Phantasm CS improves on Adobe Illustrator's basic color adjustment options and works with gradients, meshes, tweens, bitmaps, Live Trace and Live Paint, with all color adjustments available as Filters and Live Effects. With this approach, users can permanently change the colors or dynamically alter them, so they can be edited, deleted and re-ordered as desired. The plugin is said to adhere to Adobe's user interface standards, providing comprehensive color adjustments similar to those found in Photoshop, including Brightness/Contrast, Curves, Desaturate, Hue/Saturation, Invert, Levels and Shift to Color. Four additional object selectors—Spot colors, RGB, CMYK and Greyscale bitmaps—extend user control over the color of objects available in Illustrator. Also included is a "Safe CMYK" option, compliance with Spot colors and an automatic Overprint removal option.

In conjunction with the third anniversary of the launch of Phantasm CS, developer Astute Graphics recently released a free series of Illustrator Styles and Actions that make use of the plugin's toolset. Users are now invited to submit either their own Action files created with the plugin or complete examples of Illustrator work that make compelling use of the capabilities of Phantasm CS. Prizes include a Wacom Intuos4 large pen tablet (or £420.00), Pantone ColorMunki Design (or £360.00) or one of five copies of the Illustrator CS4 WOW! book (or £35.00), with details available on the Astute Graphics site.

Those without Phantasm CS aren't left out in the dark, since a collection of vector halftones created with the plugin that can be used with Illustrator CS or above have been made available for free download, such as the repeating graduated monotone shown below.