Adobe Illustrator CS6 — Review of New Features

posted by: Iaroslav Lazunov, in Articles / News/ Comments: 0

Today I will try to analyze the most important of new features of Adobe Illustrator CS6, and will review the other less significant, in my opinion, improvements. After reading this review, you can get a first glimpse of the advantages of this release, and make your own conclusions; I was just trying to make an unbiased approach towards the subject of study.

Gradients on strokes

Now it is the first time since the creation of Adobe Illustrator it became possible to apply gradients to the strokes.

Besides the traditional linear and radial gradient for the stroke there appeared two types of gradient fill. These are the Gradient along stroke and Gradient across stroke.

With the help of the Gradient along stroke, we can create a conical gradient, for example. Previously, there were some smart tricks that helped to create this type of fill (here is described one of them), but now it became much easier. You just need to create a circle with a stroke, whose width is equal to the diameter of the circle, and to apply the Gradient along stroke to it.

Such a conical gradient is very easy to control by changing the position and color of its sliders.

Gradient across stroke helps us to color curved objects similar to chrome-plated tubes.

We can apply to the path different profiles from the Stroke panel and change the width of the stroke with the help of the Width Tool. Gradient along stroke will obediently adjust to new shapes.