I am familiar with the transparency features offered in CorelDraw and Freehand; however I think the transparency features in Illustrator 9 are definetly the most robust. If you look closely at AI 9's capabilities I think most will probably agree.I have not seen this type of transparency support anywhwere. Looking forward...
While the review is on-the-mark it sound like every other review of 9.0! In fact, the information can be found on the Adobe site. So how does the product impact our workflow and is it worth the money to update now or when the price drops. $149 to 179 seems like a small price to pay to upgrade (and it really is) but most of us are faced with upgrading several programs every quarter, and asking the boss for the upgrade money starts to turn us into "nags." Their response is (fairly) "How much more production will the upgrade be...can we recover the upgrade cost before the next upgrade is published!"
With that in mind-how much "faster" can we get work done using the new upgrade-no one seems to want to address that!
Finally a major upgrade worth the money! Being a longtime Illustrator and Freehand user (versions 3 and earlier) there's only a couple of features that freehand has that I'd like to see in Illustrator: the paste-into command (masks are ok, but can be unwieldy and impractical) and the ability to handle multiple pages and multiple document formats. The Photoshop-like color management will be a very welcome bonus.
Adding transparency, better layer management and live effects will make Illustrator an even more indispensible tool, even for those of us on the edge of graphic design.
Submitted by Gary Conkling on Mon, 06/12/2000 - 19:49.
Your review of AI 9 was informative, but it was continually compared to Freehand. Believe it or not, there still are good numbers of people who prefer CorelDRAW over either of those tools. I would be interested to see what your comparison between AI 9 and DRAW 9.
I recently downloaded both AI and Freehand in order to evaluate them to determine if I could actually leave the world of DRAW one day. I gave myself an assignment and of course found it easier to complete in DRAW. However, I could not complete the tasks with the same functional ease in AI and Freehand, even given a learning curve. Each have their own strengths, I'll admit.
So, I would love to see how DRAW stacks up to AI 9. How about a showdown article?
--David Whitmyre
Submitted by dwhitmyre on Thu, 05/25/2000 - 16:47.
I appreciate your review of Illustrators strengths and was glad to hear of Illustrator 's transparency capabilities including the blending modes found in Photoshop. I use Illustrator 7 on a daily basis because it is the software available in my company. But I am also quite familiar with CorelDraw and Freehand (I personally own both). CorelDraw has had transparency since ver 6. It also has more blending modes than Photoshop. My main concern is whether Illustrator has yet addressed envelope editing (which both Freehand and CorelDraw have). I feel that Illustrator's biggest lack is no envelope editing. You have to get Kai's vector effects in order to give Illustrator that ability, but CorelDraw will let you be much more interactive with the envelope editor. If you decide you want to change the envelope later on after you have made other changes to your document, you can go back to the envelope editor just as it was. With Kai's vector effects, the change is permanent unless you want to
Well, it seems there's quite a few new toys for us to play with in release 9 of illustrator. That's great, cos I love illustrator, but there's one issue I'm quite worried about. I currently use illustrator 8 all day long, both for web and for print jobs. And it's great for the web, but the guys at my print shop frown every time I hand in a job in illustrator format. It seems illustrator files are a nightmare to output to Postscript, and it has sometimes taken them days just to figure out how to print a file. It seems that illustrator is just so non-standard in the way it prints that it makes it impossible to print straight to film. What does this mean to the print user? Well, either your print jobs are late because of problems at the print shop, or you have to save .eps's and lay them up in Quark, which is just a pain. Plus I don't like Quark. Wouldn't it be nice if illustrator 9 did it all? Quite frankly I'm a bit worried that all the extra features in ver. 9 will make illustrator even less compatible with postscript handlers and make the problem even worse... Guess we'll have to wait and see.
well written and very informative
the article provides a broad yet concise overview of the new features one can find in illustrator 9.
Transparency Features Comparison
I am familiar with the transparency features offered in CorelDraw and Freehand; however I think the transparency features in Illustrator 9 are definetly the most robust. If you look closely at AI 9's capabilities I think most will probably agree.I have not seen this type of transparency support anywhwere. Looking forward...
