Cheap Adobe Illustrator 10.0 Upgrade from 7.0 or Higher (Software) (Mac OS X, Macintosh) Price

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Customer Reviews of Adobe Illustrator 10.0 Upgrade from 7.0 or Higher

Sad
The saying, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" is epitomized in this program. Adobe attempted to add a plethora of tools a designer might want. In fact, I think the program would work great for web design if it weren't so buggy. For print, it's just as bad as 9 was and 9 was VERY BAD.
I tried to use it for a couple weeks, but I had to get some work done so I'm back in 8. I hesitated to buy 10 because 9 was such a bomb, but hope springs eternal; I thought they would surely not release two duds in a row. I will buy 11 just because I hate to be so far behind, but it better be better.

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Great for design, a step back for production
Having been a working user since Illustrator 5.0, I've seen a great deal of changes in this fine design and production program. Adobe was in my opinion at their pinnacle with release 8.0. Version 9 added transparency effect, but it seemed to drag on the OS (9.x), and one huge change that was unnoticed by most designers, put a huge thorn in the side of those working in print or production: Adobe changed their post script management in the exporting of most files to be ripped from post script, to .pdf. This caused a myriad of problems in the rip world, where the "new and improved" format would not rip, or caused serious rip problems, with images needed embedding (doubling or tripling the final file size), or other work arounds. Hence, many of us never used verion 9.0.

Now comes Version 10. This version has the beautiful aqua interface, is much faster than version 9, and a lot of designers will love it for that. Have the problems been fixed? Well, no. As a matter of fact, some are worse. .eps files saved out of 10 as version 8.0 (to hopefully rip better) causes placed files to appear as fragmented, embedded, unnamed, files, causing a total re-design. Files with transparency often rip as solid blocks, or have Pantone colors fall out when used as transparency. While one could argue this is a problem with the rip, it's not the best business ethic to let your customers (production users) have to deal with these hassles, when they should have been ironed out between Adobe and other (rip) software manufacturers. Another feature that appeared in 9.0 is still useless: Automated (batching) actions. Illustrator 10 wants to name every single file the same as the file used in the writing of the action. Making what could be a huge, huge time saver for production works, totally useless. There are also network security issues, where OSX wants to hide AI 10 files when saved to a Windows based server. Adobe also missed the boat in that the save window doesn't allow anything other than the power user window in OSX, and won't allow collumn width adustments. Again, this may all be Apple, (or Windows). But I say iron these issues out before releasing the software and charging users for it, and letting them deal with the headaches.

But before I create a huge laundry list of things wrong with the program, Illustrator does deserve some praise. It's the best looking version to date, that isn't even close. It also makes jumping into basic design easier than ever. And it has many, many web friendly features. Most any designer out there working on basic (or complex) logos, designs and illustrations will find AI 10, for OSX to be the best version to date. So you're likely to see a lot of 5-star reviews from those users.

Bottom line: If you're a designer working in OSX, this is a much faster, and nicer version than 9. But a lot of production workers who use Illustrator day in and day out for print export and rip are going to find the program still has several problems that make it very difficult to use in a production environment.

[I should note that when I say "rip" I am not talking about rasterizing files in Photoshop, but instead using programs such as Cheetah, Color Burst, Autoflo, or Onyx. Industry standards.]

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even farther of target...
I've been a user since the first beta, and things don't look good for Illustrator. The marketing people have been in charge for way too long, and now it is impossible to tell just what this program is supposed to do! It does nothing well. To this "industry standard" (in EXACTLY the way Lotus 123 was sold as "the indusrtry standard" for the last three useless versions), Adobe continues to add a scattering of confused features and tricks, while ignoring years old problems with Illustrator. At this point, the new 'web' features that started flooding in with version 7 have overwhelmed any sense of planning or design., and have caused no end of problems for its print users. One can use 'transparency features' to create neat drop shadows (not suitable for print work as they force the vector work to pixelate before printing is possible), but one still cannot handle multiple pages, master documents, or even file linking in any but the most rudimentary way. While faster than some past versions, there must be SOME reason that Adobe, the people who invented PostScript, produce the absolute slowest PostScript file creator in the field. The only program slower to write a file is InDesign - also by Adobe.

MacroMedia Freehand stepped way ahead of this product 4 or 5 versions ago and has never looked back. The only real benefit to Illustrator is its excellent ability to interpret and edit many .eps files. But a file converter is hardly worth the price.

Illustrator is NO longer a decent prepress tool, and has not been since version 7. It has such a hodge podge of conflicting and incompatible 'features' that I wonder what it IS suited for.

Unless Adobe gets some focus back to it's software, photoshop and GoLive will be the only decent products they make. (and GoLive was purchased as a good thing - who knows where it will be in a year or two).