Adobe Illustrator CC Reviews and Ratings

Rating: 9.3 out of 10

Score

9.3 out of 10

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Adobe Illustrator CC are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Better Image Management: Users have appreciated the improved image management in Adobe Illustrator over Corel Draw, which enhances their workflow efficiency and organization of design assets. The enhanced image-handling capabilities allow users to work with various visual elements, resulting in a more streamlined design process.

Seamless Integration with Other Adobe Products: Users find Adobe Illustrator to have better connectivity with Photoshop and other Adobe products, streamlining their design process and promoting seamless collaboration between different software tools. This integration saves time and also ensures consistency across projects by facilitating easy transfer of files and resources among Adobe applications.

Huge Amount of Tools for Designing: Users appreciate the vast array of tools available in Adobe Illustrator, enabling them to create intricate and unique designs while having a wide range of creative options at their disposal. Users have used the extensive toolset to explore diverse design techniques, styles, and effects, fostering creativity and innovation in their projects.

Reviews

110 Reviews

Illustrator - My Go-To Tool

Rating: 10 out of 10

January 7, 2026

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Illustrator is my go to tool as a graphic designer. It is how I ideate, create storyboards, create illustrations and logos. I can create a character and start turnarounds. It is the single most important tool for my business. I love how I can quickly create patterns and now I can incorporate AI to help me generate ideas. When I need to create an environment, the perspective tools are critical. On a day to day bases, it gives me all the tools I need and seamlessly works with the document layout tool InDesign. I can also take my illustrations into Photoshop as smart objects and refine or enhance. I think of it as the cornerstone of my work.

Pros

logos
illustrations
perspective drawing

Cons

There are some text formatting tools in InDesign that could be incorporated into Illustrator.
Some things require too many menus or digging to get to.
The turnaround for 3d is still being developed, but definitely can use some refinement

Likelihood to Recommend

It is the only tool that I use to create logos. It gives me the flexibility to create sharp text and marks and they can then be resized at will, color changes in a second and perfect way to export. I know that some people use Illustrator for document layout, it is not ideal. While I can easily create documents here, it really is InDesign that is the perfect tool.

Verified User

Professional (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

28 years of experience

Great overall tool for Vector Graphics

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

April 24, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Adobe Illustrator CC for Marketing and Sales purposes. The types of elements we typically create are social media ads, paid digital ads, logos, branding elements, icons, landing page assets, infographics, charts, email banners and graphics, as well as video thumbnails and other video assets. We use these graphics on social media, on our website, for sales tools, and for videos.

Pros

Full control of vector elements which work well for any type of scaling for print as well as precise specs for web
Many useful tools to make a project's workflow easier
Built-in AI assisted tools to improve project speed and eliminate manual editing

Cons

Adobe Illustrator CC could use an update in regards to a working gradient on editable text, right now the workaround is a little tedious

Likelihood to Recommend

Adobe Illustrator CC is a widely recognized tool that has a lot of integration features with other platforms and programs that I think blow other applications out of the water. I think any creative team should be using Adobe Illustrator CC as it is the most consistent platform. I don't think illustrator is the best for digital illustrators as there is another tool that is better suited for that.

Verified User

Employee in Marketing (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

9 years of experience

Design Needs in One Spot

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

April 22, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Adobe Illustrator CC for product design and tech packs that we send to factories to produce the products in our line.

Pros

Symbols - this is a major part of what my department uses Adobe Illustrator CC for
Linking - linking external assets within the Adobe Illustrator CC document
Libraries - these are so useful to keep assets that the whole team uses often

Cons

In my experience, large file sizes tend to force this program to crash often

Likelihood to Recommend

Adobe Illustrator CC is well suited for digital artwork would not be as useful for newsletters or book layouts, I would use InDesign for those.

Verified User

Manager in Quality Assurance (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

18 years of experience

Adobe Illustrator CC is a trusted tool for any designer

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

June 26, 2024

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I'm a Senior Art Director and Graphic Designer and I use Adobe Illustrator CC regularly for making vector artwork for clients and various projects. I use Adobe Illustrator CC for logo concepting and production and rely on the program for its vector output.

Pros

Creating vector artwork
Illustration
Artboards for creating multiple visuals
Logo creation

Cons

It would be great if Adobe Illustrator CC had an easier way to export compressed PDFs
More pen tool ease of use

Likelihood to Recommend

Adobe Illustrator CC is the best program out there for producing high-quality vector artwork. I love using it for logo design and creation. For print pieces it can also be very helpful, although I prefer making the graphics for a printed piece in Adobe Illustrator CC and then placing them in an Indesign document for final output. Adobe Illustrator CC can also create artwork that will be used for digital purposes, although I usually use Photoshop for those kinds of projects.

Verified User

Employee (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

15 years of experience

Adobe Illustrator has been my most used tool for over 12 years of my graphic designer experience.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

June 25, 2024

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Adobe Illustrator CC has been my design platform standard since 2009. I've used Adobe illustrator for almost every design asset I've ever delivered including: web and product design assets, print files, brand development, video and animation assets for After Effects; Adobe Illustrator is by far the most complete software product for design and design handoff for other creative teams.

