You can also apply and edit individual effects right in the Appearance panel. The Appearance panel has added the ability to turn on and off individual effects, much like you can show/hide layer effects in Photoshop. Once you’re finished editing, simply hit the Escape key to exit Isolation mode. It’s also much easier to adjust the stacking order of objects in Isolation mode, greatly reducing the need to use Paste In Front/Back and Arrange commands. Once in Isolation mode, you can adjust objects such as clipping masks, images, gradient mesh objects and compound paths. By double-clicking a group of objects, you can visually isolate those objects on the artboard, having all other objects grayed out. I can’t say enough how useful Isolation mode is. Isolation mode has also seen advancements. The guides are more intuitive in CS4 with on-object readouts, allowing you to stay focused on your work, rather than on the alignment panel. Objects can be aligned to the artboard rather than the cursor. Feature Enhancements: Another feature shared between Creative Suite applications are Smart Guides. The application frame keeps your document and all the panels in a single, resizable window, and features spring-loaded panels which allow you to expand the panel of your choice simply by dragging an object on top of the panel icon. Simply by dragging your object over another document tab, that document pops open so you can drop your objects right where you want it placed. Tabbed documents are spring-loaded, making it easy to transfer objects between documents. User Interface: Adobe Illustrator CS4 shares the new GUI with it’s Creative Suite counterparts.
You can now create radial gradients of any proportion or shape. Radial gradients have also seen an upgrade, with the new ability to set dimensions independently. With the gradient controls right on your object, you get immediate visual feedback, allowing you to focus on your design without interruption. Along with the ability to use transparency in gradients, Adobe has added the ability to adjust your gradients right on the object, rather than being forced to make a trip to the gradient panel every time you want to adjust your gradient. With Illustrator CS4, you can set the colors of your gradient, the use the gradient slider to use adjust one or both color stops to a custom level of opacity to show objects beneath the gradient. Even then, it rarely yielded the results you wanted. Previously, you had to use a complicated method of setting up masks to simulate transparency. Gradient Transparency: The second big feature request from Illustrator users for years has been the ability to use transparency in gradients.
When exporting your artwork from Illustrator, you have the option of saving each artboard as a single mutli-page PDF file, or as single page files in a numbered sequence. While not a huge feature, it’s nice to be able to work in Illustrator with a completely accurate artboard and not have to “fake” a bleed area. Also included as part of the new artboard feature is the ability to set bleed amounts to your Illustrator documents, much like you can in InDesign documents. Illustrator CS4 allows up to 100 artboards in each document, and you can even create an artboard inside another artboard, allowing you to easily export just a piece of a composition.
If you choose the artboard with the black only version of the logo, the Pantone colors used in the logo on another artboard are not brought into your document, keeping your swatches panel free of the clutter of unused colors. And when you place the logo file into InDesign, you choose which artboard (via InDesign’s Place options) you wish to have in your document. With Illustrator CS4, you have a single logo file containing all five versions of the logo.
The most minor of changes to the logo would require you to edit five files, and then update five different files in every InDesign document they were used in.
Before Illustrator CS4, you probably had an Illustrator version of client X’s logo in full color, another file for the logo in Pantone colors, another version for solid black, yet another version solid white (for placing on dark backgrounds), and finally, another version in grayscale (for placing in B&W ads, etc.).
So what’s the big deal you ask? Read on… Let’s look at an example of why this is so great. Multiple Artboards: Think of multiple Artboards as essentially multi-page documents, much like a page layout program, except that it allows you to have different size artboards within your document. That is, unless you want two of the most sought-after features that Illustrator users have been begging for since at least version 8.Īdobe Illustrator CS4 brings those two huge features and a whole lot of existing feature enhancements to Illustrator users who’ve been patiently waiting.