Illustrator's type features have evolved to the point where you can design and layout a single-page document and the author dedicates a good section of the book to the many Illustrator type tools such as point, area and path type and converting type to outlines. Another section of the book that has become more important as Illustrator's tools have advanced is the section that covers the blend, gradient and mesh. The book demonstrates several great examples of shading, modeling and working with transparency for print projects. Live Color is one of Illustrator's most popular new tools and the author shows you how to use this feature to experiment with color schemes and recolor artwork.

If you want to explore the world of 3D digital art but you are not ready for a full-blown 3D software, you will enjoy the chapter on Illustrator's live 3D effects including warps, envelopes and Live 3D. I especially liked the examples of 3D artwork which demonstrated mapping artwork onto your 3D objects, which is a good introduction to 3D techniques.

With the release of CS3, these is a major increase in the integration between Illustrator^R and the other Adobe^R products including Flash^R, InDesign^R, Photoshop^R, Acrobat^R and After Effects^R. The author covers several aspects of moving art between programs such as working in RGB color mode in Illustrator, image slicing and animation.

Sharon Stever is the originator of the Illustrator WOW! books and has been creating digital art for over two decades.

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