Product Description

CS4 ILLUSTRATOR 14 WIN 1U CROM

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #866 in Software
• Brand: Adobe
• Model: 65010248
• Released on: 2008-11-03
• Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows XP
• Format: DVD-ROM
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 2.00" h x 5.00" w x 8.00" l, 1.40 pounds

Features

• Sketch naturally using the Blob Brush tool that turns strokes into a single filled object; Advanced path controls, graphic styles, and appearance editing enable intuitive vector drawing
• Share files smoothly with other Adobe professional design applications, collaborate with colleagues, and work easily among multiple tools for different media
• Enjoy easy type creation and professional control with more than 80 OpenType fonts, paragraph and character styles, paragraph composition, underlining and strikethroughs, transparent effects, and more
• Create files containing up to 100 artboards of varying sizes and displayed any way you want--overlapping, side by side, or stacked; save, export, and print artboards independently or together; save a selected range or all artboards as a multipage PDF file
• Explore, apply, and control color variations using Live Color to interactively edit or replace colors; use the Color Guide panel to quickly choose tints, shades, or harmonious combinations

Amazon.com Product Description
Adobe Illustrator CS4 software is a comprehensive vector graphics environment tightly integrated with the Adobe Creative Suite family of products. New features such as multiple artboards, a Blob Brush tool for intuitive vector painting, and transparency in gradients with on-object controls invite you to explore more efficient and creative ways of working.

Multiple Artboards Create files containing up to 100 artboards of varying sizes and display them any way you want--overlapping, side by side, or stacked. Save, export, and print artboards independently or together. Save a selected range or all artboards as a multipage PDF file. Click to enlarge.

Explore new paths with the essential vector tool

Sophisticated vector drawing controls
Sketch naturally using the Blob Brush tool that turns strokes into a single filled object. Advanced path controls, graphic styles, and appearance editing enable intuitive vector drawing.

Integration with Adobe design applications
Share files smoothly with other Adobe professional design applications, collaborate with colleagues, and work easily among multiple tools for different media.

Advanced typography
Enjoy easy type creation and professional control with more than 80 OpenType fonts, paragraph and character styles, paragraph composition, underlining and strikethroughs, transparent effects,and more.

Multiple artboards
Create files containing up to 100 artboards of varying sizes and display them any way you want--overlapping, side by side, or stacked. Save, export, and print artboards independently or together. Save a selected range or all artboards as a multipage PDF file.

Live Color
Explore, apply, and control color variations using Live Color to interactively edit or replace colors. Use the Color Guide panel to quickly choose tints, shades, or harmonious combinations.

Live Trace
Quickly and accurately convert photos, scans, or other bitmap images to editable and scalable vector paths using Live Trace.

Live Paint
Easily paint closed or partially closed objects with the Live Paint Bucket, which automatically detects and corrects gaps. Interactively select colors from a Swatch panel for faster work.

Adobe PDF file creation tools
Create protected, graphic-rich PDF files with Illustrator layers retained, multiple pages, color space and transparency handling, and ultimate prepress control, including printer's marks and bleeds.

In-panel appearance editing
Edit object characteristics directly in the Appearance panel, eliminating the need to open fill, stroke, or effects panels. Work with shared attributes and control display for faster rendering.

Gradients and transparency
Edit gradients directly on your object. Rotate them, add and adjust colors, and create elliptical gradients. You can even define the transparency of individual color stops in a gradient.

Transparency in Gradients Interact with gradients right on your object. Set gradient angle, position, and elliptical dimensions. Add and edit colors using sliders--all with immediate feedback where you work. Define the opacity of any individual color stop in a gradient. Reveal underlying objects and images, and create rich color and texture mixes using multiple layers, knockouts, and cover-up fades. Click to enlarge.

Top new features of Adobe Illustrator CS4

The following are features in Illustrator CS4 that enable new ways of working so you can get the creative results you're after more efficiently and deliver designs more easily, anywhere.

