You’ll notice that Adobe Illustrator CS2 has both a Filter menu and an Effect menu. At first glance, the contents of these menus seem very similar and many of the items listed in the Filter menu appear to be identical to those in the Effect menu. In truth, there’s a big difference between filters and effects in Illustrator CS2.

As we mentioned, effects in Illustrator CS2 are referred to as Live Effects, and as they are applied, they appear in the Appearance palette. As you update your objects, any applied effects update accordingly. You can remove or edit these nondestructive effects at any time. In contrast, once you apply a filter, the actual vector object is changed and the filter can’t be edited or removed. For this reason, you can refer to filters as “dead effects” because they are applied to objects in a destructive fashion.

Although you will most likely use effects for the majority of your work, there are certain times when it makes sense to use filters instead. For example, there may be times when you need to apply a filter and edit the vector paths right away. Rather than having to apply an effect and then expand it, you can just apply the filter, which is already expanded.

Additionally, some items in the Filter menu do not appear in the Effect menu—namely, those that appear in the Filter > Color and Filter > Create submenus. These filters (for example, converting color objects to grayscale or creating trim marks) are usually applied once and aren’t edited afterward.