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It blows my mind to see how much Adobe Illustrator has improved when I first started using the program. After its initial publication in 1987, graphic designers began using it almost immediately. The industry was completely reshaped by the company’s vector graphics. In contrast to raster photos, which are constrained by the pixel resolution of the camera, vector graphics enable artists such as myself to stretch images without compromising the quality of the result.
The format that is used by default.AI is commonplace in the printing and design industries. In recent years, Adobe Illustrator has been subjected to significant competition from other design applications that have appeared to perform better than it in terms of features and the user experience. It looks like the illustrator is making an effort. The fact that Adobe has not allowed itself to get comfortable is an interesting aspect.
The upgrades to the illustrator show that the company is aware of the competition and is determined to maintain their position at the top. One of the numerous changes they’ve made is the ability to personalise the toolbar. Being able to quickly access my prefered tools in Illustrator is a game-changer for me because the program has so many features that it may be overwhelming. Another curious new feature is called Rotate View, and it was originally only available in Photoshop. Because of this function, I am able to manipulate complex designs and observe them from a variety of perspectives.
Adobe Illustrator Specifications
Note that these are only the bare minimum requirements for the position. Please visit the Adobe Illustrator website if you require any further clarification on this matter.
| Feature | Specification |
|---|---|
| System requirements (Windows) | 1 GHz or faster, Windows 10 and Windows 11 (64-bit), 8 GB RAM, 1 GB of available hard-disk space |
| System requirements (macOS) | macOS Catalina (version 10.15) or later, 8 GB of RAM (16 GB recommended), 3 GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation; SSD recommended |
| File formats supported | AI, EPS, PDF, SVG, PSD, TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, DICOM, EMF, WMF, SWF, DWG, DXF, DWF, STP, OBJ, AC3D |
| Color modes supported | RGB, CMYK, Grayscale, Spot Color |
| Document types supported | Vector graphics, Raster graphics, Text |
| Drawing tools | Pen, Pencil, Brush, Shape, Line, Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon, Star, Spiral, Text |
| Text tools | Font, Size, Color, Alignment, Spacing, Kerning, Tracking, Warp, Path |
| Effects and filters | Drop Shadow, Inner Shadow, Outer Glow, Inner Glow, Bevel and Emboss, Gradient, Pattern, Transparency, Distortion, Pathfinder |
| Export options | AI, EPS, PDF, SVG, PSD, TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, DWG, DXF, DWF, STP, OBJ, AC3D, SWF |
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What is Adobe Illustrator?
In a nutshell, Adobe Illustrator (Ai) is the graphic design software that serves as the industry standard. It can be used to create anything from logos to icons to illustrations to packaging, and the list goes on. When it comes to branding, it is an absolute requirement that you utilise this design tool at Shape. It possesses both straightforward functionality for basic drawing and highly sophisticated possibilities within the software itself.
Adobe Illustrator review: 3D Shading and Mapping
Users who want to give their drawings more dimension can take use of the numerous new capabilities offered by the most recent version of Illustrator, which includes a number of three-dimensional elements. Without having an in-depth understanding of 3D, it is possible to apply 3D effects to simple 2D vectors using Illustrator’s 3D window in a way that is reasonably straightforward. These 3D effects include extruding, rotating, and applying dynamic light sources.
Artwork mapping is yet another 3D feature that was added to Illustrator in its latest edition. This feature gives users the ability to map a vector artwork over the surface of a 3D object. The interface may seem complicated at first, but it’s actually more easier to use than it seems at first, and it will prove to be a valuable tool for creatives who want to visualise their illustrations on 3D items.
Adobe Illustrator review: Remarkable Quality at any Scale
You may make a variety of various pictures with the help of the Adobe Illustrator programme, which provides you with the opportunity to use all of the tools for drawing, as well as capabilities for changing text and colour settings. Every single one of the images that you design, be it a logo, the cover of a book or magazine, a website, or anything else, will be vector pictures.
