The Adobe Illustrator series of software is highly regarding among its users. This latest addition to the series, version 8.0, offers even more reasons as to why it is so esteemed. Illustrator 8.0 lets you export your Illustrator files to Adobe Photoshop and ImageReady with layers intact. Or, drag and drop Illustrator artwork into Photoshop, ImageReady, or Adobe PageMaker - or between Illustrator and Microsoft Office applications. Illustrator even lets you share files between Windows and Macintosh computers. Use your artwork in virtually any medium by saving it in any of the popular file formats, including EPS, PDF, Photoshop, TIF, GIF, JPEG, EMF/WMF, BMP, CGM, ASCII, and RTF. The new Pencil tool in Illustrator 8.0 lets you draw and redraw naturally, making it fast and easy to express your ideas. To reshape a path, simply draw a new line near the section you want to change. Illustrator automatically re-adjusts the path. Illustrator 8.0 now allows you to resize shapes, text, and paths using the same easy-to-grab bounding box handles that appear around objects in PageMaker and Microsoft Word. Stretch or shrink an item or group of items simply by pulling one of the handles. Illustrator comes with a multimedia tour that shows you around the interface, as well as QuickTime training movies that demonstrate how the features work. Built-in libraries of predefined brush art, a variety of preset Actions, and templates, images, and clip art from the Adobe Image Library will get you up to productive speed in no time. The new interactive Smart Guides in Adobe Illustrator 8.0 help you precisely align shapes, text, and paths while you work. These vertical, horizontal, and angled guidelines appear automatically when you create or move an object, so you can accurately align it with other elements on the page. The enhanced Eyedropper tool now lets you pick up and apply text formatting. Simply select a text block, then click on any other block of text with the Eyedropper tool to apply its attributes to the selected text. Duplicating character and paragraph styles has never been faster or easier. The Illustrator Actions palette lets you automate even the most complex repetitive tasks. When creating an effect you want to reuse, just record the steps as an Action. Then you can apply that same effect again any time, to any Illustrator file, with a single click. Adobe Illustrator 8.0 has a unique and powerful Gradient Mesh tool that lets you blend multiple colors in multiple directions to create natural-looking airbrush or watercolor effects. You can easily add and remove colors or move the anchor points anywhere on the mesh. Illustrator 8.0 gives you the flexibility to format text in a variety of ways. String words along any path, curved or straight. Place text within or around any shape. And control all aspects of your type: point size, leading, kerning, tracking, hyphenation, columns, tabs, indenting, alignment, and multiple master typeface specifications. Illustrator 8.0 enhances your creativity even further with four new live brushes. The Art brush lets you paint a piece of artwork along an editable path. Use the Scatter brush to randomly sprinkle artwork along any path, adjusting settings to control the size, spacing, relative dispersion, rotation, and more. With the Calligraphic brush, you can create graceful pen strokes that are easy-to-edit paths. And the Pattern brush lets you paint a pattern along a path. Work with any of the approximately 400 built-in brush libraries, or you can create your own. Offering an unmatched combination of creative freedom and productivity, Illustrator 8.0 remains the preference of graphic artists, technical illustrators, and professionals. Its combination of time-saving features and integration with Adobe Photoshop, ImageReady, and PageMaker, help you create superior artwork for print, presentations, and the Web. This is a Win95/NT version of the software.
|