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Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator

Overview

What is Adobe Illustrator?

Adobe Illustrator CC is a vector-based graphic design software.

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Recent Reviews

Adobe Illustrator CC Review

9 out of 10
April 01, 2023
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 …
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Illustrator for Architects

9 out of 10
March 23, 2022
I use this software on a daily basis as an architect and it is a very useful tool that helps us a lot of design buildings and makes plans …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

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Pricing

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Yearly - Billed Monthly

$20.99

On Premise
per month

Monthly

$31.49

On Premise
per month

Yearly - Billed Upfront

$239.88

On Premise
per year

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

PACMAN ARCADE SPEEDART | ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR CC | GRAPHIC DESIGN CHARACTER ILLUSTRATION TUTORIAL DEMO

YouTube

How To Enable Pressure Sensitivity In Adobe Illustrator CC

YouTube

Adobe Illustrator CC 2020 Curvature and Pen Tools Demo

YouTube

Adobe Illustrator CC - Color Models/Wheel Demo

YouTube

HOW TO DISTORT VECTORS | ADOBE CC ILLUSTRATOR | 2017 | QUICK TUTORIAL EASY TEXTURE EDGES DEMO

YouTube
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Product Details

What is Adobe Illustrator?

Adobe Illustrator CC is a vector-based graphic design software.

Adobe Illustrator Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows, Mac
Mobile ApplicationNo
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(1433)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(51-75 of 102)
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Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Adobe Illustrator CC is being used by the whole organization and is currently being used to create vector graphics for product photos, advertising, and website graphics and icons.
  • It is great for creating vector graphics.
  • Great for creating animations or cartoons.
  • Create logos and artwork for websites.
  • Ease of use or get started with it for a new user could use some extra improvement.
  • It can be intimidating for a new user to begin using the software if they have not had any experience with it prior.
It is well suited for drawing or creating vector graphics, designing logos and creating website graphics and also product packaging design. Adobe illustrator would not be good for photo editing but that’s what photoshop is for!
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Adobe Illustrator CC almost daily for my companies' many graphic design needs. Illustrator is one of my favorite Adobe products because it is so user friendly but also powerful. I think this program is well-suited for an array of graphic design projects, anything from product design to signage and beyond.
  • Logo design
  • Shape making
  • Illustration
  • I hate when I hit a button and unknowingly change my workspace setup, or disable a setting, and then need to take hours of searching on forums to figure out why my program isn't doing the things I want it to. I'd love an undo button for times like this!
Adobe Illustrator CC is really a program that is well suited for most graphic design needs, save for photo-manipulation. This program is perfect for logo design, shape making, illustration, and product design. I also like to use it for layout needs, even though I know Adobe Indesign is best for that.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Adobe Illustrator is used mainly by our marketing department for many purposes. It is one of the best tools that we used for designing all our marketing materials that include flyers, brochures, postcards and any graphic designs for our school website or social media. Illustrator provides us with everything that we need for vector and graphics designs.
  • Flexible graphics tool.
  • High-quality graphics.
  • The best vector tool so far.
  • Very convenient price and comes with adobe creative cloud package.
  • Suitable for almost anything related to printed marketing materials.
  • Not suitable for beginners.
  • Requires training to know how to use it.
Adobe Illustrator is perfect for graphic designs. It allows me to create any design that I need (thanks to the vector tool). Our department uses it as the main tool for creating any visual ads, social media ads and any marketing printed materials that we use in public events. Illustrator might not be suitable for people who are new to the software because it is not easy to figure out all the features and tools options that illustrator provides.
October 30, 2019

Amazing for vectors!

