Just got Adobe Illustrator CS2... (first impressions)

[Jason Arthur]

Well, it's faster for me than CS was. Makes sense, I suppose, since I'm paying more.

First big gripe: can't scroll side to side just by using two fingers on my Mac mousepad. Annoying as hell. ALL programs I own seem to allow side scrolling with the two finger mouse pad. Illustrator CS allowed it. Taking that away is NOT an upgrade... if anything it's a BIGTIME disapointment. Now I have to hold COMMAND and THEN use two fingers on the mouse pad. It's like juggling and I didn't pay to juggle.

New features:

Live trace. Awesome. And it's fast too. No complaints whatsoever about this feature and I haven't even played around with the settings on it yet. This will make my font creation easier than ever.

The black recognition is something I don't fully understand yet, but it seems as if that would nearly eliminate your need to check mark the overprint stuff (though I'll continue to do it the old-fashioned way regardless).

The toolbar along the top/bottom of screen. Eh, I got rid of it and laid out the palette items the way I've always had them.

So... if someone with CS were to ask me if it's worth it to upgrade? No. Flatly. Unless they have a STRONG need for Live Trace/Paint then there's nothing new here that makes this worth the money. I'm a bit disapointed really. The scroll bar thing IS a big deal. It saves me a lot of time being able to just put two fingers on the mouse pad and move the page were I need to.

Anyone else have CS2 and want to share their joy/frustration?

-- J

[raya]

I agree with you, in fact, I posted that in another post awhile back. Even the live trace is not fantastic, it takes some time to get used to. If anyone wants it for that reason, I would wait for a newer version. More of the bugs would be fixed by then (hopefully at least). ;)

Oh, they do have a tryout version at:

http://www.adobe.com/downloads/

So please try that before you buy. If you don't have DSL or cable, go to Kinkos or the Library, they usually have computers and internet there.

[Kep!]

Does CS3 fix it?

[raya]

Does CS3 fix it?

LOL, we'll see, it hasn't come out yet from what I just saw.

You are getting too excited Kep, wait until Adobe announces it, lol! :laugh:

If you read somewhere about it and are serious, please let me know. ;)

[Kel Nuttall]

Well, mine was humming along fine for a few days and now it's giving me fits again. Simple crap like a quick copy and paste locks it up...damned beach ball just spinning away. If I copy....wait....then paste very slowly then it doesn't happen. I just went through and did all the crap I did before to fix it and it did no good. Although last time I went through everything, it didn;t help, and then suddenly 20 minutes later it was just fine.

I've wasted two hours on this CS2 crap this morning, two hours I didn't have to waste. I'm going back to CS. Has anyone looked inot this outside of our community? We can't be the only ones. Someone let me know if they fix all this glitchy horsecrap.

[Piekos]

I bought the whole Adobe Design Suite she-bang last year that has CS2 and I've had no problems at all. Runs like a 'beaut.

~N

[Kep!]

Mine works great too...but I'd like a bit tighter res on the trace...make that masking a bit easier.

on the other hand, I'm trying to do a perspective tilt right now with a lensflare and I'm on 20 minutes of computing...urf!

[Jason Arthur]

I bought the whole Adobe Design Suite she-bang last year that has CS2 and I've had no problems at all. Runs like a 'beaut.

~N

Does the side scrolling (or rather, lack thereof) drive you crazy or am I the only one that letters on a Laptop?

-- J

[raya]

A laptop will have more problems probably. But it does depend by how many programs you have on it. I know someone who has one, and Illustrator works really well because there aren't many programs on the laptop.

However, Adobe does have numerouse updates for CS2:

http://www.adobe.com/downloads/updates/

[Kep!]

I do all my lettering on a laptop with lots running...of course, it's a beast with a Dual Core...but it is technically a laptop.

[Jason Arthur]

Has nothing to do with processing. They've simply removed a nice feature that existed on CS (the ability for me to put two fingers on my mouse pad and move left and right on the page).

-- J

[Kel Nuttall]

Yeah, I mentioned the side-scroll thing in my first CS2 whine-fest a couple weeks ago. It was already there...why go take it out for the new "improved" version. In may case it's the scroll wheel on my mouse, not the laptop pad but it sucks just the same. ;)

I did some Googling and someone said they were having the kind of trouble I was and it was caused by the most recent OSX update. So, I reloaded my system and got back to before that last update and it seems to be working. Of course something went screwy when I was backing things up and I spent the rest of the damn day getting my fonts reinstalled and set up right. It's always something.

[raya]

Sorry, I forgot, I switched to Jaguar because I had trouble with the newer X Upgrades. Now I just stick with Jaguar and CS. I think CS3 would have to be fantastic for me to go back to the Panther or a newer version again.

[Kel Nuttall]

I'm running Tiger and CS2...for now...and it SEEMS to be going okay (For a day or so at least). I think it was to the 10.4.8 update that caused problems.