Adobe Illustrator CS6 is here, and boasts the same appearance updates as the other apps in Adobe's Creative Suite. But there's much more to this update than meets the eye. Discover the improvements to workflow, patterns and more in our in-depth review.
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.
In fact, it's not even a gripe, it's purely an observation. And,
designers and illustrators being the creatures of habit that they are,
the most likely thing they'll do is go to
Illustrator>Preferences>User Interface and change the brightness
setting back to Medium Light or light. Something in this preference pane
that isn't in the Photoshop equivalent is a slider and percentage
field, which enables you to set the brightness of the interface exactly
how you want it.
Interface brightness
As you slide, the interface changes brightness. OK, it's not going to
set the world on fire and get users queuing up to upgrade or sign up
for Creative Cloud Membership,
but it's a nice detail. As is the option to change the Canvas colour
(the area around the artboard) to match the user interface or keep it as
white as in previous releases. The main Tools panel also looks more
refined, with redesigned tool icons. In fact, everything looks a bit
more detailed, a bit more refined (and the Tools panel, in our opinion
still looks better as one column). It's hard not to like the new
interface - it feels like a modern step forward for the application.
Tweaks for the hardcore
There are a few other tweaks to the interface that will definitely
please hardcore users. The first is being able to edit layer names,
swatch names, brushes, artboards and so on in their respective panels.
In CS5.1 and earlier, you had to double-click the item you wanted to
rename and then an intermittent dialog appeared where you'd rename it.
You can still do it this way if you like by double-clicking the
item's icon (it gives you access to more options, as well) but it's
quicker and easier to double-click on the items name (rather than its
icon) and change it inline. Why wasn't this in IIlustrator before? No
idea, but we're glad it is.
Adobe's thinking about workflow
The other tweaks are about as minor as they come - but again examples
of Adobe thinking about its user's workflows with this release. For
one, there's a new Make Mask/Release button in the Transparency panel.
This certainly makes it quicker to work with opacity masks, saving you
an albeit brief visit to the Transparency panel's flyout menu. Another
example of this is the new expandable sampling area in the Color panel.
Expand the panel by dragging its bottom-right corner and the expanded
colour spectrum becomes visible. Compared to Illustrator CS5.1's tiny
sampling area it's ace. Oh, and you can now copy and paste hex values
directly from the Color panel.
The Character panel
And there's more! The Character panel has had a minor tweak to enable
you to cycle through fonts - seeing a preview on the artboard if the
text is selected - using the arrow keys (it was available in Windows up
until this release, but now is across both platforms). There's also new
buttons for All Caps, Small Caps, Superscript and Subscript towards the
bottom of the panel. We'll never complain about better text controls.
The Transform panel also gets a Scale Strokes & Effects checkbox
rather than it being tucked away in the Scale dialog.
In addition, the Control panel has been made a little more consistent
when displaying content-sensitive information relating to tools and
objects. And finally, when you tear off hidden tools you can now arrange
them vertically to save a bit of desktop real estate - and dock them
either like this or horizontally. All this is about making things a
little quicker for the user - and the interface improvements are very
welcome. Nice job.
Speed and specs
The other thing you notice when you open up Adobe Illustrator CS6 -
or at least when you open up a complex file with many layers,
complicated gradient mesh, many effects, feathering, transparency and
thousands of points - is its speed. Adobe preached to us how fast Adobe
Illustrator CS6 is, and it actually is blazing fast. You probably won't
notice unless you're working on a complicated file - if you're designing
a logo or similar you're unlikely to see any real improvement in redraw
or usability.
The speed, we're told, is down to the rather nicely coined 'Mercury
Performance System' and Adobe Illustrator CS6 being completely rewritten
as a native 64-bit application on both Mac and PC. Whatever you put it
down to, on a modern MacBook Air with 4GB RAM (Adobe recommends 8GB) it
is very quick. On a Mac Pro it is going to fly. Seriously.
On the subject of specs, the bare minimum is Mac OS X 10.6.8 or 10.7
Lion; 2GB RAM; 2GB hard disk space; and 1024x768 resolution. If you're
on Windows, you'll need XP with Service Pack 3 or Windows 7 with Service
Pack 1; 1GB of RAM for 32-bit or 2GB RAM for 64-bit; and the rest the
same as Mac. Of course though, these are the bare minimum system
requirements: Adobe Illustrator CS6 will work, but it won't be that
happy if you start experimenting with effects, gradients and
transparencies.
The bigger features
So far, we've really focused on the workflow and speed enhancements
in Adobe Illustrator CS6, but thankfully there are some creative
additions - not as many as you might hope, but some. The first worth
noting is being able to apply gradients to a stroke. You can now apply
gradients along the length, across the width, or within the stroke
itself. Big deal? Well, kind of - it opens up some nice creative
possibilities. It's difficult to see why this hasn't been here before -
it may be due to the amount of processing power Adobe Illustrator CS6
needs to calculate gradients applied to strokes.
What would you use this for? Adding highlights to photorealistic
artwork or creating faux 3D effects are just two examples. This feature
requires a little bit of a reshuffling of the Gradient panel. Below the
Type dropdown - where you specify a Linear or Radial gradient - and
above the gradient angle, there's three new Stroke options. These, from
left-to-right enable you to apply a gradient within the stroke, along
the stroke or across the stroke.