Yay! Finally an upgrade that's REALLY an upgrade!
I've grown used to FreeHand in the last year, but if this ends up as good as Mr. Penston says, I'll have to take another look.
Tell me something new...or how it impacts workflow
While the review is on-the-mark it sound like every other review of 9.0! In fact, the information can be found on the Adobe site. So how does the product impact our workflow and is it worth the money to update now or when the price drops. $149 to 179 seems like a small price to pay to upgrade (and it really is) but most of us are faced with upgrading several programs every quarter, and asking the boss for the upgrade money starts to turn us into "nags." Their response is (fairly) "How much more production will the upgrade be...can we recover the upgrade cost before the next upgrade is published!"
With that in mind-how much "faster" can we get work done using the new upgrade-no one seems to want to address that!
great as always, but I miss a couple of freehand features
Finally a major upgrade worth the money! Being a longtime Illustrator and Freehand user (versions 3 and earlier) there's only a couple of features that freehand has that I'd like to see in Illustrator: the paste-into command (masks are ok, but can be unwieldy and impractical) and the ability to handle multiple pages and multiple document formats. The Photoshop-like color management will be a very welcome bonus.
Encouraging upgrade
Adding transparency, better layer management and live effects will make Illustrator an even more indispensible tool, even for those of us on the edge of graphic design.
Illustrator Vs. CorelDRAW--how does it compare/
Your review of AI 9 was informative, but it was continually compared to Freehand. Believe it or not, there still are good numbers of people who prefer CorelDRAW over either of those tools. I would be interested to see what your comparison between AI 9 and DRAW 9.
I recently downloaded both AI and Freehand in order to evaluate them to determine if I could actually leave the world of DRAW one day. I gave myself an assignment and of course found it easier to complete in DRAW. However, I could not complete the tasks with the same functional ease in AI and Freehand, even given a learning curve. Each have their own strengths, I'll admit.
So, I would love to see how DRAW stacks up to AI 9. How about a showdown article?
--David Whitmyre
AI 8.0 was good, AI 9.0 looks great!
Waiting for 9.0 to arrive....
Would like a review of CorelDraw compared to Illustrator
I appreciate your review of Illustrators strengths and was glad to hear of Illustrator 's transparency capabilities including the blending modes found in Photoshop. I use Illustrator 7 on a daily basis because it is the software available in my company. But I am also quite familiar with CorelDraw and Freehand (I personally own both). CorelDraw has had transparency since ver 6. It also has more blending modes than Photoshop. My main concern is whether Illustrator has yet addressed envelope editing (which both Freehand and CorelDraw have). I feel that Illustrator's biggest lack is no envelope editing. You have to get Kai's vector effects in order to give Illustrator that ability, but CorelDraw will let you be much more interactive with the envelope editor. If you decide you want to change the envelope later on after you have made other changes to your document, you can go back to the envelope editor just as it was. With Kai's vector effects, the change is permanent unless you want to
Does illustrator finally work for print?
Well, it seems there's quite a few new toys for us to play with in release 9 of illustrator. That's great, cos I love illustrator, but there's one issue I'm quite worried about. I currently use illustrator 8 all day long, both for web and for print jobs. And it's great for the web, but the guys at my print shop frown every time I hand in a job in illustrator format. It seems illustrator files are a nightmare to output to Postscript, and it has sometimes taken them days just to figure out how to print a file. It seems that illustrator is just so non-standard in the way it prints that it makes it impossible to print straight to film. What does this mean to the print user? Well, either your print jobs are late because of problems at the print shop, or you have to save .eps's and lay them up in Quark, which is just a pain. Plus I don't like Quark. Wouldn't it be nice if illustrator 9 did it all? Quite frankly I'm a bit worried that all the extra features in ver. 9 will make illustrator even less compatible with postscript handlers and make the problem even worse... Guess we'll have to wait and see.