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Adobe Illustrator for vector graphics including icons, illustrations, and logos. It addresses all of our vector needs. Our entire organization uses it in some form.
  • Vector creation including icons, logos, and illustrations.
  • Logo creation and export in different file formats.
  • Gradients aren't the best in Illustrator. They almost always look a little off.
  • I don't like using Illustrator for large body text. It's not made for that.
I use Illustrator for all of my vectors. I'll create logos for clients, icons for print work or websites, and some illustration work. I would not suggest using it for photo editing, effects, or page layout.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is being used within the marketing/creative department and it addresses our graphic design abilities.
  • Allows vectorization of artwork
  • Easy-to-follow guidelines and tutorials
  • Allows extensive design edits
  • It a massive program that can sometimes slow down other programs on my computer.
  • More tutorials, there could never be enough.
  • Tutorials within the program that guide you through your design live.
It's great for creating artwork. Great for vector files. It's not the best for tracing files. Can be very tedious work to do.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As a graphic designer, I use Adobe Illustrator CC when designing logos. When designing a logo you always want the artwork to be vector so Illustrator is the best program for that. It is worth every penny spent and all the updates to the program over the years have only made it better.
  • Making charts and graphs.
  • Designing logos.
  • Using live trace to quickly re-draw something.
  • No improvement needed.
We use Illustrator when designing graphics. It is not meant to be a design layout program even though some people do use it that was. Wonderful for designing logos, creating graphs and info graphics. I have been an Illustrator user for over 20 years and there are still things I am learning. They have great product updates and seem to listen to user feedback when adding in faster ways to accomplish tasks.
Holli Drewry | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have access to educational priced Adobe Creative Cloud licensing. We use Adobe Illustrator in a variety of ways from teaching to professional graphic design. Students use Adobe Illustrator in Architecture, Graphic Design, Industrial Design, and Communications courses. Example professional uses include signage, printed publications, logos, web graphics, presentations, and infographics.
  • You can create multi-layered illustrations or graphics.
  • You can use the layers and styles to create many versions of a document from the same file.
  • You can export your art in a variety of formats that suite high-resolution print and 4K screens as well as images tailored to small screens or the web.
  • Vector art files can scale endlessly with no loss of detail.
  • The drawing tool is not as intuitive as the much older and no longer available tool in Freehand.
  • Make it easier or more intuitive to add points to a shape.
  • Make it easier or more intuitive to edit a shape by moving a point or changing it from curve to straight.
Adobe Illustrator is especially well suited for use in creating graphics or logos, one-page flyers, signs, or folded brochures (no more than front and back printing). The pen tool and layers make it easy to complete complicated text wraps. I would not recommend Illustrator for multiple page documents - Adobe InDesign is the better tool for that type of design.
Jason Wilkinson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Adobe Illustrator is currently used by our 2D and 3D design teams. Not only does it serve its main purpose as a vector design software but it also bridges the gap between 2D & 3D by offering a way of 2D designers to work with CAD files when quick changes need to be made.
  • Lightweight vector design software - our go-to to quickly put together scamps for a proposal, or mockup some initial icons or logos.
  • Rips PDFs apart - when you're working with limited resources Adobe Illustrator lets you take any PDF and claim assets for use elsewhere, regardless of the software used to create it.
  • Great for typographic exploration - if you want to quickly try out a type combo, illustrator handles fonts beautifully without the restrictions software such as Adobe Indesign or Photoshop can put on your workflow.
  • Mobile - Adobe lacks a full mobile version of Illustrator, which would be very handy when working on an iPad when you're out of the office. Affinity Designer does this well.
  • Half pixels - Illustrator can annoyingly play with half pixels, which when designing for web or email, can be extremely frustrating for developers.
  • Improved handling of complex files - Illustrator tends to get bogged down as soon as you insert complex drawings or large amounts of artboards.
Illustrator is best suited to icon development, logo design or 2D mockups. These are quick to implement and it's brilliant for creating campaign assets to use elsewhere. Illustrator falls down when it comes to create large format print - even at half size or quarter size, it simply can't handle it. However, it's perfect for initial layouts.
Maria Clara Daly | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Utilized for everything from single-page print mockups to logo design, super-fast wireframing, flow charts and infographics. Where simple Powerpoint and Word art files won't suffice, we have an amazing way to really bring RFPs, proposals and conference materials to life in a vector (scalable) way that makes amazing graphics for social sharing, web and print use alike.
  • Logo creation
  • Single page flyer design/fast comps for digital pieces
  • Infographics
  • Charts with far more custom options than Excel provides
  • This is a tough one: I feel the system is incredibly powerful and incorporates beautifully with the CC suite.
  • The system can on occasion seem a bit slow to 'recognize' a new font that's been added through the external font management system, so it sometimes takes a few (or even a restart of the program) for it to 'see' a missing font that's been reactivated, but this may be local to my machine and network.
  • The pop-out menu for the pen/anchor point tool used to be more robust, including the ability to add and delete points as well as adjust vector paths all from one condensed little menu, I do wish that arrangement would return.
Do not try and use this for multi-page designs—the multiple artboards you'd need to create within one doc are just a pure hassle and it's really a task better suited to InDesign in any case. This is great for any sort of design work where you want to be able to create quick and easy, highly editable vector graphics. It also pairs very nicely when used in tandem with Photoshop to do actual illustration. I think it shines the most when being used to create web assets (whether you export as JPEG, PNG or SVG), infographics, logos and flow charts.
Lisa Cooley | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Currently, we don't use Adobe Illustrator so much, but in the past, it has been crucial to our design work. It's no reflection on Illustrator, it's more that the nature of our work has changed. We've used Illustrator primarily for print design, but I also find it to be far superior to word processors for simple but important things like resumes.
  • Illustrator provides incredible precision and flexibility for two-dimensional design.
  • I find that I call upon Illustrator for my first drafts of anything visual because it is so versatile. It's a great place to sketch out ideas which can then either be fleshed out within the program, or switched over to something different like InDesign, XD, or AfterEffects.
  • I love using it for resumes.
  • The most recent interface redesign is annoying. I can't find things where I expect to find them, especially critical tools like Align.
  • The way selections get made is harder than it needs to be.