In light of this information, you are free to alter the size of the photograph without sacrificing its quality. You could, for example, make the logo smaller so that it fits on the screen saver of a smartphone, or you could make it larger so that it may be displayed on a billboard that is quite enormous. Even after all of these scale alterations, the quality of your illustration will not be affected in any way.
Adobe Illustrator review: Pricing & Plans
Adobe is a leader in the subscription business; one must subscribe to the company in order to acquire any of its professional applications. The benefit is, of course, that you will be able to download and use the most recent features as soon as they are made available to the public. Major releases such as this one are only a portion of the tale since throughout the year, new tools and upgrades are made available to the public. The fact that you have to make payments on a regular basis is, of course, a drawback, but if this is your primary source of income, the expense is more than reasonable.
As is customary, you have the option of paying for Illustrator by itself through either a monthly membership (which costs $32 / £31) or a yearly subscription (which costs $21 / £20 when paid monthly). In addition, there is a single annual subscription available at a price of either $240 or £239.
The temptation, on the other hand, is to make use of Adobe’s Creative Cloud in its entirety. For a fee that may be paid on a monthly or annual basis, you will have access to Adobe applications such as Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Lightroom, as well as a great many more. In light of the fact that many creative apps were developed with interoperability in mind, opting for the complete Creative Cloud experience is frequently the best course of action.
Adobe Illustrator review: Design Software
All of the artwork may be scaled to any size without any loss of quality since the graphics in Illustrator are generated by mathematical equations rather than being stored as individual pixels, as is the case in the image editing software Adobe Photoshop. In everyday language, a vector graphic is one that is made up of paths, as opposed to raster graphics, which are made up of individual pixels. Examples of vector graphics include SVG and EPS. A raster graphic, often known as a PNG or JPEG file, is a collection of pixels that are each a different colour and, when combined, make a picture.
This ensures that your Illustrator file, regardless of how much you enlarge it, will always have crisp, clean lines, making it ideal for use in the creation of logos and banners. When it comes to working with vector graphics, Adobe Illustrator is without a doubt the greatest software to use because this is exactly what the program was designed to do.
Adobe Illustrator review: Help and Support
On the extremely rare occasion when Adobe platforms have a disruption in service or a problem occurs that halts workflow, Adobe’s support is quick to respond and resolve the issue. I’ve read that some individuals had negative experiences based on reviews and ratings, but everytime I’ve had problems with Illustrator, Adobe offers the best assistance I’ve ever experienced from a software organisation. They are quite helpful, and they are very knowledgeable in even topics that are very particular.
In addition to this, they have one of the most comprehensive and helpful help centres and forums that I’ve ever come across, which includes a large number of potential answers. In most cases, you won’t even need to call the company because you can easily discover the solution to your question on their website.
Final Words
From my own experience, I know that Adobe Illustrator is always adding cool new features, which I really like. But I’ve also seen that if you only need to work with standard vectors, are on a tight budget, or have simple design needs, you might want to look into other graphic design tools. Illustrator has been the leader in graphic design for a long time, but other vector program are starting to catch up. Before making a choice, it’s important to do some study. Having said that, Adobe Illustrator is the standard in its field for a reason, and I can personally attest to its excellence—it really is the best in many ways.
Adobe Illustrator review: The Good and Bad
Graphic designers that like less supervised and more flexible design tools over hands-on solutions specifically developed for novices are the ideal candidates to use Adobe Illustrator as their primary design software.
The Good
- The best vector design tools on the market
- Excellent Touch Type feature
- Simplified Free Transform tool
- Many improvements to existing features
The Bad
- No perpetual license option
- No uniformity of key commands with Photoshop and InDesign
Questions and Answers
pupils may master the fundamentals of Adobe Illustrator in a matter of hours thanks to the program’s accessibility and user-friendliness; this allows pupils more freedom to play with the programme. However, in order to really learn Illustrator, students who intend to use the programme in a professional setting will require far more instruction. Obviously, this is dependent on a variety of different things.
If your project does not require a great deal of editing and instead primarily focuses on drawing or producing designs, then you should select Adobe Illustrator as your software of choice. However, if you need to edit photographs, retouch images, or do anything else similar to that, the software that you should use is Adobe Photoshop.