Adobe Illustrator CS4 review
in Software
1 of 2 
Verdict
Still heavy going, but a raft of improvements means it's the most comprehensive drawing package on the market.
Review Date: 20 Oct 2008
Reviewed By: Tom Arah
Price when reviewed: £485 (£558 inc VAT)
Overall Rating
Features & Design
Value for Money
Ease of Use
You can also now hide the display of processor-intensive effects as you work. When happy with the look of your object, you can quickly save it to the Graphic Styles panel for re-use. And you can now Alt-click to overlay multiple styles on an object.
Finally, output options have been improved. Illustrator's background is in high-end PostScript-based commercial print and here a new Separations Preview is welcome, while for screen-based output there's support for the new XML-based Flash image format FXG.
Despite all the improvements it's unlikely that Illustrator CS4 will win over its critics. Compared with rivals such as Xara and CorelDRAW, the program is still heavy going. But the level of advanced creative control that Illustrator offers is unmatched, and this CS4 release adds important new features and makes existing power more accessible.
Click below for the rest of our CS4 reviews:
Adobe CS4 Master Collection
Design Standard / Design Premium CS4
Photoshop CS4
Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended
Adobe Illustrator CS4
Adobe InDesign CS4
Author: Tom Arah
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