Adobe Illustrator CS3 How-Tos: 100 Essential Techniques

I purchased "AI CS3 How-Tos: 100 Essential Techniques" because I consider myself to be a beginner with AI, and wanted a book that would provide a basic introduction to AI CS3. Although the book does a good job in covering most basic techniques (as well as some not-so-basic techniques), I found that it really was too basic, and lacked the detail (as well as examples) to address many of the questions that I had. Most How-tos are 2 pages long and are pretty skeletal. I was surprised at the absence of color (odd in an illustrator book?) and that some of the screenshots were two small to clearly show the author's intent. In all, I couldn't figure out who this book would be for. CS3 is a complex, professional level application. Anyone having the need to purchase CS3 will ultimately require more guidance than was offered.

Adobe Illustrator CS3 (for short, AI) is the top software for creating vector artwork, that's infinitely scalable with perfectly crisp edges (as opposed to bitmap images, like JPGs, that become jagged when their size is increased). AI is capable of some gorgeous effects -- not just objects or typography but "painterly" gradient shadings -- that can be scaled in size from a tiny drawing to a billboard without any loss of perfectly smooth edges. The trouble comes in learning how to use the daunting AI, which feels much less intuitive than, say, Photoshop. Enter Adobe Illustrator CS3 How-Tos: 100 Essential Techniques, by David Karlins and Bruce K. Hopkins. Through a hundred concise chapters, covering every important aspect of AI with clear hands-on directions, the authors have made AI as "user-friendly" as, say, Dreamweaver CS3 How-Tos: 100 Essential Techniques by David Karlins (I also gave it a 5-star review here at Amazon), and for many of the same reasons.

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As a beginner at AI, I needed a way to get a quick understanding of the software without having to wade through a bunch of opinion or wasted commentary. This book provided me with a very clean, staged, well-organized and well-written introduction. It covers all the important topics in a sequence that helps you build skills, but without forcing you to do exercises that might be good pedagogically, but don't give the sophisticated practitioner any direct line to his or her particular goal.

Highly recommended.