Hi everyone, I'm brand new to the forum and have a question about whether Illustrator is an appropriate piece of software for a project I have in mind.

I'm trying to design a greeting card and I want to produce the graphics and drawings on my Mac and then print out the cards. If I bought a graphics tablet and a stylus is it possible for me to make my drawing on the tablet and have it transfer straight into Illustrator?

If so, is Illustrator capable of then shading and coloring the image, adjusting the lines, adjusting the size etc? In other words is Illustrator the product you would use for such a project or is there something else better suited to such a thing?

Whatever you can tell me is wonderful and I'm most appreciative. Thank you very much, I'll speak to someone soon. I'm always at (210) 865-2732 and cmgreenb...@hotmail.com. Best.

Chris.

You can certainly use Illustrator for all that. However, it would depend greatly on your style of illustration and your willingness/ability to learn the application. It's not something you could do tomorrow if you just bought the application today.

For a novice, Photoshop is generally a more intuitive application for painting.

Great hearing from you Scott, thanks much for getting back to me concerning my using Illustrator for the greeting cards. I have CS4 so maybe I'll start there. Is it something that is doable for a person just beginning? I don't need anything terribly sophisticated at first, just something to create some hand drawn computer generated images. Looking forward to speaking with you again. Thanks!

Chris

Welcome to Illy, Chris. I've been with it since the 80's :-)
Start off by reading all the Help info or the handbook. Print it out and keep it for bedside reading. Learn the basic vector stuff first before you move on to the frills. Examine all the tools, starting off with the basic shapes, the Pen tool and Type. Understand fully how layers work. Use CMYK files for printing (not RGB).
Once you feel you're reasonably competent, move on to masking and effects. Illy's good for most things you will ever need to do. If you're conversant with Photoshop, that's a useful companion to Illy too. For multi-page stuff take a look at InDesign.
Steve.