

I've used CorelDRAW and FreeHand, but they don't even come close to the power and ease of use of Illustrator 9.0. From the logical menu organization and palette arrangement to the ability to change the appearance of artwork *without changing the artwork itself*, Illustrator 9 is the *only* tool you'll need for creating web graphics. Add Photoshop, and you've got the ultimate high-end studio for both print and web.

If you like to create logo's and illustrations, you owe it to yourself to purchase this program. Ever wonder how people create those crisp, sharpe looking logo's? Well many designers use this program. It is extremly easy to use. It comes with a second cd full of tutorials and help files that will answer any questions that you may have while you are creating. You won't be sorry once you start trying this program out. I'm sure you'll fall in love with it.

The most important change to Illustrator 9 is its ability to work with web design projects.

Illustrator 9 combines illustration tools with improved typographic control and image support.

Why Trade Up to Adobe Illustrator 9.0?

Graphic artists using Illustrator 9 now have the ability to work their web design projects in unison with Photoshop 6. Adobe Illustrator 9 offers them a bundle of new features:

Pixel Preview command

Web safe colors when working in RGB mode

Web Optimization

Release to Layers command

Simplify Command; and

Effects menu.

Who Uses Adobe Illustrator?

New Transparency Palette. Adobe illustrator 9 introduces the new Transparency palette. You can now apply varying levels of transparency to any object, bitmap or type character.

You can apply transparency to layers, groups of objects, knockout shapes, stroke and fill. Also, you can create special effects, such as confining blending to a group of objects. Now, graphic artist can create graduated transparencies on blends.

New Features

Several new features in Illustrator 9.0 will be familiar to veteran Adobe Photoshop users:

The new real-time transparency effects. (There is a new tab on the Stroke and gradient dialog, with a slider.) Select an object, slide the transparency value to 80 percent and the objects beneath it show through. You can move the transparent object at will.

New Styles Palette

Apply drop shadows, glows, scribbled outline effects or dozens of other visual effects to any object or text. The text remains fully editable.

The Layers functions are useful to web designers using Adobe Illustrator 9 for improving their drawings.

The new release Layers to Flash function allows Illustrator 9 to be used to produce morphing object and animation effects.

Pixel Preview Mode and Save for Web Dialog

Pixels are now supported as a measurement method. The new Pixel Preview mode allows you to preview your vector objects as they would appear in a web browser. Objects snap to the nearest pixel edge in the document.

This allows you to preview up to four different optimization settings for output to either JPEG, GIF, PNG-8 or PNG-24 format files. Now, you can adjust the resulting image quality, file size, blur, number of colors in the image.

Use the release to Layers feature in Illustrator 9. You can take all the objects in a given layer and assign each object its own layer which is useful for web animation.

Pro Comments

Noted are Adobe Illustrator 9 new Opacity masks, Layer Clipping masks and Feathering functions, and overprint preview.

Excellent hardcopy manual for learning how to use Adobe Illustrator 9 comes with the program. (No Missing Manual)

Adobe Illustrator 9 has True transparency effects, styles palette and improved Flash support. Pixels can now be specified as a global measurement unit for sizing, editing, and laying out artwork.

Con Comments Noted was the missing companion CD with Adobe Illustrator graphics that comes standard with Adobe Pagemaker Plus application.

Also, I noted that some of the Selection tools can be confusing. I found that Masking tool some times flattens layers.

Final Notes

Every day over one million men and women use Adobe Illustrator. Adobe Illustrator continues to provide the touch-and-feel tools you need to create brochures, video artwork and web pages. Plus, it's used for making packaging, ads and editorial spreads.

Adobe Illustrator 9 offers graphic artist and web designers more flexibility, better integration, along with new object effects.

For those of you who design graphics, webpages, presentations, publications, or just enjoy working with a great piece of drawing software, Adobe Illustrator is for you. Adobe Illustrator gives you fine precision over your artwork, so that you can truly make it your own. Using Adobe Illustrator, you will be able to work in the developing field of vector graphics, a great enhancement. Vector graphics are great, because if you need to stretch or skew a picture a vector graphic will remain crisp and sharp around the edges unlike more traditional bitmap style images. You can also save your graphics in the SVG format for use on your webpages. This will help to ensure that your graphic always looks the way that you intended it to. In addition, Adobe Illustrator works amazingly well with other Adobe products (such as Acrobat) so you should have a smooth transition between products. If you are used to using Adobe products, you will also feel very comfortable in the environment of Illustrator, which is very much like that of other Adobe products. Where I can see some problems, is for those of you interested in a simple graphics program without all of the bells and whistles. This program is NOT for you. This program can be a bit complicated at first, but is well worth learning for all of the advanced features. This is a product that you can learn to use well, and when you do you will have a VERY powerful graphics development application at your side.

This is by far the best graphics software available. New improvements to the basic drawing tools, as well as special effects that allow you to change everything to exactly what you imagine combine to produce a fantastic application. Not just the industry standard, but in a class by itself.