Illustrator CS4 has all the new interface changes we’ve seen with the other CS4 apps. Things seem a little simpler in the interface to me, which should hopefully make some features easier to find. Like Photoshop, Illustrator CS4 has also been decked out with a tabbed interface which you may or may not feel the need to switch off. I think the tabs are a better fit for Illustrator than they are for Photoshop - for me anyway because I rarely use Illustrator for the kind of bulk processing that I use Photoshop for regularly.

The great thing about Illustrator CS4 is that is in no way a backwards step. It is a careful, considered upgrade with some nice subtle new features (blob brush, new interface) and some more obvious new features (multiple artboards). Whilst I don’t think it is so fundamentally different from the CS3 version that everyone will instantly want to upgrade, it is definitely a superior version and lots of fun to use.

Multiple Artboards
A great new feature in Illustrator is the addition of support for multiple artboards. This allows you to create multiple work areas in one file that can be of arbitrary shape and size, and all different from one another. You can achieve multiple artboards of the same size using the new document dialog, or you can create new artboards using the Artboard Tool from the tools palette. This would be of great use to designer creating collateral for a project that publishes to a few mediums, or to a few different formats. All the collateral can be kept in the one source file which will allow for easier management.

Transparency in Gradients
Actually, it isn’t only that you can now have transparent gradients (which is great), it’s more that the whole process of making gradients in Illustrator is way less of a pain. When you are choosing the colour stops on the gradient, you now get a popup that has swatches and a colour mixer inside. I’ve always hated the workflow for making gradients in Illustrator and this change has completely altered that. Excellent work.

Blob Brush
The new Blob Brush tool is a painting tool that creates a vector shape when you paint, merging any lines that intersect as you go into one big blog. Aptly named, don’t you think? This tool has a nice ‘free’, fluid feel about it, that lets you paddock-bash a little more with the drawing tools, rather than always be worrying about vectors and curves and the like.