Illustrator CS3 features and Xara

[Xhris]

There doesn't seem to have been much talk about the recent release of Adobe Illustrator CS3. It seems that the number of new features is slight relative to the previous release, but concentrate primarily on increasing speed, and colour handling. They have an interesting new eraser tool; people have been asking for this feature in Xara for some time if memory serves. They've also integrated it with Flash (easier for them now that they own it).

It appears that most of their time has been spent on fixing their UI. While I doubt it's anywhere near Xara's slickness, there appears to be context sensitive toolbars, better toolbar/palette docking, solid dragging and enlarge-when-hovered-over bezier control points.

It still looks like a very messy, complicated and excessive UI though, but it would be interesting to see how significant their speed improvements are.

Oh, and we'll not mention their outrageous prices...Xara's full price is the same as their upgrade!

[Albacore]

Chris since your not really making a comparison between features in XPro and Illly CS3 would this topic not be better in the Illy topics down in the depths of this forums bowels?

[Xhris]

Chris since your not really making a comparison between features in XPro and Illly CS3 would this topic not be better in the Illy topics down in the depths of this forums bowels?

Perhaps you're right.

Adobe's most touted feature is the "Live Colour". This is essentially comparable to the linked colours feature Xara has offered since day 1, but includes pre-set relations between colours as an extension. Apparently Xara is updating their colour handling, and so it would be interesting to see how things have changed in the coming release.

AICS3 also has an improved object selection feature. I suspect this is comparable to what could be achieved using Xara's name gallery, and naming object groups independently of true groups to enhance control. Xara's name gallery is a very powerful relational tool; I was going to write a tutorial on it once, but never got round to it. When Flash animation was included in Pro, the minimum use of the name gallery was required, and I wrote a little about that in the Flash Animation document.

[MarkMyWords]

Now bezier control points that enlarge when you hover over them is a nice little touch. I'm not sure how their eraser works, but again, with this, they are moving their toolset closer and closer to those used by bitmap artists. Livepaint was the last such step and sold as a 'killer' function.

Adobes problem is that they have made both Illustrator and Photoshop into market leaders of their respective fields. Now they find they will have Expressions hybrid model as serious competition (this will pave the way for more hybrids), they have to compete in this area and by following the logical path of progression, one or other of their flagship products will become obsolete.

It's my opinion that bitmap programs will eventually lose out and become minor tools in computer graphics, but meantime, I believe, we will see battles over the 'middle ground' heating up.

[georgetroy]

I just got this upgrade in the mail today. In the box is the discs, some ads and this chincy little start up guide. For $199.00 you would think Adobe would include a manual like you get with out an upgrade. I don't why I spend my money on upgrades whether it be Xara Xtreme, Adobe, MS, Corel, Serif, Painter or what ever else I forgot. Spending my retirement money before the kids get it and they don't need it.

Question I wonder if I should remove CS2 before I load CS3 Upgrade or afterwards?

Someone was making a remark before the thread got moved to here about MS Expression Suite being $500.00. I do use the old Expression 3.3 a lot. It has the best smart curve or b-spline tool around. GT

[Soquili]

George, if the upgrade to CS3 is like the Photoshop upgrade from version 7 to CS leave CS2 on your system until after you upgrade.

Adobe upgrades require the previous version to be installed or you need to have the CD for the old version handy to put in when prompted.

It usually takes me a few hours to go through old CDs to find the one I need.

[georgetroy]

I just got this upgrade in the mail today. In the box is the discs, some ads and this chincy little start up guide. For $199.00 you would think Adobe would include a manual like you get with out an upgrade. I don't why I spend my money on upgrades whether it be Xara Xtreme, Adobe, MS, Corel, Serif, Painter or what ever else I forgot. Spending my retirement money before the kids get it and they don't need it.

Question I wonder if I should remove CS2 before I load CS3 Upgrade or afterwards?

Someone was making a remark before the thread got moved to here about MS Expression Suite being $500.00. I do use the old Expression 3.3 a lot. It has the best smart curve or b-spline tool around. GT

As I said today I got the new upgrade now it won't install. This is a thread I placed in the Illustrator forum.

I don't need this problem. Got my new upgrade today. Got this message.

E:Adobe CS3\Setup.exe is not a valid Win. 32 application. Ok, it either installs without a hassle or it goes back to Amazon immediately for a refund and it will never darken my computer again. I will call tomorrow Adobe about it tomorrow. GT

[Soquili]

George check the root of the CD for an autorun.exe, setup.exe or any file with a .msi extension. Sometimes a preloader is required to load the setup.exe files from subfolders.

[Albacore]

We have a few try out copies at work and I have used CS3 for about 5hrs the other week. Since all our work iis for print I enjoyed using the new "Live Colour" tool for preparing recently produced work for a book cover to be sent to the print section and it was so easy to set up spot colour colours and reduce the number of colours used. To answer Xhris statement that it was like using "named colours" in Xara is being unfair, it is far more sophisticated than that as you can so quickly change your colour palette from the drop down menus. As some of our work goes into both colour production and into greyscale for newspapers this was so,so easy and it has cutout another process that we had to go through. I had a quick try at the eraser tool and I can say that it works well and it would be a great tool to use if you wanted a complex shape but you only generated it from a simple shape.

If the upgrade was the same price as it is in the States I would upgrade but as the price is the same over here as you pay in $ (current Exchange is $2.03) and then we have to pay an extra 17.5% on top of that in VAT (Gov. Tax) it takes a lot of freelance work to pay for that, so no thank you.

[Xhris]

To answer Xhris statement that it was like using "named colours" in Xara is being unfair...

You're right actually on further inspection. While you can link colours together in Xara so they have a common saturation or value, you can't perform the hue-linked changes without limiting to primary colours like R/G/B. AI actually goes one step further and allows complete control over fixed hue relations and displays in a WYSIWYG fashion what those relations are.