[thelist] Adobe Illustrator and Web Graphics

Kevin p+evolt at redbrick.dcu.ie
Sat Mar 23 09:30:00 CST 2002


Lots of people use Illustrator for Flash work, limiting illustrator to print
work is not portraying what it is accurately IMHO.

Illustrator is a vector graphics program as stated. That basically means that
it works with shapes defined mathematically.  You can edit the shapes at all
times. e.g. a circle would be defined by it's centre point and radius.

Photoshop on the other hand is a raster graphics program. It edits things in
pixels which means shapes aren't understood. it would define a circle simply
by noting which pixels were a different colour (for example)

Illustrator is often used for Flash work as well as print work and logo design.

The best way to learn it is to simply download the trial version.

Here's a few liks that go into more detail:
http://www.askthegirl.com/letters/02.html
http://home.att.net/~rgagnon/Clip-VR.html
http://www.designsbymark.com/ai_tips/index.shtml

Good luck,

- Kevin

On Sat, Mar 23, 2002 at 07:56:37AM -0700, warbassedesign.com wrote:
> I have been designing with both tools for about 11 years now.
> Obviously my first suggestion is to go to www.adobe.com and check out
> multiple reviews for yourself.
> I will give you my opinions here though:
> First PhotoShop and Illustrator differ in that Illustrator is a VECTOR based
> program (you'll hear that word a lot)  Illustrator is used mostly by print
> designers.  It allows the user to easily create things like tool lines and
> 1pt lines.  I also supports text very well.  Illustrator works well for
> people who need to layout print ads from scratch.
>
> PhotoShop on the other hand is a NON-VECTOR based photo editing program.  It
> is used for manipulating images for the most part.  Things you probably
> don't want to try in PhotoShop would be layouts for negs or anykind of
> prepress (although it can be done).  Anything with lots of text or where you
> need really clean lines would be better in Illustrator.



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