Adobe Illustrator has been around since 1987, yes ... you read that correctly, 1987. In all that time Illustrator has come in a poor second choice behind graphic giants like Quark, Corel Draw and even its little brother Photoshop ... that could be about to change ... Adobe Illustrator CS2 could well begin its reign as "King".

The release of Adobe's Creative Suite 2 (you can read the review here) has met with thunderous applause from the industry, even cynics are in awe of the power. Adobe Photoshop CS2 is perhaps the most important release of that product to date ... and Illustrator CS2 is a wowser!! Why? Lets take a look.

Lets talk about Illustrator's new feature "Live Trace" ... now we're not talking about tired old "Auto Trace" here ... "Live Trace" is a little gem which allows you to take any imported bitmap image and turn it into scalable vector graphics. Think about that, a scanned technical drawing, a cherished photo, a hand-drawn sketch ... converted with the click of a button ... and scalable to print anywhere, even on the side of a building ... Powerful! This new feature not only sounds good, it is good, it does the job beautifully. If you've used Macromedia Flash and the convert bitmap command then you will realise the power of "Live Trace" in Illustrator. (Could this perhaps be the first glimpse of life post the Adobe/Macromedia merger?)

Okay, Live Trace is goooood ... lets combine it with another new feature called "Live Paint". Before live paint if you wanted to colour an object in Illustrator you needed to create multiple layered objects, not only was this complicated it also slowed things down. Live paint looks at things a little differently by allowing single objects to have multiple areas and each of those areas can be painted a different colour, no complex multiple layered objects ... and the paint reflows if the object's sections are manipulated ... simplicity.

Suprisingly, Illustrator looks very much like Photoshop these days ... and I have to say 'finally!!' ... I'm sure everyone has been lost in the myriad of palettes in Illustrator ... now with the introduction of the top control panel, things are much simpler. The top control panel is pure Photoshop and you can utilise Photoshop's filters ... the dockable palettes and the ability to customise your workspace are all very Photoshop-esq. There are big improvements in porting files between Illustrator and Photoshop as well ... full support for Photoshop layer comps.

The stroke option has also been enhanced enabling control over the position of a stroke on a path by choosing centered, inside, or outside. This has always annoyed me and I'm pleased that this Photoshop-esq feature has been added to Illustrator.

What I have given you here are my favourite new features which I believe make this product a force to be reckoned with within the graphics arena. You can read about the other new features of Adobe Illustrator CS2 on the Adobe website. Adobe have stepped up to the mark yet again and continue to get things right.