How This Book Is Organized


Unlike most other books on Illustrator, this text isn't formatted to systematically cover each menu, tool, palette, and feature. Rather, it is organized based on my years of personal experience teaching Illustrator. Concepts like appearances and groups are covered long before discussions on text or brushes. Loading and saving libraries comes before discussions about fills or strokes. In this way, you understand the important aspects behind the features before you actually use them. The way I see it, it's like taking a class on skydivingyou spend a few hours on the ground learning all about the physics of the jump and then you get on the plane. Once you've already jumped, it's a bit too late to start learning.

Most chapters in this book contain a "Featured Match-Up" sidebar that discusses conceptual or physical differences between Illustrator's features and technologies. These are meant to give you a deeper understanding of the tools you have at hand and will assist you in choosing the right tools for the right tasks. Tips and Notes appear throughout the book as well and offer bite-sized nuggets of information and resources where appropriate. When keyboard shortcuts are included for Illustrator commands, I've listed the Macintosh shortcut first, followed by the Windows shortcut.

You'll also find three appendixes at the end of this book covering automation, FreeHand conversion, and application preferences. The appendix on automation should serve as food for thought on how you can begin using actions and scripts to have Illustrator handle more of your work while you find more important things to do. The appendix on application preferences is a great reference in case you ever need to know what a particular preference setting is. In light of the merger between Adobe and Macromedia, of most importance is the appendix on FreeHand conversion. This appendix is a wonderful guide that will assist users who are making the move from FreeHand to Illustrator. It shows feature-by-feature comparisons between FreeHand and Illustrator, discusses differences in terminology between the two, and offers general advice on making the switch.

Overall, this book serves as a great resource, no matter what your experience level is with Illustrator. My hope is that you learn something about Illustrator that you never knew beforethat would make me a very happy person. So read on, and enjoy!




Real World Adobe Illustrator CS2
Real World Adobe Illustrator CS2
ISBN: 0321337026
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 147
Authors: Mordy Golding

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