Long ago, in the nearly pre-historic past and as a part of my studies at a design and engineering college, I was planted down in a tiny, stuffy computer lab and forced to master Macromedia FreeHand, a geometric modeling application allowing the creation and editing of vector graphic files for print and the Web, while relying mostly on geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and polygons to represent images as you create them. I recall mostly a class full of blank, puzzled faces as the software instructors assigned to us tried to explain the interactions between the different shapes created and how to manipulate these.

While back then vector play seemed to be all the rage at our humble little school, by the time our graduating class was out the door, diploma in hand and in search of their first “real” gigs in design and graphics, FreeHand was already dead buried and eulogized: Adobe’s competing software, Illustrator, had taken over the market, and was admittedly much more fun to use.

Like the classic Photoshop interface which I was already familiar with, Illustrator provided many new options for typesetting, fonts and image layout, as well as supporting plug-ins and other extensions that made projects easier. However, Illustrator was like a surprise cold pail of water for anyone who’d been training on FreeHand, and most of my friends found themselves lost, desperately seeking tips on how to catch up with Illustrator and its vast abilities.

So while this may be a little late for my frustrated former classmates, you still have every chance to get acquainted with the terrific abilities of Adobe Illustrator, as well as other software applications published by Adobe. With the help of Total Training’s software training videos, you can proceed at your own pace, learning the entire Adobe Creative Suite right on your own computer. Lessons are structured into segments dealing with the different tools and features of each application, allowing you to get familiar with all the tools you will be using as you gain experience. Check it out - learn how to create and color objects in Illustrator for an easy start: