Adobe Illustrator CS5

Adobe® Illustrator® CS5 software helps you create distinctive vector artwork for any project. Take advantage of the precision and power of sophisticated drawing tools, expressive natural brushes, and a host of time-savers.

Use powerful creative tools

Design vector graphics with precision and power using Adobe® Illustrator® CS5 software. Draw accurately in perspective, create variable-width strokes, paint with lifelike brushes, and let your creative juices flow.

Sophisticated vector drawing tools

Create distinctive designs with precise shape-building tools, fluid and painterly brushes, and advanced path controls.

Beautiful Strokes

Fully control variable-width strokes, arrowheads, dashes, and art brush scaling along a path.

Perspective drawing

Use perspective grids to draw shapes and scenes in accurate 1-, 2-, or 3-point linear perspective, creating the look of realistic depth and distance.

Bristle Brush

Paint with vectors that resemble real-world brush strokes. Achieve the expressiveness of natural media with the scalability of vector graphics.

Gradients and transparency

Interact with gradients directly on your objects and control the transparency of individual colors in gradients and gradient meshes.

Blob Brush

Sketch with a brush that generates a single clean vector shape, even when strokes overlap. Draw naturally, using the Blob Brush tool together with the Eraser and Smooth tools.

Advanced typography

Design beautiful text for any media with professional controls for paragraph and character styles, support for OpenType®, transparent effects, and more.

Resolution-independent effects

See raster effects such as drop shadows, blurs, and textures maintain their appearance across media. Create work for different types of output and know that raster effects will look the same no matter how your resolution settings change.

Flexible brushes

Enjoy improved pressure sensitivity when using a pen and tablet. Add flair to paths, choosing from calligraphic, scatter, art, and pattern brushes. Take advantage of newly subtle controls when making your own custom brushes.

Brushes with corner control

Apply art and pattern brushes to a path and get clean results, even at tight bends or corners. Where strokes of different widths join, or they form obtuse or acute angles, choose options to properly fill points where joins occur.

Live Trace

Quickly and accurately convert photos, scans, or other bitmap images to editable and scalable vector paths using Live Trace.

Live Color

Explore, apply, and control color variations using Live Color, which lets you select any artwork and interactively edit the colors to see results immediately. Use the intuitive Color Guide panel to quickly choose tints, shades, or harmonious color combinations.

Envelopes and live distortion

Warp, liquefy, and distort artwork any way imaginable with envelopes and live distortion tools. Easily access envelope options from the Control panel.

Blend

Morph one shape into another to create smooth shading, complex contours, and basic animations.

3D effects

Turn 2D shapes into fully editable 3D objects by extruding and revolving paths. Add lighting and wrap images around 3D shapes to easily create objects such as packaging mock-ups, and separate spot colors applied to 3D artwork.

Clipping masks

Use clipping masks to hide areas of an object or group, crop placed images, or cut intricate shapes. Quickly find the clipping mask options in the Control panel and work with masks more easily, thanks to new viewing choices for both masks and masked objects.

Live effects

Apply live effects without affecting the underlying artwork, so you can edit at any time without starting over.

Symbol spraying

Add design elements to your artwork by spraying, scaling, colorizing, and adjusting the transparency of repeated symbols while keeping file sizes small.

Graphing tools

Communicate data clearly using powerful tools that make it easy to produce visually compelling charts and graphs, including quickly applying harmonious color groups with Live Color.

Boost productivity

Work efficiently with multiple artboards, symbols, drawing enhancements, and the ability to edit object characteristics in the Appearance panel. Take advantage of smooth integration with other Adobe applications and support for almost any graphic file.

Shape Builder tool

Intuitively combine, edit, and fill shapes directly on your artboard without accessing multiple tools and panels.

Drawing enhancements

Draw behind elements, disregarding stacking order. Draw or place an image inside an element, instantly creating a clipping mask.

Multiple artboards for web and interactive

Define up to 100 working areas in one file. Paste objects in place across artboards for repeating artwork on multiple web pages, screens, or frames.