  • Also, the way text boxes have to be created is kind of weird. It's like Illustrator took text boxes from Quark, but it was just fine without them.
Illustrator is well suited to absolutely any kind of print design, sketch, brainstorm or, resumes. It's ok if you want to create multi-page documents, or multi-frame sketches. That's a relatively newer functionality that I love. But it really shines as a playground for two dimensions.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Organizationally, Adobe Illustrator CC is used by several different departments. The main departments that utilize this platform are our Corporate Marketing team and our Graphic Design and Website Design teams. Adobe Illustrator allows our graphic designers to create detailed logos, icons, and graphic content for both internal purposes as well as for our clients. Having unique graphic content really helps our brand, as well as the brands we serve, differentiate themselves from the competition and attract new business.
  • Adobe Illustrator CC is graphic design software that is primarily used to create detailed vector images.
  • Opposed to its counterparts Photoshop & InDesign, Adobe Illustrator is used for creating logos and more advanced graphics with high resolutions.
  • Granted Adobe's other design software products pick up any slack that Illustrator presents, I think they could integrate some native features that Photoshop and InDesign have to make this software more fully-functional.
  • The snap-to features could be enhanced to better position and align different graphic aspects.
Adobe Illustrator is best suited for creating vector objects that can easily be reshaped and resized while retaining all of its quality. This design software should be a graphic designer's go-to for designing logos, detailed graphics, fonts, and other photo-rich layouts. Designs created in Adobe Illustrator will create a better print, as well, since it is not resolution-dependent.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Adobe Illustrator CC is used by our Marketing department, specifically by graphic artists and production artists. We support the marketing efforts of the entire company, which includes national and international offices. Main reason we use Adobe Illustrator CC is because it is one of the most supported, standard design applications available, and it works cross-platform.
  • Logo and corporate ID design and development. No better app for this.
  • Detailed editing of PDFs, including pulling out embedded images not otherwise available.
  • File conversion, including the ability to simply copy from Adobe Illustrator CC and then paste into Adobe Photoshop CC.
  • Color management. Creation of color palettes for use across all Adobe CC applications.
  • An actual manual, like the old days.
  • Simplified functionality.
  • Easier way to spec and use colors.
Adobe Illustrator CC is best suited for the creation of imagery, especially when it ultimately needs to be available in "high-res," or vector, format, such as logos. Great for creating charts that can be edited later by calling them up from InDesign; make changes to charts and they automatically update in InDesign. Great for creation of simple to complicated images. Great for copying and pasting text-based designs from InDesign for tweaking in Illustrator--GREAT when the graphic artist is more comfortable and able to use the fine-tuning ability of text offered in InDesign. Adobe Illustrator CC is not great for raster images, which is what Adobe Photoshop CC is for. Adobe Illustrator CC can be used for page layouts, but I prefer InDesign for that.
Hanzhi Jiang | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As a forum, we produce some brochures and background papers for distribution to the participants. We use Illustrator CC to design the cover. It's used by our whole team. It's very helpful and it works well with Photoshop, Indesign, and Adobe CC.
  • Compatible with InDesign, Photoshop, and Adobe CC so objects can be placed into each other as is, without converting into a different format.
  • Easy to use for cover design, and easy to draw.
  • It is demanding for the RAM of the computer - We had to upgrade the RAM to 16G otherwise it's way too slow and the laptop may crash.
  • For beginners it's a little hard to use with so many buttons and interfaces.
It's well suited when you are publishing a brochure or booklet and you are designing the cover in Illustrator and using InDesign for the book itself.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Adobe Illustrator is one of the main graphics products that we use in our IT department to create all the necessary flyer and brochures of the other departments. It's a very flexible tool that allows us to design marketing materials and sometime educational materials to our freshmen that are new to the school.
  • High quality graphics
  • Very flexible tool. The best vector tool in the market so far
  • Great for preparing flyers and brochures
  • Affordable plans for education institutions
  • Not for beginners
  • Requires a lot of training to master the software
Adobe Illustrator is one of the best products in the market for graphics design. The vector tool gives the flexibility to create almost any design that we need. It is only less appropriate for people who are new the software but other than that it is a great tool!
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It's the primary software we use for vector and graphic design. It's being used across the marketing department in support of several retail portfolios including multi-family, office, retail, and events. When it comes to managing the number of projects we have as a team, Illustrator gives us the freedom to create marketing graphics in vector format, making them scalable without pixelation, i.e. if we create an 11x17 sized flyer, we can scale that to 1920x1080 vertical without any pixelation in the end product. This is useful in every area, including digital media, logos, etc.
  • Vector-based graphics.
  • Constant software updates that bring in quicker shortcuts and fixes.
  • Integrate cloud library that allows you to access files from other Adobe products like Photoshop and InDesign.
  • Sometimes bugs are found in new updates. It is cloud-based software, rather than a yearly update of buying new software, they have the ability to push out code and updates at any time.
  • No other weaknesses.
Illustrator is well suited for anything with creative or graphic design. Especially digital media. Where the pace and end product matter, it's important to use software that's integrated and has the capabilities of quicker turnarounds through shortcuts and integrated connections, like Adobe Cloud. Adobe Illustrator is a creative software that would have no use in photography or video. Think digital, "still" media. Illustrator is used mainly for graphics creation and is even usable with web mock-ups.
Ostap Yaroshevych | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Adobe Illustrator is a must use design tool in our company regardless of beginning a design process with other software. Tool has simple functionality for basic drawing, it's an enormously advanced graphic design tool with many features that can make designing projects easier. I have been able to make things as small as stickers, banners, buttons, and more. The usability is great even you are a designer or marketer.
  • It is easy to use.
  • It has the most important wide range of tools to create, modify and customize draws, images, vector, details, navigator, and more.
  • Working with vectors is a great way to create very polished and clean designs.
  • There is nothing that I currently dislike about using the software.
Adobe Illustrator is great for creating and editing vector graphics. It also integrates well with the rest of Adobe World. Sharing with a cloud is amazing possibility. Also, I am able to save or import files of many different types.
For a less experienced designer it is very difficult to habituate or work in such a complicated interface—there are too many options/features and too many buttons. However, I am a marketer and use it for my purposes without any problems.
August 12, 2019

