All about Adobe Illustrator 10
By MIKE BERMAN
Scripps Howard News Service
February 13, 2002

When I reviewed Adobe Illustrator 9 last year I thought to myself, "Well, this is it. It can't get any better". So I was a bit skeptical when Illustrator 10 arrived, figuring that any enhancements had to be purely cosmetic.

I was wrong! In fact the look and feel of the program were the only things that didn't change.

Adobe Illustrator 10 ($399 or $149 for an upgrade) is loaded with new features including enhanced tools for working with text and composing for the web. And what was the most surprising was how easy these new tools were to use, turning a geek into a Michelangelo with a few swipes of a mouse. Of course the "learning curve" depends on your experience with the program. Those unfamiliar with Illustrator will still have to commit to many tedious hours to become comfortable with it. But it pays off in the long run.

Among the new features are:

- Improved compatibility with other Adobe products such as Photoshop and Go-Live. It's faster than older versions, although redraws of complex illustrations are still a bit tedious. New symbol commands allow you to select a drawn object, text or element. - Drag and drop it into the new symbols palette and reproduce it an endless number of times by dragging and dropping it into your drawing. Symbols in your illustrations are automatically updated as changes are made to a symbol in the palette. - Slicing tools speed up loading of Web pages. Object-based slices update automatically as your design changes. You can now control format and compression options using slicing tools to optimize graphics for the web.

- New Arc, Rectangular Grid and Polar Grid tools allow you to easily create open curves and other complex matrices. New Liquefy brushes are actually filters that transform simple paths or text into more complex shapes, giving you more control over these elements than the older Distort and Transform tools. The new Flare tool adds a lens flare effect, including halos, to images. You can add live Scalable Vector Graphics effects to illustrations with a few simple lines of code. Compatibility with Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows XP.

Of course these are only a few of the new features that keep this program at the top of the heap. But be warned: Those of you that open this Pandora's Box of Illustration Tools may encounter hours of frustration as you try to master this program. For those that aren't up to the task, I recommend lots of bed rest and a solid dose of something that's easier to master like Corel Draw 10 or Jasc Pant Shop Pro 7.

But, if you're determined to persevere and master all that Illustrator 10 has to offer, you will be rewarded with artistic capabilities you never thought would be available to a computer graphics professional.