If you bring artwork into Photoshop as a smart object (I’m only doing this because I cannot fathom the gradient and style tools in CS4 – despite having visited several forums and spent half an hour trying to do something I used to be able to do with my eyes closed) – and then take that artwork back into Illustrator to edit (by double clicking the smart object), you have NO COLOURS available in the colour palette!!!

All I’m trying to do is change a gradient shade drop colour to a standard palette colour, but the palette is blank.

Come on, Illustrator CS4 is a disappointing joke.

There are many bugs. You cannot stroke or edit the colour on warped text, and the drop shadow (which is hidden in a sub menu) only sometimes works on it. Why have they moved it away from the bottom of the layer palette????

You have to make new text, recolour and style it, then warp it. Completely uncreative and counterintuitive and counterproductive.

I just tried to make some text all caps. In Photoshop, or InDesign, we are used to using the character palette to do this. You can underline or strikethrough from character palette in Illustrator (two features I rarely if ever use), but to make all caps I had to go onto the Adobe forum to learn how to do it (you have to go into a menu – I’ve already forgotten which). Why aren’t the all caps/small caps button on the palette???? I think someone forgot.

That is a running theme with the CS4 suite in general – things just got forgotten prior to release.

CS4 suffers APPALLING interface inconsistencies between the applications. CS2 felt like a ‘suite, but this is just a random hodge podge of software that crashes far too often and doesn’t feel at all like a natural upgrade (I’ve been using Photoshop since version one, and Illustrator since version 3, so I had expectations that I could use the upgrade straight out of the box – I can’t because of the ‘forgotten’ bits).

Don’t even get me started on the awful new palette system. I have to think about what the ambiguous icons mean, click one open to get the palette (that has self closed) before choosing my option. In this time, I have been wholly distracted from my creative train of thought. The palette sets, ‘essentials’ – well, no. Many of the ‘essentials’ are missing and you have to spend ages fiddling around and setting up the desktop and save a new one for yourself.

When Illustrator crashes and is reopened, it opens in a sort of ‘safe’ mode. Meaning you can’t actually use it. There is no tool palette and the plugins do not work. You have to quite and reopen the app again.

I am, for the first time in my life, downgrading. I am defeated by the joke of CS4 and will be requesting a refund on the grounds that it is so buggy and inconsistent. There are many forum comments about this. It is appalling that Adobe are allowed to sell this ‘developer version’ software at such high prices.