Still the best around

Nicholas De Salvo | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Illustrator for designing vector graphics and branding materials in conjunction with other programs in Adobe's creative suite. It is used mostly by our designers and helps us produce large format graphics for marketing materials. We use it for both internal and external projects and we consider it a core app we use to conduct business.
  • Managing vector formats is made pretty easy.
  • Pro tools for creating digital illustrations.
  • Robust features for complete control over your projects.
  • You can jump in as a beginner, but it takes a long time to master some of the more advanced tools.
  • It's a resource hog. If you're running multiple programs, make sure you have enough resources.
  • Artboards can be confusing at first.
Illustrator is great for handling vector artwork. We use it for digital illustration, branding, iconography and anything else that would be helpful to create as a vector. I think it excels in handling artwork for print. I know many people also use it for designing interfaces, but I personally think it is less well-suited for that application.
Hilary Hobbs | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Illustrator is used within our video department in order to create graphics and charts to implement in our educational videos. It is an absolute necessity and the fact that it is a part of Adobe cloud allows us to seamlessly work between Illustrator, After Effects and Premiere with less exporting and complications. It saves time and a fantastic way to keep our branding streamlined.
  • Easy to use.
  • You can personalize your layout to a workflow that works best for you.
  • Integrates well between all other Adobe software.
  • Illustrator has a tendency to lag if open too long.
  • It took me a while to understand how to export all my layers to use in After Effects.
Adobe Illustrator is great for anything involving graphics and animation! Design and layout are made easy in this software, especially if using other Adobe software. It's perfect to use for any type of creative work- from marketing to video. It doesn't make sense to have if you are in accounting or something completely unrelated to art and design.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Adobe Illustrator is one of the important software products that I use on a regular basis due to the nature of my job in the marketing field. I consider this tool as the best in creating and editing vectors in the market by far. It has an almost unlimited number of features that allows me to make design materials for anything we needed in our department for marketing purposes like print or social media ads.
  • A flexible tool that allows me to design anything I need.
  • High vectors quality for logo designs and for printing materials.
  • Amazing iPad Pro application with apple pencil.
  • There is a learning curve for this tool (not for beginners or casual users).
  • Requires a lot of training and practice to get the best of this tool.
Adobe Illustrator is a great graphics tool for designing anything from scratch. Very useful in making flyers, brochures, logos, and digital graphics or artwork.

