Adobe Illustrator Review | PCMag

Adobe Illustrator is a muscular piece of graphics software for illustration, drawing and painting, fine typography, and most graphic design, and it’s one of the best vector-editing graphics apps available. In late 2023, Illustrator users saw the introduction of several promising public betas, a new AI vector image generator, upgraded Share for Review, and Illustrator on the web (still in beta). Add to that a sneak peek to dream about: Project Neo, a parametric 3D drawing tool enabling creators to embrace simplified 3D design within familiar 2D tools and methods. For its longstanding excellence and continued innovation, Adobe Illustrator is an Editors’ Choice award winner.

How Much Does Adobe Illustrator Cost?

Adobe Illustrator is only available by subscription. It costs $22.99 per month with an annual commitment (the total is $263.88, but you pay in monthly installments) or $34.49 on a month-to-month basis. Adobe does not offer a perpetual license for Illustrator. CorelDraw Graphics Suite, which is one of Illustrator’s closest competitors, still has a perpetual license option for $549 or a subscription plan at a comparable $269 per year (it works out to $22.42 per month).

With a subscription to Illustrator, you get everything listed below:

• The web version of Illustrator

• Premium access to Adobe Express, a template-driven web app to create branded content, like flyers, logos, and social media content

• Adobe’s artificial intelligence (AI) image generator, Firefly

• 500 generative AI credits per month

• 100GB of cloud storage

• Step-by-step tutorials

• Adobe Portfolio, a simple no-code website builder so you can show off your work

• Adobe Fonts

• Behance, the world’s largest creative online network for showcasing and discovering creative work

• Creative Cloud Libraries, a central repository for storing core design assets for your brand or personal projects

• Immediate access to the latest features

Adobe Illustrator System Requirements 

Illustrator is compatible with Windows (Windows 11, Windows 10 22H2), and Mac (macOS 11, Big Sur and later), and iPad (iOS 14 and later). No matter which platform you use, you need a reliable internet connection to download and register Illustrator and its companion programs that come with the subscription. You can work offline, but you need an internet connection for membership validation and access to some online services. A complete list of the system requirements for Adobe Illustrator is available on Adobe’s site.

Getting Started With Adobe Illustrator

To understand Adobe Illustrator, it helps to know the difference between vector and raster graphics. For the uninitiated, here’s a brief explanation.

Vector vs. Raster

Illustrator is a vector graphics editing program. Vector graphics are defined by points, lines, and Boolean curves. Their main advantage over raster images is that you can enlarge them infinitely without loss of resolution. For example, if you were designing a huge billboard or other large graphics where scalability is a requisite for success, you would need vector graphics. A second advantage of designing with vectors is that files tend to be much smaller than their raster counterparts. In the image below, the object on the left is a vector graphic, and the object on the right is a raster.

(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)

Workspace and Tools

Illustrator’s general environment should be reasonably familiar if you’ve worked with InDesign or Photoshop. You can customize the interface with dark to light gray options and set your palettes and menus to snap to any configuration that pleases you. When you have your screen perfectly composed with your favorite preferences, defaults, menu organization, and positions, you can save that workspace and reset to that exact configuration whenever you like.

I appreciate that the software lets you assign custom key commands, which lets you further optimize your workflow for any kind of project. In fact, Illustrator ships with customized workspace options specifically suited to disciplines such as layout, printing and proofing, typography, and an Essentials space that highlights new enhancements and additions.

Illustrator supports multiple repositionable pages, which it calls Artboards. You can size them using Illustrator’s myriad presets, cut them down to size with the Page Crop tool, or define the width and height values yourself. Artboard control has improved over time with steady enhancements to positioning and arranging, as well as allowing more boards than before.

Appearance and Properties Panels

Although it’s mixed in with other less powerful tools, the unassuming Appearance panel constitutes the backbone and muscle of your workspace. Appearance is arguably the most underappreciated of Illustrator’s default panels, but I consider this tool my information control tower. 