Pros

Outstanding design workflow
Design assets delivery
File management and backups
Easy to use and easy to learn
Continously developing new tools
Personally, I'm in a never ending cycle of finding new tools I didn't know before

Cons

Improve performance on macOS Silicon hardware
Better accessibility tools both in UI and for designing products for persons with disabilities

Likelihood to Recommend

Adobe Illustrator has been the most useful tool for my designer career development as it has been an essential tool for every design project I've made. The integration of the Creative Cloud Library adds a boost in productivity inside our design team for brand assets management and also for working with external teams either clients, directors, designers and printers, as it is all centralized in a single cloud folder for delivering. It has also made our design products more efficient when handing off AI files to work with each other members of the design team.

Verified User

Employee in Marketing (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

15 years of experience

Still the industry standard

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

June 25, 2024

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We're a design agency so we use Adobe Illustrator CC to create all manner of vector artwork. Typically clients hire us to produce logos, illustrations, infographics, and graphics for print products like package designs, T-shirts, brochures, displays, and, annual reports. Depending on the style we also create our explainer video storyboards using Adobe Illustrator CC.

Pros

Pen tool drawing
Logo design
Typography manipulation

Cons

creating compound shapes with multiple overlapping objects creates unpredictable results
Can crash often. Especially when it's a new release or upgrade
costly
Training AI on subscribers artwork is bad

Likelihood to Recommend

If you want fine-tuned, delicate control over vector graphics and paths then Adobe Illustrator CC is your best bet. Other software like Affinity Designer and Sketch have limited functionality and probably work better in certain instances, like creating graphics for websites. But Adobe Illustrator is still the best all-around vector manipulation tool available. If you're confident your work won't be stolen to train Adobe's AI then it's the best bet for you.

Andrew Davies

Creative Director in Marketing at Paragon Design Group (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

20 years of experience

Best application for graphic designers

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

June 24, 2024

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I am a graphic designer. We heavily design and use this for packaging. Our industry is in tech and mobile accessories.

Pros

Features are easy to find
Connects with Dropbox
Has some amazing tools always improving

Cons

Making it an option to do outee glows with a transparent shape
Going over new tools on updates

Likelihood to Recommend

Perfect application for packaging design. Layout design and photo manipulation could use some work

Verified User

Employee in Marketing (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

Adobe Illustrator CC Review

Rating: 9 out of 10

April 1, 2023

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

When creating icons for use in a website under development, we were able to save a considerable amount of man-hours because we were able to create icons of multiple sizes in a single batch. Thanks to the shape-forming tool, which combines multiple shapes to create a new shape, we were able to create vector data of complex shapes.

Pros

batch output images of various sizes
Can create vector data by extracting contours of raster images
Data can be stored in the Cloud
Easy to use due to sophisticated User Interface

Cons

Every time an app is automatically updated, the pinned icon disappears from the Windows Start menu.
The font selection tool is difficult to select from a drop-down, as the display is too small.
High memory consumption and CPU utilization for screen rendering

Likelihood to Recommend

Illustrator is suitable for batch output of images of multiple sizes or when you want to use advanced features such as AI. For example, we recommend it for creating icons for applications or banner images. Since it specializes in vector image editing, it is not suitable for processing photos. Also, the subscription is expensive, so we recommend other software if you want to use it for free.

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

The most powerful illustration app out there

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

March 9, 2023

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

As a content developer for business pitch meetings I have to customize decks to match clients branding. So my PowerPoint backgrounds are exclusively designed in Illustrator. Illustrator also help me to manage client logos better especially I use tracing function to recreate logos or icons as necessary for my presentation. Yes I can somewhat use PowerPoint to add elements to generate the background but I hate too many moving parts in my ppt.

Pros

Tracing is better
Its image management is better than Corel Draw
Better connectivity with Photoshop and other Adobe Products

Cons

Illustrators workflow is slow. Corel has some really fast shortcuts. Yes you can remap those but the warning message is scary that the shortcut key is already assigned. So I never changed any
Illustrator is still slow to load and run it should make the software more modular so that we can select which tools to load
Every time it launches a new version newly created files do not work on the older one without warnings. During saving a file you will get like 10 different version you can save for. Do it like office before 93-2000 or after 2000. I am a human and can't remember which feature offered when and save the file accordingly.

Likelihood to Recommend

Illustrator is obviously well suited for any agency as its offer very good result for advert or promotional campaigns. But for older PCs it can be a pain to start and use it. It might crash or hang in the middle.

Verified User

Manager in Marketing (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

Best tool of Adobe, for sure!

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

January 20, 2023

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use Illustrator in creating brands for my clients. I also like to use it to alter and/or vectors to be used in other software like Figma or Photoshop. It give me a huge freedom to create whatever I want, so I can create unique brands for my clients.

Pros

Vectoring
Exporting files
Connecting with other adobe softwares
A huge amount of tools to create an unique design

Cons

Performance, sometimes illustrator crashes or become slow
Bug correction
Give the same tools for Illustrator desktop and tablet

Likelihood to Recommend

I think Illustrator is the best vector software on the market today, whenever I need to work with this type of format I choose it. It's pretty versatile too, I can connect and export files to be used in other software, and it exports those files cleanly. Despite having a huge amount of tools inside it, it is not a difficult software to use, you can already do a lot with just the basics, but knowing some advanced techniques you can save a lot of time in projects. Just don't try to do miracles with photos inside it, it wasn't made for that and you will end up frustrated, use Photoshop instead.

João Alcantara

Brand Designer at Freelancer (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

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