Illustrator^R CS6 is progressively becoming a great digital art software. With more advanced drawing and painting tools and more intuitive user interface you can create stunning digital art in Illustrator CS6.

User Interface Enhancements

As with the other members of Creative Suite 6, Illustrator CS6 has the new darker workspace. But that's not all.

Floating Tools

Do you have a favorite set of tools that you would like to move around the workspace? Well, now you can "tear off" a group of tools from the Toolbar and drag them anywhere you wish. Or, you can dock them separately alongside the Toolbar.

1. Click on a group of tools to expand the list.
   
   
2. You will see a new triangle at the right edge of the group. Click this and the group pops up as a separate group. Now, you have two groups of the same tools because the original group is still in its spot on the Toolbar.
   
   
3. You can toggle this new group to list the tools horizontally or vertically by clicking the double arrow on the top right corner of the floating group.
   
   

Color Panel

The old Color Panel has some new enhancements. One of my favorites is the addition of the hexadecimal code field. I hate to be slowed down by converting RGB codes to hex codes between programs. This saves me that aggravation. It's a small thing, I know. But it's frustrating every time I need to take those extra steps.

Also, you can now enlarge the Color Spectrum in the panel. You no longer need to try to grab a color from that small horizontal line.

Inline Name Text Box

Have you ever wished you could rename layers, swatches and other items using an in-panel text box instead of the popup box. Now you can. When you click on the name of a layer, you will not get the old popup dialog box but an inline text box as you find in Photoshop^R. This new feature is available on the Layers, Swatches, Symbols and other panels.

New Dark Workspace

If you are a fan of the new popular dark workspace, you will be happy to see that Illustrator CS6 has this new feature. But you can customize this feature to your own needs.

1. To set your Illustrator workspace to the same color as your Photoshop workspace, you have the same Color Theme options in the User Interface section of the Illustrator Preferences panel.
   
   
2. In Illustrator, you also have the option to edit the color further by using the Dark to Light slider.
   
   
3. Under the slider are the Canvas Color radio buttons. You have the choice of setting the background color behind your artboards to match the Color Themes or to white. I personally like the white background.
   
   

*Adobe provided a copy of this software to me for review purposes.

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