Adobe Illustrator CS2 How-Tos: 100 Essential Techniques (How-Tos)

List Price: $19.99 Discount Price: $11.75

Customer Reviews:

Great book for Illustrator NOVICES [Posted on 2006-07-10]
At first glance at this book, I really liked how the book was formatted by numbers and "quick tips". This made me feel like learning illustrator would be short and to the point. I liked the screenshots and shortcuts that were included and I felt like the first few chapters (or "tips") were a good way to get introduced to each topic in a quick and easy way. The reading in this book is good. It is easy to follow and straightforward. The reference guide is plus too!

But, for me personally--I did not find this book extremely helpful to my knowledge of Adobe Illustrator. I think it would be great for a REAL Illustrator novice--someone who has absolutely NO prior Adobe Illustrator experience because it explains to the Illustrator student how each step should be taken in a thorough and explanatory way. For someone who has had experience with Illustrator--you might be looking more for a tooltip book like the QuickStart guides that Peachpit press puts out. But for the true Illustrator novice--I think this book can be really beneficial for you!

One last point, I think that I would've liked to see more examples and images of Illustrator-created work as examples for each of the tools that were explained and expounded on in each chapter. This is what helps inspire me as a designer, seeing other people's work and seeing how I can do something similar with an ordinary Illustrator tool.

Again, for a beginner who is just starting out--this book is to the point, well written and can help you be on the road to learning Illustrator in an easy & topically driven way.

Great for Illustrator Newbees [Posted on 2006-12-31]
Yes, as stated in other reviews, this is a book for those new to Illustrator. Simple, to the point, and clearly written, this book takes the dread and frustration out of using a program that has such an extremely steep learning curve. There is a bit of redundancy when using this book cover-to-cover, but the chapters can also be used as stand-alone reference material in such fashion.

Great Problem Solver [Posted on 2007-03-15]
This book is structured exactly as you would imagine from the title. It's great for looking up a solution quickly when you get stuck. I felt that I needed more "Instruction", being a novice ... so I bought "Exploring Illustrator CS2 (Design Exploration Series) to go with it ... together they are great for the beginner! Both Highly recomended.

Great overview of Illustrator features [Posted on 2007-10-30]
This book gives an introduction to almost all features of illustrator and how to use it. Using this book in conjunction with extensive personal practice and experimentation with the program will take you a long way toward mastering the software.

Hit & miss, even for novices [Posted on 2007-11-23]
I bought Illustrator CS2 a couple months ago and had never used the program before. I have used Photoshop for years, so I was at least familiar with the general Adobe layout. This "100 Essential Techniques" book sounded like the perfect place to start, but I soon discovered mistakes and omissions as I went through the tutorials. And as a novice, ANY mistake or omission makes the difference between quick learning and total confusion. "Did I read that wrong? Am I not looking in the right place?" No, the book is wrong.

For example, #24 is called "Clipping with Masks". It's supposed to tell you how to use one object as a shape mask for another object. Here are the COMPLETE instructions for this section:

"The components of a clipping mask are the object to be masked and the masking object. You first create the object to be masked. Then you move the masking object on top of the object to be masked."

It fails to mention the important part about clicking "Object | Clipping Mask | Make". This I discovered on my own. Other sections (example #31) use the wrong terminology. In this section they used "Lasso tool" when they should have said, "Magic Wand." If I hadn't already been familiar with these two tools from Photoshop, I would have wondered why their instructions didn't work.

To summarize, this book isn't great for anyone. It's too simplistic for anyone who's used Illustrator, but has too many mistakes to be 100% useful to beginners. If you end up buying this book, buy it used and know that if you get lost reading the instructions, it's most likely the fault of the authors.

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