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1. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
kas8 Apr 12, 2010 2:39 AM (in response to Jacob Bugge)what is this about?
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2. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
KC29 Apr 12, 2010 2:44 AM (in response to kas8)K-Swoosh wrote:
what is this about?
Adobe have released CS5 today. Jacob is asking if anyone has used it yet, and what do they think of it
This will usually result in a list of crashes, incompatibilities, things-which-worked-yesterday-and-don't-now, functions which have disappeared.
Let the guinea pigs speak...........
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3. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
kas8 Apr 12, 2010 3:12 AM (in response to KC29)haha
what ive seen on new features looks awesome! for Illustrator CS5 that is, the rest i dont know
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4. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
John Danek Apr 12, 2010 10:38 AM (in response to Jacob Bugge)They're taking pre-orders. It doesn't ship until mid May. I haven't seen any Illustrator specific features yet, sorry.
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5. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
kas8 Apr 12, 2010 10:45 AM (in response to John Danek)try looking at this, for the new AI features:
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6. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
Wade_Zimmerman Apr 12, 2010 12:03 PM (in response to kas8)I would say it looks good and from my exposure to it I think you will find it powerful.
There might be some user's who will not like it and find fault with it for no real reason but that speaks for itself,
I won't mention names like Skullmaker (Hans) and those who will claim it can't be good because my grammar doesn't suit them.
What can one say about such things.
I really should add that i am not a beta tester for Illustrator but just happen to have some very recent exposure to it.
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7. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
JETalmage-71mYin Apr 12, 2010 8:08 PM (in response to Jacob Bugge)So far, it's too much hype, too little information. But it looks like a significant upgrade.
The perspective feature may at long last bring that one aspect up to par with FreeHand--about...what...10 years ago? We'll see. I hope it's a better emulation of a FreeHand feature than was CS4s multiple pages.
The click&drag path union looks useful, but nothing I would have placed higher priority on than any of dozens of still-missing basic drawing features.
Flash Catalyst interests me, and I'm convinced that data-incorporation is the future of graphics apps, and information-rich animation is the future of illustration. But by that I mean things more basic and more significant than a glorified "edit original" feature for linked graphics, which is all the teaser video seems to illustrate.
For example: Ordinary word processors can insert a fully-functional spreadsheet object onto a page. Why wouldn't that make just as much sense in an illustration / page-layout program? Yet Illustrator still can't even handle basic arithmetic involving two operators in a value field.
For another example: Long before now, Illustrator should have been able to import a .swf onto a page, save the page as a PDF (you know, Illustrator's ostensibly "native format"), and have the .swf playable in the resulting PDF. PDF has long supported live embedded .swfs. But Illustrator still can't pass a .swf as part of an illustration's content to be delivered as a PDF.
We've got yet another Brush type; but where are the still-much-needed improvements to existing Brushes? (Disallow scaling of end tiles; disallow scaling of strokes.)
The arrowheads video clip is particulary uninformative. They've done something with the scaling behavior of arrowheads--but still no provision for proper custom arrowheads?!
The thing I was most looking forward to is: I thought I saw a teaser announcement somewhere that pre-built physics behavior was going to be a built-in feature of Flash CS5. But I don't see any mention of it in the new feature splashes.
So for now, I don't know. Sometimes it looks like they spent more on the announcement than the content.
JET
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8. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
Mylenium Apr 13, 2010 12:54 AM (in response to JETalmage-71mYin)The arrowheads video clip is particulary uninformative. They've done something with the scaling behavior of arrowheads--but still no provision for proper custom arrowheads?!
You can of course edit the template document that contains the arrowheads. I agree, though, it's still awkward. They should simply have allowed drag&drop fields for symbols or added a parametrized arrowhead.
We've got yet another Brush type; but where are the still-much-needed improvements to existing Brushes? (Disallow scaling of end tiles; disallow scaling of strokes.)
That should no longer be an issue. You can define the range in which a brush is allowed to stretch now, so your ends stay untouched. If all else fails, you can always compensate with the new stroke width tool. I didn't want to get into any of this, but other of those minor enhancments you may be interested in:
- dash adjustment
- 9 slice scaling for symbols
- persistent registration points for symbols going to Flash
Mylenium
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9. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
[scott] Apr 13, 2010 3:15 PM (in response to Jacob Bugge)Why I've been less visible around here...
Variable Width strokes are absolutely fantastic. Intuitive, easy to apply and edit.. just great. This is one of my favorite new areas of AI.
Perspective grids are terrific as well. The grids are "smart" or allow objects to snap to them and you can easily toggle between drawing planes.
Pixel Perfect drawing will be a HUGE leap forward for users wanting to create web images in Illustrator. It's eliminated so much time fiddling around to kill anti-aliasing. Now things just snap to a pixel and look the way they should.
