Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One

3

STARTING A DOCUMENT

I’VE BEEN COVERING

Adobe applications for years, and

I’m intimately familiar with most of them. So I really shouldn’t play

favorites. But if I were to pick the one closest to my heart— purely

my personal pet, clearheaded reasoning be damned—it would be

Illustrator. Compared with such powerhouse applications as Flash,

After Effects, or InDesign, Illustrator may seem like an odd choice.

I mean, hello, have I forgotten Photoshop? Don’t get me wrong, I

think all those programs are wonderful. And I must admit, I spend

more time in Photoshop than any other application. But I’d still go

with Illustrator.

I’m not saying Illustrator is the best thing Adobe’s ever released.

Honestly, it’s impossible to compare one Adobe product to another;

they all serve different purposes. Nor is Illustrator the most enter-

taining application in the Creative Suite. While there are times I

quite enjoy using Illustrator, I can’t deny that drawing an intricate

path with the pen tool can be grunt work of the most menial order.

And between you and me, Illustrator is not the most elegantly de-

signed piece of software. After twenty years of haphazard updates—

some really great, some not—the program is about as organized as

a mad tea party.

I fi nd Illustrator so particularly captivating for three reasons. I don’t

expect you to identify with the fi rst one: Illustrator was the subject

of one ...