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Provides: Vector illustration
Developer: Adobe
Requirements: Mac OS X v10.5.7 or greater, Intel processor, 1GB RAM, 2GB of disk space
Price: $599 for standalone version, $199 for upgrade, and is part of the Creative Design, Web Design, and Production Premium and Master Collection Suites.
Illustrator CS5 has some of the most amazing new features ever presented in an Illustrator release, but still has the same amazing limitations it's had for years. I suppose we users are used to the limitations, but at least we can enjoy the Beautiful Strokes, Bristle Brushes, Perspective Grids, Pixel Perfect drawings, and the impressive Shape Builder to name a few features that will keep us working better, faster, and more intelligently than before. In other words, CS5 is a worthy upgrade.
Illustrator is one of those applications that's been around almost as long as the Mac. [The first Mac was released in Jan. 84 and Illustrator was released in Jan. 87.] If you are not familiar with Illustrator, it is a vector drawing program as opposed to, say, Photoshop, which is a raster (or pixel) based program. The primary difference is that if you draw a circle in Photoshop, what you have is a collection of pixels that are shaped in a circle but are in fact, nothing more than pixels, one (or more) for each part of the circle. In Illustrator, you have a mathematical definition for that circle and a definition of how wide the stroke of that circle is. Thus, the Illustrator circle is always re-sizeable, moveable, and the width of the stroke always variable. A vector drawing is often called "resolution independent" because the same image will look as good on a postage stamp as it will on a billboard: it will never appear pixillated because it is not composed of pixels.
New with CS5 are startup screens that all have the same theme as other CS5 applications but individually they are unique. [All startup screens in Applelinks reviews have been reduced 35% across the board so that the largest ones will fit within the width restrictions we use at Applelinks.]
When first starting AI, one of the things that might stick out is that the Tool Panel has changed a bit as shown below and compared to the Tool Panel from CS4. Of note are three new tools and one whole new section below the swatch selector. These are WT: Width Tool (part of Beautiful Strokes), SB: Shape Builder (Pathfinder begone?), PT: Perspective Tool (city blocks anyone?), and DN-B-I (Draw Normal, Behind, Inside). The tools that these tools have overtaken still exist and are accessed by mousing-down on the tool and holding as any other tool that has that tiny little arrow in the bottom right corner of some of the tool icons. No past tools have been lost or removed.
Beautiful Strokes
Without a doubt, my favorite new feature with Illustrator is Beautiful Strokes. Beautiful Strokes actually encompasses a number of new dynamics, but the one that most people will show off first is how one can change the width of a path, any path. As shown above, the one that most will first encounter is the WT, or Width Tool.
Drawing variable width lines has been around for some time but you do need some sort of drawing tablet that can convert pressure into variable width. Then, selecting the Brush tool, and making sure you have your Brush settings set to accept the tablet responses, you can make a variable width line--think of an eyebrow's variable width. The catch is that unless you are VERY experienced, obtaining just the right nuanced line can be a bit of a challenge. If you are not completely satisfied with the line, you have to draw it over (and over and over) until you are satisfied. Now, using any straight line, bent line, circle, square, pen-tool generated line, or any other line you might have in mind (but not the Brush tool) you can draw the line, take the Width Tool and customize the line as shown below. On the left you see a wavy line created with the Pen Tool. On the right I've taken the Width Tool and dragged out from the center in three spots. If you press the Option key during a drag, the line only thickens from the side you are pulling from, otherwise the line is thickened equally from both sides. If you want manual preciseness, you can double-click on any central spot and a the Width Point Edit window pops up letting you manual set either side (or both) to exact dimensions.
If you develop a contour that has some special benefits, don't worry about trying to reproduce it later on, you can save the contours for later use. In addition, you can use it on any OTHER kind of line (circles, squares, etc.).
Beautiful Strokes doesn't stop there, it also has been used to fix Dashed lines. Here's the problem: in the past if you set your dashed line to be 12 pixels wide, it would rigidly maintain that 12 pixels even if it wrapped stupidly around corners as shown below on the left. If you want rigidity, you can still have that but CS5 now brings intelligent dashes that will vary in size so that when corners are approached, the rigidity of that 12 pixels is tossed and averaged out so that the now corners appear uniform and logical.
