Adobe Illustrator CS user reviews

Pros ENVELOPE DISTORT (warp)

Cons Still the most convoluted user hostile application ever created

Summary I am a professional AI user since the dawn of the bezier curve. (remember 88) The application Sucks but what is the alternative? It is the industry standard for now, but beware ... so was Pageslayer and QuirkXcess!

If you have to ask why it sucks, you have not used it intensly. But since you're interested:
1. Don't expect to find a setting or preference in a logical place.
2. Don't expect the app to do that same thing twice the same way
3. Sub layers from hell
4. Instead of fixing the path system so that it works and does'nt take an act of congress to join a path, let's just put a warning box telling the user vaguely why it won't work (keep them hunting for a couple of hours for that rogue node, grouped object or dupilcated compound section)
5. Can you say clutter
6. Can you say useless functions.
7. Can you say convoluted nonsence to infinity
8. Could the links pallette be more useless?, which file did I place?
9. Be sure to uncheck 'selection only" in the doc info if you can find it or it will lie to you.
10. OH NOOOOOOOOO I used transparency, noooo
11. Is it a filter or an effect, you figure it out, beware the appearance.
12. Would you like expand, expand appearance, expand envelope or expand pathfinder. Just one should do. but 4 looks so much better.
13. Does "clean up path" or "rasterize" actually do ever work.
14 Oh well you get the idea, I could keep going for days.

Pros Has a lot of nice features that are unmatched in other products.

Cons Locks up Windows XP frequently. Crashes if you load a JPEG or TIFF file created by a Sony digital camera. Adobe supports wants payment to address defects in their brand new product.

Pros dosen't exist other program so powerfull such illustrator

Cons could get better than this an i can wait for it

Summary My opinion as a proffesional graphic designer is that illustrator mantained his elegant interface and profesionalism. You have much more control in illsutrator than in any other vector graphics program created + it is easy
and user friendly. I didn't come with any crash on illustrator cs even on my old pc witch is an celeron at 2 Ghz with 256 MB ram and 64Ram video card . Actualy it is working perfect even if i have to make an vectorization for an jpg tiff at hy resolution in mesh or the pen tool.
Great color output.
As problems i didn't saw major ones but i feel like illustrator can make real stuff if will progress a litle bit more by integrating a 3d part . Allready you can doo photorealistic vector graphics in illustrator but if adobe will have the spark to create an interface for 3d in illustrator it will be great. When i speak 3d im not speaking of the efect thats making an extrusion rotation or revolve im talking serious 3d vector graphics witch will be based on mesh . But Maby thats a dream of mine.

Pros Wonderfull color output, powerful tools

Cons Export to swf still somewhat clumsy. Stiff.

Summary Illustrator for PC is quite stable (Pentium IV, 1256 RAM). I know I haven't got the standard PC, but it very rarely crashes on me. Version 10 crashed more often.

Although the tools got better (for example: old scale tool was hell until they upgraded it to the actual free transform tool), the interfase still feels somewhat stiff. Why are effects dug within a menu?? Who undestands two ways/differents places for rastering? Etc. It is idiosincratic. It keeps old ways, like one page files only... Things like that plague the program. But it has the most powerful layering system around (Corel, are you listening??). It is worth every cent, but it needs some getting used to here and there (What about bigger anchor points?).

Etc.
Etc.