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  Illustrator 8 continued

Of course as with any program, not everyone will be impressed with all of these new things, but at least this is better than some of the recent upgrades I have seen for other programs. While I will not name it here, I was disappointed in the new version of a major graphics program where only a couple of things were improved to the point that they could have been included in a service release and did not warrant a new version.

Back to Adobe Illustrator 8, another aspect of any graphics program is not only that it works with other programs from the same company, but others as well. Whether it is text or graphics, whatever you are working with can originate in a variety of programs and still be brought into Adobe Illustrator 8. From vector to bitmap programs plus inputting and exporting of text documents including Microsoft Word and PDF files as well, Adobe Illustrator 8 does a nice job.   And with a couple of exceptions, while I use the PC version, MAC users will find identical features, just a couple of differences in the file formats that can be opened.

So now with all of those new features and compatibility with other programs, what fault could I possibly find with this newest version of Adobe Illustrator? Well, believe it or not, I do have a couple of issues. One of the first things that stick out is the limitation of the zoom. No, I probably will never use the 48,000% zoom that is available in Corel Draw 8^., but I think that Adobe Illustrator 8 having a zoom limit of 6400% is one of its shortfalls. Also, while I love Adobe fonts and they are generous with free Type I fonts provided along with giving you Type On Call and Adobe Type Manager (and some other goodies as well), I was disappointed that True Type fonts are ignored. For the professional, I will submit that is entirely appropriate to include Type I, but I think it creates and extra hassle for the consumer not familiar with using Type I fonts.  I also realize Adobe has a great business going selling Type I fonts, but I think they should have included True Type in the package as well.

Overall, despite the concerns I had and a couple of personal preferences, I think Adobe Illustrator 8 does a great job of staying with and in several cases other professional graphics programs in its league, yet if offers a set of tools that can be mastered by non-professionals as well.

System Requirements (minimum):
Pentium or faster Intel processor
Windows 95 or 98 or NT 4
32MB of RAM (64 MB recommended)
50MB of available hard drive space (95 MB recommended)
CD-ROM Drive
Video card displaying 800X600 pixels desktop area
For more information, visit http://www.adobe.com