Lastly, for Beautiful Strokes, Arrowheads. What would a technical drawing be without arrowheads pointing at something. The problem was that in the past arrowheads were applied to the ends of a line, not part of a line as shown on the top of the image below. That meant that if you changed the size of arrowhead, or changed the arrowhead, you would also have to move the line around so that the arrowhead tip was still pointing at what you wanted to point at.
Now, with CS5 we can still have the old approach if we want, but we can also have the new approach that places the tip of the arrowhead at the end of the line. Also, as shown below, to access the arrowheads is finally (and properly) placed in the Stroke Panel. (Also shown below is the Dashed Line section in the Stroke Panel as well as the Profile selector where you can access saved profiles from the Width Tool. Lastly, on the bottom is a quick combination of the arrowhead tool stylized by the Width Tool. Simple, classy, and as easy as pie.
I do not know about you, but for me, the one feature I love/hate in Illustrator is the Pathfinder Panel. Sometimes I know exactly which one to use, but more times than I wish to admit, it's a process of "is it this? Command-z, is it this? Command-z, is it this? Command-z, etc. until I finally find the right one to click on and combine my objects.
Shape Builder Tool
New to AI-CS5 is the Shape Builder Tool. Simply, the Shape Builder tool lets you drag to add or subtract the various parts of your image to create what you want. In other words, Shape Builder is how Pathfinder should have been all along. As shown below on the top, I've got a bunch of shapes lumped together. In the middle item, I've started using the Shape Builder. The first thing you need to do is to make all parts of the image that you wish to affect active. Then, after selecting the new Shape Builder tool, you drag across the object's borders. As you cross the object's borders you can see with the border's red line what's being incorporated into the new shape. Also note the cross-hatch texture of the new object.
You can only drag in straight lines and cannot do squiggles. While this may seem inefficient, it turns out to be a better approach. The best analogy I can think of is to use the Lasso Tool in Photoshop from a large complex object and just as you finish, your hand slips and all that dragging went to naught. It's just fine to use the Shape Builder tool with little drags at a time so that if you slip, the Command-z action will only undo a minimal amount of your work. As in most Adobe tools, if you press the Option key while dragging, you will be subtracting borders. Be sure to double-click the Merge Tool in the Tools Panel to see the various options.
Perspective Grid
Illustrator ventured into 3D with AI-CS1 with Extrude and Bevel. Unfortunately, and it does pain me to say this, nothing has been done with this feature since then. It continues to sit, doing what it has done with nothing new to show for its time. However, Adobe has added a new 3D tool, (sort of) the Perspective Grid.
Admittedly, the Perspective Grid is a bit hard to get your brain around and is a bit tricky to get used to the full dynamics. At a minimum, it places the same perspective grid you might have used in art class on your drawing space to draw in, well, perspective. Under some conditions, objects you place in the perspective grid are automatically locked into the grid while other items may not be.
If any of you remember that great science fiction TV show, Farscape, you might also remember Pilot, the being who was joined to Moya, the living space ship. Pilot had many arms all of which were in constant motion as they pushed and pulled the various buttons to control the ship. Well, that's sort of what it's like to work in the Perspective Grid.
To use the Perspective Grid you first need to place it in your workspace by clicking on the Perspective Grid Tool on the Tool bar. From there you can adjust the various Grid faces so your image will land where you imagine you want it to view. (You can move these after you've started your image.) Then you need to establish which "face" in that grid you wish to draw on by clicking on the "Plane Switching Widget, that little circular item you see in the upper left corner of the document screen shot below (or the close up shown in the bottom right). Then select your object shape (circle, rectangle, etc.) and draw. As you draw, your object will automatically (and wonderfully) be in perspective. However, if you want to alter your shape, you need to select the "Perspective Selection Tool" (dropdown from the Perspective Grid Tool from the Tool menu (see the image bottom left)), or Shift-v.
Working with Text is a bit different as you first enter the text on the page. Then select the Perspective Selection Tool and drag it to the location on THAT face where you want it to land. If you later chose you want it on a different face, you need to undo any changes in size or placement and then undo the "Bring into Perspective" move before you change the selected plane from the Plane Switching Widget, then (be sure you have the Perspective Selection Tool" selected and move the text into the new desires plane.
