As someone coming from Photoshop and moving into Illustrator to a make vector graphics, why is Illustrator so god damn unintuitive?
Why do I have to CTRL + Click a tool to select it's variation? Why can't I right click layers to change their settings?
There is literally NO cohesion between any of these programs, which is made worse by the fact they they LOOK so similar.
Ctrl + Z vs. Ctrl + Shift + Z
>>295800
>No cohesion
>unintuitive
Yer talkin out of your ass m8.
Stop trying to justify using photoshop for vector work just because you're unwilling to learn a new program.
Moving from photoshop to ai was a literal breeze for me. I picked it up in like 15 mins. They're similar enough that it made sense without me having to sit through tutorials.
Sure there's some things specific to the program, but that's an easy enough quirk to pick up and keep going. They're 2 programs that do different things, you cant expect them to work exactly the same. But the UI is damn consistent for almost all the adobe programs.
also
>CTRL + Click a tool to select it's variation
Did you try clicking and holding? Because that's how it's done.
I heard something to the effect that adobe aquired the rights to programs originally from separate devs and eventually brought them all under the CC umbrella - that's why there's so much disparity between its programs workflows.
Could be a total crock of shit though. I've never bothered to actually look into it.
>>295800
you know you can assign shortcuts right? if you're going to click a tool more than 5 times per project you should definitely consider assign it a shortcut you will remember easily.
>>295807
Click and hold, my bad. What's wrong with right-click exactly?
>Have to press a button to delete a layer instead of just selecting it and pressing DEL
>Have to click the tiny ass dropdown menu in the top right of the layer panel to perform layer actions instead of simply right-clicking a layer
>Have to manually open option menus for the tool you're using
I don't know why you guys defend this piece of shit. Usability is so much better in Photoshop. Literally everything that I want to do in Illustrator requires googling to get done. It is NOT intuitive, especially if you're used to Photoshop, which is ridiculous since the UI is almost exactly the same.
>>295813
adobe bought Goldwave and turned it into Audition/Soundbooth, and Macromedia Flash and turned it into Adobe Flash. That's it. Photoshop and Illustrator et. al. are all in-house stuff.
OP: Illustrator is much more versatile than Photoshop. Learn the shortcuts and workflow, particularly:
>t, q, v, a, b, p, and especially r, s & o
>the relationship with shift, control and especially alt when holding down your mouse button in different tools
>the many keyboard shortcuts, alt-ctrl-B, shift-alt-ctrl-D, ctrl-J, ctrl-2 and ctrl-5 etc. and the panel shortcuts
Regarding your original questions:
>Why do I have to CTRL + Click a tool to select it's variation?
You don't. What version are you using?
>Why can't I right click layers to change their settings?
Why do you need to? There are no layer settings besides Color and Name. You may want to check out the Appearance panel though.
Sounds like you need to dig a bit deeper into the program to understand it. But it's worth it!
continued:
>>295822
>What's wrong with right-click exactly?
You can right click, works the same as clicking and holding.
>Have to press a button to delete a layer instead of just selecting it and pressing DEL
Delete key works just fine.
>Have to click the tiny ass dropdown menu in the top right of the layer panel to perform layer actions instead of simply right-clicking a layer
There are zero important layer actions like in Photoshop. What exactly are you trying to do? Normally people rarely even open the Layers panel because there's so little to do.
>Have to manually open option menus for the tool you're using
For the Blob brush yeah, what else?
>inb4 YOU'RE A SHILL
This is why you should use affinity designer
>>295838
if you're famial with photoshop then affinity designer is more of a chore to learn than illustrator shill.
>>295838
Does affinity do vector? The video on their website makes it look like a photo editor.
>>295846
They have a Photoshop competitor, "Affinity Photo" and an Illustrator competitor "Affinity Designer"
They're working on Affinity Publisher right now though so Adobe will be dead in a few years
>>295813
Photoshop and Illustrator have been owned/developed by adobe since before 1994.
The only "new" thing is the CC packaging.
This history stuff isn't hard to look up, you know.
Doesn't read manual, blames program for being suck.
Typical.
>>295875
If the program doesn't work intuitively then it is bad UX design.
>>295878
>>If the program doesn't work intuitively then it is bad UX design.
