Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator which is better for Mapping????

[spiderfate]

Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator which is better for Mapping????

i generally use photoshop because its the only program im familiar with but i heard people use Illustrator. i was jsu wondering what the difference is and if their are features which are better for cartography?

[Ascension]

From a theoretical standpoint vector (Illustrator) would be better because that would allow for zooming in and out with ease without pixellation distortion. That makes it good for technical things. I prefer more artistic things and less technically precise so I go with raster (Photoshop).

[RjBeals]

a combination of both is usually the best way.

[ravells]

If you go to the software section on the site, it's discussed at length on one of the stickies.

[spiderfate]

hey thanks ill check out the software discussion.

[Midgardsormr]

I feel like I should also jump in to say that mapping in Illustrator is often done with a set of plug-ins that cost almost as much as the software itself does. I forget the name of the plug-in suite at the moment.

[spiderfate]

i would love to know the name of those plug in suit if you remember.

[guyanonymous]

A limitation, though, that I've found in Illustrator, which drives me nuts is the limit on the number of vertexes in a path/ink line you are permitted. When tracing out a complex coast, etc, I often hit the limit early and am unable to trace the whole coast in one go, which makes it difficult to get a decent continuous outline/pen effect. I haven't done much with paths in PS, so I'm not sure if it kicks in here on or not; I usually use the other selection tools and layers.

[Midgardsormr]

I hadn't noticed such a limitation. But I generally don't trace with the pen tool--I use the pencil. Are oyou using an older version? Or maybe it's just a limit with bezier curves; they do need a bit of computation to display.

Those plugins are called MAPublisher.

[guyanonymous]

I hadn't noticed such a limitation. But I generally don't trace with the pen tool--I use the pencil. Are you using an older version? Or maybe it's just a limit with bezier curves; they do need a bit of computation to display.

It's been over a year now (CS4 is what I've been using), but even the pencil had limitations if you go long enough...I believe it starts removing/averaging points starting at the beginning of your pencil tracing and following through, though I could be mis-remembering that aspect.

I'll have to go back and experiment some more....after my initial frustrations (lots of time lost tracing to no avail) and experiments to test things, I've not returned to see if things have changed.