Illustrator 8 draws on other Adobe offerings

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Sept 1, 1998 by Dzintars Dzilna

In August, Adobe released Illustrator 8.0, the latest version of its graphics illustration tool, with a host of new features that draw from the company's other graphic arts software products. For starters, users can now preserve layers when they save an Illustrator file as a Photoshop file. That file can then be imported into the image-editing software, where the layers can be opened and manipulated.

Illustrator also now features an Actions palette, a function similar to the one in Photoshop 4.0 that allows the user to create preset actions--such as adding a drop shadow, embossing an object, creating a texture, etc. The palette is activated with a click of the mouse. Illustrator also takes from Photoshop a Navigator palette, which lets the user zoom in and out of any area without scrolling or waiting for lengthy screen redraws. Also, the software includes a pencil tool; this allows the user to sketch on-screen. As a shape is drawn, paths can easily be reshaped simply by drawing a new line near the section to be altered. And blends in Illustrator are now "live," in that users can automatically create a blend along an editable path. The blend's anchor points can be added, removed or edited to refine its shape. Also, an unlimited number of objects can now be blended.