Why I buy this one ?
- Live Trace and Live Paint convert bitmap images into vector paths, while applying color with overlapping paths, instantly detecting and correcting gaps
- Create custom workspaces with the palettes you need for a specific task - Save, share, or access any workspace at any time or use workspace templates
- Expanded stroke options - choose a centered, inside, or outside stroke
- Optimize mobile content creation by saving artwork in any SVG format, including SVG-t
- Colorized grayscale assigns a spot color to a linked, embedded, or opened grayscale image - for proper color separations when printing

JM offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $970.00 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

What our customer's say!

"Good program", Illustrator CS2 is a good program with interesting new features (live trace/live paint).

For those of you who complain that the program is unstable, I recommend 1. shutting down Illustrator, 2. throw out your preference file on your C: drive and 3. reopen Illustrator. It's a bizarre bug Adobe introduced. The most stable version is CS.

For those who are complaining about the difficulty of the program - I hear you. I self-taught myself Photoshop and it worked pretty well for me. I could not for the life of me understand the pen tool in Illustrator. I highly recommend taking a class (books and video can only do so much), preferably one that is project-based. One recommendation is San Francisco State U's online course. You can find them at msp.sfsu.edu

In all honesty, I had to sit at my computer for 20+ hours before I finally "got" how the pen tool worked. Talking to various people who work proficiently in the program, that's also how they leaned the pen tool.

Don't give up! It's a great program. The biggest issue is the buggy preferences file that can crash your program, if not your computer. THAT really sucks.

"Excellent ship time, product came in perfect shape.", I was afraid at first not to order directly from Adobe but decided to take the cheaper route. It was obviously worth it - everything arrived perfectly - wrapped up, original CD set, etc.
Shipped in record time as well.

Eyal.

"Sooo much better for novices than Illustrator 9", Nobody, and I mean NObody, could be more of an Illustrator novice & ignoramus than I. Several months ago I was given a licensed copy of Illustrator 9 that a departing coworker had used. Wanting a chance to design the departmental logo that otherwise would've gone to an agency, I raised my figurative hand and volunteered blindly for duty. Having taught myself everything from MS-DOS to TurboCAD, to Photoshop Elements, not to mention Word, Excel, and Powerpoint (don't get me started on that latter program, argh), I figured I could tackle at least the basics of Illustrator 9. Loaded it on my laptop, took it home for a weekend....and just about lost my sanity -- and several fingernails -- trying to learn that confounding program. I managed to produce a few logos, one of which was chosen. But egads, what a big, stinky bear Illustrator 9 was to wrestle.

When I saw that CS2 had this Live Trace feature, I pleaded with my workplace Santa to get it for me, and WOW! What an overall improvement!!

Illustrator will still not be as intuitive to pick up as an MS Office product, but this comes darn close. With CS2, they've given us "hot tips" -- little clues about what some of the tools do, that pop up when you mouse over the tool. The intuitive menus are nice too. Also cool is that all the text & paragraph and fill & stroke features, which used to be huge boxes taking up valuable real estate on the screen, are now condensed up on a small horizontal toolbar, like in the Office products ... and when you mouse over them, the screen tips tell you how to expand them. Aaaahh! Finally some help for dunces like me.

Live Trace and Live Paint are unbelieveably cool. The very first thing I did after loading CS2 was to grab a .jpg photo of a soccer ball off Google Images, and within 20 minutes, without consulting any book or online Help, I'd converted it into a simple graphic image painted into the 2 colors I wanted.

But as for a great guidebook, the reviewer who suggested Illustrator Visual Quickstart guide by Elaine Weinmann was dead-on. I've bought several other "highly rated" books to try to help me through the confounding quagmire of Adobe products, so I've seen them all. The Visual Quickstart book doesn't have any of that insufferable "wanna-be-a-comic-novel-author" writing, and focuses just on the basics. And it's very literal, with step-by-step instructions. Still there's no substitute for the utterly excruciating process of learning Illustrator through experience. But the Weinmann book's better than any I've seen yet.

The only reason I haven't given this product a 5 is because it still doesn't have the intuitiveness that it needs. In that way it's still "snobby" -- aimed at pros, not folks like me who need to do occasional design stuff but not for a living. But this is a far, far, far cry better than Illustrator 9. Absolutely worth the money, just for Live Trace and Live Paint alone.


