Adobe Illustrator has long been the choice for illustration professionals, designers, and anyone who wants to work with infinitely scalable vector graphics. Over the years it’s gained some highly impressive features, such as mesh tools for drawing photorealistic objects, perspective tools for taking the pain out of vanishing points, and much, much more. So, what can CS6 bring? Oh, just plenty of new features and an all-new interface.
The charcoal-gray interface, like Photoshop’s by default, gives Illustrator a more refined, professional feel. If it’s a little much, you can change the interface color via Preferences (unlike Photoshop’s theme-based approach). It’s a minor, but lovely touch. But the real thing you notice about Illustrator is its blazing fast speed. Mainly thanks to the Mercury Performance System and native 64-bit support, complex documents with meshes, gradients, and many points can be manipulated with relative ease. Redraw certainly seems snappier as well.
The charcoal-gray interface, like Photoshop’s by default, gives Illustrator a more refined, professional feel. If it’s a little much, you can change the interface color via Preferences (unlike Photoshop’s theme-based approach). It’s a minor, but lovely touch. But the real thing you notice about Illustrator is its blazing fast speed. Mainly thanks to the Mercury Performance System and native 64-bit support, complex documents with meshes, gradients, and many points can be manipulated with relative ease. Redraw certainly seems snappier as well.
Designers will love the easy-to-use, extremely powerful pattern tools.
Beyond the speed improvements, Illustrator brings new and improved features to the table. The most notable is undoubtedly the new pattern creation tools. Creating a tiled pattern and editing it is now extremely easy: open or draw an object that you want to be repeated and then go to Object > Pattern > Make. Your object then repeats on the art board. The Pattern Options panel lets you control the pattern, with a really handy slider enabling you to dim your instances so you can work on and edit the original object. As you edit, the repeats update. The pattern is automatically added to the Swatches panel and updates when you click Done in pattern creation mode. You can choose to save a copy to add another swatch to the Swatches panel. But the best thing? Double-clicking the swatch in the Swatches panel lets you go back to edit the pattern. When you update it, it updates any object the pattern is applied to. It’s quite brilliant, and textile artists, designers, and illustrators who use patterns will absolutely love it.
The other big feature is the removal of Live Trace--it’s been replaced with a new bitmap tracing engine called Image Trace. Now, don’t expect this to magically turn any photos into vector artwork, but it does a pretty good job. And you have more options for tracing than ever before. The tool is controlled by the context-sensitive Control panel or the new Image Trace panel, and you can apply presets or tweak settings manually. Image Trace is a powerful replacement for the often hit-and-miss Live Trace, and when you do need it, it comes in very handy.
Beyond the speed improvements, Illustrator brings new and improved features to the table. The most notable is undoubtedly the new pattern creation tools. Creating a tiled pattern and editing it is now extremely easy: open or draw an object that you want to be repeated and then go to Object > Pattern > Make. Your object then repeats on the art board. The Pattern Options panel lets you control the pattern, with a really handy slider enabling you to dim your instances so you can work on and edit the original object. As you edit, the repeats update. The pattern is automatically added to the Swatches panel and updates when you click Done in pattern creation mode. You can choose to save a copy to add another swatch to the Swatches panel. But the best thing? Double-clicking the swatch in the Swatches panel lets you go back to edit the pattern. When you update it, it updates any object the pattern is applied to. It’s quite brilliant, and textile artists, designers, and illustrators who use patterns will absolutely love it.
The other big feature is the removal of Live Trace--it’s been replaced with a new bitmap tracing engine called Image Trace. Now, don’t expect this to magically turn any photos into vector artwork, but it does a pretty good job. And you have more options for tracing than ever before. The tool is controlled by the context-sensitive Control panel or the new Image Trace panel, and you can apply presets or tweak settings manually. Image Trace is a powerful replacement for the often hit-and-miss Live Trace, and when you do need it, it comes in very handy.
Image Trace is a replacement for Live Trace, and admirably turns bitmaps into vector art.
The final addition of note is the ability to add gradients to strokes. We don’t know why this wasn’t in previous versions, but it’s a welcome addition, especially for those designing photorealistic vector artwork. There’s also some tweaks to the Gaussian Blur effect and minor panel updates, including a Scale Strokes & Effects checkbox added to the Transform panel.
The bottom line. Illustrator remains hugely powerful, and a tool that is reliable, fast (as long as you have a good amount of RAM), and pretty much vital to any creative pro. The new pattern creation features are a joy to use, and the speed of this version alone will impress any daily user of the app.
The final addition of note is the ability to add gradients to strokes. We don’t know why this wasn’t in previous versions, but it’s a welcome addition, especially for those designing photorealistic vector artwork. There’s also some tweaks to the Gaussian Blur effect and minor panel updates, including a Scale Strokes & Effects checkbox added to the Transform panel.
The bottom line. Illustrator remains hugely powerful, and a tool that is reliable, fast (as long as you have a good amount of RAM), and pretty much vital to any creative pro. The new pattern creation features are a joy to use, and the speed of this version alone will impress any daily user of the app.
TO DOWNLOAD CLICK HERE
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment