Adobe Illustrator CS4 user reviews

Pros The text is fantastic!

Cons It's annoying that you have to go trough a little obstacle to see the previews of the font you want to use.

Summary They should just have made the preview right next to the name of the font. That was a shame shame, other then that I have no problem with this program.

Pros Not much. Obviously there are greater artwork swatches, multiple pallets, and greatly extended capabilities and options, but just because someone can dream up a function doesn't mean it's a good idea to incorporate it.

Cons I draw with Illustrator 10 for years! Some short cuts that are vital (Tab toggle for select all and direct select). Not possible in CS4. Integration between CS4 and 10 is horrible. To edit a CS4 doc in 10 means fragmented text and loss of function.

Summary As I said above, I use Illustrator to create production graphics, technical drawings, illustrations (imagine that with a name like Illustrator), and much more. I started on a Macintosh back in the 80s with version 1.0 and have been using it ever since. I still use v.10 but I bought CS4 to get the latest, greatest. It's not the greatest in my book. The differences between 10 and CS4 are needlessly clunky and awkward. I would love CS4 if the controls, the keys, the short cuts -- the way it's actually used -- were the same or at least comparable or similar to 10, but they are vastly different. Sure I like certain of the changes in toolboxes and filter and effects capabilities, but where the rubber meets the road, i.e. in every day ease of use, CS4 is somewhere between a bad dream and a nightmare. And, as someone who paid money for it and who actually uses Illustrator in my job, I feel entitled and qualified to make that comment.

Pros industry standard

Cons The tech support for all ADOBE products is either useless or not available.

Summary The hold times for tech support are in the mulitple hours range. Mostly you get low level techs that cannot answer anything but simple questions. We are consultants and reccommend anything but Adobe. We have wasted hundreds of dollars in time loss with Adobe products trying to get help from Adobe. Learn from our mistakes.

Pros Very powerful if you have the time to dedicate to learning it which is undoubtedly best done through a book.

Cons Anti-intuitive and frustrating if you're not a seasoned Illustrator pro and have time to learn the mysterious ways of Adobe "logic".

Summary Again, anti-intuitive and frustrating...I can't say it enough. The first two tasks I tried (cropping a picture and trying to stretch the corners of an image) were nightmares, this should have been easy. Not so. If you're used to Microsoft products and programs behaving consistently and logically, you're not going to like this program. It's a black hole which will devour your time as you try to perform, what should be, the easiest tasks.