Two prolific authors of how-to books have collaborated on this fun yet comprehensive look at Illustrator, a great application that is even better in version 9. Real World Adobe Illustrator 9 doesn't require any prior experience, laying a good foundation before diving into more advanced tasks. More experienced users can scan chapter 1, which lists what's new in version 9 and points to the appropriate chapters you can read to get up to speed fast.

The book is divided into four sections: "Starting", "Creating", "Changing" and "Colouring". This is particularly suited to the vector-based nature of Illustrator. More than in the case of a pixel-based application like Photoshop, the great advantage of working with art in Illustrator is how easy it is to modify objects.

Following along with instructions in the book isn't difficult, although you have to pay careful attention to details in the screen shots, especially if you skip around. Probably to keep the price of the book down, most of the illustrations are small and black and white (though there is one colour insert section). Moreover, the images lean more toward clip art than professional-looking projects.

On the other hand, this book is reader-friendly. The text size is comfortable to read and the captions are clear and detailed, which means you can flip through, look just at the pictures and still learn a lot. The text is casual and conversational, and the more serious information is set off typographically. --Angelynn Grant