Groundbreaking Creative Options and Productivity Enhancements Enable Designers and Developers to Easily Publish Artwork Anywhere

SAN JOSE, Calif., (September 24, 2001) (Nasdaq: ADBE)--Adobe Systems Incorporated, the leader in network publishing, today announced Adobe® Illustrator 10®, a breakthrough version of the company's industry-standard vector graphics software. Adobe Illustrator 10 defines the future of vector graphics by providing indispensable tools to cross media design professionals, Web designers, and Web developers for efficiently publishing artwork. With Adobe Illustrator 10, Web designers and developers can work together more closely than ever in high-volume publishing environments.

Adobe Illustrator 10 software delivers powerful, integrated tools such as symbols and slicing for creating and optimizing Web graphics, creative options such as live distortion and productivity enhancements such as dynamic data-driven graphics. In addition, Illustrator 10 integrates tightly with Adobe's professional graphics programs including Adobe Photoshop®, Adobe AlterCast™, Adobe GoLive®, Adobe LiveMotion®, Adobe Premiere®, Adobe After Effects®, and others. Also, with the release of Adobe InDesign® 2.0, Illustrator 10 users can now maintain transparency between the two products.

Powerful Production Tools for Network Publishing

Adobe Illustrator 10 streamlines production with support for new dynamic data-driven graphics, which automate the preparation of repetitive artwork. Print professionals can use dynamic data-driven graphics to create an unlimited number of variations of similarly formatted graphics. Web designers can create a template, and then use the new Variables palette to define objects, such as the product name and company logo in a Web banner, as variables. Users can then quickly generate an unlimited number of unique variations using scripts or dynamic image servers such as Adobe AlterCast™, which generates customized graphics content on demand.

Producing Superb Web Graphics

With Illustrator 10's new support for symbols, professionals can reduce file sizes and manage repeating graphics more efficiently. Users can insert instances of a symbol into their artwork and update those instances automatically by redefining the original symbol.

Adobe Illustrator also offers robust new support for object-based slicing, HTML tables with Cascading Style Sheet layers, and enhanced SVG import and export and Macromedia® Flash™ (SWF) format export. Users can reduce production time by slicing objects, groups or layers, and optimize performance by specifying raster and vector format options for each slice.

"Illustrator 10 offers a well-balanced mix of exciting new creativity and productivity features," said Peter Bauer, help desk director for the National Association of Photoshop® Professionals (NAPP) and Adobe Illustrator 10 beta customer. "It opens new areas for creative exploration and for getting work done faster. It's definitely worth the upgrade."

Enabling Extraordinary Creative Freedom

Illustrator 10 adds exciting new creative features such as Live Distortion, allowing users to easily bend, stretch, and twist text, graphics, and images in any way imaginable using live enveloping, warping, and liquify tools. Distorted objects and text remain completely editable no matter how much they have been manipulated, giving users unprecedented creative flexibility.

Groundbreaking symbolism tools allow users to create naturalistic masses of repeating elements quickly and easily. Users can spray instances of one or more symbols onto the artboard, and then use one of seven other specialized symbolism tools to interactively adjust colors, spin, resize, and scrunch to quickly achieve the desired look. Symbolism tools can be used to simulate foliage, crowds, and other large groups of similar objects.

Pricing and Availability

Adobe Illustrator 10 software will be available in the U.S. and Canada for an estimated street price of US$399 in the fourth (calendar) quarter of 2001. Current users of Adobe Illustrator may upgrade for an estimated street price of US$149. Customers can now pre-order Illustrator 10 on the Adobe corporate Web site at http://www.adobe.com/illustrator.

About Adobe Systems Incorporated

Founded in 1982, Adobe Systems Incorporated (www.adobe.com) builds award-winning software solutions for Network Publishing, including Web, ePaper, print, video, wireless and broadband applications. Its graphic design, imaging, dynamic media and authoring tools enable customers to create, manage and deliver visually-rich, reliable content. Headquartered in San Jose, Calif., Adobe is the second-largest PC software company in the U.S., with annual revenues exceeding $1.2 billion.

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2001 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. Adobe, the Adobe logo, Acrobat, Adobe Illustrator, After Effects, AlterCast, GoLive, InDesign, LiveMotion, Pagemaker, Photoshop and Premiere are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. All prices stated are available only in the United States and Canada. All pricing is listed in U.S. dollars and does not include tax or shipping. Macromedia and Flash are trademarks or registered trademarks of Macromedia, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries.

Ian Bain
A&R Partners
650 762-2806
ibain@arpartners.com