How To Avoid Frustration When Learning Adobe Illustrator

New users to Adobe Illustrator often complain that they find the program "fiddly" and frustrating. When we run Adobe training courses, we recognise that part of our job is rid people of this perception of Illustrator as a difficult program to use. We have identified three main elements to making people aware that Illustrator is no more difficult or frustrating than any other program.

To start with, we show them how to read and understand the extensive visual clues provided by the software as you perform various operations. Next, we keep reminding new users how easy it is to revert your drawing back to the way it was before things started going wrong. And, finally, we keep telling our students that they have to highlight the right tool to be able to perform a give operation.

Illustrator beginners will often hit a roadblock where they are unable to carry out a certain operation because Illustrator will not permit it at that point in time or under the current circumstances. For example, they might want to change the size of an object and they end up rotating or moving it around the page instead.

If your whole drawing has gone seriously wrong, perhaps the easiest thing to do is to take it on the chin and choose the Revert command from the File menu. This is like saying "OK, I give up. This isn't working!" File - Revert will discard every change you have made to the file since the last time you saved it and can be a very useful way of avoiding unnecessary frustration.

Another thing that phases new Illustrator users is when they find they are unable to carry out a certain operation because it can't actually be done under the current set of circumstances or at that moment in time. For example, they might want to resize a shape and they end up rotating it or changing its position instead.

Avoiding this problem is not hard. You just have to make sure that you have the right tool selected. So, if you want to manipulate an existing object, you just ensure that you have the Selection tool highlighted. One of the first shortcuts that we teach people who come on our Illustrator training courses is that you can temporarily activate the Selection tool by just pressing the Control key (or Command for Mac users).

If you a new user to a program like Illustrator, it is inevitable that you will make errors: things may go slightly wrong or even get completely messed up. The key thing here is to learn the Undo habit. For example, if you accidentally move an object don't try to manually put it back where it was, simply choose Edit - Undo or use the shortcut Control-Z (Command-Z on a Mac). If you Undo too far back, you can use the Redo command to come forward again. (The shortcut for Redo is Control-Shift-Z.)

If your effort to create a drawing has gone completely wrong, the best thing to do is to accept defeat and choose the Revert command from the File menu. This is a way of admitting "This just isn't working. I submit!" The Revert command abandons all of the modifications you have made to the document since it was last saved and can be another useful way of avoiding user headaches.

By: Andrew Whiteman

The The writer of this article is a trainer and developer with Macresource Computer Solutions, a UK IT training company offering Adobe Illustrator training courses at their central London training centre.

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