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Illustrator User Guide?

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
March 29, 2021
8 replies
4074 views

Any OLD Illustrator users here? I still think having a "User Guide" printed book is the easiest and fastest way to get help. I wish Adobe would go back to printing these books. Does anyone know of something equivelent to a user guide?

Adobe could slow down the updates and print user guides once a year or once every two years, it would still help. They could even sell it and I would buy it, as it used to come with the program.

So far, I haven't been able to find the electronic version of any such source that is as easy to use, it used to take me seconds to find a solution. Now we have to go to a forum, post, wait and see. Or look up answers, search and search.

Thanks.

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Correct answer Ton Frederiks

An old unfortunately, but the most recent one:

https://helpx.adobe.com/pdf/illustrator_reference.pdf

R

Rubéncho

Participant

Deberían permitirle volver a descargar las guías de usuario de todas las aplicaciones como se hacía antes, ya que eso facilitaba mucho el aprendizaje, no creo que sea justo que ya no se pueda hacer.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

@Rubéncho schrieb:

Deberían permitirle volver a descargar las guías de usuario de todas las aplicaciones como se hacía antes, ya que eso facilitaba mucho el aprendizaje, no creo que sea justo que ya no se pueda hacer.

The Uservoice-link has been posted already. Please post that request over there, so the relevant people read it.

D

david misconish

Known Participant

I agree with your sentiment.

It would be oh so very easy to create, update and support if the "old school book version" was an online searchable resource. Once created it would be even easier to update and maintain. A small (inside Adobe) team could pound that out in a very short time and receive high accolades for it. It baffles me why they wouldn't want or be willing to put forth such a tiny effort to support those who pay them handsomely month after month for their, under-explained/barely supported tools.

Met1

Legend

https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/user-guide.html is just the front page, there's a plethora of tutorials and online help...

Gallucci ArtAuthor

Known Participant

that is precisely why I asked about a user guide, the tutorials and tons of comments and posts by the community takes too long to find answers. Even when I type in key words or phrases, I do not find what I am looking for unless I spend far too long searching for it. Opening a book took seconds and the answers were there.

D

david misconish

Known Participant

I agree. Why would they choose to provide just a few (weak/low-level) videos?

D

david misconish

Known Participant

I myself am an OLD(School) Illustrator user and I agree that the lack of issuing any type of user guide is at best discourteous. Unfortunately, they seem quite happy to *Offload* (i.e. burden and/or inconvenience) the task to their *community*. It seems like they used to consider us customers (or even clients) who deserved professional, well-organized, easy-to-use, comprehensive instructions and guides. Hmmm,.. whatever happened to supporting those who put/keep you in business? I guess in the software business that's progress?

It's even worse when you consider that we live in a time when it would be magnitudes easier than ever to produce, share and update truly useful and robust supporting content- Instead they offer tutorials that are so basic, they're practically useless.

just my 2¢

Gallucci ArtAuthor

Known Participant

well said! Thank you. I hope Adobe reads your response.

jane-e

Community Expert

@Gallucci Art wrote:
well said! Thank you. I hope Adobe reads your response.

This is a user-to-user forum. You can tell Adobe here https://illustrator.uservoice.com/ where the product developers will see it.

~ Jane

Kurt Gold

Community Expert

I do understand and know that, Monika.

It is a dubious business nonetheless, in my eyes.

Kurt Gold

Community Expert

I don't think they would need to buy all of the tomes, Monika.

A basic and elaborate manual from time to time and some booklets beyond the basics when new features are introduced would be sufficient, as far as I can see.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

A basic and elaborate manual from time to time

By @Kurt Gold

That's pretty much what is happening to most instruction books apart from the "Classroom in a book". That one has to be updated with every version, since it's the offical workbook for certified Adobe training centers. Other instruction books get a full update when an edition is sold.

Kurt Gold

Community Expert

There are authors that try to compensate that gap with some instruction books.

Often it is a kind of funny business, because year after year weighty tomes are published for each new version of Illustrator, although a small booklet would be sufficient to explain some new features that were introduced in the most recent versions of Illustrator.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

There are authors that try to compensate that gap with some instruction books.

Often it is a kind of funny business, because year after year weighty tomes are published for each new version of Illustrator, although a small booklet would be sufficient to explain some new features that were introduced in the most recent versions of Illustrator.

By @Kurt Gold

And then all new users of Illustrator (who are the target audience for instruction books) would need to buy all the previous editions of those books in order to learn the complete application. And also they would need to go through all the editions in order to follow up which old chapter became outdated with the current version, because there is a better workflow available.

Gallucci ArtAuthor

Known Participant

Adobe doesn't need to update as often as they do. Many of the changes aren't even necessary. It's like the developers need to keep exta busy now throwing too many updates at us as fast as they can, complete waste of time and money.

Ton Frederiks

Correct answer

Community Expert

An old unfortunately, but the most recent one:

https://helpx.adobe.com/pdf/illustrator_reference.pdf

jane-e

Community Expert

@Gallucci Art wrote:

I wish Adobe would go back to printing these books. Does anyone know of something equivelent to a user guide?

Adobe made the decision to stop publishing the PDFs that we loved. In addition to the resource from Ton, Adobe suggests that you use the online help and thinks it is equivalent:

https://helpx.adobe.com/support/illustrator.html

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