neither, after all "knowing too much could kill your career".

learn both, along with in design, or another dtp program.

Definitely have a general knowledge of both for not only what you can do for a company, but what you can do to your personal work. No matter what, there is always something you need to do while in Illustrator that can only be done in Photoshop, and something you always need to do in Photoshop that can only be done in Illustrator.

I think Photoshop is a given. Many firms will expect you to have some knowledge of it before you walk in the door. I would assume that most of your competition will have some photoshop knowledge, or say that they do.

Most people that "know" Illustrator in architectural offices really have no idea how to use the program. So learning illustrator will be a plus on your resume. I don't think it's a must have skill though.

definitely learn both. . .since they both come from adobe, they utilize similar functions and you will find many things in common. .
illustrator is useful because it allows you to create things (portfolio etc) so i would definitely recommend learning illustrator. the basics are easy to grasp.

i'd say both if you have the option. (people have covered the reasons why)

if you were FORCED to choose one. I'd take photoshop. though you don't have vector graphics, you could fudge the things you'd normally just do in illustrator to some extent while illustrator could NEVER EVER come close to doing anything raster based.

first learn why you want to use the software, then pick a software to do the job. Macromedia makes Freehand that many prefer to illustrator, and a lot of firms dont want to drop the cash on photoshop so they buy paintshop pro or some thing like it.

I personally think that photoshop is the most abused software on the planet, well maybe ms word and powerpoint beat it by a hair. Vectors beat raster in my opinion...

If I'm not mistaken, Adobe just bought Macromedia. Bye-bye Freehand.

Yup, Macro is owned by Adobe. Something like 3.4 billion.


Photoshop is the one to know. Illustrator is great, but you can get by without it. Most firms I've worked for only had one or two copies of Illustrator, but PS was everywhere. You NEED PS.

I doubt adobe will kill freehand, there are too many people who like it over illustrator, and Flash will keep the brand alive.

And I would learn Rhino instead of Form-Z. You can do some pretty sweet stuff with Rhino and Illustrator. Learn the software that you want, if a firm wants you to use a piece of software they can teach you, its called an intership for a reason.

Are you trying to say that most architectural firms do there coloring of cad drawings with Photoshop?

Be careful about assuming a firm will teach you everything. Every job I've had the deal was sealed by knowing FormZ very well. But it's up to you - if you are looking to enhance your marketability or if you want to learn things for your personal design.

I just read the first few posts on this thread, so I apologize if somebody already answered the question. You really do need both Photoshop and Illustrator. If you're going to use one, you really need the other as well. Illustrator can handle vectors. Photoshop obviously cannot, but you'll need the raster editing tools that Photoshop offers. You also should learn InDesign, which is in the same group of products. I generally go from Max or Rhino rendered images to Illustrator, via Photoshop if necessary, and then to assemble final boards/product in InDesign.

I think you all are missing the point of the original question. Of course, you should learn both, it will be helpful to you to learn as much as you can and be as fluent in as many programs as you can because every office has a different method of producing drawings, presentations, renderings, etc.

Obviously, you should be working with vectors in Illustrator, but I know there are many firms that color their plans in Photoshop, and lots of firms don't even have a copy of Illustrator. If you know both, you might be able to show the necessity of using Illustrator, but most firms don't really care. The firm I work for currently exports their plans to PDFs, and then imports and colors them in PS. It looks fine. No one has died because of this arrangement, it's not a big deal.

Freehand will likely go away. Just like GoLive will go bye bye too... Adobe doesn't need two WSIWYG code editors, or vector programs. They may incorporate features of the two programs, but there's no reason to keep both.

forgive me for a dumb question, but i do not have or know illustrator...

can you give me an example of how you work with the vectors? i assume this is for presentation purposes only?

Cyn

Check this out: http://www.uic.edu/cuppa/udv/ai/

pencrush maybe you should step up and tell your firm they are using a screwdriver for a hammer. Thats one way to get the job done, but you cant edit easily, and you have a limit to what you can scale up to. Most firms dont know what software is out there or how to use it right. That is what you as an intern can offer to a firm. yeah lots of firms are too cheap to get the right software, but I would rather have a cheaper raster editor and illustrator than just photoshop...

trace- Oh and yeah Form-Z was the software a few years ago, but is not going to be that way for much longer. I think its like asking do you learn microstation, vector works or AutoCadd, etc. you have to pick one, and every firm has their preference, but if you know one, you can learn a different one, no big deal.

Oh yeah and yes indesign is great...it is also stupid simple to learn, which makes it nice.

, it' hard for me to take you seriously, because you've spelled your user name incorrectly. I don't know why it bothers you if a firm wants to color plans in PS, rather than illustrator. The scalability and other advantages illustrator offers aren't always a necessary benefit. I can easily alter the colored areas using separate layers in a PS document.