This tool is not suited for beginners or people who don't have prior experience with Adobe's applications like Lightroom or Photoshop. Requires a lot of training and practice to be able to use Illustrator properly.
Liz Wade | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I am a full-time professional freelance photographer, so I use Adobe Illustrator heavily for design projects, which is an important part of my business. Illustrator allows me to easily work with vectors text, and it contains many tools that Photoshop does not have (Photoshop is the other software I primarily use in my business).
  • Adobe Illustrator is probably the most powerful software for creating and editing vector-based graphics.
  • It integrates seamlessly with other Adobe systems, so in my case, bouncing back and forth between Illustrator and Photoshop is a breeze.
  • Projects that require precision and unlimited resolution are perfect for Adobe Illustrator.
  • Adobe Illustrator is not limited to one operating system; it works with both Mac and Windows.
  • This isn't a fault of the software, but a downside is that there is a steep learning curve with Illustrator. Be prepared to learn the extensive set of tools and features.
  • Illustrator doesn't do as great a job when it comes to working with images. I bounce between Illustrator and Photoshop when I need to incorporate an image into my project.
  • Illustrator will eat up most of your computer's resources so it will require a powerful desktop/laptop.
Adobe Illustrator is well suited for design projects that involve vectors and graphics. It is extremely comprehensive with a steep learning curve for beginners, so it would be good to do your research before purchasing the software. I would not recommend it for projects which are more image heavy since Illustrator does not work with pixels; for that, I'd recommend Photoshop.
Dyke Habegger | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
The Creative Team in Marketing at my company uses Illustrator for all types of design work, from conceptual mockups to finished designs. In conjunction with the whole Adobe Creative Cloud (especially InDesign and Photoshop), Illustrator enables us to quickly and beautifully create lightweight, but detailed design work to support our brand.
  • Extremely robust vector editing tools are superior to most other vector graphics software. Illustrator has been the standard for two decades and continues to be.
  • Artboard flexibility. The addition of multiple, editable artboards a few generations ago allowed a single Illustrator file to be much more comprehensive, both for concept work and for multi-page/screen projects.
  • Integration with other Creative Cloud products is increasingly seamless.
  • Size limits on file dimensions is very frustrating for large-scale projects. The inability to work on a single 20ft event graphic or sign at actual size, let alone multiple concepts, forces inefficient workarounds.
  • Perhaps as much a criticism of the PDF file format, Illustrator cannot open more than one page of most PDFs. Being able to open multiple or all pages of a PDF in multiple artboards would be useful.
  • Snap to grid, pixel, and point still often feel imprecise or unpredictable years after their introduction as tools.
Illustrator CC is an excellent tool for branding projects - often the only software needed for logos, brand patterns, illustrations, etc. While InDesign is better suited for longer documents, Illustrator is often perfect for cards, flyers and brochures. Its vector-based model makes it ideal for efficiently creating large graphics like trade show displays or billboards (until actual file dimensions need to exceed 200 inches).

