Andrew’s Vector Plugins Collection

CATEGORIES: Plug-ins, Product Reviews | David Creamer | June 26, 2006

Collection of 22 Illustrator plug-ins

The massive collection of plug-ins for Adobe Illustrator 10, CS, and CS2 can take awhile to filter through (no pun intended). Some sets may come with only one plug-in, but add multiple tools to your palette, while other sets may come with three or four plug-ins. As you’ll see, a number of tools are added (although I wish they would arrange themselves better in the Toolbox). In addition, a couple of Andrew’s Vector Plugins Collection menus are added to the Filter menu.

The collection comes with 22 different sets of plug-ins and some of them may be a bit “fluffy,” but they’re all interesting. If you like to experiment with designs and effects in Illustrator, you should check out these plug-ins. Some of them could be used for things that Illustrator should have already, such as PerspectiveGrid and Layers.
The various plug-ins come with a folder full of bonus material, which can be a good starting point to learning what they’re capable of. Also, each plug-in comes with HTML-based documentation, which is fine for one or two plug-ins, but I would have preferred a printable PDF covering all functions. Sometimes it’s nice to print out a manual and refer to it while playing around onscreen.

If you plan on checking out this set of Illustrator plug-ins, be warned that I found the website a little confusing to use. The info is there; I just don’t think it’s presented in a clear fashion, making it difficult for a first-time or novice user to find out about the different products.

Demo versions are available on many plug-ins and if you don’t want the whole set, you can purchase them separately for approximately $10–12 each.—David Creamer

PRICE $90
FROM Graphicxtras
WEB www.graphicxtras.com
FOR Mac and Windows

LAYERS VERDICT
HOT Large collection of plug-ins
NOT No single-source documentation
RATING 4

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