Multiple artboards
Define working areas of varying sizes with complete freedom, all within one document. Work on a variety of projects in a single file and share settings and content across designs. You no longer need to use page tiling to create multipage PDF files, and you can arrange up to 100 artboards of different sizes any way you want--tiled, overlapping or freeform. You can even create an artboard inside an artboard to easily export just a piece of a composition.

Multiple artboards provide the most powerful way yet to organize projects with multiple pages or diverse outputs. Sharing objects, styles, and output settings is a great time-saver, and you can apply symbols or test color variations with Live Color while viewing artwork in multiple contexts. Quickly set up bleeds and crop marks, and choose to show video-safe areas using preset profiles.

Export your artboards in any supported file format as a series of files that are automatically numbered in sequence, or save as a single, multipage PDF file--your choice.

Transparency in gradients
Create a gradient of many colors and define the opacity of any or all individual colors assigned to your color stops. Transparency within a gradient simplifies creating interaction between layers and enables easy mixing and knockouts. Use transparency to create cover-up fades or to reveal underlying objects or images. For example, make a rainbow gradient on one object, and then simply set the blue gradient slider or color stop to 0% opacity level to show what's underneath.

You can even apply multiple fills to a single object, such as a pattern fill overlaid with transparent gradients, to create highlights and shadows that simulate the fabric of a draped garment. In the Appearances panel, simply apply additional fills and then use the Gradient tool to define opacities. And change the shape of that object as much as you want--all of your fills will follow along.

Transparency in gradients also enhances work between Illustrator and other Creative Suite 4 components in which transparency and gradients behave in a similar fashion, such as Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended, Adobe Flash CS4 Professional, and Adobe Fireworks CS4 software.

Gradients exposed
On-object interaction plus new elliptical gradients exposes the power of gradients in Illustrator CS4. The new controls enable fast adjustment with minimum interruption of your train of thought--no need to shift your attention to the Gradient panel.

Work with gradients right on your object with immediate visual feedback. Color sliders and swatches appear on your selected object, with gradient stops that you can drag along the gradient bar. You can add and delete gradient stops and set the angle and position of the gradient by clicking directly on the controls.

Radial gradients are enhanced with the new ability to set dimensions independently, to create an elliptical gradient of any proportion.

Blob Brush tool
The Blob Brush tool generates a clean, filled, vector shape while you sketch, even when strokes overlap, merging your paths naturally into a single object that's easily selected and edited. Now, when you draw, you don't get the typical jumble of paths, you get an outlined and filled shape--no expansion or Pathfinder tools required. And you can customize how your drawing flows together, choosing options for stroke character and pressure sensitivity.

Drawing with the Blob brush is a truly painterly, fluid way to create vector forms, especially when used in combination with the Eraser and Smooth tools. Use these tools together--alternately stroking and erasing--to perfect your silhouette to get a single, smooth outline without ever needing to expand paths or use the Pathfinder panel.

Integration and delivery

Collaborate with your team, work across products, and deliver anywhere, using integrated tools and extensive format support. Illustrator CS4 enables export of editable, workable content for web, interactive, and RIA projects. And moving smoothly among Adobe tools is easier than ever, thanks to cross-product feature support and common interface elements.

Flex integration
Enrich your Flex applications more easily and take advantage of further support for designer-developer efficiency with Adobe Flex 3 integration. Flex Skin Design extensions for Illustrator enable reliable creation of vector skins with export in native Flex format.

Smooth send and receive
Send your artwork anywhere with broad support of even more file formats and across Adobe products. Enjoy cross-product feature support such as the ability to import multiple artboards from Illustrator into both Flash and Adobe InDesign CS4 software.

Work across multiple applications
Streamline your work among multiple applications with more tool commonality, increased consistency of tool behavior, and new user-interface enhancements across the components of Creative Suite 4.

Blob Brush Tool Sketch with a brush that generates a single clean vector shape, even when strokes overlap. Draw naturally, using the Blob Brush tool together with the Eraser and Smooth tools. Click to enlarge.