Arrowheads are now applicable in a method similar to Indesign.. there's a start and end list (which can be edited) and a scale field for each end. No more need for effects to make arrowheads.
The Bristle Brush is probably as close to natural media creation as I've ever seen Illustrator. it's not just a single brush type, there are several varying brush tips and it's all COMPLETELY controllable, from size, density, opacity, etc and all tablet aware for those with tablets.
And the little things... renaming and arranging artboards, the Artboard Panel, gradient mesh transparency, dashed stroke corner control..... all nice steps forward.
Here CS5 has been very solid and stable. It's a great statement on how hard the AI Team has worked and just how well they can build features.
Anything specific you'd like to know about?
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10. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
Wade_Zimmerman Apr 13, 2010 3:48 PM (in response to [scott])Hear, hear!
I agree it is a major upgrade and a good starting point for a real leap forward.
I think Adobe worked really hard on this one.
I love the idea of naming artboards and for those who think feature request don't work here is one that did work as is true of the artboard panel and renumbering and reordering artboards.
The perspective grid is another feature request that came about.
And I think variable with strokes was as well.
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11. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
Doug Katz Apr 13, 2010 5:22 PM (in response to Wade_Zimmerman)Damn. The program will cost me 3-4K. I now have to put my old PowerPC G5 to bed just to use all these lovely new features. Damn.
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12. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
JETalmage-71mYin Apr 13, 2010 5:46 PM (in response to [scott])Anything specific you'd like to know about?
Yes. The teaser video does not demonstrate any editability of the perspective planes and vanishing points. I surely hope they are both moveable after objects have been attached to them, and that their content moves and updates accordingly.
Can you duplicate a plane, complete with its content, and then move it--as when making an opposite wall of a room identical to the first?
Do transformations applied to objects already attached to the perspective plane abide by the perspective plane distortion? For example, imagine a dial with an upward pointing needle attached to a perspective wall. If you numerically perform a 90 degree rotation of the dial's pointer, does it point toward the 9 o'clock position according to the perspective distortion?
JET
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13. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
[scott] Apr 13, 2010 6:21 PM (in response to JETalmage-71mYin)Vanishing points, horizons, planes are all not so much "editable" as they are reconfigurable. In the late beta I have, there are 3 preset grids - 1 point, 2 point, and 3 point perspective. These can all be adjusted for horizon, vanishing points, etc. Once configured how you like, you can create your own preset Perspective grid to suit your work.
You can not duplicate planes. You can duplicate items on a plane and snap them to another plane. The Planes are simply seen as guides so you can snap to them, but you can't duplicate or release them. You can release objects from the grid however.
General transformations are not constrained by the grid. It's not a three dimensional workspace. It's simply a grid as guides. Using the 1, 2, or 3 keys you can tell an object to snap to the grid plane as your draw or drag it. General workflow would be to create an object or group of objects as flat, then drag it and snap it to a grid plane and draw your extrusions.
To be honest, while I've explored the perspective grids to some degree, I haven't yet delved deeply into them to fully explore what is and is not possible. For my work, the grids may be handy at times. However they aren't a feature I'll use with great regularity.
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14. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
Jean-Claude Tremblay Apr 13, 2010 6:28 PM (in response to [scott])But when you move a plane, you can either just move the plane, the
plane and the attached object, or the plane and a copy of the attached
object (and these object get transformed) so you can build two side of
a room in perspective.
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15. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
Wade_Zimmerman Apr 13, 2010 7:11 PM (in response to Jean-Claude Tremblay)I believe what is being ask is if you can take an shape from one plane and move it on to another plane and have that object update to the new plane as if it where created for that plane.
If I recall Freehand's grid allowed you to displace the shape from one grid surface to another if you held the shift key or something like that.
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16. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
JETalmage-71mYin Apr 13, 2010 7:28 PM (in response to Jean-Claude Tremblay)In FreeHand's Perspective Grid (introduced in FH9, 11 years ago), you can move the vanishing point(s) and/or plane grid(s) and/or horizon at will, anytime as you work, with or without also simultaneously moving a copy of the selected bound objects:
Jean-Claude's description sounds similar. Scott's doesn't.
JET
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17. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
Jean-Claude Tremblay Apr 13, 2010 7:44 PM (in response to JETalmage-71mYin)Yes, this can be done exactly like this in CS5.
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18. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
[scott] Apr 13, 2010 7:45 PM (in response to JETalmage-71mYin)That's similar, James.
What I meant is that the actual plane grids won't duplicate. So you can't have, say, 3 grid guides on the left side...
Again, the grids weren't one of my really in depth focal points.
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19. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
Wade_Zimmerman Apr 13, 2010 8:31 PM (in response to [scott])Though it can be done I rather think it has limited use if any since the objects remains 2D in a mock 3D space which is kind of weird.
