As we announced yesterday, Adobe's Creative Suite (CS) of tools will no longer be released as annual boxed editions, but as part of its Creative Cloud subscription service. So the new version of Illustrator, expected to be CS7, is actually called Illustrator CC.
Illustrator CC will ONLY be available through the Creative Cloud, which will mean you essentially rent it, along with Photoshop CC, InDesign CC, Dreamweaver CC and other tools, via a monthly subscription. You won't be able to either buy it in the shops or download it for a one-off payment.
Illustrator CS6 will still be available to buy, but won't be updated with the new features in Illustrator CC.
New features
So what will the new Illustrator include? Here are some of the most interesting updates:
- New Touch Type tool. Typographical characters can now be manipulated like individual objects, so you can move, scale and rotate them, while retaining the ability to change the font or edit the type.
- Art, Pattern, and Scatter brushes can contain raster images, so you can paint with a brush made from a photo.
- In the Character panel, you can search for a style such as "bold" or "italic," a font family, or any other part of a font name.
- A new Sync Fonts tool helps you quickly find the best font for your project from Typekit and sync it to your system.
- Import multiple files into your Illustrator layout at the same time. Define the location and scale of images, graphics and text; use the new thumbnail view to see where each file will go and how big it will be.
- Illustrator CC can generate CSS code for you, ready to copy and paste into your web editor.
- Instantly switch between area type and point type.
- Create pattern with auto-generated corners.
- Move, scale, and rotate objects directly using a touchscreen device.
- Synchronize your workspace settings to Creative Cloud, including Illustrator preferences, presets, brushes, and libraries.
- Automatically gather and save the necessary fonts, linked graphics, and a package report into a single folder.
- Easily unembed images that have been placed and embedded in an Illustrator file, making them available for editing, or extract files embedded in artwork you received from someone else. Links to the image files are created automatically.
- All of your placed elements - images, graphics, and text - will now appear in the Links panel.
In total, Adobe promises "literally hundreds" of updates and new features to its Creative Suite tools. So keep your eye on Creative Bloq over the coming weeks, and we'll bring you details of each and every one of them...
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What do you think of the Creative Cloud? Are you willing to pay a subscription for Illustrator and other Adobe tools? Share your views in the comments below!
