Topping the announcements for Fall 2021 is a beta duo of web-based collaboration facilitators: Creative Cloud Spaces and Creative Cloud Canvas. Think of Spaces as a centralized hub where your team can share work, resources, and assets. Canvas is like a real-time mood board for clients and other stakeholders to explore and evaluate concepts and solutions.
Illustrator on the iPad also got some capability kisses. Now you can trace images using your iPad’s camera as a scanner, then process it with the new Vectorize tool which draws your sketch automatically.
Other goodies for the iPad include much-anticipated artistic and calligraphic brushes—make them, use them, and edit them. The addition of object blending, rulers and guides, version history, and cut-and-paste capabilities, between it and Photoshop and Fresco, truly amp up the creative experience.
Despite some competition in the vector-based graphics space—Affinity Designer, CorelDraw, and Sketch, to name a few—Illustrator remains the market-leading vector drawing software thanks to its unrivaled toolset, sweeping capabilities, and integration with Creative Cloud Apps, the industry standards.
How Much Does Illustrator Cost?
Adobe Illustrator is only available via subscription. It costs $20.99 per month with an annual commitment or $31.49 on a month-to-month basis. Adobe does not offer a perpetual license version of Illustrator, so you can't pay once and own it forever. You can only get it with a subscription.
The full Adobe suite of 20-plus apps costs $52.99 per month. It includes 100GB of cloud storage, Adobe Portfolio, Adobe Fonts, and Adobe Spark. The related Fresco drawing app is free. A free 30-day trial lets you test the software out with no commitment and no credit or debit card information required.
Can I Run Illustrator?
Illustrator is compatible with Windows (Windows 11, Windows 10 21H1, 20H2, 1909, and 2004), macOS (10.15 Catalina and later), and iPad (iOS version 14 and later). No matter which platform you use, you need a reliable internet connection to download and register the programs. You can work offline, but you need an internet connection for membership validation and access to some online services. You can find a complete list of the system requirements for Adobe Illustrator on Adobe's site.
Top New Features in Adobe Illustrator
At its annual Max conference, online-only this year, Adobe announced a raft of new features for its Creative Cloud design software suite, and Illustrator was not to be overlooked. In addition to partaking of new collaboration features like Creative Cloud Canvas and Spaces, the software got some compelling new capabilities all its own. Here are our favorites.
3D Enhancements and Marriage to Substances (3D Creators’ Superpower)
Illustrator’s sleepy 3D-like effects have been resuscitated with a ray-tracing engine and an expanded new interface. Notably, Adobe has integrated materials from its recently acquired company, Substance. On the Adobe Substance 3D assets page, you can see multitudinous photo-realistic materials, then import your favorites. (Full access to the Substance 3D quartet of apps requires an additional subscription.) You can also use the underutilized iOS app, Adobe Capture, to create your own.
Softening the Storied Learning Curve
Learning Illustrator just got easier with the new in-app Discover panel that directs you to helpful resources and information.
Alternatively, click on the house icon in Illustrator’s redesigned app header, you’re transported to an interface that feels much like Home on Illustrator on the iPad.
Additionally, for quick questions or reminders where certain tools are buried, never underestimate the still-useful Help tab that lives on the main menu bar. Adobe seems to have listened to user feedback about Illustrator’s learning curve. The app's ever-growing collection of tutorials and quick show-me videos helps users work through and learn Illustrator's superabundant capabilities.
A Better Way to Collect Feedback
Graphic design differs from fine art in many ways, the most fundamental being that someone is paying you to solve their challenges effectively and elegantly, and it’s critical to know what customers will think of your work. That’s why it’s important to be able to share files for collaboration with your team (if you work with one) and then solicit feedback from your stakeholders, clients, or boss.
Illustrator’s new Share for Commenting feature brings you closer than ever to anyone you choose. Even if they don’t have Illustrator, they can comment on your work as a guest, but not make edits. Simply click on the Share button and up pops the dialog box encouraging you to save your file as a cloud document.
By clicking Continue, the deed is done, and if you click the share button once again, you have the option to invite teammates to save, comment, and even edit (or not). Your teammates receive an email with a link to the cloud document. If you prefer, you can copy the link and send it however you want. Incidentally, saving your file as cloud documents also affords you instant access to it on other devices, such as the iPad.
