Illustrator! Short and Sweet

Adobe Illustrator is probably the second most used program. I think it is a very fun program that really lets your creative side loose. Beginning to use Illustrator can be very difficult for some. Personally I think this is one of the easier ones because it's pretty self explanatory. It is definitely easier to get a hold of than photoshop. Probably the only aspect of this program that is difficult is having to think of an idea to create. And to create it from scratch is even more difficult.

To keep the discussion of illustrator short and sweet I'm just going over the general mechanics. I am not a huge fan of illustrator because it requires a certain level of creativity to be able to shoot out good looking ideas, and I'm more of a gradually idea builder. If you are very creative, imaginative, and very into vector based work I'd definitely recommend this program. Vector based art does not use pixels, such as you will see in photoshop. In illustrator you are not working with an image but with a vector based graphic with paths. 

I have attached an image to illustrate the difference between raster and vector based art. You can see that the vector art is very smooth and precise, while the raster work looks very pixelated. Obviously raster images will not be ideal to work with in illustrator. If you do plan on implementing and image into illustrator be sure to image trace that image to convert it to a path based piece of work that you are able to alter and edit. But I strongly recommend just editing your images in photoshop before hand and then placing it into illustrator. To place in illustrator you can either do File>open or File>place. My preference is File>place but feel free to do whatever feels right for you. Once again be sure to comment and follow!