Enhanced user experience

Stay in the creative groove, thanks to significant interface improvements. Work faster and smarter with the following features that help reduce clicks and make interacting with Illustrator easier and more productive.

Options where you work
Choose tool options, stay precisely oriented, and make complicated edits to your artwork without interrupting your train of thought. New features in Illustrator CS4 help focus your attention where you need it most--on your artboard and on your objects.

Tabbed document view
With multiple open documents in a tabbed view, you can bring windows to the front with one click. Tabbed documents are also spring-loaded for easy copying and pasting. Simply drag a selection from your window onto a document tab, and that document pops to the front so you can paste your selection where you want. And, you can arrange multiple document windows in a tiled or cascaded view for easy visual comparison and even faster copying across documents.

Spring-loaded panels
Get to your panels even more quickly with springloading. Panels now expand automatically when you drag an object on top of the panel icon.

Practical Smart Guides
Smart Guides are more intuitive and practical, with an unobtrusive look and new behaviors, such as alignment to objects on the artboard rather than to the cursor. New on-object readouts tell you exactly where you are, without your having to shift focus away from your work.

Isolation Mode advances
Isolation Mode now supports more object types, including compound paths, gradient mesh objects, images, and clipping masks. You can isolate a single object as well as top-level layers. Control your view while in Isolation Mode with new support for Outline View and with quick locking and hiding of objects. It's now easy to add new objects to a particular place in a stacking order, reducing the need for the Paste In Front/Back and Arrange commands.

Check the new iconic breadcrumbs to see at a glance what type of object you're editing. The icons symbolize Layer, Group, Symbol, Path, and Image. The labels in the breadcrumbs are clickable so you can quickly navigate through your layers and objects. When you're finished working in Isolation Mode, exit using the Escape key.

In-panel appearance editing
Edit multiple object characteristics directly in the Appearance panel. This improved panel shows attributes for single and multiple objects, such as fill or stroke color, which you can edit by simply clicking on the attribute--even when it's shared among objects.

Another new function in the Appearance panel is the ability to control the display of individual attributes. You can simply click the eye icon to turn off a complex effect that must be re-rendered with every move, so that you can work faster and keep your creative momentum going.

And if you wish to select all objects in your artwork that have certain attributes, you can use a new Same Appearance Attribute option in the Select menu. Once you have selected objects with at least one common attribute, you can edit that attribute in the Appearance panel and see immediate results on all the objects at once.

The power of the new Appearance panel lies in centralization of control and streamlining of your workspace. You no longer need to keep multiple panels open to apply and edit fills, strokes, complex attributes, and more. You can even copy and paste within the panel, so adding attributes to any object is fast and simple.

In-Panel Appearance Editing Edit object characteristics directly in the Appearance panel, eliminating the need to open fill, stroke, or e ects panels. Work with shared attributes and control display for faster rendering.Click to enlarge.

Refined graphic styles
Apply sets of attributes to objects and text as a single graphic style, layering and combining styles for unique effects. The Graphic Styles panel provides new functionality that includes an option to preview all your styles on the seleted object or group of objects. It's now easy to choose a style without having to actually apply it.

The Graphic Styles panel and the Appearance panel work hand in hand, supporting creation of complex styles that can be quickly applied without destroying an object's original appearance. Add a new style while pressing the Option key (Mac) or the Alt key (Windows) and observe that it doesn't replace the object's existing appearance. To see all the attributes that make a graphic style, click on the style and find its attributes listed in the Appearance panel--each easily edited.

Illustrator CS4 makes graphic styles even more attractive with a new library of prebuilt styles to jump-start your creative exploration. New libraries include sets of effects such as pre-set blurs and drop shadows that you can add without affecting fills. And, of course, you can generate your own libraries of graphic styles that you can use again and again.

Clipping masks demystified
Work with masks more easily, thanks to true WYSIWYG behavior. Now, when the clipping object or group is selected, you will see only the clipped area (the visible parts of your objects). Edit the masking object in Isolation Mode or choose to make it visible using the Clipping Path menu options. Plus, with the buttons in the Control panel for Edit Clipping Paths and Edit Contents, you have truly intuitive choices for viewing and editing both your masks and masked objects.

