Illustrator....???

Im really intrested in entering the graphic design field yet, I have little experience. I've done some Photoshop, and Im not that bad at it but you can tell Im new to it... but the question is should I learn or do I have to learn illustrator to compete in this field?Illustrator....???
When you go into college, you will learn all that in your curriculum. You should know illustrator.....and InDesign...etc. you want to learn as much as you can. BUT keep in mind, knowing software inside and out does not make you a great designer, YOU make you a great designer through your education, and learning proper design techniques and elements...how to incorporate typography, color, photography, illustration, etc. w/ one another.





DESPITE what so many ding-dongs think, we don't push a button and make it happen...you can tell the difference between a good designer and a hack in about 2 seconds! :)Illustrator....???
The first answerer gave you a very good response. I'd like to add a little, since I'm currently in school for graphic design myself.





Yes, you should learn Illustrator. Photoshop is amazing, it is such a complex and deep program the real experts will tell you no-one can learn everything it does (but don't let that hold you back it just means there is so much to explore and try and experiment with.) That said, Illustrator is intended to do things that Photoshop itself cannot do. One of those things is creating an image (whatever it may be) that can be resized without losing quality. It's the difference between a raster program (pixel based) such as Photoshop and a vector program (lines, curves, points, with mathematics determining how these things work, and don't worry, you don't have to understand the math part, it's the computer that does the work) such as Illustrator.





If you've ever played around with an image you copied off the Internet, you know that when you try to take small image and enlarge it in Photoshop, it tends to get fuzzy, pixelated or jagged. That's because all you are doing is making the pixels bigger. You would use Illustrator for something that you want to be able to enlarge. For example, say you were designing a logo for a business that wanted to use that logo on letterhead (stationary), business cards, product boxes, trucks, and billboards, you could design the logo at a size that would look good small (on that letter head and business cards). Then you could take that logo and size it way up, say from 2 x 3 inches to 10 x 15 FEET for a billboard, and it would still look good.





InDesign was mentioned, and you will want to learn that too, its Adobe's major page layout program.





The latest version of the Adobe Creative Suite really does a good job of further integration of all its programs and depending on which version you get, includes other programs too, such as Flash and Dreamweaver for designing for the Web (those are two of the programs Adobe got when it bought Macromedia). As a graphic designer it's a good idea to learn at least some of the basics of web design, it's in very high demand. (I will be learning this stuff hopefully starting this spring.)





Hope that helps, and if you want to talk some more about this, feel free to contact me through my profile.