Customer Reviews

Real World Adobe Illustrator CS3

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I am not a graphic design expert guru nor have i finished Mordy's book (I am only on Chapter 4) but I am reviewing because the first and only reviewer is, what is the word i am look for....sort of an dumb-dumb. (the commenter is absolutely correct; the system should delete reviews like the first one for this book). The book is clearly 4 or 5 star material. I can't speak to the book from a expert perspective. But this is not a book on graphic design; further, the book goes deep on color/live color and you don't actually need to see everything in color to learn the color tools.

I am still learning illustrator CS3. I took most of Deke McClelland's mega course at [...] and i also just started Mordy's [...] course "essential illustrator cs3." I highly recommend both and this book, too. But i had a tough time getting over the initial learning curve. I think illustrator cs3 is hard to learn. Mordy's approach, in the book and in his [...] videos, is borne of teaching experience. The book does not go into a catalog of features. Instead, he starts early on layers and the appearance palette. This was exactly what i needed. I finally get illustrator because i see it as paths in layers, and attributes to paths as reflected in the appearance palette. I probably simplify, but when you "get" paths, layers and the appearance palette, it all starts to come into place (e.g., all the live effects are just additional attributes!).

The book doesn't walk thru projects with associated downloadable files, that's a difference from some others. It is a bit more like a reference, except organized sort of by jobs rather than features. But Mordy (like Deke) is world class and you won't find a better Illustrator instructor.

Mordy Golding is not only one of the true masters of Illustrator, but he is a magnificent teacher. Mordy can explain complicated features in a way that beginners can easily grasp. We are all lucky that in addition to being such an expert, and teacher, that Mordy has the time to author books such as this. No book can cover all the features of a program as complicated as Adobe Illustrator, but Real World Adobe Illustrator CS3 comes very close, and it is a book that I am proud to associate with (we have excerpted this book in the Adobe Illustrator CS3 WOW! Book). I have noticed that there have been some criticisms here about this book being in black and white, and it's important for readers to know that the only way that this immense book can remain affordable is to make it in black and white (with a color signature!)-- it's not meant to compete with the full color books such as Illustrator WOW!, any more than the WOW! Books can provide the level of technical detail found in this Real World Adobe Illustrator CS3. Real World Adobe Illustrator CS3 is a comprehensive reference book that is both good for beginners, and users of all levels will find that this is a great book to keep beside the computer while you work.

Golding might be an expert on Illustrator, but it does not show through in most of this book. The only detailed chapters were the graph and 3D chapters. These were the only chapters I thought provided any true insight. The rest seemed like it was taken verbatim out of the manual.

I thought the classroom in the book provided much more insight and info than this book. I might have liked this book better if this was the first book I got. However, the book claims that it is targeted towards Intermediate / Advanced users - and except possibly the 3D section, I can not agree.

Also, one of the highlighted features of the book was the "detailed" flash integration. There was maybe a total of two and half pages devoted on Flash - just regurgitated from other places.

I would have liked to see more insight and some more tutorial driven approaches to see how the guy, who is supposed to be an Illustrator genius, works.

I did love the cover art.

As a relatively new Illustrator user I purchased this book because it covered a broad range of topics, and seemed to have extra detail on features that were of particular interest (e.g., graphs, clipping masks). I am somewhat disappointed so far. The introduction is short -- not enough to even learn where all the tools are located -- yet the topics do not provide enough depth to master the topics. There aren't many pictures (and only 16 color pages), so when the book says "Use the Direct Selection Tool" for the first time without a picture, a novice needs to turn back 3 pages to remind themselves what that is. (An expert obviously already knows what this is and has no use for this section at all.) So this seems to be a book for people who have some familiarity with Illustrator but not enough that they will tire of only 3-4 pages per topic.

A major pro to the book, however, is that the topics are very accessible. I am getting a good introduction to a variety of topics, and learning the lingo enough to be able to Google for more information when necessary. Many of the Adobe programs are difficult to break into, and this book does make that possible for Illustrator.

