Review of:
Adobe Illustrator 7.0 
by David Bridgewater

 This new version of Adobe Illustrator 7.0 lets you drag and drop objects from one Illustrator file to another and is wonderfully adapt at allowing you to drag and drop from any other program that supports that functionality. Adobe Photoshop, PageMill, and Adobe PageMaker. This feature alone is great because it shortens the learning curve when moving from one application to another, and makes working between applications a breeze. The User Interface now shares a common menu structure, keyboard shortcuts, and tabbed palettes. 

 You'll experience an improvement in display time as well. Illustrator 7 displays the information you need at a given zoom level and your resolution. This allows you to handle large images with greater ease. These tools help you create new packaging looks, advertising and editorial spreads, brochures, video artwork and my favorite Web page designs. 

 These collection of tools allows you to pick and choose the appropriate tools for your individual work style. You'll love the easy to use tabbed palettes, and the new docking feature lets you put your most frequently used palettes together into one solitaire unit. Be sure to check out the new vertical text tool. Create vertical text on a path, and scale it with the same ease and control provided for horizontal text formatting. This versatile tool allows individual character or word manipulation within vertical text block. 

 Apply shapes, curves, effects, textures, grades, fills, and filters to design elements, objects, and images with the click of a button. You can also create paths: and place, trace, mask, and edit or create graphs and freehand drawing (which I'm not even close to being good at) with these versatile tool resources. 

For me and others who like to make Web page layout and designs, you will find you can create and export Web-ready image files, without compromising design or color integrity. And you're going to love to be able to drag and drop image files into any other HTML authoring programs. You're going to find that assigning a Web address, or URL, to an object, will automatically create a built-in link within the file to a client-side or server-side image map. I found Illustrator 7.0 has extensive Web graphic support. You can export, open and edit PDF files; export images in Web-ready JPEG and GIF89a formats; convert Illustrator artwork to bitmaps; and drag and drop illustration files to HTML pages. 

 Illustrator 7.0 has several time saving essentials like align and transform palettes, layer palettes, but the one I found the most useful of all was 200, yea count em, 200 levels of undo. You can change your mind and change your mind and change your mind. Or if you're like me, half way through the design, you'll wonder how it will look if this was changed or that was moved just a little. Great, now you have the option of making 200 different adjustments. Adjustments sounds so much better than corrections. Enough of my rambling, let's get back to this review. 

 Illustrator 7.0 has extensive file compatibilities, open and edit EPS and PDF files created in any software program that can generate PostScript Level 1 language files or Acrobat PDF files regardless of platform. Illustrator opens most other file formats, including CMX, WMF, PSD, IFF, BMG, GIF89a, JPG, PCD, MPT (MacPaint), PCX, PNG, PXR, PX1, TGA, TIFF, PICT, Macromedia FreeHand 4.0/5.0 files (Mac only). Illustrator can export files in EPS, PDF, WMF, PSD, IFF, BMP, GIF89a, JPG, PCX, PNG, PXR, TGA, TIFF, and PICT format. 

 For those who know absolutely nothing about creating or designing such things as Web pages and/or layouts. Illustrator 7.0 comes with a Tour and Training CD-ROM that is excellent. Installed is Adobe Acrobat Reader, which easily reads the Illustrator 7.0 Tutorials. 

The Adobe Illustrator 7.0 Tutorials are step-by-step lessons in Portable Document Format(PDF), designed to teach you the fundamentals of Adobe Illustrator. Adobe recommends that you print the PDF documents and go through the lessons using the sample files installed in the Tutorial folder within the Adobe Illustrator 7.0 application folder. The sample files are also included in the Tutorial folder on the Adobe Illustrator Tour and Training CD. Each lesson takes about an hour to complete. 

 The lessons include: 

• Making Selections: Learning to make selections is of primary importance in Illustrator, because you must first select what you want to effect.

 

 

• Drawing Straight Lines: You draw lines by using the pen tool to create a starting anchor point and an ending anchor point. You will also edit the segments to modify some of the shapes.

 

 

• Drawing Curves: In addition to drawing straight lines, the pen tool lets you draw precise curves and complex shapes.

 

 

• Creating Basic Shapes: Starting with basic shapes and then editing them to create new shapes can create Many objects in Adobe Illustrator. For example, you can use tools to create polygons, stars, and spirals, and then combine these shapes to create more complex objects.

 

 

• Painting: In this lesson you will learn the color and swatches pallets and apply, modify and save colors in you artwork. You can paint with CMYK, RGB, or HSB colors, with grayscale, spot colors, patterns, and gradient fills.

 

 

• Working with Layers: Layers let you organize your work into distinctive levels that can be edited and viewed as individual units. Every Adobe Illustrator document contains at least one layer. Creating multiple layers in your artwork lets you easily control how artwork is printed, displayed, and edited.

 

 

• Working with Type: One of the most powerful features of Adobe Illustrator is the ability to use type as a graphic element. You can quickly change type size, shape, and scale; you can precisely flow type into virtually any shape of object; and you can flow type horizontally or vertically along differently shaped paths. Adobe Illustrator also lets you paint type with colors, gradients, or patterns, and create type in a multitude of languages.