Some wonder why Illustrator is part of Adobe’s video suite. We think the proper answer to that question is, “because they could”. Think of it as an extra and a way of Adobe underscoring the fact that they approach all things from their heritage of the “graphic eye”.

Truth in reviewing, most of our team does not venture into Illustrator that often. It is usually relegated to a narrow range of needed tasks and then projects are moved on to other applications. That said however, we see a few things in this release that may change our workflow very soon.

This new version of Illustrator has added a number of tools that make working with vectors more like working with pixels. For example:

Live Color–lets you modify either single colors or entire projects of color around the color wheel as easily as we can do it in PS’s Hue/Saturation/Brightness interface.

Eraser Tool–lets your drag-eras just like in any paint program. Illustrator takes care of redoing all the vectors for you.

Crops Tools–let you specify not just one but multiple croppings for output to a range of media and uses.

New ease-of-use features include:

New Interface & Speed–a similar streamlining that we see in all CS3 applications, along with a much peppier response.

Highlighted Anchor Points–will make finding the points you want to modify less of a treasure hunt affair. No more select the path, de-select the path, go back and hope to select the point and…you know what we mean.

Easier to Reach Tools–are now located along the top of the screen in a new “Tool Panel”.

Group Editing–selecting items from within a group can now be done by first double-clicking on the group to open it for selection. Remind you of any Flash you know?

And speaking of Flash, Illustrator is now very Flash friendly. It can swap out symbols to Flash and (we are told) all vector art is now brought in faithfully from Illustrator to Flash. We can recall the painful days this was not the case.

Bottom Line:

Illustrator has been beefed up in two ways. To better appeal to those of us who have preferred working in pixels, and to become Flash’s best new friend (or its stepchild/servant depending on your work needs). While many of these changes are a long time coming, it is nice to see them here. This is a great addition to the suite.