Customer Reviews

Adobe Illustrator CS4 How-Tos: 100 Essential Techniques

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

 

 

This book has taken me from being a part-time user of Illustrator to somebody who feels confident every time I now open up the application. Everything is bitesize and easy to digest. A must-have!

Owners of Illustrator and libraries catering to them will find this a powerful introduction offering a hundred selected techniques to help users get to work. From using the programs new Smart Guide features and using Live Paint to apply color to fills to adjusting gradients right with new interactive tools, this offers fine easy small lesson plan structures with real-world projects to help hit the ground running. Black and white screen shot examples abound.

I wouldn't recommend this if you've NEVER used Illustrator. However, it is a wonderful resource. I wish he made one for Premiere/After Effects. I teach my video students at the Defense Information School basic Illustrator. I use this book as a teaching guide. I find it more useful than Adobe's "Classroom In A Book." The explainations are crisp, analogies clear, tips applicable. I really like the layout. It reminds me of the "Dummy" series, but much more streamlined.

Bravo for Chris Orwig!

This book is a technical documentation/manual describing the tools (and their properties/settings) in Adobe Illustrator CS4. I wish there were in dept examples demonstrating the power of the program.

This book is good for someone who:
-'' wants to know what each of the settings in the dialogue box means
''- is an illustrator and want to learn how to use Adobe Illustrator CS4
''- is upgrading to CS4 and wants to learn the new tools
-'' wants to know how get the most out of each tool

This book may not be for you:
-'' if you want to learn to illustrate
-'' if you require step-by-step examples in order to learn to use a new tool
-'' if you are looking for tricks

This book was great for all kinds of Illustrator hints.

I'm going to use some in my next class

Looking at this book and comparing its size to other Adobe reference books I have, I wasn't too sure about what I would find. I was pleasantly surprised when I started going thru the book. I found that the examples were helpful. The author explains everything so that it is easy to understand and use.

Adobe Illustrator CS4 How-Tos: 100 Essential Techniques is worth borrowing from your local library, but not worth buying if you're seeking information about the Gradient Mesh tool or how to customize pattern brush options (found at [...] or at Anatomy of a Pattern Brush: [...]). Fortunately, this book does cover just about everything else and is particularly ideal for beginners. For intermediate Illustrator users this book may have beneficial information discussing the use of Color Guides (first introduced in CS3), stacking strokes and managing fills in the Appearance Panel, editing Live Paint objects, explaining the difference between embedding vs. linking raster images, making headlines fit (Type > Fit Headline), Aligning and Distributing Objects (Page 173: Spacing by Fixed Increments and Page 87: Aligning Anchor Points [since CS3]), how Unclipping an Opacity Mask after applying it as such makes the mask for like a transparency, what an inverted opacity mask is (Page 185 side-note), the effect- and filter-types with descriptions of suggestions for use (i.e. SVG filters "are based on SVG code used for programming digital graphics for devices like cell phones."), editing and using Graphic Styles (Page 200), 3-D customization (Chapter 5), Exporting to Flash (Page 134: "CS4 allows you to convert each layer to a Flash frame), exporting HTML pages (Page 231-3) as slices and using those slices to Define Links (Object > Slice > Slice Options).
Not included: plugging mathematical functions / equations in the Transform fields to manage shapes (i.e. pasting copies on x- or y-planes. [Excerpt from Illustrator CS2 Killer Tips: "To move an object to a specific area and copy it, use the Transform palette. Enter the amount you'd like to move the object in the X or Y field and press-and-hold the Option key (PC: Alt key) as you press Return (PC: Enter). Keep in mind the reference point in the proxy."], and the difference between Saving for the Web as PNG-8 vs PNG-24h (they work for RGB printers and offer less radiance in CMYK). It would be nice to find a trick showing how to write Javascript or applicable code to embed and display an exported Illustrator animation (as a Flash, .swf) file onto a simple HTML webpage showing the animated graphic in action. Unfortunately, this book doesn't bring enough information to qualify it as all-encompassing; however, it is a fair start for beginners.

I thought it would be wonderful to have these bulky CS4 documents all on a slim Kindle. BUT, when it came to the screen shots, I could not enlarge them, nor change the contrast to help me read them. They were useless. I could not read them. Therefore, my great idea -- wasn't.