Adobe Illustrator 9.0

It's worth emphasising from the start that Adobe Illustrator was never intended for casual users. The latest version of the famous vector graphics design package has just hit the streets at the price of £316, which should give you a pretty clear indication of how serious a program it is.

The Adobe interface has been preferred by many creative types for years, particularly by Apple Mac users, although versions are available for both Apple and PC platforms. Applications like Photoshop and Illustrator have been the yardstick by which other programs of the same type have been measured.

However, the last couple of versions have seen Illustrator lagging behind a little compared to some of its competitors, namely CorelDraw and Macromedia Freehand. While CorelDraw bundles other useful applications for photo editing and 3D modelling to create a complete set of graphics tools, Illustrator 9.0 still comes as a standalone program that is designed to be used in right integration with Photoshop and other Adobe products. This, of course, means that you have to shell out for multiple packages if you want to work with different kinds of graphics.

That said, Adobe has addressed many of the other issues that have previously held Illustrator back from the top position among its peers. In this version, you are given a lot more control over the objects and designs that you create. For example, there is a much improved transparency feature that allows any object, even text, to have a transparency effect applied to it in order to fade or blend into the background or create a 'ghosting' style.

Illustrator 9's real strengths, however, lie in its increased support for creating graphics for the web. Any vector-based design can be converted to a popular internet ready format, such as GIF or JPEG files. You can even preview how they will look in either Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator without the bother of actually having to save your work and then open it in one of these browsers separately.

Illustrator has its own Pixel Preview mode which takes care of this from within the application itself. When you are ready to export the file, the Save for Web option gives you precise control over the type of compression you want to use to keep file sizes low but quality high. Again, not to be left behind on the web design front, Adobe has included a feature in version 9.0 of Illustrator that allows you to create files in the Flash format. This is a very popular format for creating animated vector designs on the web.

Unless you're a veteran Adobe user, you'll probably have a reasonably tough time learning the ropes, as Illustrator is not the most obvious application to get to grips with. The interface has all the traditional Adobe palettes and features, although there have been a few concessions made to beginners and those who need to do a job quickly and efficiently. For example, each button on the central control toolbar has several functions. By holding the mouse button down over a button, these extra hidden features will appear in a strip that you can 'tear off and leave on your Desktop' if you think that you will be using the tools quite often. Experienced users will, no doubt, ignore features like this and opt for using the customisable keystroke commands in preference.