Cheap Adobe Illustrator CS2 Upgrade (Software) (Windows XP, Windows 2000) Price

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Customer Reviews of Adobe Illustrator CS2 Upgrade

Smash Hit !!!
OK, sorry, I've been vectoring line art since 1990. My current machine is an AMD Athlon XP with the 333 FSB, 1 Gig ram & 80 Gig HD shared on network & a 40 Gig HD for software, OS is XPpro, it's 2 years old I think. I installed three cathode ray tubes, you know; big boxy monitors, the largest of which is a 21 inch monster right in my face all day. I read the reviews here and started "Quaking" in my boots! Oops I said to myself, and I looked up my previous day's purchases for the new Artist I just hired. Sure enough; I bought CS2 for the new machine. So I downloaded the 30 day trial for Illustrator CS2 Upyours, I mean Upgrade. Replacing my old Illustrator 8.01 These kids I've been interviewing made me think I should take a look outside MY CAVE! So I got it loaded up and sure enough; it takes longer to load than my old corrupted rusty buddy; Illustrator 8.01, about twice as long. ( so leave it running ) <
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>!!!!!!!!! BUT WOW !!!!!!! <
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>I should have done this sooner, or should I have ? <
>As soon as It was running Illustrator CS2 AUTO UPDATED ITSELF. <
>It wanted it's Adobe Bridge fixed up. So I let it. This is just exactly what people have been complaining about. <
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>******** THE BRIDGE IS FIXED ********* <
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>WAY SUPER COOL DUDE! I keep the Bridge open on the right monitor and I can drag art into Illustrator CS2 at lightning speed. The whole time I get to see super big previews of all the artwork I need to work with. Way better than XPpro's little thumbnails. <
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>LIVE TRACE: Realy nice, I think this is what these companies are using to sell Vectored Line Art to Printers like me. It is very accurate and seems to acomodate all those nasty giant pixels that up till now, took a human brain to see past while vectoring. OK, it's not as good as a skilled craftsman such as (full of) myself, but for only about $160 or so, it's like a gift from ALMIGHTY GOD! <
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>No crashes, no bugs, just pure inteligence from Adobe once again. <
>Don't you think of a little white mud hut in the dessert when you say ADOBE? <
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>I really apreciate the Object Oriented work bar thing at the top, wait, let me go look at what it's called, Hmmmm, still don't know, well it changes according to what kind of object you've clicked on in your artwork. Also this new wonder of technology solves an old problem of global color change needed for color separation work. That top task bar object oriented do-hickey is similar but better than the one in Photoshop. <
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>Transparent objects, looks like everything can be transparent, WOW, do you know what that means ??? I gotta go use it some more, it's just way to cool. OK, I'm back, EVEN FONTS can be transparent, .tiffs .jpgs, everything. THIS MEANS way less jumping back and forth from Photoshop to Illustrator. <
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>But I do believe you have to be very capable with your hardware, operating system, and have at least a year; full time with Illustrator and Photoshop to fully appreciate the thought and creative potential that Adobe has opened up for us.

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CS2 is great!
I don't know what the other reviewer is complaining about, but this program is only capable of going as far as your knowledge of the tools of the program. Quite honestly, Adobe Illustrator does not have as "steep" a learning curve as most people claim. With that, I HIGHLY recommend any beginner to get the Illustrator Visual Quickstart guide by Elaine Weinmann. (You will not regret it! I've tried the expensive "Total Training DVDs", which are more like "Concise Training") It has to be one of the BEST most thorough book to get you introduced into the program, and for about $20, is so much BETTER than what most college "intro" computer courses offer for $200-400. <
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>Now as for Illustrator CS2, most of the newest features have left me very satisfied with the upgrade. Especially the inclusion of "Live Trace" (eliminating the former "auto-trace" tool), with it's multiple tracing modes, makes converting bitmap images to vectors SO easy. Another feature I love is the top control palette, similar to that of Photoshop, which makes accessing options much easier. <
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>The only decision you might be faced with is whether these new features are worth the price of the upgrade (that is, unless your a student).

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tedious to use...
Yeah, I know it's the industry standard, and it's powerful, and all that stuff. But, MY GOD, what a freaking PAIN to use. It's just plain tedious to draw anything from scratch. While the interface in CS2 is an improvement, doing relatively simple drawings with primitive shapes and freehand curves still requires much more effort than it reasonably should. Frankly, I could draw better stuff faster with 1990's-era Macintosh drawing programs. The drawing issues are compounded by the fact that -- in true Adobe spirit -- this program is incredibly bloated and slow. It's slow doing EVERYTHING... I've never seen a program so slow starting up. And every time you save a file (even a tiny drawing with 10 shapes) you get a "saving file" progress bar for a few seconds. It's also incredibly slow to shut down... frequently taking about 30 seconds. I'm running it on a Pentium M laptop, and I know this is not a "graphics professional" machine, but COME ON! Let's get the lead out! I just get the sense that Adobe pays no attention whatsoever to efficiency or speed. That bugs me a lot.