This is something that lots of new users tend to hate right off the bat because it looks confusing, but in reality all of the information and controls that Illustrator throws as you are extremely helpful. The first thing that you’re likely to notice when you start using Illustrator is that there is a whole lot of stuff going on when you select and edit something. Even better, you don’t have to choose one over the other but can instead use them and all the other apps in the Creative Suite synergistically throughout your various projects. The thing that you need to accept now is that Illustrator really does blow Photoshop away in this area (Fireworks is an interesting in-between that does both fairly well). Odds are, if you’re reading this blog you already know what the differences between vector and raster graphics are. Watch how much a simple circle loses quality as its size increases: As you’ve probably no doubt run into a million times, if you try to increase the size of that element, it pretty much gets destroyed. This has major positive implications to the way you work.įor instance, let’s say you’re in Photoshop and you have a circular logo that is small and you want it to be big.

What this means on a practical level is that when you create art in Illustrator, no matter what its original size is, at any time you want you can make it as big as a billboard or as small as a thumb tac. Instead of being comprised of static individual pixels, vector graphics are mathematically drawn by your computer and can therefore be drastically changed with absolutely zero loss in quality. As you probably know, vector graphics are very different than the raster graphics that you typically create in Photoshop (it’s true that Photoshop has some limited vector capabilities, but no where near what you can achieve in Illustrator.). The absolute first thing you should know about Illustrator is that it’s used to create vector graphics. Like Photoshop, Illustrator is a huge app so we can’t possibly cover everything in one post but this is a decent overview of some techniques, tools and knowledge to keep in mind.

The two apps are quite similar so you should be able to leverage your existing knowledge as long as you keep the information below in mind. Most web designers live in Photoshop and/or Fireworks so this should work well for you if you fit that description.Īs I go through the tips below, a lot of the explanation will be based on how working in Illustrator is different than Photoshop. In writing this article, one of the major assumptions that I’m making is that you’re fairly familiar with Photoshop. Web Templates Landing Pages & Email Presentation Templates PowerPoint & Keynote Graphics Icons, Vectors & MoreĮxplore Digital Assets A Photoshop-Centric Discussion

Adobe illustrator fonts file