Changing colors on a surface is straightforward, but not for text. For text you need to double-click the text with the regular Selection Tool to bring it into Isolation Mode, then you can alter the text as you see fit and after exiting Isolation Mode, your Perspective text will display the changes.
I feel almost silly saying this, but all of this is much easier to perform in real life than it is to write about (and probably easier than it is to read about). My whole point though is that working in the Perspective Grid is not as easy as it is to work in Illustrator itself, and until you use if for a while will be confusing.
While the Perspective Grid is a wonderful tool, there are a few things that might pop up in your mind that you do need to know about:
- The Perspective grid will NOT let you create objects. By this, I mean you cannot draw out the six sides of a box and expect to then rotate and manipulate that box. Like I said, working in the Perspective Grid is no different than drawing out perspective lines just as you did in art class.
- There is no interactivity between the Perspective Grid and the Extrude and Bevel features. They are two different tools that are quite different in focus and operation. On the other hand, the two different 3D approaches can easily exist in the same document: see the next item.
- You can have objects locked onto the grid and other objects off the grid in the same drawing, and you can separate objects that were on the grid from the grid and vise versa. However, if you do remove an object from the grid, it will maintain its perspective shape and subsequent re-sizing will not maintain the perspective dynamic.
Despite the complications and challenges contained within the Perspective Grid, I've seen images of buses, planes, and city streets that were simply amazing. It is a worthy tool.
Bristle Brush
Almost seeming as an offshoot from Beautiful Strokes, the new Bristle Brush features look like they belong in Photoshop. Using a Brush in Illustrator is not new, and the full power of using an Illustrator Brush can best be achieved with a pen and tablet such as a Wacom tablet.
There's been a brush in AI for ages, and in fact there have been four different types of Brush for almost as long. In addition, it's been easy to vary the width of a stroke by using either pen angle or pressure via a pressure sensitive tablet as shown on the image below. In this image, the black brush stroke has been selected with the Direct Selection tool to emphasize that the stroke contains the varied width. [Note: you cannot alter and/or enhance the width of a brush stroke with the Width Tool, something that I do find regrettable.]
After selecting "New Brush" from the Brush Panel you can select which kind of brush you wish to create. At that point you can customize the brushes attributes quite a bit as shown in the middle image below. Varying these dynamics lets' you vary the quality of the stroke as shown in the bottom images below. I've selected the strokes with the Direct Selection Tool on the right to demonstrate how these are simply single brush strokes.
I’m no artist and I can attest that using Bristle Brush will neither automatically nor immediately turn you into one. However, if you are comfortable using a tablet and know some drawing basics, you can achieve results like the image below. [Note: The image below is a roll-over image. If you move your mouse over the image, you can see part of the images' stroke structure as I did above.]
[Image courtesy of Janet and Brian Stoppee (M2 Media Studios, Inc.) who's work with the new brush tools from both Illustrator and Photoshop are stunning.]
Fortunately, after all your work creating these new brushes is not necessarily a one shot deal. As you create each new brush, they will be displayed in the Brushes Panel. From here you can save them for future use by clicking on the "Save" icon on the bottom left. I've included in the left side of the image below to display the various brush selections available to the user during the Bristle Brush creation process.
While I may not be an artist, having these tools around does give me the impedance to try it myself. I'd have shown you my work but while it would do my justice, it wouldn't be doing Illustrator any justice.
One word of warning: as you create these images, there is more and more overlapping transparency paths and that can bog down printing. Adobe suggests that if you are having printing problems that you save a copy out as a rasterized copy and print that. [Don't rasterize your original or you will lose any ability to edit anything after the save.]
Pixel Perfect Drawing
One would assume that a vector drawing tool like Illustrator would be a strongly desired product for web image creation. In the past you'd think that, but it hasn't been that way because for years Illustrator has butchered images intended for the screen view because AI didn't know where to place a pixel.
