oh, write

I’ve been using Illustrator CS4 for a few weeks now, in fact I wrote a review of it for Digital Arts magazine. I was initially sceptical about the release if I’m being honest. It all seemed to come out of nowhere, and the feature list didn’t sound that compelling for an upgrade.

Let me say now, if you use Illustrator regularly, upgrade.

Seriously, I wouldn’t go back to CS3. The most important new feature, in my opinion, is support for multiple artboards. I wouldn’t recommend laying out a brochure in Illustrator; it’s just not built for that, and InDesign handles it all with much more aplomb, but for business cards, multiple items of stationery for the same client, and even multiple versions of the same mockup – superb.

Anyway, beyond that the tool I’m getting the most enjoyment out of currently is the Blob Brush. Rubbish name, even if appropriate, but great tool. Essentially, everything you hoped Illustrator would do the very first time you used it is now true. This is like a combination of Flash and Freehand in terms of drawing vector shapes with a brush. Great fun, massive productivity boost. It makes blocking out colour in to organic shapes much easier.

These are just the two enhancements I’ve got time to talk about just now. There are actually quite a few other very useful additions I hope to get to talk about in the future. So, I’ve come full circle. I started off dubious, but am a total convert. Pretty glad to have the new version, I’d recommend it to any serious Illustrator user without hesitation.