Today Adobe released a sneak peak on their fourth edition of Creative Suite and since the web is all over the new features of Photoshop, I’m going to take a closer look at the features of Illustrator CS4 (version 14).
Last time Adobe updated their Creative Suite, the features was a bit scares on new and improved tools and features, probably because of the Intel porting for Mac OS X, so this time around should be exciting!
I have a list of features I would like to have seen upgraded in Illustrator:
- Better Live Trace, which is more like inkscapes’ abilities to trace.
- Crop Area tool that’s more precise and without that “2px offset” bug.
- An improved Brush panel that’s faster and more user friendly – actually I would die for the “brush tracking” feature in Painter X and faster access to brush options, without dialog pop ups. Make Illustrator more Wacom friendly in general.
- Gradient palette – more user friendly.
- Better rendering in 3D (it’s really horrible when you use smooth corners or angles).
- A direct shortcut to “expand” and “expand appearance”.
- More sensitive anchor points and get rid of that “double click” with direct select tool.
This is my short list of improvements I’ve hope for, but probably quite unrealistic.
- Multiple artboards, which looks quite effective since you don’t have to save multiple artworks in the same file or spread out in multiple files – I guess it replaces the Slice tool.
- A new appearance panel with “easier” access to editing individual strokes and fills. It’s an okay update but probably not that important?
- Transparency in individual gradient sliders – this is a HUGE step forward for blending colours. At the same time your sliders are showing right above the artwork itself, so the Gradient tool and gradient slider panel are combined; that’s a good step forward and rather productive! Somehow it should be an opacity and gradient palette rolled into one.
- Blob Brush tool. Its’ like painting with an object or fill instead of a path. It’s similar to the CS3 Eraser tool except your painting with it.
- A workspace for colourblind people sounds rather dandy if you ask me!
- Improved Live Colour.
- Tabbed documents view just like you are already familiar with in your browser.
- Better Wacom support – I just say thanks!
- Better feedback from smart guides, so you don’t have to look at your transform palette, while placing them.
- Export directly to HTML (bye bye Fireworks!). Actually I have secretly hoped for this, but I thought it was too unrealistic
- ohh the filter menu is gone!! Less confusing for inexperienced Illustrator artist
At the same time they have introduced a new Bridge and hopefully they leave out the Flash interface which was soo slow compared to the normal Finder/Windows Explorer.
Personally I think the biggest news is better Wacom support, but since I haven’t found info on how this support is implemented, I’m not jumping up to cheer quite yet.
So I guess I did hit a couple of good guesses about future improvements, but we’ll see when CS4 is released, because often it’s the little things that make the difference in a big release.
If you want to have a good list of improvements which goes into more depth, then don’t go to Adobe.com, but take a look at Mordy Goldings site. Layersmagazine.com got some good in depth videos on the new CS4 products too. Go Media has some screenshots and videos (especially of the Blob tool).
Which enhancements do you see as the most important ones?
Wow, Esben, thanks so much for writing up a review of Illy CS4 for CC! You’re a star!
Ah, I’m so glad they got rid of filters! I never understood those.
I don’t think they got rid of the Slice tool (unless I misunderstood you?). According to Go Media, they just moved it.
Love the tabs. Finally!
Wooohooo for transparent gradients in Illy! I’ve been waiting for that for a long time. I hate having to create an opacity mask to get a color to fade to transparent (and that kind of transparency doesn’t work if you export to EPS! I wonder if this will…). I don’t know that it’ll be worth another $700 to upgrade from CS3 to CS4 just for that though :/
I’ve never understood filters either, but Im glad the got rid of it because its so confusing for beginners.
Slidetool hmm your right! they haven’t removed it
In general gradients/opacity mask in SVG is a big problem, I haven’t exported to EPS in a long time (only to CC once in a while :p) but I think they are gonna break the backwards compatibility with transparency in this way, but lets see
But Im still cheering over the Wacom support for some reason! But on the other hand I don’t think Im going to give up Painter X – yet!
Filters, meh, they really only belong in PShop anyway.
The upgrade cost might be significant — but I never actually made the jump from CS2 to CS3, largely because it didn’t look like CS3 had much of interest to me, and it wasn’t compatible with OSX.5 anyway. This one might actually be worth it, though.
Warren’s last blog post..Again with the saber rattling?
Yeah CS3 didn’t come with much, but it is compatible with OSX tiger and leopard
Esben, that has to be the most PERFECT avatar ever! ET… Esben Thomsen. Yay!! Love it.
You work in Painter? I tried using it once (I’ve seen some stunning results) but I just couldn’t understand the tools!
@Warren, you can pay an upgrade price from any level of Adobe products. You can even upgrade from, say, Photoshop CS to the complete CS4. The cost varies, naturally, but it is at least some discount if you own a previous version of an Adobe product.
InDesign CS3 was a HUGE improvement over CS2, which was a huge improvement over CS, but then, this (CS4) is only going to be version 6.
Esben, did you see this tutorial section from Lynda.com? There are 2 free videos to watch or you can buy a $25/mo subscription (sounds too good to be true!) to access all the videos. Can’t wait for the InDesign one!
thank you Lauren
I just love ligature and it seemed fitting!
I got Painter Essential with my Wacom and I tried it out and kind of liked it – there are a couple of beginner videos that explain how to use it, which is very different from PS/illy. I seriously suggest you look into it, since its only a couple of hours of work to learn the basic. For me PS becomes more and more a Photo app for post production for me! But if you are serious with your Wacom Lauren, then I would go for Painter.
Lynda.. well for me that would be a wast of money, since well.. lynda is good if you are green in a app or specific field, but otherwise test and trial is the way forward
Lot of money to play for “little things”. Myself I still have CS and that’s fine for me, so I couldn’t really say what I would like changed since I’m now officially three versions behind.
Doug C.´s last blog post: Characters Welcome
Doug,
CS was a huge improvement for Photoshop and Illustrator over PS 7 and Illy 10. If you use InDesign at all, the upgrade to CS3 was WAY worth the cost. You do get a discount for upgrading to the latest CS from any Adobe product. But true, the upgrades really just make work faster and easier, they don’t help you produce better work, so if you’re happy with your current version, why waste the money?
Adobe only allows upgrades two versions back. I’m three versions back.
Doug C.´s last blog post: Characters Welcome
Doug,
Not true! And CS4 hasn’t been released yet. You can upgrade from any version and even from a single program (like if you ONLY had Photoshop CS and you wanted the whole CS4 suite). The discount for the upgrade varies depending on how old your version is and which programs you have. For a limited time, Adobe is offering discounted upgrades from Macromedia Studio 8, MX 2004, CS2 and CS1. You do have to have the serial numbers for the products though. They ask you for them on install (and it’s frustrating to reformat your computer and then have to install your upgrades because you’re forever finding the old serials!!). Look at the 6th entry on that table; Creative Suite 1.0 to CS4 is $599. Worth it?
This is odd. I went to the Adobe site and discovered you are right, Lauren. I swear I read somewhere that you could’nt upgrade if you were three versions behind. Musy have been brain fart. Anyway, it seems CS4 Design Premium is $1,799, but since I have CS Premium (I believe it’s 1.0) I can upgrade for around $600 (special introductory price until February 28, 2009).
Be nice if I had that kind of money.
Doug C.´s last blog post: Characters Welcome
Doug,
Well, it’s pretty easy to miss the tiny “1.0″ in that huge list of eligable upgrade programs; no worries! Someone may have misreported it to you, too. Maybe by the end of February you will have that kind of money! Here’s hoping!
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