Adobe® Illustrator® CS3

Adobe® Illustrator® CS3 software allows you to efficiently create sophisticated vector artwork for virtually any medium. Access tools quickly and easily, explore color variations, and share files seamlessly between Illustrator and other Adobe professional applications as you prepare content for print, web and interactive, and mobile and motion designs.

Top new features: (my favorites in bold)

1. Live Color—Explore, apply, and control color variations using Live Color, which lets you select any artwork and interactively edit the colors to see results immediately. Use the Color Guide panel to quickly choose tints, shades, or harmonious color combinations.
2. Adobe® Flash® integration—Import native Adobe Illustrator® files into Flash CS3 Professional, or copy and paste artwork from Illustrator to Flash with paths, anchor points, gradients, clipping masks, and symbols intact. Layers, groups, and object names are also preserved.
3. Drawing tools and controls—Draw in Illustrator more quickly and fluidly than ever. Easier and more flexible anchor point selection, improved operating performance, and a new Eraser tool help you create artwork efficiently and intuitively.
4. Improved operating performance—Enjoy more responsive drawing and editing with improved performance in key operations, including faster screen redraw, object moving, panning, scaling, and transformations.
5. Control panel—Discover more options faster and free up screen space by accessing anchor point controls, clipping masks, envelope distortions, and more from the context-sensitive Control panel.
6. Eraser tool—Quickly remove areas of artwork with the Eraser tool as easily as you erase pixels in Photoshop®, and enjoy complete control over the width, shape, and smoothness of the erasure.
7. New Document Profiles—Create artwork easily by selecting prebuilt profiles for various types of media, and save custom profiles that specify such setup parameters as artboard dimensions, styles, and color spaces.
8. Crop Area tool—Define crop areas interactively for print or export. Choose preset web ratios or video formats with safe areas, and set crop marks intuitively. Define multiple crop areas and easily move between them as needed.
9. Isolation mode—Edit objects in a group without disturbing other parts of your artwork. Easily select hard-to-find objects without having to restack, lock, or hide layers.
10. Symbols for Flash—Use Symbols to animate repeated objects while keeping file sizes small. Define and name symbol object attributes, and preserve these properties when you take the artwork to Flash CS3 Professional for further editing.