Illustrator isn't perfect, sure. But it's designed as a complete professional tool, with the expectation that the user will spend a few hours learning the program.
You think AutoCAD is simple to use, has a great UI? Rhino? FormZ? Get real.
Most pro apps aren't designed for a snowflake that needs someone to hold your hand and have Clippy show you where the layer tools are.
The fact that the OP thinks the layers palette in Illustrator needs all these extra options shows that he doesn't have much clue how to use Illustrator. If he did, he'd know that the layers palette is so seldom used that you DONT need all those shortcuts.
I probably use Layers in Illustrator twice a month. It's not like Photoshop. Stop trying to use it like Photoshop.
>>295800
I had the same experience as coming from Photoshop, I thought Illustrator would be the same except with vectors. But they did a damn good job in making it unintuitive.
It made me use Inkscape instead, because I want to work with anchors, paths and shapes in a fast way.
Why can't Illustrator duplicate layers. Who the hell needs artboards.
Now I am slowly trying to learn the, somewhat industry standard, Illustrator
Adobe has kitchen-sinked too many weird tools into Illustrator, IMHO. Photoshop has developed very nicely and has all kinds of useful tools FOR A RASTER PROCESSOR. Illustrator is the greatest program of all time. Just kind of bloated these days.
I remember trying to draw a straight line in Illustrator and being baffled at first.
Stick with it.
>>295919
>Why can't Illustrator duplicate layers.
Drag a layer onto the layer pad icon in the layer menu?
Is there a preference in Illustrator that I can turn on to prevent having to use the rotate tool for text boxes?
rotating text feels random.
sometimes it rotates the text box and path. other times it just rotates the text box.
and i'm using the right type tool. i think i have someone unchecked in my preferences.
>>295838
>no offset path tool
>no blend tool
>expanding strokes to outlines makes them lumpy dirty garbage
call me when it's a professional program.
>>295926
Just an example of how it is intuitive when coming from Photoshop. Right click -> Duplicate is what I would expect to do.
>>295946
Layers don't quite work the same way in Illustrator because layers aren't really used the same way as in Photoshop.
Primarily, I just use them as an organizational tool. Keeping things that I want isolated, and locking backgrounds.
Photoshop uses layers more as a building block system, with each layer adding to the final image. You can use the layers in Illustrator similarly, but when you do end up grouping or merging paths it all ends on the same layer anyway.
Duplicating layers is kind of pointless to me, because I can copy and paste in place in roughly the same time it'd take to duplicate.
It's not really a fault of bad UI, moreso just different workflows between photos and vectors.
>>295818
fucking this
I used photoshop for years, when I hopped over to AI literally every single fucking decision was an improvement in every fucking way
now every time I have to hop back over my fucking bones ache from how FUCKING TRASH photoshop is for absolutely anything else other than tweaking photographs.
I should have known
it's right there in the fucking name
>>295919
>Why can't Illustrator duplicate layers. Who the hell needs artboards.
I use artboards more often than I use layers.
>>295847
Why can't they stick both applications in one package. How hard is that.
fucking money grabbers
>>295878
Object based editing that Illustrator is based on is actually more intuitive than the layer based one Photoshop has. Humans perceive the world as objects so its much closer to our basic understanding.
Photoshop is based on photo processing, an unlikely perception in humans.
>>295919
>Who the hell needs artboards.
To export multiple designs at once, for example with different text. It's faster than exporting every single one separately.
>>295992
>Why can't they stick both applications in one package.
Maybe because they do 2 completely different things, and were written with 2 completely different code bases 25 years ago.
So what I get from this thread is that Illustrator's workflow is entirely different from Photoshop. Does anyone have short to-the-point resource for learning the Illustrator workflow ?
>>295966
drawing stuff with photoshop works fin with me
>inb4 coreldraw
awful program, awful layer management, brushes are quite ok
>>296052
As someone with thousands of hours in both CS and draw I completely disagree.
>>295800
it really depends which way you start. If you start with photoshop, illustrator is gonna be unintuitive. I went the same route as you and HATED illustrator in the beginning. Now i almost never look back. I agree that its kinda weird they have a lot of the same options, but they vary in hotkeys, and they are very different but look very similar.
