Illustrator CS5

[handrawn]

beautiful strokes? - bit of a disapointment but then , I don't draw that way really

bristle brush? - brilliant [did not get much sleep last night ]

attach a quick cartoon sketch - this was done in less than two minutes on the tablet [literally] and was the first go, duck to water I think - it can be imported into xtreme as fully editable vector, but [so far] it doesn't seem this can be done in multi layer....AI or PDF....

[Albacore]

Well are you going to up grade because of the brushes? I am thinking about it, will try the download now. It takes so much room in the hard drive but I have plenty to spare so I will.

[handrawn]

well first I'll have to check right through and establish workflow[s] - it looks very promising, but there are [nearly] always issues, as is life

it seems to me that the rendering on zoom out is better too, more on a par with photoshop CS4 than illy CS4 was [daren't even try CS5 photoshop at the moment its going to be a tough year ..] .....

[handrawn]

the brushes do the job I need them to do - plus illy live paint makes creating coloring shapes on a duplicate layer very easy

xtreme struggles after a while to redraw the imported vectors though - I think because there can be many hundreds of transparent shapes here - I've tried tweaking the live drag and cache, but it still isn't as happy as illy in this respect which 'leverages the power of the GPU' for its rendering [I think I know what that means ]

I'm going to have think hard about this - £190+ for the upgrade [and VAT will go up after the election I reckon..] - but they are exactly what I have been after for a long time

[handrawn]

yep - it's all good

now take care y'all...

it was nice

all power to the web and photopharties...

may you prosper and grow...

[InfoCentral]

I'm officially out of the upgrade path now as I have CS and you need CS2 or better.

[Albacore]

That's always been the case that you have to upgrade every 5 years unless you have a registered copy of PS and upgrade to the Creative Suite I think.

To enquire from Handrawn is a silly thing to do as he seems very happy with his purchase I am a bit more sceptical as I to have been playing with Illustrator and with CS 3 on my drive I can't really afford the benefits of the nice masking using the new brushes. Can't see myself using the 3D effects very often or the art strokes which seem a hype. Still I have some time left to play and will make my mind up later.

[handrawn]

To enquire from Handrawn is a silly thing to do...

forgive me my enthusiasm

handrawn is an Artist [with a capital A] and not a Designer [Graphic or otherwise] so he/she/it is going to look at things from that point of view; if this is atypical [here] so be it

the really nice thing about the bristle brushes, for me, is that they are stroked by a group of lines of varying levels of transparency - and that as you curve the line you get 'extra sweep' similar to a real brush [in principle]

this means, for example, that when the lines are reduced they still retain visual character, and do not become 'flat looking' in the way solid or single transparency strokes would - and all this is laid down in real time so it can be drawn freehand and spontaneously...

I think drawing in the style of JA might be a good example here Peter...

attached are some [default] stroke examples - there is a very useful amount of variation possible

[Albacore]

You got it in one there Handrawn as the only time I would use the bristle brush would be in my own work which is on the back burner a bit at the moment. Most of my work at the moment is straight vector, info posters, backgrounds for power point, technical illustrations, newsletters upon newsletter and cartoons for the newsletters. I thought the new art strokes might help with the cartoons but at the moment they don't feel right when using them but I will try a bit longer before reverting back to the normal strokes and brushes.

Since you draw cartoons most of the time why so much emphasis on the bristle brush? Do you not want a clean clear outline like an old fashion pen gives you with thickness and thinness given the way you angle the pen. Its what I am looking for and since I draw out the cartoon before loading it into the computer. Sometimes it just goes into PS for a quick clean, while other times its drawn in either XPro 5 or in Illy and is pure vector with very little in the way of shading as that is my style.

[crayola]

CS5 with tiny hardly can see icons at 1920x1080 hp W7 ultimate. I haven't used Illustrator since way back Version7. Still as clumsy as ever and now with tiny icons, brushes? Painter for brushes. Xara is excellent for vectors and ordered 5 a bit ago looks like improvements since my 3.2.
I have linux on another system and I can adjust fonts on every part of the desktop, toolbars, menus, W7 is sorely lacking here.