Illustrator's rendition is more difficult to use than CorelDraw's, but with practice, you can create incredibly realistic shading. Our awe at this feature, however, soured a bit when we viewed the output on an older PostScript 2 printer. If you intend to take advantage of Illustrator's mesh gradients, a PostScript 3 printer is a must. The new Live Blend tool can handle more than two objects, blend along editable paths, and blend both gradient and compound objects. As with the mesh gradients, however, you'll need a PostScript Level 3 printer to ensure that the blends, as well as the new brushes, print properly.
Several additions make the program easier to use, especially for beginners.
The responsive Pencil makes it easy to draw and edit freeform paths that can be refined with the Smoother tool. Another enhancement is the SmartGuide feature. Similar to Canvas's SmartMouse, visual guides appear when you move an object close to a point, a path, or another definable geometric location such as the center of a circle. This feature isn't as configurable as SmartMouse, but it is useful for aligning and snapping objects to each other. Also, we wish Adobe would at least include Hot Door's CADtools plug-in, which supplies dimensioning and scale drawing for more precise illustration tasks.