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20. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
Silkrooster Apr 13, 2010 9:13 PM (in response to JETalmage-71mYin)The thing I was most looking forward to is: I thought I saw a teaser announcement somewhere that pre-built physics behavior was going to be a built-in feature of Flash CS5. But I don't see any mention of it in the new feature splashes.
Well they kind of mention it. There is a small video about the bone system with a behavior apply to it, but i did not see anything that goes into detail of what types of physic behaviors are included. I hope there is more than just the one.
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21. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
JETalmage-71mYin Apr 14, 2010 5:36 AM (in response to Silkrooster)Users have been coding supple physics reactions (collisions, gravity, trajectory, etc., etc.) in ActionScript for years. The video demo I saw somewhere among Adobe's "sneak peek" stuff demoed such behaviors as UI components (thereby avoiding hand-coding).
The relatively little time I can make for working in Flash is almost entirely for interactive instructional illustrations--drawings that simulate and explain real-world mechanical / electrical systems--things of lasting value; not just web-centric eye candy. I work out the coding I need, but it is laborious for me, and not something I can easily train my staff on, for relatively infrequent use. The stuff in that demo would probably have been of great advantage in that regard.
JET
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22. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
Mario Arizmendi Apr 14, 2010 6:02 AM (in response to [scott])ScottWeichert wrote:
Anything specific you'd like to know about?
Yes......What about new prepress feautures? I cant' see any in the video demonstrations.
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23. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
thuth Apr 14, 2010 1:27 PM (in response to [scott])In AI CS4, when copying text out of an area type field (for use in another application) from within a symbol, you get ALL of the text in ALL of the area fields in that symbol-- a horrible and reproducable bug.
You have to copy the whole area text field to the clipboard, exit the symbol, paste it on the artboard/work area, then select and copy the text.
Can you tell me if this fixed in CS5?
-Tony
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24. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
thuth Apr 14, 2010 3:10 PM (in response to [scott])Have they fixed the HSB color rounding problems?
For example, if you switch the Color panel to HSB, type in H=50, S=50, B=50, you will see that immediately these values are rounded to the second decimal, presumably such that they align with a pure RGB value. In this case they become, H=49.69, S=50, and B=50.2. Toggling the color panel to RGB will show the values are R=128, G=117, B=64.
Toggling the color mode back to HSB will show the previously rounded values. Okay, looks good.
Now double-click the color swatch to bring up the Color Picker. You will see that the values are TRUNCATED, not rounded. So even though it shows it shows the same RGB values of 128/117/64, the HSB values are now suddenly 49/49/50. That's not right. 49.69 is clearly closer to 50. So, you think, okay, I'll fix that by typing a 50 in that box. Only now if you change that, the Color Picker now reports that HSB 50/49/50 is mapped to RGB 127/117/65.
So you think to yourself, okay maybe there is more higher math going on here than I can understand, so I'll just re-input HSB of 50/50/50 like I did to start out with and surely that will get me back to RGB 128/117/64.
So you go ahead and do that but AI decides that from within the Color Picker, HSB 50/50/50 is mapped to 127/117/64.
WTF? Okay, you say it is only a point or 2, but it clearly shows there are precision problems under the hood of AI's color engine or engines. This was just an "off the top of my head" test, but I find that colors are constanlty shifting slightly in AI unless you only use whole RGB values (I don't use CMYK, so I can't speak to it.) Anything else and rounding issues between conversions creep into the workflow because of different algortithms being used in different places presumably.
Never had this problem in FreeHand.
-Tony
** ADDENDUM**
I illustrated (pun intended) the above problem to a co-worker, and found an even more disturbing wrinkle. If you switch the color model for the Color panel a few times, it behaves differently. Initially it is trying to resolve values to whole RGB numbers, but at some point it decides the ruling model is whole value HSB nubers and gives you 2-digit decimal RGB values for no apparent reason. In fact the more times you do this the more wonkiness you will see.
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25. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
thuth Apr 14, 2010 2:15 PM (in response to [scott])Have they improved/extended the ability to organize assets into groups?
In CS4 you can group color swatches into Color Groups in the Swatches panel, but not gradients-- even if they are built from those same swatches. (?!)
And you can't create groups/folders within the Graphic Styles or Symbols panels. Is this possible yet? Seems like a huge omission for a seemingly simple feature.
These things start to become more important as AI s-l-o-w-l-y moves toward true multi-page support. Which brings me to my next question. Exactly what are the multiple "artboard" improvements beyond a naming panel? Do they auto-number when moved like in FreeHand or only within the little naming panel.
-Tony
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26. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
thuth Apr 14, 2010 2:42 PM (in response to [scott])Is there any way to easily edit the value of a single tint of a global color?
Say you have a swatch that you built 5 tints for and you wanted to just edit one of them. Can this be done now?
