ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR CS6

Adobe Illustrator CS6

ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR CS6

     

Adobe Illustrator is the industry standard tool for vector drawing and illustration, used by a wide variety of creative professionals including editorial illustrators, identity designers, textile and pattern designers, UI designers, motion artists and many others. It's always been an incredibly versatile tool, thanks to a broad feature set, and of course the fact that vector graphics are infinitely scaleable and in most cases relatively lightweight.

Over the years the application has been given some quite remarkable features - from the Gradient Mesh in the 1998 release of version 8 to multiple art boards in CS4 and the Perspective Grid in CS5 (which Adobe ported across from FreeHand, the tool it bought from Macromedia and then phased out), it is a behemoth of an application, whether you want to create photorealistic illustrations or slick logos. So, what has Adobe done in Adobe Illustrator CS6? A facelift, some speed improvements, a few tweaks and one major addition that illustrators and designers in particular will love are all on the agenda.

The interface in Adobe Illustrator CS6

The first thing you notice about Adobe Illustrator CS6 is that it looks different. If you've seen Photoshop CS6 you won't be that surprised - by default it's charcoal grey. Like Photoshop, it gives Illustrator an undeniably more professional feel. The thing is, it doesn't really feel like Illustrator to a user of many years. It feels more like a post production tool - matching that of After Effects. But this is a minor, minor gripe.

Download Adobe Illustrator CS6