What really makes this feature work is that you can see the feedback and comments from within the app. Annotations can be pinned to specific areas, so everything is clear. As you review comments, you can reply, resolve, or delete them.
I can’t wait to try this new capability in real work situations. I do worry that my clients who are used to PDFs and stickies might resist this progress, but I’ll spin it until they are as excited as I am.
Vector vs. Raster
To understand Adobe Illustrator, it helps to know the difference between vector and raster graphics. For the uninitiated, here's a brief explanation.
Vector graphics are defined by points, lines, and Boolean curves. Their main advantage over raster images is that you can enlarge them infinitely without loss of resolution. For example, if you were designing a huge billboard or other large graphics where scalability is a requisite for success, you would need vector graphics. A second advantage of designing with vectors is that files tend to be much smaller than their raster counterparts.
Conversely, raster-based artwork like that created in Photoshop is defined by pixels. When you enlarge or zoom in on raster art, the pixels enlarge too, resulting in visible pixelation, or chunkiness with ragged edges. Also, large raster artwork produces enormous files.
When your work includes logo design, typography, or illustration, Adobe Illustrator is a must in your arsenal. It's the tool for creating simple drawings, maps, complex technical illustrations, iconography, interesting charts and diagrams, information graphics, fine typography, and even business card or invitation layouts and mechanical art. What's more, you can export your files in a variety of formats intended for use in print, web, video, mobile interfaces, interactive projects, and app designs.
Workspace and Tools
If you've worked with InDesign or Photoshop, Illustrator's environment (robust toolbars and panels, and contextual menus) should be reasonably familiar. You can customize the recently modernized, flattened interface with options from dark to light gray. Palettes and menus snap to any configuration that pleases you. When you have your screen perfectly composed with your favorite preferences, defaults, menu organization, and positions, it's good to know that you can save your workspace and later clean up palette clutter by returning to that exact configuration whenever you like.
It's great that the software enables you to assign unique key commands so you may further streamline your process for any job. In fact, Illustrator comes with specialized workspace options for fields like layout, printing and proofing, typography, and web design, as well as an Essentials section that emphasizes recent updates and improvements. Do not worry; you may still access the earlier Essentials configuration.
Artboards, which are multiple, repositionable pages supported by Illustrator. You can resize them using one of Illustrator's many presets, use the Crop tool to reduce their size, or provide the width and height values yourself. With improvements to placing and arranging, as well as an increase in the maximum number of boards permitted, artboard control has increased.
Appearance and Properties Panels
The modest Appearance panel is the spine and muscle of your workstation, even though it is surrounded by other, less effective tools. Although the default appearance panel in Illustrator is likely the most underutilized, I view it as my information command center. You have complete control over all of an object's or group's properties using the Appearance panel, including the basic fills, stroke color and size, opacity, and blending mode. When you perform complicated tasks like adding multiple strokes, modifying Illustrator Effects (including glows, feathers, and drop shadows), and switching between or rearranging effect layers, the panel really shines.
When you select Properties from the Window menu or open the Essentials workspace, the Properties window displays. Its contextual menu displays tools that are often used based on
Toolset Panel
In addition to the Appearance panel, Adobe has filled the tools panel with all the standard features of a professional drawing program in addition to a few extras. If that's not enough, there are also several exceptional, top-notch plug-in packages designed especially for Illustrator that are updated frequently. Check out the incredible assortment from Astute Graphics or the adaptable sets FILTERiT 5 and XTream Path 2 by C.Valley.
Illustrator can execute bespoke scripts, so you may indulge your inner design geek. You can use the ones that were installed with the software, create your own using Microsoft Visual Basic, AppleScript, JavaScript, or ExtendScript, or search online for a ton of fascinating automation and function-adding scripts.
The eight tool categories in Illustrator let you accomplish creative tasks while also encouraging experimentation. Before starting a project that has a deadline tomorrow, I advise newcomers to do exactly that—explore the tools and their submenus. At first look, having so many specialized tools may seem overwhelming.
