Illustrator CC / Features

Design with type in a powerful new way. Characters can now be manipulated like individual objects. Experiment with moving, scaling, and rotating, knowing you can change the font or edit at any time. And you can now use multitouch devices as well as a mouse or stylus.

Paint with a brush made from a photo. Art, Pattern, and Scatter brushes can contain raster images, so you can create complex organic designs quickly — with simple brush strokes. As with all Illustrator brushes, your strokes can be reshaped and modified at will.

Find the perfect font — fast. In the Character panel, type a style such as "bold" or "italic," a font family, or any other part of a font name. You'll get a filtered view that lets you see just the fonts that match your criteria.

Sync Fonts — part of Creative Cloud — will change the way you work with type. Quickly find the perfect font from the growing library of Adobe® Typekit® fonts, sync it to your system, and have it immediately available for use.

Import multiple files into your Illustrator layout at the same time and with new control. Now you can define the location and scale of your files — images, graphics, and text — and use new thumbnail views to see where each file will go and how big it will be.

Hand-coding web elements such as icons and patterns can be frustrating. Now, create websites faster by letting Illustrator generate CSS code for you, even for a complete logo that includes gradients. Copy and paste the code right into your web editor.

Capture color themes out in the world with the Adobe Kuler® iPhone app. Share your themes and explore thousands of others available on the Kuler website. Sync your favorite themes, and they'll be accessible immediately in Illustrator.

Instantly switch between area type and point type. Text object conversion is now instantaneous so you can design freely in your text layouts. And you can work just as easily with imported type, switching formats at any time.

Get the corners you want without extra steps. Create pattern brushes swiftly with auto-generated corners that perfectly match the rest of the stroke. No need to tediously create special corners for your sharp angles.

Get hands-on with the power of the Free Transform tool. Move, scale, and rotate objects directly using a touchscreen device. Or use a mouse or other pointer right on the artboard to transform objects in a more immediate and intuitive way.

Work faster with type, even in your most complicated, type-intensive designs. Text that wraps around objects and type that is set in multiple connected text frames now refreshes quickly when you make a change.

Work the way you like on any of your computers — Mac or PC. Synchronize your workspace settings to Creative Cloud — including Illustrator preferences, presets, brushes, and libraries — so they go where you go.

File packaging automatically gathers and saves the necessary fonts, linked graphics, and a package report into a single folder. Efficiently hand off Illustrator files to production or keep your working files organized by packaging up your project.

Easily unembed images that have been placed and embedded in an Illustrator file. You can quickly make images available for editing or extract files embedded in artwork you received from someone else. Links to the image files are created automatically.

Get more complete information about any placed file in the Links panel. All of your placed elements — images, graphics, and text — appear in the Links panel, where you can track them with greater control than ever before.

Create compelling vector graphics for print, web, mobile, and video. With precise shape-building tools, painterly brushes, and advanced path controls, you can experiment freely with intricate shapes, complex effects, and elegant typography.

Work with precision, speed, and rock-solid stability on large, complex files. With native 64-bit support on Mac OS and Windows®, the Adobe Mercury Performance System lets you access all your RAM to easily open, save, and export large files and preview intricate designs.

Interact with gradients directly on objects, defining the dimension of elliptical gradients, editing colors, and adjusting opacity. Apply gradients to strokes — along the length, across the width, or within the stroke itself. Even create gradients on meshes.

Draw strokes with variable widths, quickly and smoothly adjusting at any point. Create and save width profiles and apply them to any stroke, or use variable-width presets.

Create and align vector objects precisely on your document's pixel grid for clean, sharp raster graphics. Use text anti-aliasing options for precise control over individual text frames.

Convert raster images to editable vectors with a powerful tracing engine that provides exceptional control over colors and shapes. Get clean lines, accurate fitting, and reliable results using simple, intuitive options.

Easily create seamlessly tiled vector patterns. Experiment freely with different kinds of repeating vector patterns that can be edited at any time for maximum design flexibility.

Turn 2D shapes into editable 3D objects by extruding and revolving paths. Add lighting and surface imagery to create realistic objects. Use built-in perspective grids to draw in accurate 1-, 2-, or 3-point linear perspective, achieving the look of depth and distance.