Adobe Illustrator: Which version to buy?

[Grasshopper]

I've pretty much given up trying to find a free drawing program that will import Illustrator files, and buying Illustrator new is out of the question as it is prohibitively expensive.

I'm now considering buying an old version of Illustrator off Ebay.

Can someone tell me which is the oldest version of Illustrator worth buying, and also which version you need to load files from the vector library.

I'm also a bit confused by Illustrator's version numbering system. For example what does CS mean?

Thanks in advance.

[Witchboard]

CS stand for "Creative Suite."  It would be Illustrator 9 I think.  I'm not sure since I don't use Illustrator.  In Photoshop it's 8.  They just realeased them all together and called them CS.  If you can't afford the newest one, then I would get the latest one you could afford.  Be careful on eBay, there are a lot of pirated copies out there.

[whammoed]

cs is the next to latest version (11)
looks like cs2 is out now

[rohan]

CS is the newest version, and it's version 11.

[Witchboard]

I stand corrected.    I guess Illustrator was further along than I thought.  I enrolled in a class at the community college so I got my student version (It's exactly the same) for half of what the retail costs.  I think student version of Illustrator CS was only $90 or so.  I wish Photoshop was that cheap!  I guess if you wanted to stay enrolled in the class you would learn quite a bit, but people drop classes and get full refunds all the time... cough, cough.

[AceTKK]

photoshop and illustrator are two of the most easily piratable and widely-available warez on the net.  uhhh... so I've heard...

[MrSaLTy]

CS2 is the latest version and its version 12 for illustrator.
Photoshop CS2 is version 9

[Joystick Jerk]

I'd recommend going with Illustrator CS(not CS2). Illustrator CS2 works well, but it's a gigantic resource hog compared to CS(which is already enough of a resource hog), and some users have reported tool/cursor jumpiness when certain dialogues are open.

[Bones]

I have Illustrator 11 CS. I rang a shop and was alarmingly honest. I told the guy I had a mate who was a student and I was going to get him to buy it for me. I asked him if I could pay for it on my card when my mate produced his student ID.

He said don't worry about all that and let me buy the student version at a cost of $150 against a full retail non-academic cost of $1050.

Is this right? No, not really..... But it isn't as bad as getting a hacked/pirate version free off the net.

Maybe if you make a few calls you might be able to pull a similar scam.

[shodokan123]

pull that scam or get it for free.... free is always good, not like the feds are going to show up for u using a program on ur comp from an ISO.  Just say ur friend installed it onto ur computer or somthing.

[Baker535]

If you are looking for a cheap, legit copy, the absolute lowest I would suggest is finding illustrator 8. However you may run the risk of newer files not opening properly. They still share AI extensions, but the older version sometimes won't know how to correctly interpret the newer version's data. If it happens, most of the issues would be with typography and how it's handled. Not a big problem since you are primarily looking to manipulate and create line art.

For better compatibility AND functionality I'd highly recommend trying to find version 10 or CS1. This is when I would consider illustrator ALMOST tolerable.

Regarding student versions...

Most of the student version licenses I've read say something along the lines of... for attending student's educational purposes only and can't be used to produce artwork for commercial use. Other than the legal agreements they are identical to the full versions.

Still I wouldn't even bother because unless you are really a student it's not much above just getting a version off a friend or the net. At that rate, you might as well invest any money saved into buying a tutorial book if you want to learn properly. At the very least you can make it an official Adobe one if you start to feel guilty about how you acquired the software...

-baker

 (I'm not a big illustrator fan at all, I've just had to deal with it a lot)

[dema]

Would it be better to purchase Photoshop or Illustrator? Which is the one to go with?

[AceTKK]

They are different programs designed to do different things.  That said, I think Photoshop is infinitely more useful for the average person.

-Ace-

[Bones]

Would it be better to purchase Photoshop or Illustrator? Which is the one to go with?

After using both I found Illustrator much better for this hobby. Having said this I am pretty lousy at both, but Illustrator was a pleasure to work with once I figured out the basics.

I will definitely use Illustrator for all future arcade artwork.