People new to Adobe Illustrator often say that they find the program complex and hard work. When we hold Adobe Illustrator classes in London, we acknowledge the need to help delegates get rid of the belief that Illustrator is a difficult piece of software to use. We have found that there are three main aspects to showing users that Illustrator is no harder or more annoying than any other application.



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 new users find is that they are unable to carry out a certain operation because it is not permissible under the current circumstances or at that point in time. For example, you want to resize an object and you end up rotating or moving it 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 have just started using a program like Illustrator, it is to be expected that you will make mistakes: things may go a little wrong or even get completely screwed up. The main thing is develop the "Undo reflex". For example, if you move an object by accident, don't try to manually put it back where it was, just choose Undo from the Edit menu or use the keyboard shortcut Control-Z (Command-Z on a Macintosh). If you Undo too much, you can use the Redo command to take you forward again. (The keyboard shortcut for the Redo command is Control-Shift-Z.)

If your effort to create a drawing has gone horribly wrong, the best thing to do is to bite the bullet and choose Revert from the File menu. This is a way of saying "OK, this isn't working. I give up!" The Revert command discards all of the changes you have made to the document since it was last saved and can be another useful way of avoiding unnecessary frustration.