Learning Adobe Illistrator after Knowing Adobe Photoshop

Learning Illustrator after learning and being good at Photoshop is a tough because illustrator and photoshop are two completely different pieces of software and although they look the same as well as the tools do, they function in different way.  First off, Photoshop is a piece of software that rasterizes what ever you make with it, this means whatever you make in photoshop, each detail is turned into a pixel. Illustrator on the other hand is a vector arts software, this means that your art that is made in illustrator isn’t following pixels but mathematical equations that are called algorithms, so no matter how big you want to make the art you made in illustrator as long as its still an illustrator file, it can be made as big or as small as you want with out getting distorted or pixelated.  Now how to learn, when working in photoshop you think in terms of layers and the tools that you are using such as the paint tool paints and if you dont have a steady hand it wont be a straight line etc. In illustrator however, you have to think in terms of “paths” (that’s a tool in photoshop and in illustrator) and different points …that’s how you make your shapes in illustrator.  As well as paths there are an interesting set of brushes and the brush in illustrator will automatically straighten and if you click on a point it will continue the line no matter how many strokes.  One important thing to know is that what you are making in illustrator isn’t an image nor what you are seeing on the screen it is math and equations going on in the background…so the smudge tool doesn’t smudge it smudges lines.  What you make or are making in illustrator isn’t going to be drawings, its going to be lines that can be turned into a brush stroke, figure, letter etc. its just a matter of connecting the paths or lines to make a closed object…this post might be a bundle of words that make no sense because I may not be phrasing it correctly but once you read this and then mess around with illustrator it might make more sense then…if not do what makes most sense with you…for me its trial and error…try something and if it doesn’t work do something else.

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