Customer Reviews

Adobe Illustrator CS-Design Professional

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This book will drive you insane...the directions are extremely hard to understand.

The focus of the book is on mindless duplication of ugly projects instead of learning the tools to create. The focus on detail in the step by step directions is maddening (go to pixel located at x234 y250 and click mouse button three times)

This book is a actually harmful to the learning process

Avoid it.

This book is not worth its price. The poorly written instructions are confusing, not to mention that steps are often left out of the examples. Not a useful learning tool for a beginning learner.

I have worked through every page and exercise in both this book and the official Adobe "Classroom in a Book" for Illustrator CS2. Chris Botello's book (this one) is far better in my opinion. Chris covers features, topics, and techniques that the official book completely ignores (gradient meshes, as one of many possible examples). I suppose the official book may have a couple of very minor things that this book doesn't, but no book like this is completely encompassing. This book certainly comes closer to giving a fuller picture of what you can do in Illustrator than the official book.

While I find that some of the comments in other reviews below to be exaggerated, I do agree that a very small amount of the instruction text in just a couple of the particular steps of only a few of the tons of exercises could be worded better, but it's far from incomprehensible. Just a tiny amount of thinking and experimentation reveals the "why" of any step you may find baffling. I might even suggest that if this simple book befuddles you, maybe Illustrator isn't right for you altogether. No one will be holding your hand when you are doing *real* work with Illustrator.

Think of my 4 start rating as more of a 4-and-a-half star rating. I would have given the book 5 stars if it had been in full-color and included a CD. A very small number of the examples refer to a color you should be seeing in the accompanying picture, but the whole book is in black-and-white. That isn't really a big deal, since it's always obvious what the text is referring to. About the CD: while I'm sure it was a smart, cost-efficient solution for the publisher, including a CD with the book's example files would have been nice. As it is, you must download the examples from the publisher's website. Still, that isn't really a problem.

So, for greater exposure to what Illustrator CS2 does and how to do it, I highly recommend this book. It covers many features, has lots of exercises, and it has better-than-what-some-people-would-have-you-believe explanations for everything. It is worth spending time with.

This text was bought for an art class for graphic design project production. At the time, I didn't know anything about Illustrator other than using the pen tool and some basic shapes and whatnot. While I haven't used many other references for Illustrator, this would have to be THE book I recommend for learning Illustrator. It goes through and systematically teaches you everything you need to know to be a mid to high level user of Illustrator CS2. If that's what you want to be, this book is for you.

This is my textbook for a communtiy college class on Adobe Illustrator and it is a great book. I can go back and redo the lessons and get it!! I am a visual learner and this book is really a great tutorial. I am having fun in the class but missed two lessons and caught up on my own with the book.

While it doesn't cover any of the new features in CS3, this is an excellent guide to get your feet wet in Illustrator. It includes step-by-step instructions and leads you gradually through all the basic features of the software.

I bought this book for my husband to learn Illustrator (and also the companion book for photoshop). It is an excellent tool to teach the basics of illustrator, especially for someone who has never used the program before. It's not meant for people already familiar with the program but BEGINNERS, and it does a great job. I would highly recommend it to someone who wants to learn the basics. If you do the chapter work, you will learn Illustrator.

Excellent book!! I learned so much from this fun, easy-to-understand book. I had been working with adobe illustrator for a year and a half before I decided to get this book and take a course. Turns out there was so much more to adobe illustrator than I had realized. This book is beautifully written and I want to give the author a huge "Thank you" for writing such a great learning tool.

listen to these directions ..click selection tool..click edit ..paste in front..then move bracket to center and copy text.. !?

that's what you're getting here..STAY AWAY..I can't believe teachers use this garbage