Hey..I'm a graphic artist by day, & I use Illustrator as my main app. I tried gettin' into Freehand, but I felt so limited, fewer tweaking tools. Plus, I switch back and forth between PS And Illustrator alot! Illustrator can be a pain to learn, but I think it is the high-end choice. I deal with alot of other studios that send me artwork, & most of it is in .ai. However, I hate Pagemaker! It is a total pain to transfer docs between versions & platforms ( I use PC & Mac ). I like adobe Indesign better, or Quark!
When it comes to Macs or PCs...PC alll the way...I have to have my right click!!!!

Freehand 8 solved alot of the problems. You could even open Illustrator files with it!
I haven't used illustrator for a few years, myself, I did find it a bit clunky probably what your calling intuitive I felt as loss of control. If I remember right it didn't have the same abilities with type that freehand did, but it had a great color blending.
I remember having a great deal of difficulty getting separations with it too, the printing windows had lees control than pagemaker , quark or the freehand ones.
Like I said its been awile, I have heard it's better for drawing on the computer is that true???
But, I keep asking people who send me stuff in illustrator what they think of the program because I know how often the stuff can change significantly. It could just be blind luck or coincidence but of those people, the ones who seem pretty computer saavy have not preffered it over other stuff.
To be fair, I don't get too many illustrator files anymore, usually Photoshop, Quark or PDF nowdays. I'll have to admit most Illustrator files I have gotten are from freelancers who seem barely above novice pc users, and all their stuff has been riddled with cross platform problems, so it might not be the program itself, could just be the users. There is nothing like trying to explain to some guy on the phone how and why he needs to convert his text to paths, because your computer won't support his fonts, even if he could figure out how to e-mail it to you properly, instead of attaching the short-cut/alias of the font by mistake. And he's only been using microsoft word documents for his whole career until a month ago when his boss thought he could save money by getting a secretary a graphics program, and not hire a freelancer anymore.
So my general impression has been bad.

But I absolutely love the latest photoshop, have a chance to play with that yet?
What's Canvas??

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6.0? Yeah, that's what I'm using. Overall, a very good upgrade. My complaints are pretty minor: basically, the inclusion of many web tools into Photoshop, which are duplicated in Image Ready, such as the slice tools. The problem is that many of the old tools now double up on the same key short cuts, such as both Brush and pencil being "B" and requiring Shift-B to go between them, rather than a dedicated SINGLE keystroke for each tool. A minor thing, but a few thousand keystrokes in a day. Oh well.

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Deneba Canvas is a drawing program, that in later versions (the latest I have is 6 - dunno where we are now) allows layers in bitmap/Photoshop modes, and vector/Illustrator-Freehand modes, in one application. Still a good program, but not as smooth as working, at least for me, as Photoshop. Earlier, less-ambitious versions, were loads of fun. Also allowed me to mix resolutions in various layers. Could layer a 300 dpi layer over a 200 dpi layer, etc. Got some cool effects layering textures in bitmap mode that way.

Studio Artist is another cool paint program, but rather unwieldy, and not suited to higher resolutions. Painter is still a favorite, when one ignores the idea of emulating natural media, and tweaks it to be a computer tool.


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T H O M A S L U T H
digital artist
http://www.thomasluth.com

The gap between Photoshop and ImageReady has gotten so small that it would almost make sense to recombine them now -- and yet, those small differences are often vital (and yet frustrating when you find yourself reaching for a tool that isn't there.)

--Nat (currently working on a book on Illustrator)

I find ILLUSTRATOR to be everything I need in a drawing program. I have no problems with it.

If you're looking for quick display lettering, try TYPESTYLER. Newspapers get a lot of mileage out of it. It's VERY easy to use, with a shallow learning curve.

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"When it comes to Macs or PCs...PC alll the way...I have to have my right click!!!!"

Thanks to Logitech, my Mac has a "right click", too.

Shallow learning curve?

Are you saying after reading all the above conversation, that any, if any problem, one might have with Adobe Illustrator, it must be that its to hard to learn?
Quick Display Lettering? What for like kids birthday parties, or something?

I find most of my needs as far as anything with type, are met by Quark, Photoshop, & Freehand. I don't think Illustrator can do anything they can't, please let me know if it can, I'd love to hear it. But don't worry about the learning curve.

Illustrator ten is the best version of Illustrator. Canvas is good but can't open DWG files correctly. Illustrator does. Freehand does a lousy job of Rasterizing as well as opening DXF files. Now most of these needs are my needs but if the app can't do it why bother with it. Quark is definately the better program for page layouts.(opinion) I'm just waiting for the PS upgrade for my Mac. Does anyone here know where I can get a cheap 11"x 17" Duplex scanner? I have an 11"x 17" scanner now but found that the duplex process works far better for scanning B/W's. Figure for a B/W comic it will cost you around three grand to put out 3000 copies. This includes cost of material and your time as well as the printers time. So be sure you have a product truly ready for prime time.

I've used Illustrator since version 3.0 and Freehand I think from the same time. I started out in Illustrator and that's probably why I prefer it. There are things like color selection that have always been easier in Illo... But, just like PageMaker vs. Quark, you'll ask 50 people and split it down the middle (I'm a Quarkie for the record, but haven't gotten to play with InDesign yet). Freehand has some really great tools though, the Perspective system is interesting and Freehand supports multi-page documents, so yes, you can do Quark-like stuff in it.

I've also spent a lot of time in CorelDRAW, because when I bought my first graphics pro-level PC... in 1991!.... Illustrator was still stuck at the 4.0 revision for PC, which was a REAL pain in the ass to use as compared to the 5.0 version for Mac. So, I got Corel, and used it for a long time. It's actually an excellent program, but I've found all the crazy interface changes they've made since version 6 to be disconcerting and largely unnecessary for me. I have version 9.0 now but rarely use it. Highly capable program! However, if you are not well-versed in prepress stuff, you'll want to be sure that your printer or service bureau handles CorelDRAW files.

I personally also recommend Painter 6.1 (now also put out by Corel) as a really excellent tool for ARTISTS to create very natural-looking art on the computer. I love it!

Mind you that all these programs have pretty steep learning curves. Whichever ones you start out with, those will likely be the ones you stay with, because you'll spend months or a year learning to use them in some cases.

Finally, I certainly can't argue with the economics of the Adobe Publishing Collection. It will save you hundreds, and gives you everything you need to do this stuff.

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Jeff Zugale
Pagan City Comics
www.pagancity.com

Rather than buying a font from comicraft I'd reccomend www.blambot.com
Nate has several good free fonts for both mac and pc and several reasonably priced pay fonts too.

Or you can go to:
http://www.1001freefonts.com/fontfiles/main.htm

And have a fun time looking through all of the fonts. Download the ones you want [img]/resources/ubb/smile.gif[/img]

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http://www.octaviostudios.fws1.com