Applying the gradient within the stroke enables you to change the
angle of the gradient within the stroke; along the stroke places the
gradient along your path (use the Reverse Gradient button to change the
direction); and across the stroke places the gradient across the width
of the stroke that you've specified. Used in conjunction with some of
Illustrator's art brushes, it's a powerful tool - especially if you're
building up complex (and maybe photorealistic) illustrations.
Image Trace in Illustrator CS6
Illustrator is a little misunderstood sometimes. And it's probably
because of its ability to trace raster images to create vector graphics.
How many bad portraits have you seen that have been traced using
Illustrator's Live Trace tool? Anyhow, we digress, but there is a point
to our slight rant: Adobe Illustrator CS6 sees the end of Live Trace,
bringing in a new tracing tool and engine housed in the Image Trace
panel. And what a panel it is.
When you place a raster image in Adobe Illustrator CS6 (JPEG, TIFF
and so on) you access Image Trace one of two ways. By the presets in the
Control Panel (you can create your own presets - more on this in a bit)
or by using the comprehensive Image Trace panel under Window>Image
Trace. There are five options that run across the top of the panel,
which are separate to the presets - think of them as starting points.
These are: Auto-Color, High Color, Low Color, Greyscale, Black and White
and Outline. Once you've applied a starting point, the main slider
within the panel changes contextually, giving you further control.
Add more colours
It gives you options for adding more colours in the 'Color' starting
points, Greys in Greyscale mode and Threshold in Black and White and
Outline modes. You can choose different views as you're tracing: Tracing
Result, which shows the final trace; Tracing Result with Outlines,
showing paths; Outlines; Outlines with Source Image; and Source Image.
At any time press and hold the small eye next to this dropdown to view
the source image.
Using Presets
Above the View dropdown is the Presets dropdown. This gives you
access to some common uses for tracing - High Fidelity Photo, Black and
White Logo and Line Art being the most obviously useful (the rest are
Low Fidelity Photo, 3 Colors, 6 Colors, 16 Colors, Shades of Gray,
Sketched Art, Silhouettes and Technical Drawing). But of course, you can
save your own presets using the menu next to the Preset dropdown.
This all offers a certain amount of control over tracing, but there's
a bit more to the panel. Expand the Advanced settings and you have
control over Paths, Corners, Noise and different methods of tracing -
where Adobe Illustrator CS6 either creates cutout or overlapping paths.
You can also specify to replace slightly curved lines with straight ones
by checking the Snap Curves to Lines box and set white fills to none
using the Ignore White checkbox. You also get a neat readout of how many
paths, anchors and colours are being generated by the trace.
Image Trace: the results
So how does it do? Well, much better than Live Trace, especially on
full-colour photos. And like everything else in Illustrator, it's
extremely fast. Whilst you're not going to use it to trace photos on a
daily basis (even though it does a pretty good job) for quickly tracing
sketches of logos and line drawings, it works exceptionally well once
you've mastered the array of advanced sliders. Sketches will still need
cleaning up, and there's nothing better than a hand-trace to make sure
you manage paths and anchors correctly, but it's an improvement on Live
Trace and a welcome addition. There's even a new Tracing workspace which
sets up the most useful panels for tracing including Color, Navigator
and of course Image Trace.
Another feature of note is the improved Guassian Blur Effect. The
Guassian Blur in CS5.1 gave you a tiny preview of the effect. In Adobe
Illustrator CS6 you preview your blur on the artboard - if the Preview
box is checked as you ramp up the slider your selected object blurs in
real time. And once again, it's fast.
The big feature in Illustrator CS6 is ...
Usually, an upgrade has a killer feature. Something that users just
cannot imagine not having. If there's one feature that fits this mould
it's Adobe Illustrator CS6's new Pattern Creation tools. It may not
sound as sexy as Photoshop's Content-Aware Move or 3D functionality, but
it's actually, if you'll pardon us for one moment, bloody brilliant.
Patterns are something designers and illustrators create in
Illustrator on an almost daily basis. And this changes things in a big
way. Creating patterns pre-CS6 was a little clunky. Create your objects,
go to Edit>Define Pattern and then apply that swatch to your object.
If you want to edit the pattern it was difficult, and lining up a tiled
repeat using a pattern swatch was often frustrating. CS6 changes this.
Pattern Options panel
Here's a typical workflow to show you how easy it is to create
repeat patterns. First, open or draw your objects, select them and then
go to Object>Pattern>Make. Your object is immediately repeated
according to the settings in the new Pattern Options panel. Your pattern
swatch is added to the Swatches panel but you can edit in Pattern
Creation Mode until you're happy, finalising the swatch by hitting Done.
We'll go back to the Swatches panel in a moment.
The Pattern Options panel gives you a huge amount of control over
your patterns. You can change the tile type (even interactively tweaking
the tiling using the Pattern Tile tool - accessed from the panel),
spacing, copies and more depending on the preset you've chosen. A very
handy option is being able to dim copies of repeats within your pattern
as you're working on it - so you know you're working on the original
object. A slider and percentage field lets you edit the amount your
repeats dim.
The killer feature
The killer feature though is being able to double-click on the
pattern swatch in the Swatches panel at any time and re-edit the
pattern. When you're finished editing and press Done, the pattern
updates across all objects it's applied to. If you want to create a new
pattern, hit Save a Copy. It's a brilliant toolset, brilliantly executed
and truly useful for designers, illustrators and just about anyone who
uses this piece of software on a regular basis. It's hard to say
anything bad about it.
Reference: http://www.creativebloq.com/graphic-design-tips/adobe-illustrator-cs6-review-1233309
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