Customer Reviews

Illustrator CS4 for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is pretty and has lots of colorful images in it. There, you know the only thing I like about it. If you expect to learn how to use Illustrator on your own using this book, save your money and buy another one. It is confusing, poorly written, lacks proper directions, and provides neither a quick nor easy way to learn how to use Adobe Illustrator.

A quick note on the numerous glowing reviews. Note that many of these ratings are from students using the book to supplement a course. As purely a reference guide, this book is not bad. However, I bought this book "Learn Illustrator the quick and easy way" (as it says right on the cover) on my own. If you want a book to teach you how to get "started quick", avoid this "quick start" book. It's a waste of money.

After buying this book, I've come to find some other very well written books that are by far superior to this one that I can recommend. No, I'm not some marketer. If you don't believe me, head down to your nearest book store, pull these books side by side and you'll immediately see what I mean. I wish someone had asked me to do the same. It would have saved a lot of heartache.

Try Adobe Illustrator CS4 Bible by Ted Alspach. Read the section in Chapter 2 titled "Picasso Meets Illustrator" and you'll see what I mean. Also good is the Adobe Illustrator CS4 How-Tos by David Karlins. Just compare how he lays out the different document profiles on page 2 with the way Weinman and Lourekas do on page 3 of theirs. (It took two of them to get it that wrong).


My biggest complaint about this book is that it fails to teach at all. The book reads like a series of definitions of functions rather than tell you how to use the tool. To illustrate my points (pardon the pun... I couldn't resist) I've listed a few complaints below:

1. Images in the book are not accessible: Purchase of this book gives you access to the authors' "private" lesson files. One would imagine you'd have access to the image files used in the book to follow along with the various lessons. Good luck. No explanation of where these images can be found is provided. For example, on page 7, the book has an image of four playing cards, all aces. The lesson uses this image to show you how to add an artboard to your document. The instructions fail to tell you where this document is. In fact, you'll be hard pressed to find any access to these pretty pictures.

2. Poor directions: On page 3 'Creating a new document', the book states "From the New Document Profile menu, choose a preset for the medium in which you plan to output your file.". As a PC user, I'm looking in the menu at the top of the screen for some "New Document Profile" menu. There is not one. They mean 'drop-down list box'. And what the heck medium do I plan to output my file??? I'm just trying to draw something!! This book should be "guiding me" by saying, "Select 'Print' in the 'New Document Profile' listbox and click 'OK'".

3. Q: When do I get to draw?? A: Page 80!!! Yeah, you don't even learn how to draw freehand until chapter 7!! There's nothing quick about this quick start. In fact, you'll spend a lot of time reading painstakingly detailed tersely written prose about everything you don't need to know right away before you even draw anything at all. Without the context of a basic drawing, many of these concepts were not clear to me at all.

4. Spaghetti writing: Nearly anything you try to read about will reference a technical term you'll need to look up somewhere else. This term will usually also contain more jargon you'll need to look up and on and on until you've flipped through the entire book.

Example 1: page 7: Under "To add an artboard to your document", step 2 it says:
"Choose the artboard tool (Shift-O).
On the Control panel, click Document Setup, then click Edit Artboards."

I spent a long time a) trying to figure out what the "Control Panel" was and b) looking for the dag blasted Document setup button. The control panel is not described anywhere up to this point. Turns out, the control panel disappears once you hit Shift-O. The book is trying to show you two ways of doing the same thing. The layout of this is not clear.

Example 2: Page 72: "When you release the mouse, the rectangle or oval will be selected, and the current fill and stroke settings will be applied to it." Go to the index to see where you can learn about the Fill and Stroke settings.... Fills, Fill Patterns, and Fill Colors aren't covered until page 333, 131, and 111 respectively. That's right. The basic concepts of filling a shape with a color of your choice aren't covered in detail until much later. Even then, stroke or fill are only tangentially discussed as options in some other lesson. Trying to find what you need is extremely difficult.

5. Extra extra dry writing: This book reads like a dry college textbook on a subject that could be fascinating and engaging if it were written by someone who write as well as they were passionate about their subject. Example page 184: "If you target a layer or group, a "Contents" listing also appears on the Appearance panel. Double-click a Contents listing to display attributes that apply to the whole layer; or click a Group listing to display group attributes."

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Maybe I'm being harsh on the book, but I am in the IT industry and I own a plethora of technology manuals. This one has probably been the most frustrating to try and learn from.

I've recently looked at all of the Illustrator CS4 guides/books. This is the best one in my opinion. It is straightforward, easy to use, easy to read. I am just now learning Illustrator but I have used Photoshop and Indesign so I am familiar with Adobe interfaces. There may be better books for experienced users but this is the one for beginners. My only criticism is the cover but don't let it scare you off.

I've been teaching Illustrator using this series of books for the past 13 years. They have an admirable combination of brevity, excellent organization, clear writing and a excellent section of illustrations that cue students into the real potential of the program. I use them to learn all the necessary upgrades I need to be able to teach. Highly Recommended.

These books are great for initially bringing yourself up to an decent knowledge level and a great reference book for when you forget something you don't normally use. I like it!

First - pros: it's a very well designed book, with great concise descriptions, good illustrations and even free downloadable images (with the purchase of the book) to practice with. I used the book a lot, until....
BIG Con: ...I had to do a college assignment to show my skills working with Mesh tool. Quite honestly I was shocked to find absolute zero on the tool in this book. Mesh tool is used very frequently and one doing digital illustration needs to be very comfortable with it. With other tools described so clearly and diligently, I am puzzled why Mesh tool was so rudely ignored by the authors...
I will not return the book, but I warn others of buying it.
INCOMPLETE!

My instructor suggested this book and I decided I needed to do anything and everything I could to survive the class. I turned to this book a countless number of times and will continue to do so for the unforeseen future. I LOVE the layout. The color illustrations and pictures, the size of the book, the easy to navigate index. I once was frustrated trying to figure out how to place type in a certain way. Little did I know that all it ended up taking was looking in the index under "Type, placing in..." Two instructional sentences and I was ready to move on. All that unnecessary frustration. So now I turn to this book first and save the frustration for a little later. Highly recommended.

This book is written by a person that remembers their learning curve with Illustrator. The working step descriptions of the tools and their use, really help me to "get it'. I didn't feel I had to read between the lines to understand.

For class. Turned out that it had some very helpful information in it for people who are not experienced in Illustrator. I already knew my way around very well before the class started so I literally never used it. However my friend didn't know Illustrator at all and she said it was helpful... Should have made her pay for it....

Visual Quickstart Guide Illustrator CS4 for Windows and Macintosh offers a powerful picture-guided format to walk users through Adobe Illustrator. Step-by-step directions enable users to move quickly from novice to advanced stages; each page is packed with visuals and screenshots in full color. Covering everything from choosing between options to expanding skills and using advanced features, Visual Quickstart Guide Illustrator CS4 for Windows and Macintosh is ideal for all computer libraries catering to beginner or intermediate users.

I bought this book for a class at school and it arrived within 5 days of ordering. It seems like it is brand new and it is exactly what I needed for school.