OK, so I have a pressing question for some of the more skilled digital artists. I'm wondering what differences there are between Photoshop and Illustrator? Do they both pretty much do the same thing, or do each of them have their seperate attributes? I'm fairly new, but quite familiar with how Photoshop works. Are there certain things that Illustrator can do that Photoshop can't, or is it just two different ways of "skinning the same cat" so to speak?
A "BIG" Thank You in advance for anyone who can shed some light on this subject.

Photoshop for an artist is a more intense painting program. It deals mostly in raster images. You're more likely to use paintbrushes and the like here to get the effects you're going for. Photoshop is great for a comic like mine where fx and colors are super heavy.

Illustrator is a vector oriented program. It's great for artists who concentrate ink, lettering and working layouts. Gradient style coloring is easier for some artists in Illustrator. A good example would be Alpha Shade. While their work is actually done in Flash you can achieve a lot of the same ideas in Illustrator. :)

Hope that helps - it still a bit too early for me.

The 2 programs have become more and more similiar with each update.

Illustrator is usually used for graphic elements. Type, & the such.

Photoshop is generally used to create or modify illustrative elements.

For instance, I scan in my inks, fill in the blacks & do all greyscaling in Photoshop. I create the lettering in Illustrator, & import said type into the Photoshop file.

The newest Photoshop actually accomodates vector type, bt I still use the programs traditionally.

Later,
Chip

Pros usually use Photoshop for coloring and Illustrator for digital inking and lettering, although you can do it all in one program.

You can color in illustrator (but not paint) and you can letter in photoshop (like I do cause I don't have Illustrator and already worked out a method that works well enough).

From a technical standpoint, Photoshop is raster imaging while Illustrator is vector imaging. They're about as far as possible from one another. Photoshop is basically burning images into pixels, so to speak. Vectors are based on a mathematical equation. What does that mean? It means that a Photoshop image at 100% can be blown up to 140% without losing any detail. A vector image can be blown up to infinity and not lose any detail.

From a practical standpoint, I use Photoshop for scanning, image manipulation, flatting and coloring. Illustrator I use for lettering and its actually easier for me to letter in Illustrator than it is to letter in photoshop.

Simply put.
Illustrator = vector based program
Photoshop = raster based program

Vector art is the kind of images you see on flash animation. Zooming in or out of the screen will still retain smoothness of the images. Down side of using vector based programs is that won't allow you to do artworks like painting.

Here's the comparison image when the image is zoomed in. On the left is raster based program. On the right is vector based program.

Of course the zooming problem can be overstepped by working in a large enough resolution. For example I work on a page-sized template in 400dpi.

Which means 2750x4175, heh.