"Oh my–it’s like Illustrator and Flash have run off and gotten married," says Mordy Golding in the latest episode of his Real World Illustrator video podcast. Mordy, formerly a PM on the Illustrator team, hits not only the big-ticket items, but also the little things that sometimes matter most. I only wish Mordy had spent more time on the rad Live Color feature in AICS3–but he promises to delve deeper into it in a future episode. (It’s one of those features that makes Photoshop and the other apps jealous, so we’ll have to try to steal it in the future. ;-))
From the podcast I learned a little detail that I think is quite cool: the new Flash Text panel (screenshot) lets you designate text to be used in Flash as static or dynamic. You can even designate the URL from which the text is fed. And, as I’ve mentioned previously, Illustrator now lets you name & edit symbols just as you do in Flash, and symbols, instance names, gradients, etc. are preserved when you copy and paste from Illustrator to Flash. Niiice.
The integrations looks very promissing…
Can’t wait until I get it in my hands!
Thanks for sharing the podcast.
Best regards,
Dede Villela
Overall, Illustrator CS3 looks so much better as “new version” than Photoshop CS3. And I’m mostly a photoshop guy (the public beta was good, but the ai features are truly new and also — can you believe it — useful)
Most important,at 14:40, Mordy confirms that Flash’s bad pen tool has been replaced with Adobe’s good pen tool. Yay! (As payment, we have to put up with Flash’s ill-executed panel system)
– adjust colors for just about any object (inc. gradients)
– color groups
– Flash-like object “grouping” (plus it’s turn-off-able if you don’t want it. Nothing says pro-app like options)
– direct selection of points is easier
– crop area for exporting
– mask placed images
– layer colors are back
Even though Mordy falls into the slurpy habbit of selling his books with such marketing phrases as “elegant solution”, “much needed upgrade” “Oh my, Ai and Flash got married”, it’s a pretty concise and reassuring video.