Adobe Illustrator (Ai) was released in 1987 and is an industry standard design software that’s aimed at artists and professional graphic designers with a strong focus on shapes, color, effects, and typography.
Among its most significant features was its pen tool, which enabled the user to draw smooth curves and create high-resolution shapes and images. In 1989 Adobe released Illustrator for Microsoft Windows personal computers. Through the years, Illustrator continued to expand, adding support for TrueType (a font format created by Apple and Microsoft to compete with Adobe’s PostScript fonts), more-complex drawing tools, an ever-increasing number of drawing “layers” (which can be quickly undone), and support for three-dimensional figures.
It’s particularly popular for logo design and packaging but can be used for any home design or commercial branding project.
Adobe Illustrator came out of the now discontinued Adobe Freehand program and has evolved into an incredibly powerful design tool that’s now the industry standard for graphic designers.
NEW Features in Adobe Illustrator 2022
- 3D and Materials. The most exciting addition to illustrator 2022 has to be the 3d and materials feature. It has its own panel which you can find from the Window menu and this is probably the easiest way to work with it.
- Share Your Work. When you save your Illustrator file as a cloud document. You will be able to invite collaborators to review your work.
- PS Cloud Documents. You can now also place photoshop cloud documents into your illustrator cloud documents.
- Adobe Fonts. Now illustrator will be able to automatically enable any adobe fonts that are used in a document that you are opening up on your computer.
Adobe Illustrator’s primary features
- A library of available fonts with a search capability so you can find the perfect font types to use for your projects.
- Cloud libraries where you can gather and store all of your design assets for a project — such as colors, brushes, graphics, text, and character styles — in one accessible place, making it easy to pick up in the middle of a project.
- A grid feature with anchor points and “snapping” capabilities, allowing you to easily align shapes and lines with accuracy.
- A “Layers” feature that allows you to split the components of your design across different layers, making it easy to edit one layer without impacting the others.
- Advanced color options for creating color palettes, filling shapes, using gradient color schemes, and mixing different color effects.
The Pen Tool
The Pen tool is probably the most powerful tool in Adobe Illustrator. It allows the artist to create shapes with freeform curves, and with time and skill, most curves found in the “real world” can be duplicated using the Pen tool.
Before you start using the Pen tool, there are some things to note in that it doesn’t work the way you think it would. It does not draw wherever you drag, like the Paintbrush or Pencil tools. Notice if you click and drag immediately, all it seems to do is make a straight line with dots at each end.
The Fill and Stroke
Fill, and Stroke is the two best buddies inside Adobe Illustrator for beginners. But, it is up to us to decide the friendship should long or not.
The color of the path is called a stroke, whereas the color of the stroke is the fill. The two are the primary compounds to create every object in a vector graphic. In a casual sense, a stroke can be understood as the border and fill as an object.
File Formats Illustrator can Save
- VML – This was an XML-based format for two-dimensional vector graphics that was part of the Office Open XML standards.
- EPS is a subset of the PostScript format with additional restrictions that allow it to store graphics files.
- SVG – This format is based on Extended Markup Language (XML), which supports two-dimensional graphics for both animations and interactive images.
- PDF is a file format that Illustrator can export. It allows for images and text to display independently of hardware, software and OS.
- WMF is a format that was originally used by Windows in the 1990s for which Illustrator could export.
Other File Formats Illustrator can Export
- Photoshop (psd)
- AutoCAD Drawing (dwg)
- PNG (png)
- Macintosh PICT (pct)
- Targa (tga)
- AutoCAD Interchange (dxf)
- Flash (swf)
- Text Format (txt)
- Enhanced Metafile (emf)
- GIF
- JPEG (jpg, jpe, jpeg)
- TIFF (tif)
- BMP (bmp)
File Formats Illustrator Can Import
- Pixar (pxr)
- PNG (png)
- Macintosh PICT (pic, pct)
- Adobe Illustrator (ai, ait)
- Microsoft Word (doc, docx)
- TIFF (tif, tiff)
- Text (txt)
- Computer Graphics Metafile (cgm)
- Photoshop (psd, pdd)
- Targa (tga, vda, icb, vst)
- GIF
- JPEG (jpg, jpe, jpeg)
- Enhanced Metafile (emf)
- AutoCAD Drawing (dwg)
- AutoCAD Interchange File (dxf)
- BMP (bmp, rle, dib)
- Microsoft RTF (rtf)
- Adobe (fxg)
- CorelDraw (cdr)
- Freehand (fh7, fh8, fh9, fh10, fh11, ft11)
- PCX (pcx)
Raster vs. Vector
To understand Adobe Illustrator, it helps to know the difference between vector and raster graphics. For the uninitiated, here’s a brief explanation.
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.
Should I Download Adobe Illustrator 2022?
There’s lots to be excited about with the new Illustrator release, as almost every update brings new features. But is Illustrator 2022 the right software for download?
If you’re working as part of a design team, the answer is most likely yes. Illustrator’s new team working tools make it a stronger contender than ever commercially, making it easy to collaborate on graphics within the office and working from home, and as the monopoly that the .AI format has on graphic design has no sign of decreasing. Added to that is its inclusion in Adobe Creative Suite, meaning that Illustrator files are designed to be compatible with a whole swathe of Adobe programs.
Adobe Illustrator 2022 System Requirements
- GPU: Optional GPU Performance: 1 GB of VRAM (4 GB recommended). The computer must support OpenGL version 4.0 or greater.
- Monitor resolution: 1024 x 768 display (1920 x 1080 recommended). Optional Touch workspace: touch-screen monitor.
- Processor: Multicore Intel processor (with 64-bit support) or AMD Athlon 64 processor
- RAM: 4 GB (8-16 GB recommended)
- Operating System: Windows 10 (64-bit) versions: V1809, V1903, V1909, and V2004. Windows Server versions V1607 (2017) and V1809 (2019).
- Hard disk: ~3 GB of available space (SSD recommended)
Conclusion
Like Photoshop, Illustrator has several uses. Many artist and designers use Illustrator 2022 to create resumés, mobile application layouts, ebooks, brochures. comic books, magazines, etc. The possibilities are only limited to your imaginations and creativity. The uses for Illustrator can be very similar to those of Photoshop, the distinction comes from Photoshop being a pixel based program and Illustrator being a vector based program.
If you are a drawing professional, you will find it hard to replace Illustrator with an alternative vector graphics editor, especially with the convenience of its integration with other Adobe CC applications. Its robust features and ability to help create clean, professional-quality graphics make Adobe Illustrator a high-quality choice for serious vector art graphics professionals.
About This Version
- Pre-Activated full version that does not require activation
- Works without Creative Cloud