Illustrator is a useful illustration tool (no surprise there!), but exclusive use of Illustrator can be limiting to creativity and more natural illustration styles. It is also a good tool for web mockups, although Sketch (and Adobe XD) is definitely stronger in that field now.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Adobe Illustrator is being used by our creative department in various of ways; from creating large display graphics, elevations of exhibit spaces and vector graphics (logo's, etc).
  • Adobe Illustrator renders vector based graphics well. It is a superior program for building logos, icons, etc.
  • This program is also great for creating large scale graphics; such as billboards, exhibits, and wall graphics.
  • This program also is very proficient with creating any web based layouts; like websites, eBlasts or eNewsletters.
  • Program tends to crash a bit when working with extremely large graphics.
  • Steep learning curve for the average beginner.
  • Depending on your level of use, the cost of this program can be high.
This program is well suited for creating any thing vector based (logos, icons, line art) and works very well for creating large exhibit/display graphics. However, you would never want to use this program for page layout; such as a magazine/publication.
Anthony Burke | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Illustrator for various projects that involve creating and manipulating graphics. I am new in my position, but so far this has included included logos and social media content. It has been useful in creating and editing these types of graphics and making them exportable for use on other platforms. Vector graphics are vital in good logo creation. I expect our use of Illustrator to evolve and expand in the future.
  • I used Illustrator to fix an intricate logo that had a typo. It was the kind fix that benefited from more robust tools.
  • Altering and repurposing a logo for a custom t-shirt design.
  • Creating different versions of the same graphic with different backgrounds (also, removing backgrounds entirely).
  • Illustrator has so many features and can feel like learning a new language if you're a beginner (thankfully, tutorial videos are everywhere).
  • With such a high level of sophistication, it can sometimes be tempting to use a simpler program (such as Paint) when the full suite feels like overkill.
  • The sheer scale of Illustrator's offerings can be daunting, so it requires some stick-to-it-iveness to not feel mired in it.
Illustrator is helpful for many scenarios... If you have a lot of projects involving graphics; if you like to repurpose or otherwise tweak your logos for various settings; if you are fairly ambitious with your social media posts; if you have an interest in creating infographics. Basically, if you are a graphical go-getter, and you find yourself using these types of programs all the time, then you might as well have Illustrator which is probably the most robust such program.
If you aren't quite so ambitious with graphics projects, then Illustrator can be overkill. This is mainly because it can be overwhelming for newbies. You will be rewarded for you patience in learning the ropes if you have the time/inclination to do so.
Chani Loeb | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Adobe Illustrator for school and I used it at my previous job as a Graphic Designer. We would create flyers for events that were taking place around the school. All of the department used the program to create flyers for various projects and saved them in the Z drive. The program makes it easy to edit each other's work when employees save each part of their work in a separate layer.
  • Adobe Illustrator makes it very easy to undo changes that you have made by using the keyboard shortcut ctzl z and redo a change by using ctrl y. While Photoshop has the History feature, sometimes ctrl z is much more useful because you can undo each change that you made quickly and see the differences before deciding to go back another step.
  • Adobe Illustrator makes it very easy to work with vectors. You can download many free vectors & then ungroup them & select the specific pieces that you want to build your own vector based design.
  • Adobe Illustrator makes it very easy to create & edit clipping masks. In the layers you can replace & select the photo specifically to readjust the selection of the photo that you want in the clipping mask.
  • I like that you can easily save and insert a color palette.
  • I find it frustrating that I have to switch to Photoshop in order to cut out a specific part of a photo. Why can't they just include that as a feature in Illustrator?
  • It's difficult to tell sometimes which layer is selected or which layer you have just pasted into. You can figure it out by looking at the layers tab, but when you first go to move something or paste something, it's a bit confusing.
If you are looking to cut out something or change the color of a photo, you need to use Photoshop. If you are looking to easily manipulate vectors and clippings masks, Illustrator is really good at that. Gradients could use a little improvement, but they are pretty effective in Illustrator. It is useful for making flyers, but if you want to create your own object, it's a bit tricky. There are some secret useful features like creating a pattern, which can be really useful. All in all, I like it better than Photoshop and I wish I didn't have to switch to Photoshop to do certain things.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our marketing team uses Illustrator to mock up designs such as logos and other marketing material. We use it to send material to printers, mock up new designs and create vector images used in most of our brochures, spec sheets and advertisements.
  • Vector images. Easy to create.
  • Marketing material. We use templates that are created in Illustrator and mock them up to fit our own company needs.
  • We do not have a specified "Graphic Designer" on staff so Illustrator makes it possible for us to satisfy those needs in house.
  • Maybe offer classes that can be taken to learn the software.
  • The pen tool is difficult for me as I am not a graphic designer.
Amazing for creating vector images or changing templates.
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