Specifically, when a pixel is not located exactly where the pixel grid lies, Illustrator performs a process called anti-aliasing to make the result look "better." While this may work most of the time, when viewing these objects on a computer screen they may look fuzzy or gray when they are supposed to be sharp and black. If you look at the image below, I've drawn a simple rectangle but I've not done prepared that image that I wanted to use the image for web viewing. As you can see, there are multiple colors of gray and only one line of black. In the past there was no way to avoid this other than to not use Illustrator. Now, by selecting "Align New Objects to Pixel Grid" from the New Document window, or from the flyout menu in Transform Panel, or by checking the "Align to Pixel Grid" in the Transform Panel, you can watch as your object snaps to the pixel grid as seen below on the right. [Note: you need to zoom in greater than 600% and turn on Pixel Preview from the View menu to see the pixel grid.]
Be aware that some objects, like circles or round-corner rectangles, will not line up to the pixel grid even though it seems that the top/bottom/left/right extreme edges should be pixel perfect. It seems they should, but they do not become "pixel perfect."
One other item of note in regards to this whole Pixel perfect issue is fonts. The question should come up, if the objects can avoid being fuzzy, why are the fonts fuzzy? The good news is that now you have the same font dynamics as you've had in Photoshop for years.
As shown below, you see in the Character Panel the new (or old) options for Sharp, Crisp, and Strong (besides None) for enhancing the fonts for web view. Below that, on the left are some characters at 100% view, then 200% view and finally identifying which is which. For many years graphic designers for the web have created material in Illustrator, then brought that into Photoshop for enhancement, correction, and text. Now, finally, that can all be done without leaving Illustrator. [Note: before I get a slew of angry letters, yes I know a lot of this can be done in Fireworks, but I'm not reviewing Fireworks here. So please, settle down and wait your turn.]
Draw Normal, Behind, Inside and other great new items
In the past if you had an object on the drawing and wanted to add a new item behind that item, you had to draw the new item and then select "Arrange" from the Object menu to place that new item where you wanted it in relation to the previous object. (Note: this is when you are working within a single layer).
Now, by simply selecting where you want the new object to be placed (please look at the image on the very top that shows the new Tool Panel), you can place objects precisely. As shown below, the Green oval is placed in a Normal position, the Yellow was placed Behind , and lastly, the blue was placed Inside. In this last option, Placing Inside acts just like a clipping mask because that's exactly what it is.
Of course the corollary to drawing behind is that now you can select objects that are hiding behind other documents. This is done by pressing the Command key as you click with either the Selection or Direct Selection Tool. As long as the cursor is over something that is behind the thing you are clicking on, there will be a small "<" symbol next to the cursor. You continue to "drill down" as far as you need.
Other great improvements have to include that now you do NOT need to have the ends of two paths absolutely dead on lined up to join them. If you select them, Illustrator will join them. [Note: the better/closer they are lined up before the joining the better the results will be.]
Let me not forget that the multiple Artboards, introduced in CS4 now can have their own unique names and you can keep better tabs on the Artboards and organize them with the new Artboard Panel (what would Illustrator be without a new Panel, it doesn't have enough, does it?). Also, Artboards can have their own individual rulers or there can be one ruler to rule them all. In addition you can past into one Artboard or paste into them all.
And lastly, you do not need to have one drawing for the web and another for print if you have various rasterized effects to the items. This was always a strange dichotomy with Illustrator because vector items are always considered resolution independent. Well, the vector items were, but raster effects have not been. Now with RIE (Resolution Independent Effects, it's possible to select which resolution you are aiming at, continue, and Illustrator will figure out the details.
In short, this is a major update that has a variety of new and/or improved features. Obviously the value of any of these updates is personal and you may or may not find any value with any or all of the features I've pointed out. Personally I've no clue as to why we have all of these great new features but there is still a continued delay for long-standing features that have needed enhancement since Illustrator 1. Simply, Illustrator does need to set some time aside for the next update and perform some JDI as Photoshop has done. [JDI stands for "Just Do It" and had provided some wonderful small enhancements that otherwise might have been overlooked.]
Because of these long awaited unfulfilled wishes, I am actually giving this a 4.5 rating, even though it shows up as a full 5.
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___________ Gary Coyne has been a scientific glassblower for over 30 years. He's been using Macs since 1985 (his first was a fat Mac) and has been writing reviews of Mac software and hardware since 1995.
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