Illustrator CS5 Review - Top Five New Features in Illustrator CS5

An Introduction to Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator is a designer’s best friend. It differs from Photoshop in one primary function.

Illustrator is for vector art. Photoshop is primarily for raster.

Or put another way, Illustrator handles companies’ logos, text and illustrations where Photoshop handles photos. Now, over the past few versions, these lines have progressively blurred. Photoshop effectively works with vector designs, and Illustrator works well incorporating photos into projects.

For example: When creating a logo that incorporates a photo, I will edit and output the photo in Photoshop, then import it into Illustrator to merge with the vector elements and then save to web.

So, whats new in Illustrator CS5?

Multiple Artboards Enhancement

Multiple Artboards Enhancement

My favorite enhancement is the multiple artboards. Multiple Artboards allows multiple designs to be in view within the same file. You can copy/paste and click/drag between artboards. Managing them is very similar to working with layers – its even on the same sidebar box.

Paste On All Artboards: A great feature is that objects can be pasted to all artboards, in the exact same location. This is great when creating icons, ads, or other site components. It saves time and ensures consistency.

Multiple Artboards Enhancement (After)

The artboards are all easily arranged, with just a couple of clicks. This allows the files to be arranged for output to pdf files.

Each artboard is easily saved into its own ai file, or for output as a jpg or another web friendly format. Simply select the artboard you want to output.

This enhancement will reduce design time and help create more consistent designs.

Building Shapes

Illustrator has always been a great tool for creating web icon and logos. Now, creating shapes is even easier. Using the new Shape Builder tool, its just a couple of clicks. Use the Shift key to add and the Alt key to subtract. Works like a charm.

Drawing in Perspective

This is one of the coolest, and most difficult to use, features in Illustrator. As the screenshot shows, amazing things can be done with the tool. But it’s difficult to use and not intuitive. Maybe we’ll see some improvements to the tool in the next release.

The final 2 new features are both tools for the web.

Pixel Alignment - Tools for the Web

One of the simplest additions is Pixel Alignment. Now while it sounds like small thing, aligning your pixels to the pixel grid will improve the crispness of your designs. A simple click on the “Align to Pixel Grid” in the Transform panel will create an ever-so-slight shift in your vector design, making in much crisper. The attached screenshot shows a split of before/after of using this effect.

The after image has a slight but noticeable improvement.

The tool is selective, meaning that you need to choose which objects and components that it applies to.

Create Flash Without Writing Code - Tools for the Web

One of the more critical functions that Photoshop offers is the Save for Web/Devices feature.

Why use it? While you could just save your file in a standard method, such File / Save As, the Save for Web/Devices feature does crucial three things.

1. It optimizes the file dimensions (for example: 150 px X 150 px) allowing it to fit into web pages cleaner and look better and less distorted.
2. It optimizes the file size (for example: 23 kb) allowing it to download faster.
3. It saves in the RGB (or monitor) format as opposed to the CMYK (print) format.

This tool works great for outputting Twitter icons, Facebook profile pics, product files, blog images and source files for favicons.