Five selection tools are displayed by default in Illustrator, each of which is intended to choose a certain kind of object, group, path, or point. Through the Preferences menu, you can exercise even more specific control. The preferences addition of variable sizing for anchor points and grips is a blessing for hard-working eyeballs. Up until this point, the anchor points remained excruciatingly small no matter how much you magnified your vision.
The Object > Path > Simplify tool, which was added in the November 2019 release, is a related functionality. This tool eliminates extra anchor points, which is crucial for pathways made by tracing or using mobile applications. The Reduce Anchor Point Slider allows you to change the number of anchor points while the tool performs its function while maintaining virtually the same path. To define the Corner Point Angle Threshold, you can launch the Simplify dialog, which will delve even deeper into the details.
The Object > Path > Simplify tool, which was added in the November 2019 release, is a related functionality. This tool eliminates extra anchor points, which is crucial for pathways made by tracing or using mobile applications. The Reduce Anchor Point Slider allows you to change the number of anchor points while the tool performs its function while maintaining virtually the same path. To define the Corner Point Angle Threshold, you can launch the Simplify dialog, which will delve even deeper into the details.
With six type tools in Illustrator, including the ground-breaking Touch Type tool, working with complicated typography is a pleasure. Within live text blocks, Touch Type enables the movement, rotation, and scaling of individual letters. Typographers can now give a text block an OpenType alternate style.
Eight different paintbrushes, including the Live Paint tool, which enables users to fill shapes with color by merely clicking on them, are available for use by artists. When you consider that you may replace polygon and ellipse strokes with a custom brush, the Brush tool's ability to create custom brushes (Pattern, Art, Scatter, Calligraphic or Bristle) becomes even more wonderful.
The fun Symbol Sprayer tool, which has seven variations, is connected to the paint tools. You can make a symbol you generated into the paint by assigning it to it; in this case, let's use a star. The tool then sprays stars. The Sprayer's sub-tools, which are suitably titled Styler, Shifter, Scruncher, Screener, Sizer, Spinner, and Stain, let you to manage the spray density, unpredictability, color variation, size variation, and individual spin of the stars.
Power is promised by Illustrator. As you alter your work in all conceivable ways, such as shape blending, morphing, warping, twisting, shearing, tweaking, puckering, and inflating, the reshaping and transformation tools feel rather fulfilling. The Pathfinder tab, which executes operations like union, gives you finer control over lines and shapes with five slicing and cutting tools., exclude, intersect, merge, and divide. Try experimenting with these different functions.
Given the prominence of information graphics and data visualization, Illustrator satisfies with nine graphing features that let you get to work. With a sufficient selection of graph kinds, including scatter and radar charts as well as bar and pie charts, you may alter your data. I'm interested to see if someone develops scripts to assist in producing non-traditional graphs, which are better at visualizing complex data, such tree maps, network diagrams, or bubble maps.
Hottest Features for Work, Fun, and Experimentation
Precision Drawing. More than any other skill, precision sketching is what Illustrator was made for. Axonometric angle limitations save time and reduce annoyance, while amenities like perspective grids scaffold the base of perspective drawing and generate dimensional lettering effects. Layers make it easier to organize and separate different parts of your artwork for varied overlays or quick editing. The Pen tool is your go-to for producing lovely vector lines, Bezier curves, defining anchor points, and coaxing handles, albeit it takes some experience to master.
Copy and Paste and File Export. With so many potential asset destinations inside another project, you can only achieve the greatest result if you provide your coworkers and vendors the right file type. Of course, you may copy, paste, or even drag into and out of Illustrator using other Creative Cloud desktop applications. However, I appreciate having confidence in Illustrator's extensive file type conversions, which include output for print, online, and mobile in formats including AutoCAD, BMP, CSS, JPEG, PDF, PNG, SVG, TIFF, and more.
Type Wrangling. Working with type in Illustrator is quite enjoyable for me as a typographer, especially now that Adobe has incorporated InDesign's simple OpenType glyph chooser drop-down. Instead of needing to give glyphs one character at a time, you may now provide alternatives to full text blocks. Simply choose a character from the drop-down menu of other possibilities after highlighting it. For instance, depending on the typeface, you may pick between superscript, subscript, tabular, old style, denominator, numerator, case-sensitive, tiny capitals, and other alternatives when you highlight the number 5.
