Adobe Illustrator CS4 Classroom in a Book

Adobe Illustrator CS4 Classroom in a Book, by the staff of Adobe Systems ★★★★
I had worked through the same book for Adobe Illustrator CS, and found the book to be poorly written, often confusing, and rarely ever instructive as to the full usage of Illustrator. Rather, it simply gave you a set of instructions on how to make a certain piece of art, never telling you why you were doing what it was telling you, and never explaining all the other options on the menu. This edition has corrected most of those mistakes, and was actually informative, leaving me a feeling that I had mastered the basics of Illustrator. It provides ample opportunity to experiment with the system, and encourages one to play since the full use of Illustrator takes time and much practice. It left me feeling that I would be better served with a Wacom tablet, which I’ll probably get soon. Perhaps it was the second exposure, but I now feel much more comfortable with the use of Illustrator. All the same, there were a number of times when I could not make Illustrator do as the instructions were telling me, and sometimes could figure out what was wrong, other times not. Perhaps new editions should also include more sidebars to the text detailing where one might get into trouble, or not end up with the same result—this is especially true when working with layers and masks, which was one great deficit of both the Illustrator and Photoshop Classroom texts.