From Book News, Inc.
This tutorial guide contains 19 lessons covering the basics of Adobe Illustrator, describing specific techniques, and offering tips for getting the most out of the program. Specific lessons focus on skills like creating basic shapes, drawing with the Pen tool, painting, transforming objects, working with type, blending shapes and colors, working with symbols, using brushes and scribbles, creating airbrush effects, using the 3D effect, and printing. A companion CD includes lesson files.Copyright © 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR


Book Description
How often have you wished you had access to the team behind your favorite software--in this case, Adobe Illustrator--so that you could really pick their brains about all of its coolest features? With this book, you do. In these pages the Adobe Creative Team gives you a guided tour of the graphics powerhouse, Illustrator CS. Best of all, it does so at your pace. Whether your beautifully designed graphics end up in print, the Web, broadcast video, or even cell phone displays, this book shows you how to get them there--easily, elegantly, and efficiently. You'll find step-by-step, project-based lessons in all of Illustrator's key features, including those that are new to CS: powerful new type tools, the Scribble Effect, hundreds of professionally designed templates, support for 3D graphics, and more. Each chapter contains a project that builds on your growing knowledge of the program, and a companion CD includes all the files needed to complete the book's lessons.


About the Author
The Adobe Creative Team is made up of designers, writers, and editors who have extensive, real-world knowledge of and expertise in using Adobe products. They work closely with the Adobe product development teams and Adobe's Instructional Communications team to come up with creative, challenging, and visually appealing projects to help both new and more experienced users get up to speed quickly on Adobe software products.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Many designers and artists haven￯﾿ﾽt upgraded their copies of Adobe Illustrator in quite some time. By the early reports, the performance improvements in Illustrator CS will have them salivating, even before they look at the features.

If you upgrade -- especially if it￯﾿ﾽs been a while -- it￯﾿ﾽll be worth your time to refresh your skills. And if you￯﾿ﾽre completely new to Illustrator, it￯﾿ﾽs so deep and rich that self-training is pretty much a necessity. That￯﾿ﾽs where Adobe Illustrator CS Classroom in a Book comes in.

This package delivers training created by Adobe and proven in Adobe classrooms and labs. Like all the books in the series, it organizes your learning around a series of modular, hands-on lessons that use images from the accompanying CD-ROM and end with review questions to make sure you￯﾿ﾽre on top of what you￯﾿ﾽve learned.

The authors begin with an interactive demo ￯﾿ﾽtour￯﾿ﾽ of Adobe Illustrator CS that￯﾿ﾽll quickly get your hands on many of the software￯﾿ﾽs key features and enhancements. Right then, you￯﾿ﾽll be creating blends, ￯﾿ﾽsprayable￯﾿ﾽ symbols, and clipping masks; using Pathfinder to create new shapes from existing ones; even trying out Illustrator￯﾿ﾽs new 3D filter.

Once you￯﾿ﾽve tasted the program, the authors reintroduce the Illustrator CS ￯﾿ﾽwork area￯﾿ﾽ: the artboard, scratch area, toolbox, and default floating palettes. (Among the new goodies: you can now save and open a file as an Illustrator template. When you reopen the file, an untitled document is created from it, leaving the original untouched.)

Next, you￯﾿ﾽll review the basics of selection: when to use direct and group selection tools; how to group, ungroup, lock, hide, and clone items; and save selections for future use. You￯﾿ﾽll create basic shapes and build them into images that aren￯﾿ﾽt so basic (your project: a logo). Then, you￯﾿ﾽll systematically get comfortable with Illustrator￯﾿ﾽs pen and painting tools; object transformation; layers; type; brushes; and more.

There￯﾿ﾽs a complete lesson on working with appearance attributes, styles, and effects -- including Scribble and transparency effects. You￯﾿ﾽll also find a complete lesson on airbrushing with the mesh tool.

In a new lesson on creating 3D graphics, you￯﾿ﾽll learn how to draw cylinders and boxes, work with Illustrator￯﾿ﾽs new 3D filters, use extrusion and beveling, and more.

Of course, your Illustrator drawings won￯﾿ﾽt stay in Illustrator forever. Adobe￯﾿ﾽs complete lesson on printing artwork and producing color separations covers everything from PDF format issues to compression and security, printer￯﾿ﾽs marks, soft-proofing, knockouts, and overprinting. (Don￯﾿ﾽt miss the new ￯﾿ﾽSave for Microsoft Office￯﾿ﾽ feature, which streamlines the process of integrating Illustrator images into Word or PowerPoint documents.)

There￯﾿ﾽs a lesson on combining Illustrator graphics with Photoshop images (including exporting layered files to Photoshop). Last but not least, you￯﾿ﾽll learn how to create artwork for Web pages -- everything from image slicing to creating Flash animations from Illustrator symbols. Clear, simple, to the point, and effective: That￯﾿ﾽs Adobe Illustrator CS Classroom in a Book. Bill Camarda

Bill Camarda is a consultant, writer, and web/multimedia content developer. His 15 books include Special Edition Using Word 2000 and Upgrading & Fixing Networks for Dummies, Second Edition.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Classroom in a Book, the bestselling series of hands-on software training workbooks, helps you learn the features of Adobe software quickly and easily. Classroom in a Book offers what no other book or training program does -- an official training series from Adobe Systems Incorporated, developed with the support of Adobe product experts. Adobe Illustrator Classroom in a Book contains nineteen lessons. The book covers the basics of learning Adobe Illustrator, and countless tips and techniques to help you become more productive with Adobe Illustrator. You can follow the book from start to finish or choose only those lessons that interest you.

SYNOPSIS