What is Adobe Illustrator?

Introduction

Adobe Illustrator is a software application for creating drawings, illustrations, and artwork using a Windows or macOS computer. Illustrator was initially released in 1987, and updates continue to occur often. It is currently part of the Adobe Creative Cloud. Illustrator is commonly used to generate high-quality artwork by graphic designers, web designers, visual artists, and professional illustrators all around the world. Illustrator includes many sophisticated drawing tools that can reduce the time needed to create illustrations.

How An Adobe Illustrator is Used?

Digital and printed images including cartoons, charts, diagrams, graphs, logos, and drawings are made with Adobe Illustrator. A user may load a photo into Illustrator and use it as a reference to trace an item in the photo. This may be used to change the color of an image or give it a sketchy appearance. Illustrator is a great tool for creating postcards, posters, and other visual designs that blend text and images since it also lets you change the text in a number of different ways. The ability of illustrators to wrap words around a curve is highly useful for designers creating logos. Illustrator is also used to create mock-ups, which display how a finished website would look in applications or websites.

Vector Graphics in Adobe Illustrator

One of Adobe Illustrator’s most important features is that the quality of artwork created with it is independent of the resolution at which it is shown. This means that an Illustrator artwork may be stretched or shrunk without sacrificing visual quality. This is a characteristic of vector artwork, which use mathematical connections to describe lines, arcs, and other elements of an illustrator’s work. Photos that have been edited with applications such as Adobe Photoshop, on the other hand, are resolution-dependent, and visual quality decreases as an image is expanded. A vector graphic is a collection of polygons that make up a picture, which is made up of vectors. Each vector travels via a node or control point, which has a specific position on the x and y axes of a plane. Vector locations can be linked using mathematical formulas that appropriately recalculate their positions as an image is expanded.

File Formats Illustrator can Save

Illustrator’s ability to produce and alter vector pictures necessitates the use of vector graphics formats for saving files. Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), Portable Document Format (PDF), Encapsulated PostScript (EPS), Windows Metafile (WMF), and Vector Markup Language (VML) are a few of these formats.

Portable Document Format (PDF)is a file format that Illustrator can export. It allows for images and text to display independently of hardware, software and OS. It encapsulates a complete description of flat documents with a fixed layout, including fonts, graphics and text.
Encapsulated PostScript (EPS)is a subset of the PostScript format with additional restrictions that allow it to store graphics files. These files are generally self-contained and may be placed within another PostScript file.
Windows Metafile (WMF)is a format that was originally used by Windows in the 1990s for which Illustrator could export. This format can store both vector graphics and bitmaps, allowing it to be used in a manner similar to the SVG format.
Vector Markup Language (VML) This was an XML-based format for two-dimensional vector graphics that was part of the Office Open XML standards. It’s no longer supported by Internet Explorer as of 2012, although it’s still included in Office Open XML for legacy purposes, and was originally supported by Illustrator.
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)The SVG specification has been maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as an open standard since 1999. This format is based on Extended Markup Language (XML), which supports two-dimensional graphics for both animations and interactive images.

Other File Formats Illustrator can Save or Export

Illustrator can also store files in the following formats:
  • AutoCAD Drawing (dwg)
  • AutoCAD Interchange (dxf)
  • BMP (bmp)
  • Enhanced Metafile (emf)
  • Flash (swf)
  • JPEG (jpg, jpe, jpeg)
  • GIF
  • Macintosh PICT (pct)
  • Photoshop (psd)
  • PNG (png)
  • Targa (tga)
  • Text Format (txt)
  • TIFF (tif)

File formats Illustrator Can Import

Illustrator can import files in these formats and place them into layouts or artwork:
  • Adobe (fxg)
  • Adobe Illustrator (ai, ait)
  • AutoCAD Interchange File (dxf)
  • AutoCAD Drawing (dwg)
  • BMP (bmp, rle, dib)
  • Computer Graphics Metafile (cgm)
  • CorelDraw (cdr)
  • Enhanced Metafile (emf)
  • Freehand (fh7, fh8, fh9, fh10, fh11, ft11)
  • GIF
  • JPEG (jpg, jpe, jpeg)
  • Macintosh PICT (pic, pct)
  • Microsoft RTF (rtf)
  • Microsoft Word (doc, docx)
  • PCX (pcx)
  • Photoshop (psd, pdd)
  • Pixar (pxr)
  • PNG (png)
  • Targa (tga, vda, icb, vst)
  • Text (txt)
  • TIFF (tif, tiff)

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