With the Appearance panel, you have full command over every aspect of an object’s or group’s attributes, including basic fills, stroke color and size, opacity, and blending mode. The panel really impresses when you work with complex operations like creating multiple strokes, adjusting Illustrator Effects (such as glows, feathers, and drop shadows), and reordering or toggling effects layers.

The Properties panel appears in the Essentials workspace, and when you choose Properties from the Window menu. Its contextual menu shows frequently needed tools based on the current context, changing what it displays depending on what you select.

In addition to the Appearance panel, Adobe has stocked the tools panel with everything you’d expect in a professional drawing application, plus some unique goodies. If that isn’t enough, there are some extraordinary and high-quality plug-in packages built specifically for Illustrator and updated regularly. Check out Astute Graphics’ jaw-dropping lineup or C.Valley’s versatile sets FILTERiT 5 and XTream Path 2. 

Illustrator’s eight tool categories help you get your design work done, and they inspire exploration. I recommend beginners do just that—explore the tools and their submenus before embarking on a project that’s due tomorrow. Having so many specialty tools can be daunting at first.

Selection Tools

By default, Illustrator shows five selection tools, each designed to choose specific types of objects, groups, paths, and points. You can get even more precise control via the Preferences menu. A dream come true for hard-working eyeballs is the Preferences addition of custom sizing for anchor points and handles. In prior versions of Illustrator, no matter how high you magnified your view, the anchor points remained painfully small. The change has been in place for a year or two, and it makes a huge difference.

Drawing Tools

The program’s 18 drawing tools are sure to satisfy. Among them is the invaluable Pixel Perfect tool, which aids in creating crisp web-destined graphics with pixels that align along a grid. The Puppet Warp tool gives you a way to make minor adjustments without having to select many points and move each one separately. The tool allows for more holistic complex-shape editing by creating a triangulated mesh envelope around your selection that allows you to lock certain zones while manipulating adjacent areas rather than having to do so point by point.

Typography

Working with complex typography is a pleasure in Illustrator with six type tools, including the revolutionary Touch Type tool. Touch Type allows repositioning, rotation, and scaling of individual letters within live text blocks. Typographers can now assign OpenType alternate styles to a text block.

Paint Tools

Artists will enjoy playing with eight paint tools, including the Live Paint tool, which lets users color-fill shapes simply by clicking on them. The Brush tool allows you to create custom brushes (Pattern, Art, Scatter, Calligraphic, or Bristle), a feature that becomes awesome when you realize that you can create unexpected shapes by replacing polygon and ellipse strokes with a custom brush.

Related to the paint tools is the magical Symbol Sprayer tool with its seven variants. You can assign a symbol you create to become the paint sprayed. Assign a star you made to the Symbol Sprayer and the tool sprays stars. With the Sprayer’s sub-tools, you can control the density of spray, randomness, color variation, size variation, and individual rotation of the stars with the aptly named Styler, Shifter, Scruncher, Screener, Sizer, Spinner, and Stain tools.

Reshape and Transform

Illustrator promises powerful control. The reshaping and transformation tools feel quite satisfying as you manipulate your work in every way imaginable, like shape blending, morphing, warping, twisting, shearing, tweaking, puckering, and bloating. With five slicing and cutting tools, you get ultrafine control over lines and shapes with the Pathfinder tab, which performs operations like unite, exclude, intersect, merge, and divide. Try experimenting with these different functions.

Graphing Tools

Considering the popularity of data visualization and information graphics, Illustrator whets the appetite with nine graphing tools that allow you to get down to business. You can transform your data with an adequate variety of graph types, including bar and pie charts, as well as scatter and radar charts. It’s been a while since we’ve seen anything new in the graphing toolbox. I wish Adobe would give us some unconventional graphs like radial tree maps, network diagrams, or bubble charts, which are more adept at displaying complex data and more beautiful to look at.

Custom Scripts

If you really want to explore the Illustrator geekdom, you might play with custom scripts, which the app can run. You can use the humdrum ones installed with the program, or better, code some yourself (in Microsoft Visual Basic, AppleScript, JavaScript, and ExtendScript)—and if you aren’t up to coding, you can scout around online and find plenty of intriguing automation and function-adding scripts that others have made. I’m not a coder, but it’s easy because all you have to do is drop a code file into your Scripts folder.