Separations preview
Help ensure flawless printing using the new Separations Preview panel. Avoid color output surprises such as unexpected spot colors, unwanted overprinting, overprints that don't overprint, white overprinting, and CMYK blacks in text and placed files. The Separations Preview panel displays a list of spot and process colors; you can choose to display individual colors for previewing color separations onscreen. Illustrator CS4 continues the tradition of improving print support so you can deliver artwork that prints more reliably than ever.

Creative Pro Online Services

Connect to the power of the online community through your creative desktop. New online services accessed from within Adobe Illustrator CS4 let you search for help and get answers from the online community; share your screen with colleagues or clients in a few quick clicks; get color inspiration from your peers, and more. With new online services in Illustrator CS4, you can take your ideas to the next level.

Adobe Community Help
Get the power of an online search engine within your Illustrator CS4 software, but with more targeted results thanks to Adobe Community Help. Searchable content includes the comprehensive product-specific Help that Adobe has always delivered, plus additional Adobe and third-party content chosen by experts at Adobe and in the design and production communities. With Adobe Community Help, you can find the focused answers you need, fast. (Internet connection required for extended content.)

Acrobat.com
Acrobat.com is a set of online services--file sharing and storage, PDF converter, online word processor, and web conferencing--that you can use to create and share documents, communicate in real time, and simplify working with others. Thanks to the connection between one of the Acrobat.com services, Adobe ConnectNow, and Illustrator CS4, you can meet live over the web to share your screen, present creative concepts and ideas, and brainstorm with up to two online guests for no additional service charge. To share your screen with colleagues and clients, choose File > Share My Screen. Guests can then see your desktop on their screens as you work. You can exchange ideas using the chat pod, add a live video or audio feed, or use the Whiteboard feature to enable guests to comment on content. You can even temporarily hand over control of the screen to a guest to collaborate on a file. Additional Acrobat.com services, such as Share, Create PDF, My Files, and Adobe Buzzword, are accessible via your web browser. (Internet connection required.)

Adobe Kuler
Explore, create, and share color themes with Adobe Kuler. Kick start your creative projects with color inspiration from the online Kuler community. Browse thousands of themes by newest, most popular, or highest rated; or search themes by tag word, title, or creator. Themes can be downloaded and moved to your Swatches panel with a single click. You can also upload colors from your Swatches panel to share with others. (Internet connection required for community functionality.)

Adobe Bridge Home
Visit Adobe Bridge Home--an online channel available in Adobe Bridge CS4--and stay up to date with what's new from Adobe and the design, web development, and video and audio production communities at large. Watch the latest video tutorials for Illustrator CS4, listen to a podcast interview with a leading designer, or learn about the next training event in your community. Discover tips and resources that can help you work smarter and faster. (Internet connection required.)

Part of the Adobe Creative Suite 4 family

Adobe Illustrator CS4 is integral to the Adobe Creative Suite 4 family of products, providing a vector graphics environment that serves as the foundation for design across media.

Illustrator complements the other components of Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium software for creating resolution-independent graphics that easily move among products and out to print, web, interactive, and mobile media. Design Premium provides all the tools you need to deliver your designs across media in a unified, intuitive environment.

Also a component of Adobe Creative Suite 4 Web Premium software, Illustrator CS4 is the key for building rich vector assets for use on the web and in interactive experiences, and for creating lightweight assets for mobile content. Web Premium provides a complete solution for creating and maintaining interactive websites, applications, user interfaces, mobile device content, presentations, and other digital experiences.