"Beginners proceed with Caution!", Im computer literate and regularly use a number of varying programs from Visio to Logic Audio to MS Office. After picking up Illustrator however, Im frustrated by the lack of intuition and steep learning curve the software offers. Ive been told that the world revolves around 2 types of people: those who "get" vector graphic programs, and those who errrr...dont. Unfortunately, after 10 hours use and much manual reading, I fall into the later category. I dont plan to give up however and plan to enroll in a course. This decision was supported by friends proficient in its use - but who had difficulty demonstrating the complex concepts to me. (Indeed, defining the direction of a drawn curve was as intuitive as metaphsyics or nuclear science!)
So my advice is this: Be extremely carefull if youve never used Illustrator before. It may be a breeze to those well versed in its use, but to an absoloute beginner its an extremely difficult program to grasp and you may be dissapointed to find this out after youve forked out your hard earned dollars for it.


"Adobe's new Illustrator CS2 version is faster and feature-packed", If you're one of those people like me, who hang on to an older version of the application waiting for the right time, now is the time to upgrade. You won't be disappointed. Just ask the editors of both PC Magazine and C|Net which awarded this version their Editor's Choice Award.

Once again Adobe has listened to its loyal customer base. The proof is in the new version of Illustrator. Many of our requests were answered with the latest version including some that we didn't even think of. I was happy to find out that even with the new features, Adobe has not altered Illustrator's previous palettes or keyboard commands. There's nothing worse than having a shortcut or command memorized for years and then it gets changed with a new version. No fear here!

First of all, I want to say that I am really impressed with the Live Trace and Live Paint features, especially when used together. We all know that sometimes ideas hit us when we least expect it and are away from our beloved computer. We end up drawing it out on a napkin, paper towel or the unused envelope from our glove compartment. Normally, once you get back to your computer you have to try to redraw your graphic using Illustrator which takes both time and effort---not any more.

Take your napkin masterpiece to your scanner and scan it in. Once the image has been scanned, then the fun begins. Once the image has been scanned in and brought into Illustrator CS2, use the Live Trace feature to actually trace your drawing. This feature actually turns to drawing into a Live Trace object for easy manipulation. After applying some blurring as needed, your traced image is cleared up. Then, convert your Live Trace object into a Live Paint object using the new Control Palette. I like the Live Paint tool also because it reminds me of working in Photoshop.

Once you've converted to the Live Paint object, you can easily use the pen and other tools to modify any points to your liking. Live Paint also has a feature called Gap Detector which can prevents paint from going over into other sections because of a break in a line. This is a handy feature that keeps you from having to fix overspill later. When the object outlines are finalized, use the Live Paint feature to easily fill any region with color. Voila! You are done. Go from napkin to art in a matter of minutes.

A concern of many of us for years was the fact that while Illustrator keep getting better and newer features, it also mean more and more palettes. Sometimes it became a little unmanageable. However, the pros at Adobe recognized this problem and applied a solution - the Control palette. This new palette sits at the top of the screen. First, it acts as a an object inspector providing information. Secondly, (and more importantly), the Control palette provides easy access to fill and stroke dropdown menus, brush shape, opacity, and style. No longer do you have to fumble through your palette to get at these frequently used features. If you are fans of Adobe's other Creative Suite 2 software, you will be pleased to learn that the Control Palette is apart of their new makeover too.

Here are some more new additions and changes to Illustrator:

* Like Photoshop, Illustrator CS2 now supports custom workspaces. You can display only the palettes you need at any time. You are also able to access or save any workspace at any time or use workspace templates.
* Adobe has improved the Swatch and color integration. Now, working with the other Creative Suite 2 programs is seamless.
* Isolation Mode is a feature that allows you to double-click a group move and edit internal objects without having to search through the Layers Palette.
* CS2 now supports all of the latest Wacom tablets. It now provides brush support for the new Wacom 6D Art Pen and adds a new dimension Illustrator's Calligraphic and Scatter brushes
* Adobe Bridge integration is now a part of Illustrator CS2. Bridge allows you to easily manage images through thumbnails for better workflow.
* Macromedia Flash exports are now available. You can export both text and objects as Flash files which result in smaller file size and easier incorporation into web projects.
* You can now open Photoshop files with layer comps within Illustrator. This new feature allows you to view many versions of a layout at one time, just as you do in Photoshop
* Custom stroke placement is a new addition to Illustrator. You can now place strokes on the outside, inside or center of a path.
* Underline and Strikethrough are two of over 170 new type enhancements.
* These are a few of the new features!

The $169 upgrade cost is well worth the money, just for the Live Trace and Live Paint features alone. However, you get so much more in the new Illustrator CS2. Upgrade now and be completely satisfied. If you haven't purchased a vector graphics program, get Illustrator, especially if you are already an owner of a version of Photoshop. This new version of Illustrator even looks more like the familiar Photoshop layout.

Loren Elks
Group Manager, D-MAG.org