With the high integration between Adobe products such as Flash, After Effects, Photoshop and the new Illustrator CS2, I think Designers and animators should use or move to Adobe Illustrator CS2 in the vector image creation process.
The Adobe Illustrator CS2 is a great tool to create vector graphics in a very easy and simple interface. The new version of Illustrator extended the program capabilities with keeping on the simplicity.
Most of the new features in Illustrator CS2 share the same concept; it speeds up your work and makes it simpler.
In this review, I would like to present an overview over some new features that I consider a strong reason to buy or upgrade to Illustrator CS2:
· Live Trace:
The live Trace button in Illustrator CS2 turns you bitmaps images into vector in a button bush with a wide variety of options. You can choose from presets tracing options such as 6 colors, 16 colors, Photo law or high fidelity, grayscale, hand draw sketch and much more. Also, you can optimize the tracing option you desire using the tracing options dialog box.
Figure 01. The Live Tracing dialog box
· Live Paint
The new Live Paint tool really enhances the painting process as it makes it easier and gives you more capabilities such as creating new shapes from overlapped objects and paths that is detected by the Live paint Bracket tool. This feature allows you to create new colored areas and create complex objects from simple one.
Actually, the Live paint tool turns you overlapped objects into filling areas, which can be filled with colors and selected by the Live paint Selection tool.
· Control palette
As we mentioned in the beginning of this review, Adobe Illustrator gives you features to speed your work. And one of these features is the new Control palette. This new palette makes reaching each tool option much faster and easier. It is located in the top of the Illustrator working space and can be moved around according to your needs.
· Custom workspaces
The new Illustrator CS2 enables you to customize your workspace to fit your needs, and save it as a new Workspace. Also, you can manage your workspaces through the Workspace pop-up menu.
· Adobe Photoshop layer comp support
The new version of Adobe illustrator support the Layer comp created in Photoshop, and lets you select from the Layer comps you create in Photoshop.
Figure 02. Photoshop files import option window in Illustrator CS2
· Adobe Bridge
Adobe Bridge helps you easy locate and manage your Illustrator assets and connect to Adobe Stock Photos for more resource. What is great in Adobe Bridge that it increases the integration between Adobe products and speed your work by easily locate your file and get online assets.
· Mobile Content
Adobe illustrator CS2 extends your capabilities to get artwork out to the tiny screen of the big world of mobility by supporting SVG and tiny SVG format. Adobe illustrator supports saving your work in SVG and tiny SVG format which is support in many handheld and mobile devices. By this new feature, you can extend the market of your work as easy as mouse click.
In addition to the above feature, the new version of Adobe illustrator includes other features such as the ability to assign a spot color to gray scale images, expanded stroke option and PDF/X support.
In my opinion, the extended capabilities in the new version of Adobe Illustrator CS2 really worth to pay 499$ for it. Also, you can upgrade your Illustrator version to CS2 for 169$
And to know more information about Adobe illustrator CS2, you can visit The product page on Adobe site:
