What Illy CS4 book would you recommend for the beginner to grow with?

Question

Hello All,
             I am looking for a good illustrator cs4 book for the beginner to grow with.
I have read reviews on amazon but thought I might ask the pros.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

The instructions that ship with the program: The Help menu.
I know it's boring, but if you want to learn a new program, the most expedient way is to work through the provided manual, cover to cover. Don't just read it, actually perform the operations it describes.
Third-party books almost universally involve these downsides:
They are expensive.
They are incomplete. They try to walk a fence-edge between rank beginner and intermediate user; between being merely a too-wordy reiteration of the Help files and next-level techniques for the more experienced user. The reason is obvious: the goal is to sell to as wide a range of users as possible. The result is often unsatisfying: They can't possibly include everything in the Help files, so they leave gaps for the beginner. But they feel compelled to appeal to beginners, so the experienced user has to weed through a bunch of entry-level bulk, just to get to the "juicy stuff" he's interested in. He pay's 100% price for about 15% of the content.
The are inefficient. They are full of unnecssary verbiage attempting to be clever, cute, hip, friendly, and thereby supposedly more "approachable." Most fail miserably at this, and the result is you have to read through endless passages of such original content as "this will knock your socks off" and "this is awesome" when what you really need is "just the facts, ma'am." The Help files fall under the stylistic guidelines of technical documentation: They adhere to "just-the-facts, ma'am."
They are short-lived. They go quickly out-of-date, which is one of the reasons why they are too expensive: They have to make their money quickly after release.
I'm not saying don't buy any. I have a small fortune's-worth myself, all but a dozen or so of which I wish I had never bought. With the money I wasted on them (plus interest), I could buy a new Honda Fury. I'm just saying do the included documentation--however painful--first. And keep doing it for new features when new versions are released. That will get you there the quickest, because it will lay the necessary foundations of overall interface scheme and basic object principles. Then, when you have that understanding, look only for books that are targeted toward an at-least intermediate level user. That way, your money will be spent, but it will be better-invested.
JET