>>296027
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=how%20to%20learn%20adobe%20illustrator
>>296027
https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/tutorials.html
im just like u op, Ive only made freelance logos in photoshop, then i understand that its a no-no and that i needed to stop being a puss puss and start using Ai and man im struggling, i feel you op, but yeah, its not the same software at all, its a new thing to learn.
guys help! I made a circle in illustrator and then made segments inside the circle and painted each, but when I save it as image there are transparent lines around the segments. how can I remove this? in the edit mode the lines don't show at all and all the strokes are removed
>>295800
Affinity masterrace reporting in
>>296431
Come back and try again with sentences that make sense, and a screenshot or two.
>>296486
I split the circle in two segments and colored them but when I save the pic it has a transparent line between them like the pic (its transparent not white though), but there are no strokes at all on the objects
>>296491
rendering error. The white line isn't _really_ there
>>296584
why??
>>295800
>they they LOOK so similar
Illustrator is in no way, shape, or form similar in appearance to photoshop. The fact that you say something like that makes me want to strangle you.
>>295999
I'm talking about Affinity products. Certainly they weren't developed 25 years ago.
>used amtemulator
I currently got hit with the bad image error and saw the first fix on google that prompted visual c++ distributive for visual studio 2015 and now i cant open it,can anyone help
>>295801
Jesus Christ fucking this. It keeps me up at night wondering why Photoshop won't adopt that hotkey.
Not OP, but related question: I have a ton of experience with image editor for raster stuff, been doing it in GIMP for over a decade now.
I need to make something in vector though for a personal project. What's the best program I should use that would be a easy transition there/what's the best vector editing program around?
Also, how shit are automated raster to vector converters or in program tools for that? Just knowing how vector vs raster works I imagine at best it's still not great and requires further manual cleanup, but does it work not garbage enough that doing it + the cleanup is faster then remaking it from scratch?
For the curious, there's like 20 of these scale charts, which each red box containing another chart, and I want to remake them all in a single vector image. Secondly, is there even a way to then take the resulting vector image and have it be hosted on a website in a way viewers can zoom in and out of it, or would I be better of with flash or something else for that? My issue there is that I imagine learning flash would be even a bigger leap and not worth the investiment for a single thing.
>>297160
also inb4 >gimp
>designing new website for work
>do whole thing in Illustrator
>spend about 50 hours on it
>devs say they needed it in psd
>no problem m8
>opening ai in photoshop flattens the image
>transferring assets in bulk flattens them
>the only way is to copy across each of the hundreds of individual assets and reposition them
>takes fucking hours and hours
>a few days later the director says he's decided to go with different devs
>has already paid them, didn't bother consulting me
>I have to design the thing from scratch to work with their engine
>mfw i have no face
Dynamic link works so well between Audition, Premiere and After Effects, why not Photoshop and Illustrator? Otherwise I have no complaints and actually find Illustrator much easier to use.
>>297168
Okay if you want to save time and money you should start using some prototyping software like Adobe XD or Sketch or Flinto.
If you don't other designers who work faster and better will take all your future clients
>>295800
Where can I obtain a Ps CC 2015/2017 crack
>>297217
Do you even Google?
>>297191
I don't design websites for a living, it was a one-off. And I'm not a freelancer. I'm just annoyed at the lack of compatibility.
>>297168
>opening ai in photoshop flattens the image
In Illustrator, choose export to PSD, with 'Write
Layers' checked.
for next time
>>297280
Wasn't working, apparently an issue with object transparency.
>>297283
Well, I learned something today, tx
>>295800
I have the opposite problem. Illustrator is comfy imo, and I suck at PS.
>>297283
I believe your layers have to all be at 100% in order for it not to fuck them over. I wrestled with this at a job once before discovering the truth
Look guys. I see you all complaining about moving from Illustrator to Photoshop and vice versa, but you don't understand my pain. The first Adobe program I learned was Fireworks and moving from that to Photoshop and from Photoshop to Illustrator has been a fucking odyssey.
>>297160
I'd give inkscape a try as svg is its native file format and it's a very scripting friendly program. also svg is moreless the standard for interactive vector graphics. And there are tons of js libraries for manipulation like d3.js