Newbie question --

I've been playing around with Photoshop CS for a few months now.

I've been considering adding Illustrator to the mix.

As I understand things, Illustrator is a vector-graphics program.....

What can you do with Illustrator that you can't do with Photoshop alone?

Thanks.

hey X,
each app has it's own set of strengths and weakness. as you are already aware, Illus is a "vector" app and PS is more of a "pixel-based" app with some vector capabilities.

anyone who works in vector will tell you PS is NOT the prog to use if you need complex vector art. it can handle minor shapes and paths but Illust (and apps like Freehand, Fireworks...) handle the math a heck-of-alot better. it really breaks down to the style and type of artwork/illustration needed. i do all my ad-work and illustrations in Illus (unless photo manipulation is required, even then, i use Illustrator to put everything together). i find it handles the "text" better. they both work well together for me that sometimes they act as one app. i just don't see Adobe merging them together anytime soon ;)

:)
retrocity

Photoshop is not a vector based program. Yes, it has paths, but they're still raster/pixel/bitmap. Illustrator does vector images - which can be resized any which way you choose without losing detail like pixel based images do.

Thanks to both of you for your kind answers.

I'll be giving Illustrator a hard look. Illustrator sounds like it's worth the money.

(This is a hobby thing for me, so I can't justify the purchase based on any income which I might receive from the use of Illus..)

Thanks again.

Message edited on: 08/02/2004 11:30

Stuff you can do in Illustrator, and some freebies, too: http://aprilgem.com/log/archive/2003/03/15.html http://aprilgem.com/log/archive/2003/03/28.html http://aprilgem.com/log/archive/2004/02/03.html

Aprilgem -- Thanks for the links! These will be helpful.

I am hoping to be able to afford to upgrade from PS 5 to CS for its 16 bit capabilities and more advanced uses of brushes etc, and illustrator is a dream beyond that; but I've calculated that if I got every app I wanted I'd have to spend well over 50,000 US dollars - and I used to think that buying automotive tools was a neverending financial black hole. Seriously though, Illustrator or something similar is essential for some things. Two things I can think of you'll need a vector program such as illustrator for are creating True Type Fonts and Vector shapes for import into say Carrara or other 3d app that can support them. Right now I use Corel Draw along with TCAD for such things on the rare occasions where I feel creative in those ways. Making TTFs in my old corel draw app is no fun as you have to import each character one at a time and you have to do the whole font in one session which takes me an hour or two.

Illustrator won't do fonts, though you could draw the letters and import them into a cheap (or free if you take Computer Arts) font tool. If you have any version of PS you are, I think, eligible for the upgrade price on the CS suite - PS, AI, InDesign and Acrobat 6 in the standard version.

I checked a while back PS 5 LE is too old now - I'd have to buy new rather than upgrade - so for right now I'm just going to have to keep learning PS 5 (I still have a ways to go anyway). I had assumed Illustrator would make fonts - sorry about that, but in any case you need to be able to make closed loop vectors out of your characters and it should do that much at least. When I decided I was going to try to learn how to do fonts and before I realized that Corel Draw would do them, I looked for free fonting software but I didn't find much; the very cheapest was 30 bucks very old and I'm not sure how well it worked. It was a hard subject for me to google but perhaps someone else had better luck with it; I did find out in that nightmare of a google however that there is a part of TTF that is patented and not at all royalty free regarding smoothing curves in smaller typefaces (forget what they call it), so before putting fonts on the web it would pay to look at that to make sure you're not violating patent law. If anyone has Corel Draw 7 or better and wants to try making fonts, let me know here and I'll try to dig up and post here to the urls to 2 tuts I found which give you a good idea of how to do them in Corel. (I don't think Corel uses the patent infringing part of TTF so one should be safe on that front anyway.)

If you have any version of PS you are, I think, eligible for the upgrade price on the CS suite - PS, AI, InDesign and Acrobat 6 in the standard version.

I have both Photoshop CS and Acrobat 6 Professional.

Upgrade price on Illustrator, eh? I'll have to check into that.

InDesign? I'm not looking at publishing just yet. We'll see.

I am learning. Thanks.

No - the upgrade price is for the Suite, as such, not the individual components separately.

I noticed that upon visiting Adobe's website (too bad). Thanks.