A simple request, but try it and you will see how insanely infuriating this is.
You can't currently alt-drag a new tint value to it like you can with swatches and grads.
I am crossing my fingers that this is fixed.
-Tony
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27. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
thuth Apr 14, 2010 2:46 PM (in response to [scott])Currently you are limited to an area text box height of 1000 pixels which is overly limiting in an age where 1080 pixels is now video resolution.
Have they increased this limit?
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28. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
Wade_Zimmerman Apr 14, 2010 6:11 PM (in response to thuth)Well there was at one time the hope of making the recolor art feature a pane and there was the hope you could do all of those things and it would possibly be cross interapplication but the person doing this was fired. And the beta tester helping out was removed from the beta team.
I guess in both cases for doing a really excellent job. The beta tester I understand also made a request to have an asset management mechanism based on client and job ticket wrk flow but since they was no longer being asked how to he no longer makes such suggestions.
But in spite of the the beta tester in question thought that the beta team still did an outstanding job on CS 5 so it must be very excellent. ANd the AI team did as well.
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29. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
Silkrooster Apr 14, 2010 10:05 PM (in response to Jacob Bugge)Has anybody seen any improvements for snapping or boolean operations? I assume the gag is now lifted for the beta testers.
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30. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
kas8 Apr 15, 2010 12:53 AM (in response to Jacob Bugge)about the pixel perfect feature: when do you apply thi sand does it also work when rendering with photoshop?
because i usually render my vector files using photoshop... [i find that much better as the save for web/devices feature in ai...]
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31. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
Mylenium Apr 15, 2010 3:38 AM (in response to kas8)about the pixel perfect feature: when do you apply thi sand does it also work when rendering with photoshop?
It's a global pref in combination with the object's appearance and transform properties. It can be turned off and on as needed. Since it truly quantizes values as to obey the grid, it should render the same when using identical rasterization settings, but I must admit I never have tried, as I do not care much for doing web stuff in AI short of building the base contours. I do al lfills, strokes and gradients in PS.
Mylenium
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32. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
kas8 Apr 15, 2010 3:40 AM (in response to Mylenium)Yeah, same here, but when creating logos and stuff, having nice crisp and sharp edges is nice too, thats why i
want to know.
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33. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
[scott] Apr 15, 2010 5:49 AM (in response to thuth)area text copying
Not fixed.
This was a new one on me.. I logged it.. but probably won't be addressed real soon.
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34. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
[scott] Apr 15, 2010 5:50 AM (in response to thuth)Have they fixed the HSB color rounding problems?
Well either I'm seeing something different or I'm not following you 100%.
50/50/50 HSB becomes R127.5 G116.88 and B63.75 and those remain consistent no matter how often I switch back and forth between HSB and RGB.
Now the color picker, yes that truncates to R127 G166 B63. I'd assume that's because the color picker doesn't support tenths or hundredths of a color value. This seems to be demonstrated by simply entering a value of, say, 127.5 in the color picker, clicking OK then bringing up the picker again.. it's truncated (or rather rounded up or down based on the decimal value). Seems the issue may not be in AI specifically.. but the color picker.
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35. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
[scott] Apr 15, 2010 5:37 AM (in response to thuth)Have they improved/extended the ability to organize assets into groups?
No.
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36. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
[scott] Apr 15, 2010 5:38 AM (in response to thuth)Is there any way to easily edit the value of a single tint of a global color?
No
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37. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
[scott] Apr 15, 2010 6:09 AM (in response to thuth)Currently you are limited to an area text box height of 1000 pixels....
I just created an area text box more than 3000 pixels in height.
For what it's worth though... I just did the same thing in CS4.. so I'm not sure you're explaining your issue properly.
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38. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
[scott] Apr 15, 2010 5:46 AM (in response to kas8)K-Swoosh wrote:
about the pixel perfect feature: when do you apply thi sand does it also work when rendering with photoshop?
because i usually render my vector files using photoshop... [i find that much better as the save for web/devices feature in ai...]
They are just grids or guides to help in construction. They don't alter the nature of the objects. The artwork renders in Photoshop just like any other artwork in AI.
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39. Re: What say you, owners of CS5?
[scott] Apr 15, 2010 5:49 AM (in response to Mario Arizmendi)Yes......What about new prepress feautures? I cant' see any in the video demonstrations.
Such as?Did you have something specific in mind?
I can't think of anything specifically related to prepress... well maybe the fact that the X/Y origin is now in the upper left corner of documents (like all other apps) rather that the lower left corner where it's traditionally been.






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![function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}](http://www.IllustrationETC.com/AIbuds/PerspectiveGrid_FH_02.png)
![function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}](http://www.IllustrationETC.com/AIbuds/PerspectiveGrid_FH_03.png)
