Adobe Illustrator CS3 Review
Posted by pittmfug | Posted in Misc | Posted on 24-09-2007
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Those of you who know me know that I am not an Illustrator. I enjoy designing and programming but when it comes down to whipping out a Wacom tablet and going to town, I am not your man. Given my lack of illustration skills I thought it would be a joke for me to explain all of the great techniques and options that are available to you in the new Adobe Illustrator CS3 from that perspective. In my opinion you have two primary sets of Illustrator users: those who actually illustrate with it, and those who open, modify, and export from it. Being a Flash developer I’m part of the latter group, myself. Seeing that this is the Flash Users Group blog, I thought it beneficial to show the features of the new Illustrator through the lens of a Flash Developer.
I would wager that most of you have used a vector art program sometime in your past; most of the time it was Freehand for me. I mean, Macromedia made both Flash and Freehand so it was easy enough to get art from Freehand into Flash, for the most part. I think a lot of Flashers used to avoid bringing Illustrator files into Flash because of color shifting and oddities; integrating the two programs often left people wanting. Throughout this review I, as a “modifier and exporter”, hope to touch upon a few of the new features that make upgrading to Illustrator CS3 a no brainer for Flash designers and developers.
Integration with Adobe Flash
The best place to start is with the tight integration there is between Flash and Illustrator when importing an Illustrator file into the Flash IDE. I’m not talking about the nice Import feature from Flash CS3 here. I’m talking about straight copying and pasting from Illustrator into Flash. To users that haven’t had to deal with things like this in the past this may seem like the most basic and simple thing in the world. People need to realize that these two rock stars of vector haven’t always been distributed by the same company. Now that they are, I think that you will see a lot of sweet integration features coming your way. Copying and pasting from Illustrator is just that. You copy and paste. Your paths, gradients, etc. copy right over to Flash with little to no degradation. Nice editable paths also paste over as well. This is how it should have always been. Better late than never.
Illustrator paths, gradients and masks can easily be copied and pasted into Flash with little to no quality or editability loss.
Symbol Integration
I really wasn’t aware of symbols in Illustrator prior to learning about the way in which they can be ported into Flash. Symbols in Illustrator work similarly to the way they do in Flash. You can create a symbol and reuse it throughout the file. Changes to the symbol instance will cascade through all the instances that are being used. Illustrator also has a tool called the Symbol Sprayer which allows you to paint with symbols. Copying and pasting a symbol from Illustrator into Flash is very simple. If you name your symbol in Illustrator and then paste it into Flash the symbol data will carry over by creating a movie clip instance in Flash with the given instance name.
Copying symbols from Illustrator into Flash carries over the symbol data and instance name.
SWF Exporting
Exporting swfs from Illustrator is not new – I actually used to use that as a trick to maintain quality when exporting to Flash. Back in the day things weren’t so peachy. The new Illustrator allows you to control many options when exporting to the swf format. So, while this is not new or rocket science, it is a valuable feature you can use to deliver flash content to others who may not have Illustrator to begin with.
Illustrator CS3’s SWF Export Option
Live Color
Not all of the new features in Illustrator CS3 are Flash related. Live Color is an awesome addition to the program. Live color will take the current color palette of the selected illustration and allow you to modify the colors being used as a group. You can easily create and view live changes of different color harmonies on your illustration without taking the time to set them up manually. For example, you have a largely green and orange illustration and you want to see what it might look like using red and blue tones instead. There’s no need to manually set each drawing object to a new color and figure out the tones of each. Simply use Live Color to quickly view the different tones and steps.
Illustrator CS3’s Live Color allows you to quickly view different color options for your illustration.
Improved operating performance and the new UI
Improved performance is always a plus. Illustrator CS3 touts “…more responsive drawing and editing with improved performance in key operations, including faster screen redraw, object moving, panning, scaling, and transformations.” I really enjoy the new user interface. Adobe has done a nice job of creating a common and familiar UI across the CS3 program family. Pallet locations and look and feel is now becoming standard across the CS3 suite. Illustrator CS3 sports the new, highly configurable UI that users of After Effects have benefited from for awhile.
Crop Area Tool
Another really neat feature that Illustrator CS3 brings is the Crop Area Tool. This tool allows you to set an export area on your document. In the image below you can see that I set the crop area using the Crop Area tool. When I exported my file to a swf only the crop area was exported. That can be pretty handy when doing test prints or exports.
Exporting using the CropArea Tool.
Kuler
I think kuler is a great idea. Kuler is a community driven swatch theme exchange. You can upload, download and modify swatch themes on the kuler.adobe.com site. Adding a kuler panel to Illustrator was a great idea. Many of the programs that were originally written by Adobe lack support for Flash-based pallets/panels. This makes developing extensions for them a bit more challenging. It was pretty easy for me to develop the kuler panels for Flash CS3 and Fireworks CS3 using Flash but would not have been so for Illustrator. Adobe thoughtfully provides a way within Illustrator CS3 to view, upload and copy swatches to your swatch library from the kuler feed. The panel can be accessed by going to the menu and selecting Window > Adobe Labs > kuler.
Conclusion
Illustrator is a great application. Even thoug
h I am not a hard-core illustrator, I use the Illustrator program a lot in my day-to-day work as a web developer and designer. Today’s Flash-friendly Illustrator gets an “A” in my book. If you were ever going to purchase or upgrade now is the time to do it.
Illustrator is available for $599.00 or for $199.00 upgrade. You can learn more about Illustrator CS3 and the numerous other new features by visiting the Illustrator page on Adobe.com.
