Thinking about Illustrator CS? Read this review!

[adopey@adobeforums.com]

the mere suggestion that Adobe customers would 'event' (invent is that??)
problems?!?!?

I think its time for a well-deserved holiday Wade, you must've been staring at that screen for far too long mate...

[James_E._Talmage@adobeforums.com]

From the first paragraph of the review:

"The last time I reviewed a major upgrade of the software (version 10), I explicitly told you that the most you could expect out of future updates would be improvements under the hood--tweaks to the workflow, improvements to existing features, etc. But I was wrong, and Illustrator CS has shown me just how much a mature application can still grow."

He was wrong alright. The very thing I want to see most in AI (and FH, CV, and CD, for that matter) is "tweaks to the workflow, improvements to existing features". As anyone who spends any time in these programs should know by now, that is also the very thing LEAST likely to be seen in new versions.

Still no:

Join multiple paths.
Split multiple points.
Align/distribute points.
Decent Select Under shortcut.
Round/fillet individual corners.
Custom scales.
Doc-specific grids.
Doc-specific SmartGuides settings.
Separate horizontal & vertical grid spacing.

The list goes on and on and on.

"Mature product" indeed. I still see an awfull lot of "growing up" to be done. ;-)

JET

[James_E._Talmage@adobeforums.com]

In fairness, though, we did see:

Vertical Skew orientation added to Path Text.
TextPath threading.
Fit to page printing (Egads! What a concept!) ;-)

and others (Don't have CS in front of me right now).

Those are certainly "maturations" of existing features (albeit VERY overdue ones). I mean, c'mon. It took almost *two decades* for AI to get a brain-dead simple Fit To Page print command. We've got to start doing much better than that, guys.

JET

[Doug_Katz@adobeforums.com]

In the immortal words of Ray Charles, Uh huh.

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

But you might want to learn scripting and if you already know it what are you waiting for? I think you might be able to accomplish some of those things. Won't you think!

Though I do like the idea of a Guide manager that would allow you to create and save guides and even set guides to specific object(s) and when you move the object(s) the guides would be locked to the object(s) and move with it. But here can always be improvements.

But James as you know not everyone uses AI the same way you might so in fairness to the engineers and marketing folk of all these programs you do have to be selected. Just think about it.

Right Doug?

[Doug_Katz@adobeforums.com]

Uh huh.

[James_E._Talmage@adobeforums.com]

But James as you know not everyone uses AI the same way you might...




You're right, Wade. Most people will find alot more frequent use for a dedicated Lens Flare tool occupying precious space in the main tool box than for something so "rarely needed" as the ability to align points. Or to round selected corners. Or to have the Smart Guides setup stick with the document you actually set it up for, instead of affecting ALL documents.

Sorry Wade. You can be a dedicated apologist if you want, but that's not for me. I take great care in suggesting realistic features which I am confident would benefit the majority of serious users (often whether they know it or not). And while I am working diligently toward learning JavaScript and ActionScript, if I wanted to write my own graphics software, I'd be a programmer, not an illustrator.

Honestly, I can quite understand why it takes so long for common-sense features to appear. So many users are so unquestioningly devoted to their pet program that they will not only be satisfied with--but will actually *defend*--mediocrity.

You know, Wade, that I give Illustrator and its creators high praise, too--in those areas in which I truly think it excels. But I also know that that creative team is quite capable of building Illustrator into a truly killer product for serious illustrators. If I thought I was wasting my voice here, well, I wouldn't.

But I think the developers of AI need much less "convincing" than those users who lavishly defend the indefensible. *Those* are the minds which will have to be awakened before AI is as great as it could be.

JET

[Gary_Newman@adobeforums.com]

What's not to love aboout the Lens Flare tool? Boy, when I have an illustration that I want to really look hip, there's nothing like adding a nice lens flare to it. Now if Illustrator had a decent tool for making those curled page corners, it would be truly perfect.

[Darren_Neely@adobeforums.com]

I agree, Wade is a little quick to jump on users reporting problems.

The truth is, AICS provides an unbelievable creative environment. In fact, we have moved a large group of users to CS. If you are coming from AI 8 or before, the gains are incredible. Whether you will use those features day in and day out, depends on what you are doing. It's probably hard to know till you've used it for a while.

However, there are real bugs in there. Some of them are behavior problems, like there being no way to scale both the envelope and the strokes on appearanced type at the same time. Or the mishandling of legacy type that begins with baseline shift.

Others are cosmetic, but rough to deal with, like the frequent screen redraw problems. Or, the fact that not all objects are selected, or appear to be selected when choosing Unlock All or Show All.

There are also more serious problems, like easily reproducible "Can't Open the Illustration" corruption that occurs when saving and closing a file right after merging swatches and undoing on a file with appearanced type inside an envelope.

There are also more serious problems, like the easy to reproduce "Can't Open the Illustration" corruption of files with appearanced, enveloped type. (If you have the envelope in envelope edit mode, merge colors, undo, then immediately save and close the file, it's toast.)

Add your own bugs to the list. The problem is not that there are bugs in AICS. In a complicated product like this, bugs are unavoidable. Here is the problem:

Adobe has no intention of releasing any kind of patch for Illustrator CS.

There have been bugs AND patches for the other CS apps. Some of them have even had 2 patches by now. The only relief Adobe has in the works is selling us Illustrator CS2 when it's ready in 12-18 months. If someone can prove me wrong, please, please do so.

[Mark_Durgee@adobeforums.com]

>but will actually *defend*--mediocrity.<

Being good is usually the biggest barrier to becoming great.

While you are on the feature list, I laugh to myself thinking back to 1991
or 1992 using CorelDRAW 2 as my first graphics program. Most of it's feature
list would be very competitive to today's programs, 12 years later. It's
kind of funny that while it was the poor cousin of illustration programs,
Freehand and Illustrator were quietly incorporating DRAW's innovative
features. When I decided to go "industry standard" with Illustrator version
7, I was in shock at how terrible it was. It wasn't until version 8 that it
got to be acceptable. I'm so used to it now that it feels like second
nature, but there are some glaring holes in it's basic functionality like
JET mentioned. Everything he mentioned would make my life a whole lot
easier.

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

Intriguing, gee I thought that I had made many feature request and have pointed out many bugs on the forum and have verified many bugs that others on the forum have posted. Maybe I haven't!

Or maybe the features I requested James doesn't think are as important as the one he is listing. I am perplexed by your reaction.

So James what do you think of my guide manager feature request?