Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop & InDesign Programs
The Adobe Suite is comprised of three very powerful graphics applications. Adobe Photoshop is the premiere raster graphics application in the world, and is used by professionals around the world. Illustrator is Adobe’s vector graphics editor, and it widely used to make graphics for print and the web. The last part of the Adobe Suite is InDesign. InDesign is a desktop publishing application that can be used to assemble virtually any document type for publication. While these programs are complex, learning to use the Adobe Suite provides you with some highly marketable and profitable skills.
Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop & InDesign Training
Penn Foster Career School
Photoshop
Photoshop has a range of tools for digital artists. These tools allow users to edit photos in many ways. They can retouch them to make glamor shots, repair them to fix damage or imperfections or cut them up to make collages. Photoshop can also be used to paint or draw elements entirely from scratch.
Artists use Photoshop’s abilities in a number of ways. The photo editing tools in Photoshop are often used in the publishing industry to do things like remove wrinkles or moles from a model or to improve the lighting or color in a photo. Photoshop is also used by archivists to restore old or damaged images.
Aside from its photo editing uses, Photoshop can also be used to paint virtually anything. Website designers often use Photoshop to design the layouts that will form their sites. However, these layouts can themselves be made in part or even entirely from photos.
Illustrator
Adobe Illustrator uses the vector image format. Vector images differ in several ways from the raster based images that Photoshop produces. While raster images are made up of individual dots, vector images are made of mathematically defined shapes. On the one hand this means that vector images are less detailed than raster images. On the other hand, it means that vector files are infinitely expandable without loss of resolution. Vector files are also smaller than raster files.
The vector images produced in Illustrator are used in virtually every type of printed materiel, from logo design to full sized billboards. Like Photoshop, Illustrator can also be used to make the graphical elements used for a website, such as navigation buttons and banner backgrounds.
InDesign
InDesign is used to create publications using the images created by the other two parts of the Adobe Suite. The desktop publishing tools of InDesign allow the user to create a customized page with exactly the properties required. Users can create columns, rows and cells within a document. They can also precisely control the text properties to get a professional look.
The document created using InDesign can be a single page, or it can be multiple pages, each of which can be worked on separately. The final product might be printed, used for the web or saved as a PDF or other digital document, such as one of the various ebook formats.
Learning to use the Adobe Suite
There are many ways you can learn to use the Adobe Suite. There are any number of books you can purchase about the Adobe Suite, as well as countless websites offering advice and tutorials covering the various features of the three programs. However, none of these will provide you with the thing you need most to use the Suite as a professional, which is a degree or certificate. Those who want to use the Adobe Suite to work as a professional graphics artist would be wise to get a certificate or a two or four year degree. Skill alone is not enough to land a job in this field.
Employment Prospects
Once you have obtained training in using the Suite, you will find that there are many avenues for employment. While the publishing industry of course has openings, there are also positions available in advertising, education, government and industry. You might even strike out on your own and offer yourself as a freelance artist.
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