My First Week With Illustrator CS

[Joel_Stransky@adobeforums.com]

Instead of jumping on the board everytime I found someting I didn't like I added it to a list. The snares have subsided so I think I've ran into the majority of things wrong with CS. Feel free to call me on any of these as it had only been a week but on a fresh OS wipe and reinstall fully updated.

Illustrator gripe sheet.

CONS:

• 3rd Party .PDF font warning

o Use of some fonts will cause an error dialogue warning of .PDF trouble every time you save.

• Auto apply swatch on palette focus

o If the swatch palette is clicked on while an object is selected, the object will be colored with the last swatch selection made.

• Slower with placed art

o Screen refreshes, panning with the hand tool, and zooming in takes longer and noticeably affects AI’s stability when large files are linked or embedded.

• Hide Page Tiling set as default

o Not really a bug, just an annoyance and user preference.

• Some fonts do not update when loaded while file is open

• Cannot select certain fonts by typing them into character palette

o Some fonts you can type the first few letters in to grab it, others have to be typed all the way out. Still others don’t work at all.
o Seems to be more resistant when there is a text object selected

• Translates DCS process channels as CMYK

o If a spot channel in Photoshop has cyan, magenta, yellow, or black as its name, that plate will get converted and added to the process plate of the same name when placed in AI.

• Re-flow’s legacy text

o When opening old .ai files you are forced to choose either re-flowed or un-editable text. There is no “Just leave it alone” option. I like the new optical spacing but it should assume I was satisfied with the file when I saved it. I should get the option to modernize my text blocks on a per-text block basis at my leisure, not when opening the document.

• Deselects path in progress when doing…. Anything else

o If you are working on a path with the pen tool, doing just about anything else like changing fill and stroke colors will deselect the path.

• Still re-selects entire path on a point alignment undo (unfixed from AI 10)

o If you select a few points on a path and average them, undoing will cause the entire path to become reselected. This is very annoying when the points were hard to grab in the first place and you accidentally choose vertical instead of horizontal.

• Crashes

o It actually crashes. (about once a day so far)
o Seems to crash when returning from opening a font in Suitcase

• Clumsy Handles

o I don’t if it’s just me but the curve handles seem twice as hard to grab.

PROS:

• Print presets

o Very handy when you print spot plates the same way all day.
o Still needs an option for spot angle and frequency presets though.

• Acrobat style print dialogue

o Finally a resize to fit option! (almost worth the upgrade alone imo)
o Finally control over registration marks!

• Fixed weird custom keyboard assignment.

o For some reason I could not assign ctrl+alt+6 to select same fill and stroke in version 10. It works again… yay!
o Still needs a select same appearance

• Even more improved appearance palette

o Complex appearances got more and more stable with each version, they seem fully usable now.

• Type on path effects

o You never really know you need some things until you have them 

• CS and Version Cue integration

o A boon for those who need it. I never really worked on a full scale production where version tracking was that crucial. But even I could grasp the concept pretty quickly and can see it coming in really handy on my next large web project.

SUGGESTED FEATURES:

• Align/Distribute to Artboard modifier

o I should be able to alt-click on any align or distribute button to force Align to Artboard instead of having to toggle the side menu every time.

continued on next post

[Joel_Stransky@adobeforums.com]

Suggested Features continued

• Mouse-Wheel EVERYTHING

o If it can conceivably utilize the mouse wheel it should. Every menu, to scroll through undo’s, zooming, stroke weights… everything.

• Spot Colors on effects

o Transparency masks are a god-send but it could be taken further by just letting me apply a spot to my drop shadow.

• Interactive Gradient support

o The gradient tools should be more, dare I say, Corel like in that you can edit the object, not a palette.

• Meta-brushes

o I achieve a lot of effects via blending smaller and larger shapes. On pieces with lots of highlights the blend shapes can be very tedious. I wish I could have a brush that would add to a single paths shape rather than creating new ones at the same time blending to an ‘offset’ of itself.