The Adobe Illustrator CS3 Wow! Book: Tips, Tricks, and Techniques from 100 Top Illustrator Artists [With CDROM]

by Sharon Steuer

Book Overview

The definitive full-color book on mastering Adobe Illustrator -- now fully updated for Illustrator CS3 For years, Sharon Steuer and her international W ow! team have been reaching out to the world of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 032151842X
• ISBN13: 9780321518422
• Release Date: January 2007
• Publisher: Peachpit Press
• Length: 458 Pages
• Weight: 2.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.6" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

The Adobe Illustrator CS3, WOW! Indispensable: A Critical Review.

The Adobe Illustrator CS3, WOW! Indispensable: A Critical Review. I bought this book several months ago as a part of a three-book purchase in order to get a grip and master the Adobe CS3 premium suite. This book is phenomenal. There are many reasons why one should own this book. First, it is a great compliment to The CS3 For Dummies, as Dummies is essentially a reference book that explains the use of the tools and what CS3 is capable of. Dummies, unlike this book, WOW and another that I'm recommending, How to Cheat in Adobe Flash CS3 , Dummies does not give you real-world examples, nor in color, nor does it provide you with a CD rom of extras which this Wow! book (and, Cheat in Flash) does. To say that this entire production suite enables one to create artwork, create animation,repair photos, design brochures, create and publish websites is saying alot, All of this is possible (and more with this Design Suite.), but there is a steep learning curve with all of the applications, if you're fully interested in doing really amazing work. This is why all three books are essential. WOW, Illustrator, is essentially a reference book filled with essays by artist whom have produced work with the Creative Suite and want to share the process of some of their work. This book is fairly detailed and aside from the CD rom, each of the chapters has the essay plus-- along the margins--color step by step, before and after pictures of each step. So, if there are 7 steps to a project, the margins will have a total of 14 pictures that accompanies the written text. And, going through a few of the exercises, it really helps to reinforce the material. The main author, Sharon Steuer, suggests that after one graduates from this book to purchase Real World Adobe Illustrator CS3. It may or may not be necessary, but certainly, if you want to enhance your ability to work in vector-based objects, transfer jpg, photos or "rasterized" images to vector, create logos or as a part of a project to transfer to Flash, InDesign or Dreamweaver, this book will be of great service to you. Again, I strongly suggest picking up a copy of CS3 for Dummies, first then adding this book, WOW!, to have a strong command of Illustrator (and Cheat in Flash) for the Flash software. If you're like me, and a lot of ideas are circulating in your head and you've wondered how expensive it would be to pay someone to do it, then these books will be a lifesaver. Strongly recommended.

Outstanding

This book is the real deal! I have not upgraded since Illustrator 8 and my job recently upgraded to Illustrator CS3, so I ordered this book to see what's new with Illustrator. I was surprized and pleased with the program and the content of this book to get me up to speed. I recommend this book to anyone wanting to get the latest tips and tricks that Illustrator CS3 provides.

One of the best Illustrator books

The WOW series for Illustator has been a terrific series. The books are in color, well illustrated and clearly explained even if you're new to the program. I think it's one of the best and quickest ways to get a grasp of the depth of things you can do with Illustrator and become fairly proficient in a short period of time. My only caveat is if you already own WOW for CS2 you may want to think twice about dropping coin on the CS3 version as there is quite a bit of material repeated here. However, compared to a lot of other books out there that are dry, in black and white and more expensive, you could do a lot worse than owning both versions.

Simply the best ever book published about Illustrator CS3

If you're bored of books that are simply a copy & paste of the program help, with some funny comments here and there, this is your book. It is not a reference manual. It does not cover all the options and menus and settings of the program (you have the Illustrator Help system for that), but when it talks about a feature, it illustrates it with a lot of impressive examples. And not only the real world examples, also a step by step guide of most of this same case studies. I use this book for my classes (I'm an Adobe Certified Expert) and since the purchase of this book, the number of attendees and courses has grow exponentially. I think it's much better than the official Classroom in a Book series (they are very good material, but there are very few examples to illustrate all the posibilities of this amazing application). But if you never ever used Illustrator before, I recommend the Adobe Classroom in a Book series and then this amazing piece of art. Also, the book is in full color, and also full of tips. The CD is also a valuable resource, and all the exercises and a lot of extras are included. Read it cover to cover and you'll be a great (and inspired) Illustrator user. Thank you very much to Sharon Steuer for showing me how to write a good book.

Is the new CS3 WOW version worth it?

The main reason I updated to Adobe Illustrator CS3 was for the new Color features. I've always had a hard time with color and I love the new color wheel with all the coordinating color options. I've purchased every past edition of the WOW series, for both Photoshop and Illustrator and I am happy to report that this new CS3 edition features an extensie overview of Live Color, Live Paint etc., and for me that was worth the price of the book. The book is approximately 30% new material. There appears to be more samples on the DVD which I appreciate, because although authors suggest using your own work, it is always nice to have an actual file to work with. That's it in a nutshell. If you have the CS2 version and don't plan to upgrade to CS3 don't bother getting this book, keep your old version with the tiger on the cover. If you got CS3 this book will help you learn the new features. All those who have the WOW books, it continues to be a great learning tool. It is geared toward the more advanced Illustrator user. If you are just learning I suggest getting the beginner books and dip into this one as you get more skilled. The section on the Zen of the Pen hasn't changed and remains, to me, the best way to learn the pen tool. If you are willing to patiently go through the Pen excercies both in the book and on the DVD you will be a Master of the Pen and the rest of Illustrator is a piece of cake.