For film, video, audio, and interactive media, get Adobe Creative Suite 4 Production Premium software, which includes Illustrator CS4 as the foundation for building creative assets for use in video and film. Production Premium is a total post-production solution, with tighter-than-ever integration between video, audio, and design tools for a smooth workflow from concept to delivery.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection software is your premier solution for professional creative work, including, of course, Illustrator CS4--the key to creating the vector graphics that are the basis of your designs. Master Collection combines the best of Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium, Web Premium, and Production Premium editions, giving you advanced productivity features so you can create content for virtually all media using one value-packed offering.

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Customer Reviews

The queen of vector products
Absolutely superb product. I switched over from Corel Draw, which I never liked because of its horrible performance and UI. Draw worked well and did what it was supposed to, but what a royal pain just to navigate through the confusing interface. Illustrator is superior in everyway. From its screen refresh when panning and zooming to its tool set and FX capibilities. If you are thinking about either Corel Draw or Illustrator, do a google search and look for product reviews and especially a comparison of both programs. Illustrator will blow it away and I can say this with conviction because I used Draw for 10 years.

Gigantic Brooding Hulk Morphed Into Sophisticated, Confident Creature
I was working on a poster the other night. I had created a background in Photoshop and I was laying in the text using InDesign. I knew what I wanted to do, but I just couldn't make it work. I grumbled and groused. "I've done this a hundred times. Why can't I do it now?" Then, it dawned on me. Yes, I'd done it a hundred times, but not with InDesign. Illustrator was what I needed. The Adobe platform is a place where it is easy to forget where you are. The formats have been nicely dovetailed so you can build on what you learned in one application in an entirely new ap. I moved my project over to Illustrator my work proceeded quickly and I ended up with just what I wanted.

Adobe Illustrator CS4 is a massively powerful and robust program. It boggles the mind to think of all the things you can do and create in Illustrator. You could spend a lifetime working with Illustrator and there would always be something new to learn.

So, what does CS4 bring to the table that we haven't seen before? The interface is much more flexible and offers useful options that allow you to display a number of documents simultaneously so you can easily grab something from one window and drag it to another document.

Your choices of Workspaces has been improved and you can switch to a Workspace, for instance, that looks like Photoshop or InDesign.

One of the frustrating things about Illustrator is that in the past, you could only have one page. You got around that with layers, but now you have the option of Multiple Artboards. What's sweet about this is that you can have various sized documents within a single project: for instance, stationary, an envelope, business cards and a brochure--they all use a common theme and colors--but they vary in size. Now, you specify all this in the Document Setup under the new "Number of Artboards" button. Also, in addition to your Trim Size, you can add a Bleed Size. Anyone who does print work knows how important this is.

Here's a fun, new feature with a great name: The Expressive Blob Brush. Basically it allows you to change what you draw into a single, editable object without going through all the processes that were necessary before with brush drawing. And, hallelujah, the eraser works like the Blob Brush to make it much easier and more intuitive to draw and erase.

The new Graphics Styles offers the ability (using the Alt key) to add one style on top of another style (previously, choosing a new style overwrote the style before it.) By now, everyone knows how handy it is to be able to save a particular style and add it to other objects and with this new feature, it's even more sensational. And don't get me started on the Additive flyout menu. I could spend hours playing with it. There are so many potential ways to enhance your creative use of text and objects with Graphics Styles.


The Appearance Panel has been beefed up. You can change the stroke, fill and numerous other features within the Appearance Panel in an environment that looks like layers. This is a real timesaver and a boon to your workflow. This was always an important and powerful feature, but in CS4 Appearance Panel has gone to a marvelous, new level.

Bless you, Adobe for the Separations Preview Panel. I hate to even contemplate all the times I've struggled to get separations ready for a print job and the number of ways things can go awry. I haven't had a chance to send a job to press from CS4, but I certainly feel more confident about it.

The Filter Menu is gone and all the commands have been moved throughout the other menus. The Crop Marks menu is under the Effect menu, which means it's a live effect and the crop marks change with your artwork. Very handy.

Clipping Masks were an Illustrator bugaboo. No more. Clipping Masks are much easier to use in CS4 through the Objects menu.

