Learning Illustrator

I’ve used CorelDraw for years but feel it’s time to move onto Illustrator can anyone recommend learning guides, books, online, something that starts at the fundamentals and works it’s way up? How did you all do it?

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Just PLAY with it… If you’re comfortable with CorelDraw, you’ve already got the fundamentals.

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@gabegat, I know some folks learn by doing and others like a more structured approach. I believe adobe has a series of video tutorials that’s supposed to be quite good.
https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/how-to/what-is-illustrator.html

Personally, I mostly learned by watching @tony. :wink:

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The tutorials that are built into the welcome screen are a great place to start. I’ve been using Illustrator for a long time but every new release brings new tools and tweaks and I still watch all the new videos. Lynda.com also has what I’m told is a great Illustrator course if you’re willing to pay a little. http://www.lynda.com/Illustrator-training-tutorials/227-0.html

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Ah, don’t go.:scream: The CorelDraw contingent needs as many members as we can to make sure @dan and team are motivated to build a CorelDraw plugin.

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My local county library has a premium access portal to Lynda.com that costs me nothing to access from home or mobile device (via browser). It’s an incredible deal and worth checking into in your area. They cover a huge variety of software including older versions.

Stick with Draw. I used it for years at an old job and miss it. Now my wife (who uses Illustrator daily) can always tell when I’m using Illustrator because I am swearing at the computer about how stupid that program is and how the only way it got to be industry standard is that people didn’t take the time to use anything else and find out there are better options.

Overly dramatic? Uh huh - admittedly so. But that’s because I remember how easy things were to do in Draw. :wink:

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Now there’s a thought. How about some videos of @Tony at his desk doing work that will be handy to see helpful for new Glowforge owners?

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I have been using Illustrator for sometime now and have found this site very helpful for learning and reference.

http://tv.adobe.com/product/illustrator/

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When I was in the New Media program at VFS we used the Classroom In A Book series from adobe for photoshop and illustrator. That gives you the basics and the repetitive training as a base, pure homework, so that you can then follow up with youtube tutorials on specific subjects, without being quite as confused as to what is going on.

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I used Corel for work for a year. Will never go back. The only feature I liked was that the letter p centered stuff on the art board.

I’ve been using CorelDraw for my lasers for over 13 years. There is no better program for clean vectors imo. I do custom stencils for alot of corporate events and clients so logos have to be acurate.
The trace feature alone saves alot of time…lol
Its blend feature is essential for textile patches and such.
Us coreldraw users definitly need to stick together so Glowforge @dan hears are demands (lol) to make a plugin for coreldraw. Not to mention the time I’ll have to take for hundreds of saves cdr files that I’ll need to convert once I get my Glowforge…lol

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Pluralsight is my favorite personal site for technical tutorials. I just did a quick search - they have 109 courses that have illustrator content and 29 “beginners” level tutorials for illustrator.

The site isn’t free (or even cheap) - if you pay monthly, their lowest subscription tier is $29 /month. I’m a software developer and find the content to be well worth the price; however if all you care about are the illustrator tutorials, it may not be worth it for you. They do offer a free trial so at the very least you could sign up for that and watch as much as you have time for before it expires.

Here’s a link for those interested: https://www.pluralsight.com/pricing

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