Illustrator’s Hottest Features for Work, Fun, and Experimentation

Illustrator is packed with features, but some stand out for being the ones I’d recommend people get to know for work or just for learning and playing with the app.

Precision Drawing

Illustrator was born for precision drawing more than for its other abilities. Amenities like perspective grids scaffold the foundation of perspective drawing and create dimensional lettering effects, while axonometric angle constraints save time and minimize frustration. Layers help organize and isolate components of your illustration for easy access when making edits or for variable overlays. Finally, although it takes a bit of practice to master, the Pen tool is your go-to for creating beautiful vector paths and Bezier curves, defining anchor points, and manipulating handles.

Type Wrangling

As a typographer, I find a lot to love when working with type in Illustrator, especially with the OpenType glyph chooser drop-down you see when you select a letter (or glyph) that has alternate versions. You can assign alternates to entire text blocks rather than assigning glyphs one character at a time. All you have to do is highlight a character and select from the alternates options drop-down menu. For example, if you highlight the numeral 5 (depending on the typeface), you can choose superscript, subscript, tabular, old style, denominator, numerator, case sensitive, small caps, and other alternates.

Illustrator also borrows from InDesign’s professional character and paragraph formatting options. The addition of the Touch Type tool, described previously, a Glyphs window, and support for Asian (horizontal and vertical), Indic, Arabic, and Hebrew languages makes working with type in Illustrator a stellar experience. Thankfully, the once-anemic spellchecker has been revamped so that it’s actually helpful. That said, I wish Adobe would make it more direct and disburden us of the two-step process necessary to access it.

Variable Typefaces

In late 2023, Adobe delivered more than 150 new variable typefaces. Variable type resembles a smart build-out of Adobe’s Multiple Master technology of yore. What’s great about variable fonts is that in Illustrator, you can precisely control width (condensed or extended), weight (thin to black), and slant with the software’s sliders. It’s like getting 30 fonts in one typeface. Something to note here is that the slant is an oblique, not a true italic.

(Credit: Adobe)

Automation With Graphic Styles

Graphic Styles in Illustrator are akin to Photoshop’s Styles. They’re one-click mechanisms that automate the application of attributes to an object or type in a single step. In Illustrator, these attributes can be something as simple as a slight drop shadow or as complex as a seven-layer stroke with offsets, feathering, and an inner glow. Note that in Illustrator, shadows and glows are made from stepped gradations of solid colors that simulate a blur.

A great way to understand building and using Graphic Styles is to select an object with a Graphic Style applied to it and examine the Appearance panel. There, you will see each of the attribute layers that combine to generate the Graphic Style’s effect. 

(Credit: Adobe/Shelby Putnam Tupper)

Illustrator Beta Features to Try Now

A few new features in Illustrator are still in public beta, but they’re so promising that you should try them as soon as possible.

Quick Pen Tool (in the Beta Web App)

A Quick Pen tool in Illustrator for the web lets you draw and edit lines and arcs effortlessly, avoiding the notoriously challenging-to-master Pen Tool. You can intuitively draw smooth curves and lines to build any shape, draw and edit custom geometric shapes using lines and arcs, and continue to recreate your ideas on canvas with essential drawing tools like Pen and Pencil. 

Mockup

With the Mockup tool, you can create realistic-looking mockups for packaging, apparel, environmental, and label designs by placing artwork on raster images of real-life objects.

(Credit: Adobe)

Retype

Retype lets you convert Latin static, raster text within images and vector outlined text into live text. Additionally, you can identify those fonts, and Retype returns any matching fonts present on your computer—in addition to any matching fonts from Adobe Fonts. It’s a boon for designers who must edit text from another person’s outlined files.

Other Notable Features

Some other notable and somewhat new features in Illustrator are also worth getting to know.

Contextual Task Bar

The Contextual Task Bar is a floating bar that provides the most relevant next actions for the object you select in the object’s vicinity. The Contextual Task Bar ensures that your focus remains on the object you’re working on by anticipating the most common next step in your workflow. 