Additionally, Illustrator uses InDesign's expert character and paragraph formatting features. Working with type in Illustrator has never been easier thanks to the Touch Type tool, a Glyphs window, and support for Asian (horizontal and vertical), Indic, Arabic, and Hebrew languages. Thankfully, the spellchecker has been improved, and it is now genuinely useful.
Variable type resembles a clever extension of earlier Adobe Multiple Master technology. The preloaded fonts include Acumin, Minion, Myriad, Source code, Source Sans, and Source Serif in the OpenType variable format. The beautiful thing about changeable fonts is that you can use Illustrator's sliders to accurately manage the width (condensed or expanded), weight (from thin to black), and slant. It's comparable to receiving 30 typefaces in one typeface. Something to note here is that the slant is an oblique, not a true italic.
Automation. Illustrator's graphic styles are comparable to Photoshop's styles. They are single-step, automated techniques that automatically apply characteristics to an object or type. These features in Illustrator might be as straightforward as a light drop shadow or as intricate as a seven-layer stroke with offsets, feathering, and an interior glow. Keep in mind that Illustrator's shadows and glows are created using stepped solid color gradations that mimic a blur.
Selecting an item with a Graphic Style applied and looking at the Appearance panel are wonderful ways to comprehend creating and utilizing Graphic Styles. Each of the attribute layers that work together to produce the effect of the Graphic Style may be seen there. In order to further automate your procedure, you can deploy a bounty of Photoshop-style Action presets or make your own.
Libraries and Mobile Apps
For simple app integration, Creative Cloud Libraries maintain your project assets across desktop and mobile apps at your fingertips. Additionally, you may save frequently used text blocks like taglines or disclaimers in your Libraries for easy access.
It's a delight to have integration with the iPad version and related Adobe mobile apps like Fresco and Capture. The later iOS app is worth a serious look because it's shockingly easy to use. For instance, while riding the train to work, you might use your iPhone to make a unique brush by capturing a picture of something intriguing and letting Capture work its magic. That brush you created on the train is waiting in your Creative Cloud Library, prepared for use in any project, when you go to work and launch Illustrator on your desktop.
A professional approach that is simplified helps everyone. With the help of shared and private libraries and assets, Creative Cloud makes working with customers and team members simple.
Adobe Fonts (previously Typekit), a comprehensive collection of typeface families for use in print and the web, is also included with a subscription. Select the fonts you want, then sync them to your desktop (or grab code for your site). The main issue is that Illustrator does not copy Adobe Fonts from the bundled folder when you collect for output. You also need a Creative Cloud membership for your service provider or printer. Of course, you can convert type to an outline to get around the issue if you don't have a multipage document with a lot of type.
Along with the perks listed above, your business will also receive a team website, premium typefaces, 100GB of cloud storage for collaboration, dedicated 24/7 technical support, shared Adobe Stock plans, and more with the help of Creative Cloud for Teams.
Design Wish List
There is no such thing as flawless software. Some Adobe Illustrator aficionados are looking for a number of new or improved capabilities. Below are a few of my desires for built-in characteristics (some of which are addressed by the aforementioned plugins):
Along with the ability to symmetrically synchronize movement of more than two-point handles, numerical handle adjustments would be a welcome addition.
Big data graphing has become increasingly popular, and as a result, information is being visualized in novel and intriguing ways. However, large data necessitates extremely powerful algorithms. For creating creative graphs and data graphics, such as chord diagrams, network (node-link) diagrams, circular packing graphs, tree charts, and sunburst/radial column graphs, I would at the very least appreciate a tool with more advanced capabilities.
It would be simpler if Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator all used the same key commands. Speaking of Photoshop, it would be fantastic if Illustrator had a feature that let you quickly return to a previous state (as does Affinity Designer).
Vector Victor
Any serious designer or artist should have Adobe Illustrator in their software library. You may use it to develop vector solutions for any problem. Additionally, by being inquisitive and utilizing Illustrator's substantial expansion capabilities, you may transform the program into a unique digital fantasy world. The vast array of tools, menus, palettes, pull-down choices, and features become second nature with regular usage and careful investigation, and Illustrator seems like an unconsciously extended part of your mind. The winner of the PCMag Editors' Choice award for vector graphics design is Adobe Illustrator.
Comments
Post a Comment