Getting started in Illustrator

Illustrator draws with instructions instead of pixels. Adobe's own guide describes a vector file as a list of instructions that tell a program where to place points on a grid, how to join them up and what colour they should be. Because the picture is rebuilt from those instructions at whatever size it is shown, one file prints sharp on a business card and on a shopfront sign. That is why logos and label artwork are drawn here. Other apps draw vectors too, and the cards below set two of them beside Illustrator. A photograph is the opposite case. It is a raster image, a fixed grid of pixels that goes soft when it is enlarged too far, and it belongs in Photoshop.

This module is for someone who has to make vector artwork, such as a wordmark or a set of icons, and has never drawn a curve by dragging out its handles. It runs in eight lessons. This one covers the screen, the plans and the habits that keep a file usable. The second lesson teaches the Pen tool slowly, because every curve in Illustrator is built from the same anchor points and handles. Then come shapes, with Pathfinder and the Shape Builder, which make most icons faster than the pen does. Type follows, with when to turn it into outlines, and then colour, with swatches set up so that one change reaches every object. The sixth lesson takes Illustrator's AI tools one at a time, with what each costs and where each lets you down, and the seventh covers artboards and export. The last lesson redraws No. 4's wordmark and four matching icons, step by step, then hands the same steps to you.

As of October 2026 the current release is Illustrator 30.8, which Adobe announced on 1 September. Illustrator is sold only as a membership, either by itself as a single app plan or inside a multi-app plan such as Creative Cloud Pro. The app is installed on your own computer and does not need a constant connection, although Adobe's pricing page says it has to go online once every 99 days to check the membership. Adobe's help says you can sign in on two computers, though only one of them can use the apps at a time. Adobe India offers a 7-day free trial. Billing starts on day 8, and the trial page says you can cancel within 14 days of that for a full refund. Check the rupee price on Adobe India's plans page before you pay.

The AI features run on generative credits, and how many you get depends on the plan. Adobe's generative credits FAQ, as read in October 2026, gives a single app plan bought on or after 17 June 2025 just 25 credits a month. Plans bought before that date keep 500. Creative Cloud Pro includes 4,000 credits for premium features and unlimited use of standard ones. In Illustrator the standard features include Text to Vector Graphic, Generative Recolor, Generative Shape Fill and Generative Expand, and Adobe says most standard features use 1 credit a generation. Turntable is premium, and so is anything made with a partner model from another company, such as OpenAI or Google, which includes Concept to Vector. Credits reset each month on the day your plan started, and unused ones do not carry over. Since the May 2026 release your balance has shown in the Application Bar at the top of the window.

File > New opens the New Document dialog, where blank presets for print, web, mobile and social sizes set the dimensions before you start. Once a file is open, Adobe's workspace guide names eight parts of the window. Six of them matter from the first day. The Application Bar runs across the top. The Toolbar on the left holds the tools, and the Control panel, docked along the top of the document window, shows options for whatever tool or object you have picked. The Properties panel on the right does the same job in more depth, and with nothing selected it shows the document's own settings, such as the artboard size. The Contextual Task Bar floats over your work and offers the likely next step, so a new document offers Generate Vectors and Place Image, and a placed photograph offers Image Trace and Retype. The Status bar along the bottom shows the zoom level and the active artboard, and it cannot be hidden.

Two tools do most of the selecting. The Selection tool, V on the keyboard, picks up whole objects. The Direct Selection tool, A, picks up single anchor points and the segments between them, which is how a shape is edited after it has been drawn. The other habit to learn on the first day is Outline view. Press Command-Y on a Mac or Ctrl-Y on Windows and every fill and stroke disappears, leaving the bare paths, and press it again to return to the full preview. Outline view is where you find a stray point, a shape hidden behind another or a curve built from forty points when four would do.