Adobe Illustrator CS5 Classroom in a Book

'While I've worked a bit with other components of the Adobe Creative Suite, I was an absolute beginner when it comes to Illustrator, and really needed a simple guide to become familiar with the interface, tools and basic strategies. While I'm primarily interested in After Effects and Premiere Pro and Photoshop, I wanted to learn Illustrator because it's one of the best ways to create some of the elements I'd want to animate in After Effects or include in my composite images in Photoshop, or use as Buttons in Encore CS5 - and if you go through any of the major training textbooks for those programs they will invariably include several elements originally created within Illustrator CS5. Still, Illustrator's not a program you can just jump into, since it's designed for precision - this is not really a free hand or free style drawing or painting program, where you just pick up a pencil and scribble or a brush and express - it's much more like a precision tool-driven drafting, design, and illustration program. Moreover, it's vector based, which means that the shapes and designs you create with it are size independent - and will have the same quality whether they're output in a small format (like on a postcard) or a huge format (like on a poster). So I needed an introduction, and this is the one I picked. Apart from a few minor gripes, I'm quite happy with it. Unlike other software guides I've tried there's no humor here, and it's strictly business, but is straightforward and practical and clear. Some might call it dry, but what they're aiming for here and manage nicely is clarity and directness and practical impact, a thorough hands-on introduction to the basic tools and possibilities of Illustrator CS5. I've got a lot more to learn, but mostly that'll come from more doing. After working through this book, I have a pretty good idea how Illustrator CS5 works and am no longer an absolute beginner. The basic pedagogical approach of the Classroom in a Box series is simple: tell 'em what they're going to do,