Product: Illustrator 9
Publisher: Adobe
Website: http://www.adobe.com/illustrator/
Estimated Street Price: $399.00
Review By: Julien Jay

Introduction

    Graphic enthusiasts have been waiting for an exciting new product to be released on the market. No, I’m not talking about a new video game relating the adventures of a sulphuric and sexy heroin but about Adobe Illustrator. Indeed the long awaited new version of the highest used program to create vector-based pictures is available at last. Adobe, the worldwide leader of graphic designing software since 1982, has recently unleashed this new version of the beloved designing program used by millions of graphic designers worldwide, based on their feedback. Enhancements are more than numerous in this ninth release promising many new ways of use especially by empowering users to create Internet graphics or animations that will surely be beautiful if the artist is as good as the software. Illustrator is a key Adobe software product that positions the company in the press and art designing markets: every newspaper and printer use at least one version of Illustrator to create layouts, design logos, create drawings, edit Postscript files, open existing Illustrator files, etc. This position gave Adobe a clear leadership in the graphic world for a long time: the days where they weren’t sure if they’ll convert their top notch Macintosh applications to Windows are now clearly over and the question hopefully doesn’t hit their mind anymore.

Installation

    Installing Adobe Illustrator 9 is somewhat fast and after typing your long serial number you’ll have to choose the components you want to install (tutorial, picture samples, converters, etc.). Then the setup will start copying files on your hard disk while displaying some billboards to inform you about the cool new Illustrator features. About ten minutes later you’re ready to use it. The setup of Illustrator 9 simply puts a shortcut to the application in the root of the program menu which can be confusing for Illustrator 8 users since they had the habit to launch the software directly from the Adobe program group. When you’ll first launch the beast you’ll have to register your software over the Internet using the built in registration wizard (with it you can also print a conventional registration card to send through mail) in order to get advantages reserved to registered users like free minor updates, special upgrades discounts, seminars offers, etc. Even if your computer is powerful you’ll notice that launching Illustrator 9 is long proving the vast power and complexity of the software, that’s why I’ve just called Illustrator a beast.