The positioning of the bar gets in the way sometimes. Thankfully, you can reposition or turn off the Task Bar by selecting More Options. Additionally, the tool is limited to certain object types, like Recolor Artwork, Text, Paths, and Image Tracing.

(Credit: Adobe)

Gathering Feedback—Two Approaches

You have to share your work to get feedback on it. The first way to share files is Invite to Edit, which allows you to invite team collaborators to review and share comments directly on your Illustrator cloud documents.

The second method, Share for Review, lets you share local or Cloud Documents with links to PDFs. There, clients or any other stakeholders can provide feedback. Once stakeholders add comments, you automatically see them in the app. You can comment back, resolve comments, and push updates to the same link to continue the review cycle. It’s like marking up a PDF with stickies and comments, only more direct.

(Credit: Adobe)

Generative Recolor

Generative Recolor lets you transform the colors in your vector artwork into alternate color schemes based on your own text-based description of the desired look, or with an array of deep-level color-based options, you can dial in for the most robust control of your desired outcome. When working with the AI-generated recolor, you get four variations as output. The first of the images below is from Adobe’s press kit, and the second is from my own file.

(Credit: Adobe)

(Credit: Adobe/Shelby Putnam Tupper)

Because the generator shows options on a black background, I find it easier to review it if I group a white rectangle behind my art. I wish those teeny thumbnails were larger because it’s difficult to see well enough to choose one, and the generator only lets you choose one at a time. 

I find that the AI-generated options don’t yet cut the mustard. However, I appreciate this new tool’s more advanced color-control options. Previously, I had to use Astute Graphics Phantasm to tweak colors and palettes at this level.

Adobe Firefly Models

Introduced in early 2023, Firefly is Adobe’s branch of AI. Adobe believes AI is most powerful when deeply integrated into the core of creative workflows. The new Adobe Firefly Image 2 Model, Adobe Firefly Vector Model, and Adobe Firefly Design Model are the most advanced generative AI technologies in the market today, designed to generate content safe for commercial use.

Read more in my hands-on preview of Firefly for Photoshop.

Text-to-Vector Art Using AI

Something remarkable to note about Adobe’s use of Firefly is that the company has created the very first text-to-vector image generator—and for that, they deserve a hat tip.

I appreciate Adobe for how it has differentiated Firefly from other AI generative tools by building it responsibly and with users in mind. Firefly has a unique combination of ethical content sourcing, deep integration with Adobe’s creative suite, a user-friendly interface, and extensive customization options. 

(Credit: Adobe)

The one downside to mention is that Firefly is largely trained on images within Adobe Stock, where you find both superb content and plenty of garbage illustrations and images, and sometimes it shows.

Illustrator on the Web

The new beta web app version of Illustrator works only on Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. You log in to your Adobe account to access the web app and are greeted with a familiar interface and capabilities that echo those of Illustrator for the iPad. Once logged in, all your Cloud Documents are right there, along with the question, “Are You Ready To Create?” Yes, always.

(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)

What’s different here from desktop Illustrator is, much like Adobe Express and Canva, you find loads of templates in categories like Logos & Branding, Marketing & Advertising, Illustrations & Graphics, and Cards & Stationary [sic]. This affords novice and non-designers an easy and productive entry into Illustrator, with an intuitive interface and a simplified workflow. 

Illustrator on the iPad

The iPad version of Illustrator has seen a few recent improvements. They include enhanced touch shortcuts, snap-in gradients, and the ability to control default style with keyboard shortcuts.

Vector Victor

Adobe Illustrator is essential for any serious designer or artist’s software collection. With it, you can create vector solutions for any challenge. What’s more, by being curious and taking advantage of Illustrator’s generous expansion capability, you can turn the application into a personalized digital dream world. With steady use and inquisitive inspection, the multitude of tools, menus, palettes, pull-down options, and features become second nature, and Illustrator feels like an unconscious extension of your mind. Thanks to all of this, Adobe Illustrator is our clear Editors’ Choice winner for vector graphics design.