M ost of us have used Adobe Photoshop, right? Well, the biggest difference between Photoshop and Illustrator is that Photoshop bases its graphics off of raster images (pixels). Illustrator bases its graphics off vector (mathematical shapes/colors/gradients). Sure, both programs can do raster and/or vector art, but there is no comparison in power between Illustrator’s vector capacities.

The biggest advantage vector has is that it's not resolution dependant. You can size a circle 1 inch wide or 50ft wide, and it will still look razor sharp. After you finish your design, there are many export formats that will rasterize it for migration to other programs.

In the making since 1986, I’ve been using Illustrator for about 10 years now. I've experienced a lot of improvements that Adobe has put into this great graphics program. This is why 90% of the time I’ll create a new document in Illustrator to start a new project verses any other program because of the powerful tools, versatility of correcting mistakes and trying new ideas. Ideas such as OWC's four page ads created solely in Adobe Illustrator.

Attributes, attributes, attributes I'd like to say right away that one of the biggest over-looked features in Illustrator is the 'Appearance palette'. Basically what it does is make it easy to modify appearance attributes. You can edit effects, copy attributes to items, duplicate attributes, and remove attributes. This is really helpful because in most designs you'll use the same attributes that you can apply and see easily from the appearance palette. So when you're in Illustrator again, make sure to check it. You won't regret it. But it's only text Text editing is the one of most powerful features in this program. If you need to edit text with Kerning, Tracking, Leading, Horizontal/Vertical Scaling, and Baseline Shifting, this is it, and we are just scratching the surface! Creating outlines command on text in Illustrator is great when sending out files to clients. When you outline text, you actually change it to art. When that happens, you don't need send the fonts with the file. This should guarantee that the file displays as it was meant to be. However, the text is basically not editable. Shear what? Take the ‘Shear Tool’ for example. Draw an object, select it, use the Shear Tool by clicking and dragging around the object. You’ll get effects and angles from a 2D object in seconds that looks like you’ve spent 10 minutes on it. Now you have something interesting to work off of.

Example: The older hand drawn illustration was scanned in and imported as a template. The rest was done using tools provided by Illustrator.