Adobe Illustrator

Adobe recently introduced their latest generation of their Illustrator application, Adobe Illustrator Creative Suite 2 (CS2). There have been significant new enhancements to this specific version of Illustrator, including an emphasis on technical support, ease of use, and the availability of tutorial assistance, per Adobe Corporation (2007).

Technical Support is structured into specific levels to correspond to the audience which requires assistance. Adobe, through years of development efforts, have created a Developer Center, Design Center for design professionals, Documentation Center that includes the many manuals, documents and programming tools necessary to get the most out of their applications, Security Adviser Support. In addition, Adobe is one of the leading providers of Online Communities for its developers and graphic designer customers, and this is one of the strongest areas of support for Illustrator CS2.

In terms of ease of use, Adobe has an ergonomics design center staffed with behavioral scientists with PhDs in interface design that have a major influence on the future direction of products. Adobe Illustrator CS2 also has enhanced and intelligent use of vector design graphics, which can be translated into QuickTime movies through a series of vector-to-raster conversions. This is a differentiating feature of Illustrator CS 2 in that designers don't have to go out of their design program and into a QuickTime Editor to create the animated clips from Illustrator drawings. There are many other new features in this version of Illustrator CS2, all reflecting the growing influence of interface designers and the technological gains in vector graphics. In terms of training and availability of tutorial assistance, there is an entire sub-industry of book publishers and software developers that Adobe actively solicits assistance from. These book publishers and courseware developers are focused on how to lessen the learning curve required for learning the many new features of Adobe Illustrator CS2.

References

Adobe Corporation (2007) - Adobe Illustrator Creative Suite 2 product information. Accessed from the Internet on February 8, 2007 at http://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator/?sdid=QHSJ