Adobe Illustrator Cs5 Review

Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator CS5 was released 2010 by Adobe. It has a long history as well as many previous versions. Illustrator is a very powerful and professional vector graphical editor.

Official web site: www.adobe.com

Retail price: 599 USD when downloaded, 619 USD shipped DVD included license

Upgrade from previous versions: 199 USD

30 day trial with all functions enabled, downloadable or 20 USD for DVD.

Illustrator is fully available in all countries.

Installation process

Illustrator comes alone as well as in packs like Adobe Master Collection or Web Collection with other applications like Photoshop. If you install it DOESNT require serial numbers and activations right away, so you can enter it later too. In the installation you can choose between more languages and plugins to be installed right away. The installation of Illustrator takes to install around 10 minutes on a medium computer. A whole pack takes around 45 minutes. You are able to download extra extensions like brushes from the internet and install it manually or using the preinstalled installer.

About Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator is a graphical suite, for both simple and extended users. It is a combined vector-raster application, although it works on the basis that it converts rasters to vectors. These vectors are then freely resizable, rotatable, distortable and moveable, like in the picture below. Theoretically, you can change everything from color to shape and position. The pictures show the same square.

Interface

The most admirable about Illustrator is it's good looking and organized interface with it's expandable tool panes, which can be either windowed or "inserted" into the window directly. The main part is the tool set, where all tools are located. The basic tools are Select, Lasso select, Text, Line, Shape, Brush, Distort and Fill style. These tools all work on the vector basis, so you can whenever come back and completely change them. (Unlike raster editors like Paint, where you can only delete them with the select tool or change their color.)

Everything in the interface can be moved, adjusted and displayed by your likings very easily. (see the interface picture)

Filters and effects

Illustrator comes with a whole library of all kinds of filters from color to shape and texture stylizing. These filters and effects are very commonly used mainly by professionals and additional are also available at Adobe.com for both free and paid. From my point of view, though, you never will use all those ever. The screenshot shows the choice. You can also apply typical Photoshop effect, even when you don't have Photoshop installed.

Tools and functions

Here is a list of tools I mentioned before, with their functions

* Select- selector which allows you to select objects by one or more

* Lasso select- select by drawing a line around it

* Text- adds either artistic (better for effects and adjustments) or paragraph text

* Line- makes different lines (Illustrator can also be used for architectural sketches)

* Shape- creates a shape of your liking, you can even specify how many edges it should have

* Brush- a powerful painter tool (I will come back to that later)

* Distort- completely change