Gradients have been greatly enhanced within the Gradients Panel. Best of all, you can adjust the gradient within the gradient itself, so you can adjust it for the exact look you want for your artwork. And, at last, you can easily create a gradient that has an opacity setting.

In CS4, Smart Guides are turned on by default. Click Control K and use the Smart Guides Preferences Menu, to set things up in a way that will be the most useful to you. This is a great feature for quickly and easily sizing and moving objects.

Illustrator documents quickly become complex. In CS3, the Isolation Mode made it easier to isolate and work with one object. In CS4 the Isolation Mode enhancements mean you can work on individual paths, whereas before, you were limited to groups. It is so wonderful to be able to quickly and easily isolate one object, work on it and easily move back to the overall composition. Before, if you weren't extremely careful, you could easily scramble your whole project when you tried to fix a small detail.

Alignment is something I use constantly in Illustrator and I'm so pleased with the improvements. You can easily designate a "key object" and align the other objects to that key objects. I used to get so frustrated when things would jump around in ways I didn't intend. I finally figured out a "trick" that helped, but alignment it is so much better and easier to used in CS4. In addition to aligning to a key object, you can align to an artboard or a selection.

Here's something I would never have thought of: a Colorblindness Proofing feature. You can preview your work as a colorblind person would see it. Actually, there are two types of color blindness, Deuteranopia and Protanopia, and it checks for both. By having multiple windows/artboards, you can easily use the "Recolor Artwork" feature and preview your design to make sure it is easily visible.

In Pathfinder, the objects can be combined, separated and shaped. Not much has changed except that the Live Behavior of compound shapes has been switched as the default with Expanded Object/Shape.

There are lots of new templates in CS4 and FlexSkins come with the program. With the multiple artboards, there are so many new possibilities. And there are so many Symbols with intriguing names like: Grime Vector Pack, Illuminate Ribbons, Logo Elements, Mad Science and many more.

The upgrades/improvements in CS4 are practical and useful like the Blob Brush tool intuitive vector drawing and multiple artboards (up to 100). All the previous features are still there. Illustrator CS4 makes me want to do an Infomercial: "But wait, there's more!"

I feel as though Illustrator has gone from being a gigantic brooding hulk of a program and it has gradually morphed into a more sophisticated, confident creature. It's still huge, but much less hostile. The familiar interface makes you feel that it has finally been fully embraced by the Adobe family. Kudos to Adobe for Illustrator CS4.

Required for my college classes
I went out and bought the Adobe CS4 Design Standard software package, luckily with a educational discount, for my university studies of graphic design. While it is not required per say, in order to get our projects done (out of class time) it is a must. Overall the Illustrator program works great for work on class projects, but seems to have some bugs on the PC.

For instance in the months of use, with over 72 hours in class, on a Mac I have never had a problem with the settings file becoming corrupt; however, on almost every program start on my PC it claims my settings have become corrupt and then resets them. This is a pain as I have to reset my settings every-time to work, and even if I leave the default settings alone and reload the software it will be corrupt again.. I have discovered many others with this same problem on the Adobe forum and no help, patch, or update is available or planned. It looks to be a problem that is many years old as well, which truly is saddening. Of the suggestions from users nothing works to stop the issue, and a clean install of the program with or without the updates does not help.

Then there are other more minor issues as well that stand out. One of which is when using the tools such as the brush or the pencil. Once I begin working with either of them the icon pointer will become locked/frozen in a cursor state. The only way to resolve the problem is to change to precision cursor (Caps Lock), often pressing it numerous times until it responds, and then press once again to return to the normal cursor. Only then will the tool cursor change as needed while using it, until it does it again. The other issues are less frequent so I will save the typing space.

The Adobe Illustrator seems to have no equal, but it still needs work to iron out the numerous problems on the PC. I can happy report I have not experienced any problems using my other Adobe CS4 programs on my PC (fingers crossed) such as Acrobat, Indesign, or Photoshop; however, with the numerous frustrations with Illustrator and the costs of the software I will be looking for alternatives when I complete my classes and can use whatever I prefer.