In-panel appearance editing

Edit object characteristics directly in the Appearance panel, eliminating the need to open fill, stroke, or effects panels.

Symbols

Make symbols more powerful than ever thanks to new 9-slice scaling and registration point control. Use layers inside symbols to create extremely complex symbols that you can repeat as usual, keeping file sizes small.

Pixel Preview

See how your vector artwork will look when rasterized using the Pixel Preview mode. Edit your artwork and the preview changes live — as you work.

Integration with other Adobe solutions

Move projects smoothly from design to print or digital output, thanks to tight integration with industry-leading Adobe software such as Adobe Photoshop®, Acrobat®, Flash® Professional, and Digital Editions.

Industry-standard graphic file formats

Work with almost any type of graphic file — including PDF, EPS, FXG, Photoshop (PSD), TIFF, GIF, JPEG, SWF, SVG, DWG, DXF, and more.

New Document Profiles for web and mobile devices

Access new pixel-grid alignment from web and mobile device profiles, which also include relevant dimensions, color groups, and more.

Integration with Adobe CS Review

Create and share online reviews for clients down the hall or around the world using Adobe CS Review, an Adobe CS Live online service.1, 2

Roundtrip editing with Flash Catalyst

Edit artwork in Illustrator while maintaining structure and interactivity added using Adobe Flash® Catalyst® software.

Versatile slicing tools

Create vector-based slices from objects, groups of objects, or layers that are preserved when exporting your artwork as a SWF or PSD file.

Refined graphic styles

Combine styles for unique effects and increased efficiency, and apply styles without disturbing an object's existing appearance. Enjoy new thumbnail previews and an expanded library of prebuilt styles.

Practical Smart Guides

Stay oriented with Smart Guides that are intuitive and practical. Unobtrusive appearance and behaviors don't clutter your view, such as aligning to objects on the artboard rather than the cursor.

Photoshop layer comp support

Control the visibility of layer comps in linked, embedded, or opened Photoshop files from within Illustrator CS5.

Isolation mode

Edit objects using Isolation mode, which temporarily sequesters your selection for editing without disturbing other parts of your artwork. Isolate any type of object, including clipping masks, and add new art to a specific place in the stacking order.

Deliver virtually anywhere

Produce stunning output with beautiful text, whether you're printing or producing graphics for the web or mobile devices. Create resolution-independent effects and crisp graphics. Create more secure, multipage, graphic-rich Adobe PDF files.

Experiment with HTML5

Try out the latest in HTML5 and CSS3 to more easily design web and device content with the Illustrator HTML5 Pack on Adobe Labs.

Crisp graphics and text for web, mobile

Create and align vector objects precisely on the file's pixel grid for clean, sharp raster graphics. Use text anti-aliasing options for individual text frames.

Resolution-independent effects

See raster effects such as drop shadows, blurs, and textures maintain their appearance across media. Create work for different types of output and know that raster effects will look the same no matter how your resolution settings change.

Adobe PDF file creation tools

Create more secure, multipage, graphic-rich PDF files with Illustrator layers retained. Share files confidently with service providers, including support for PDF/X standards.

Adobe Device Central

Design, preview, and test rich graphic content for mobile devices and deliver engaging experiences to billions of subscribers.

Web and mobile device export

Easily view, optimize, and export for web and mobile devices, with choices for format, color, quality, compression, and more.

Separations Preview

Avoid color output surprises such as unexpected spot colors, unwanted overprinting, overprints that don't overprint, white overprinting, and CMYK blacks in text and placed files.

Support for bleeds

Quickly set up your artboards for bleeds with the new Bleeds document attribute. You can choose to work with bleeds when you open a new document or add them later in the Document Setup dialog box.

DeviceN colorspace

Place duotone or separated Photoshop images in Illustrator and preserve the file's native color space with DeviceN support. Use multicomponent and Hi-Fi color, raster effects, transparency, and gradient meshes with confidence, knowing that your artwork will separate correctly.

XML-based FXG support

Deliver FXG format. The XML-based graphics interchange format for the Adobe Flash® Platform enables designers to deliver more editable, workable content to developers for web, interactive, and RIA projects.