Labs

Illustrator was the first vector drawing program and remains the choice of most professional designers. At the high end, and particularly in its Apple Mac incarnation, it competes primarily with Macromedia's FreeHand. With Macromedia currently merging with Adobe, FreeHand's future looks uncertain, so Illustrator has a clear run at the top spot. Fortunately, the latest upgrade - which in effect is version 12 but is named CS2 as part of Adobe's Creative Suite - shows no signs that Adobe is resting on its laurels.

One of several new features, Live Trace turns scanned drawings, photos and other images into vector shapes quickly and accurately. Unlike other programs, Illustrator CS2 lets you adjust the trace settings interactively, so you can see the effect they have on your artwork straight away rather than having to redo the trace by trial and error.

Complementing this, Live Paint allows you to 'colour in' line drawings in a way that was impossible with vector programs. Usually, to fill an area with colour, you need a complete shape that represents an area. For example, if you draw a noughts-and-crosses board using four lines, you can't fill the square in the middle because it doesn't exist as an object; you'd have to draw a square on top, then fill it. With Illustrator CS2, you can click in the square formed by the lines, and the bounded area is recognised and filled. If you then move one of the lines, changing the shape and size of the bounded area, the fill updates. This is a real innovation that will change

Illustrator has pretty much everything you'll find in other packages, and its user interface is quite accessible, although Adobe's palettes tend to get scattered around as you work. There are lots of nice touches, such the ability to adjust the number of points on a star interactively while drawing it, and advanced features such as envelope warping, mesh fills and symbol spraying are well implemented.

A good range of distortion and raster effects can be applied individually or stacked, while Graphic Styles apply all the attributes of an object with one click. Libraries of ready-made Graphic Styles let you create effects such as gel buttons instantly, and you can access and edit the properties of each object in your drawing easily from the Appearance palette. As well as the kind of 3D extrusion most drawing packages offer, which lets you give thickness to flat shapes, Illustrator has a 3D Revolve tool, so you can 'lathe' solids such as an egg or vase from a curve. It's not as easy to use as it should be, but it's very useful once you get the hang of it. The program supports scripting with Adobe Actions.

Beyond drawing, there's built-in support for frame-based animation, including interactivity, which you can save as SVG files or export to Flash. Text handling is good enough for page layouts, and this version adds support for multiple pages. If desktop publishing is your thing, though, look at the complete Creative Suite 2, which comes with InDesign, Adobe's market-leading DTP program, and Photoshop. Creative Suite 2 costs less than £700 inc VAT if you shop around.

Although that's more than twice the price of Corel's Graphics Suite, the Adobe programs are in a different league and represent the professional industry standard. If design is your main focus, CS2 is the automatic choice at the moment, and one that you're unlikely to regret. On the other hand, if you just need a general-purpose drawing program, Illustrator is pricy as a standalone product, and its advantages over cheaper rivals may not be significant enough in everyday use to justify the extra cost.