Although this book was not what I expected from the cover descriptions, it is serving an alternate purpose.

I've looked through numerous Illustrator books before deciding that this one is the best. It has an easy-to-follow structure and is well-written. It includes everything a beginner needs to know, but doesn't bore somebody with a lot of Illustrator experience already. It also offers explanations of broader concepts (Pixels vs. Vectors, RGB vs CMYK, etc.). And one doesn't need to see color illustrations on every page to learn the most of the Illustrator tools! For the rest, there are a few color pages in the middle of the book.

Unfortunately, this book doesn't stack up to the other Real World books, like the excellent InDesign book. It's largely in B&W, though Illustrator is full of color tools--which must have saved the publisher money, but didn't save the buyer any at $55!.

It's really an advanced beginner book, with an explanation on what's a vector drawing as compared to raster. It also includes a long section on making graphs in Illustrator, an obscure feature that--if you ever need it--is covered adequately in Help.

While there certainly is a lot you can learn from this book, it just doesn't compare to the better WOW series.

Sorry to have to pan this, but people who want to learn a lot of cool Illustrator techniques would be better off with WOW!

This volume is a great disappointment. I'm sure Mordy could answer my questions but the book sure doesn't.
Deke McClelland's version (Real World Illustrator 10) is a far more thorough book. If you're a novice this book is
ample. I'm looking for more detail and it's just not here.

i had a hard time re-learning illustrator after 5+ years without it.
this book walks you step by step, from simple to complicated, beginner to expert on how to utilize everything from a to z in illustrator.
i really like the comparison in application of different tools to do the same work. this book really helped me to learn the program thoroughly and helped me to let go of the stock help file and online tutorials.
this, and the entire series of books, i would recommend to anyone, everyday users to occasional logo designer, this is a must have guide to the ins and outs of the program, completely; without complication and wordy product lingo like most other books.

Real World Adobe Illustrator CS3 (Real World) All too often, when trying wrap your mind around a particular piece of software, the guru who writes the how-to book tries to dazzle you with a whole lot of extraneous, "dig me!", "look what I can do!" "I am so clever!" "watch me pull a flaming monkey out of my butt!", nonsense, when all you want to do is learn how to use a certain tool. Mordy's not like that. His book makes Illustrator way easy to learn. I'll give you an example. In all the books I've bought over at least a decade to learn several applications, I've always had to "hack my way through the underbrush", in the effort to discover and highlight key points. In Mordy's book, I haven't underlined anything, 'cause it's all concise, with no added fluff. When I need to look up something, I grab Mordy's book, go right to the correct page, scan down the instructions, bang, bang, bang, got it, toss the book aside, back to the computer, and I'm there. Seldom have to pick up the book a second time to look up the same thing again. It's easy to remember because I didn't have to wade through numerous digressions into obtuseness. A friend purchased an Illustrator book by another author and she has a couple pages of diagrams on the correct finger placement on certain combinations of keys. "Finger-dances", she calls them. If I was in a class this person taught, I'd run screaming out into the hallway. Come on, I'm not learning to play the piano here or how to read Braille. Don't make things more difficult than they have to be. By now I know how to find the Control, Shift and Alt keys. I can even find the Spacebar. (Whoa! Hold me back!) And don't waste expensive pages showing me other people's work. I can buy a big stack of magazines at a garage sale for a couple bucks if I want to look at other artists stuff. Okay, rant over. If you want to learn Illustrator pretty easy buy Mordy's book. That's all you need.

I can only comment on the Web and Mobile Design chapter as that's all I read (put the book down after that!). It's as if the explanation of web safe color palettes and dithering were lifted right out of 1998. In fact I double-checked the cover to make sure it was for CS3! I'm a professional web developer, and let me tell you, for the most part you don't have to worry about the "216 web safe colors". My jaw is still stuck open...