Why Photoshop & not Illustrator?

[AlanShutko]

I like using Illustrator, although I'm only a very beginning mapper here. Graphic styles and symbols make it quick and easy to throw together things once you get some stuff together.

When I was playing in a Temple of Elemental Evil game, I did the mapping real-time on illustrator (and shared the screen to an iPad so others could see the map). It's not the most pretty map, but I think it turned out well for being real-time.

One thing I forgot to mention: I found the Illustrator Essential Training by Morty Golding on lynda.com to be extremely helpful in understanding how Illustrator works. It has a very idiosyncratic interface, but it has a pretty strong internal logic. Once I understood that logic (where tools tend to be, the common key modifiers things use, the Appearance panel, etc) Illustrator began to make a lot more sense to me and became easier to use. Today, I often get frustrated at work doing something in Visio or another Microsoft program, because it would be so much easier to do in Illustrator (once you know how).

Lynda.com is pricy but I think it's worth it. It has good training on many creative apps and the videos worked much better for me than the books did.