I don't think this is the point though. I'm not going to argue with my firm on what software they do or do not have. Hopefully my role as an employee has more value than knowledge of what software might be beneficial to the presentation process.

cyn, vectors are different from raster graphics (most commonly thought of as photos, images, etc.) in several ways. Vectors are infinitely scalable. If i do a drawing in vector format, I can make it as large as I want, without any loss in quality or information. If I take a raster image and try to make it larger, the software will have to make up color information to fill in the blank pixels that have been created to make the image larger, or stretch out the pixels to make the image larger. (Photos look pixelated, jaggy, whatever) Vector graphics also are generally smaller in file size. This can be useful for a variety of reasons. Many like to use vector graphics when dealing with cad drawings, because they are also vector based graphics. This is why you can print something at 1/16" or 1" scale without have the linework suffer. So they're not really for presentation only, and they aren't any better than raster graphics, they just do different things.

thank you harold for the link.

pencrush--hi, yeah i get the basic difference between bitmaps and vectors but if you are going to edit or scale, i don't understand why you wouldn't want to do that in your drafting package in the first place. and can't you just print the scale you want in a rendering package or the drafting package without bringing it into illustrator? what does illustrator add?

aren't most architects taking a 3-d model or 2-d drawing from max or autocad and bringing it into illustrator to print a drawing for a client? why else would you bring it into illustrator? i'm not quite getting it yet...

i can understand why one would want to use photoshop because you can change the contrast etc and use texture maps and photo montage etc. for presentation purposes but if one was to use vectors isn't that more of a design issue? so why not do it in the modeling or drafting package?

, your point is certainly valid. There's no reason why you can't rerender or print to the scale you want in your drafting package. The scalability is only part of the issue. I don't think many people are bringing a drawing into illustrator to print. The colored plan example is a good one. If you bring a plan into illustrator at 1/8" and color it in illustrator (illustrator will give better control and and a larger variety of fills than most cad programs) you can take that same plan and rescale it (including it's colored info)to 1/4 without having to recolor or reexport it from cad. You can also tweak lineweights and other stuff that you could also do in cad, but with the presentation information intact.

Cyn. It depends on what you want to do. As Pencrush pointed out, color planning is one strength, but there are other reasons as well. Text control is one of them:-- if you want to do text-based documentation through boxes, etc. directly onto the image, Illustrator will enable you to do it much more quickly and prettily than acad. Image assembly is another. You may need to combine renders, graphic data and photographs from multiple sources onto one document and be able to work with vector-based elements as elements even while effectively manipulating raster elements on the same page. Illustrator will give you much better simultaneous control of multiple image data types than acad can.

For example, you may want to combine a vector-based base map of blocks/lots/building outlines which you exported from Esri ArcView (which can export to .ai but not to .dwg easily), with a PNG (or other format) raster rendering of your building from a 3d modelling/rendering program like max or rhino, with a-cad vectors of plans, elevations and sections, all on one sheet, all documented with text boxes. Putting this together is much easier in Illustrator than in either your 3d modelling package or a-cad alone, and photoshop can't do it at all, because of the lack of abaility to handle vectors.

Just remember to close all of your polylines before you export from acad or you'll fall into one of the outer circles of hell :). And xref generously, where appropriate if and when you have to go back into your 3d package or acad.

not sure if someone has said it yet, but another advantage to illustrator is that the file sizes are much much smaller than ps files.

not if you've embeded raster images. then it skyrockets.

there should be no reason to embed an image just link it.

if you're trying to ensure portability (transfering files to someone else, sending out to print, etc.) you'll want to embed. i also always embed the files at the very end when the file is finalized. that way if the directory structure changes or the file is changed, the original illustrator file doesn't change.

Is there a way to "package" illustrator file like you can package an InDesign Project? When you package an InDesign file, you get a brand new file structure with all of your linked files, fonts, and any other data sources you used in the file. Seems like this would be nice to have in any program where you can link files . . . I mean, PowerPoint does it too for gods sake!

i'm assuming not. since indesign is made my adobe as well. and they probably want you to buy both!

arr! foiled again by big business!

true center. apologies. i just never move my files unless they are going to a printer. you can update your links though so if you don't have many, it might be worth it to do that.

I find indesign easier and faster for assembling presentation boards. I would do all my stuff in Photoshop and illustrator, import and link in indesign. Assembling in illustrator slows the computer like hell even if I link the files.

oh, I agree on assembling boards. My illustrator comments above were meant to refer to assembling individual images from elements of work produced in different apps, like acad, photoshop, max, and so forth.

Seeking advice-

I have some elevations in Autocad2000 that I would like to color in Illustrator. Don't have Illustrator yet, but, have noticed an issue concerning the transfer of a dwg file into the illustrator program. Will I be able to pick inside of, say, a window and color it like I would with Autocad's hatch routines? Tracing over an existing elevation in Illustrator seems to be cumbersome and ridiculous. Cadgate seems to remedy this problem, I think, but was wondering if CS allows a vector drawing to be colored in Illustrator like you would in Autocad?

Any help to this is greatly appreciated.