For someone who spends as much time with Adobe Illustrator as I do, the opportunity to extend some key functionality is extremely welcome. After-the-fact color correction in particular is one of AI’s surprising weaknesses. Phantasm by Astute Graphics equips Illustrator with an awesome suite of color & lighting manipulation tools on par with Photoshop.
Illustrator’s default color tools are limited and pretty unintuitive in terms of what you can accomplish and how. Phantasm introduces a much more standardized and powerful set of options including hue/saturation, brightness/contrast, exposure, curves, and levels among others. There’s even a powerful option for creating a live halftone effect.
Like most of Astute Graphics’ plugins, it’s actually remarkable the features they contribute aren’t already native to Illustrator. Even more so in this case considering, as mentioned, the Phantasm color toolset is pretty standard.
Regardless, and also like most of Astute Graphic’s plugins, Phantasm is an extremely welcome addition. It doesn’t just extend Illustrator’s default capabilities it adds new ones that not only accelerate certain tasks, but enables you to do things that would be almost impossible otherwise. If not technically “impossible” then beyond tedious at the least.
Phantasm (and Astute Graphics plugins in general) are time savers, streamlining processes and tasks that are otherwise labor intensive. They’re very liberating, allowing for much more creative freedom on projects. Reducing time consuming, tedious processes to mere clicks affords artists like myself the opportunity to tap into an exciting new range of possibility.
As an artist obsessed with color, the hue/saturation feature alone has been a gift. Previously shifting color en-mass was an awkward process. You could “Recolor Artwork” but it was a clunky proposition. The rest of Illustrator’s default color tools are a series of independent sliders and settings that feel unnecessarily restrictive.
I’ve used a handful of AG plugins and Phantasm is one of my favorite, and most relied on. If you spend a significant amount of time in Adobe Illustrator I’d highly recommend checking out Astute Graphics plugins.
They can be a little pricey considering they’re extensions to features that quite frankly should be native to Illustrator at this point. However, if you pick and choose the one’s you’ll find most useful for your workflow, they’ll pay for themselves with how much time they save. I’ve found them to be indispensable.