ILLUSTRATOR
understand why. With a little know-how and a few clicks of your mouse, you can learn to
draw nearly anything your mind can imagine! While it’s true this application has many different
tools, panels, customizable options, and special features that you will need to understand to
get the most out of it, Adobe does a great job of creating tools and panels that have repeating
functionality, making it easy for you to learn the program quickly and intuitively. This chapter
will introduce you to the workspace, tools, and panels. The Illustrator Workspace.
When you first launch Illustrator, you’ll see a workspace that includes a welcome screen in the
center, an application bar at the top with the application frame below it, the Tools panel to the
left, and the collapsed default panels docked to the right.
Magnification
The magnification area displays the document’s magnification,
which can be any number between 3.13% and 6400%. Use the
dropdown menu button to adjust the zoom setting.
Artboard Navigation
When more than one artboard is detected, the first, previous,
next, and last buttons become active, allowing you to quickly
jump to or select the desired artboard in the workspace.
Display Area
This area can be customized through
the menu’s Show submenu to
display the current tool, date and
time, number of undos and redos,
the document’s color profile,
or the status of the managed file.
You can also use this area to access
Version Cue commands or see the current file in Adobe Bridge
by selecting Reveal In Bridge.
The Artboard
The artboard is the active rectangular area in your workspace
that defines what will be printed, as shown in the example in
Figure 1-5. Objects can be positioned right up to the edge (to
create a “bleed”) or even outside of the artboard bounds, but
only the objects inside the artboard will print. You’ll set the size
and quantity of artboards each time you create a new file.
Customizing the Workspace
Different projects can often require different configurations of
panels and tools within the workspace. In Illustrator, you can
create and save your own custom layouts and reuse them at
any time. To save your own custom workspace, first set up the
Panels
Use Illustrator’s panels, located in the “dock” along the right
side of your screen, to edit your work, customize tool settings,
accomplish particular tasks, and improve your workflow. By
default, the dock is collapsed. To expand it, click the tiny
left-facing double arrows once at the top of the dock. Panels
are grouped into families of similar tools. For example, the
Swatches panel is grouped with the Brushes and Symbols.
Most panels share certain features, such as a button bar at
the bottom, a flyout options menu, and the ability to expand,
collapse, and be docked to the right edge of the workspace.
Here’s a brief overview of each panel:
Actions: Use this panel to record and play a series of
steps or operations.
Align: This panel allows you to align objects.
Appearance: This panel lets you view, build, and
apply attributes to objects such as multiple fills, multiple
strokes, transparency, and effects.
Attributes: Use this panel to view overprinting
information and any web URLs associated with a
selected object.
Brushes: This panel lets you select a brush type.
Color: Use this panel to select and apply color to your
work.
Color Guide: This panel gives you access to the Live
Color guide.
Control: This is the Control panel, where you can
customize individual tool settings.
Document Info: Use this panel to view file information
such as artboard size, color mode, font details, and ruler
units.
Flattener Preview: This panel lets you see flattened
artwork and adjust flattener settings.
Gradient: This panel lets you apply and adjust gradients.
Graphic Styles :Use this panel to view, create, and
apply custom graphic styles.
Info: This panel displays information about selected
objects, such as X/Y coordinates, width and height, and
color values for the stroke and fill.
Layers: Use this panel to organize your work on
different layers.
Links: This panel shows a listing of all placed objects
that are linked to the active document.
Magic: Wand Use this panel to adjust the Magic Wand
tool settings.
Navigator: Use this panel to view and adjust the
magnification of a document.
Pathfinder: This panel allows you to apply
transformations to add, subtract, trim, intersect,
exclude, and merge objects.
Separations Preview: This panel gives you a separations
overprint preview of your document.
Stroke: Use this panel to adjust stroke settings such as
weight, miter limit, alignment, dashed line, and cap and
join shape.
SVG Interactivity: This panel allows you to link
JavaScript functions to vector graphics from external
JavaScript files.
Swatches: This panel displays preset color, gradient, and
pattern swatches, custom swatches, and swatch libraries.
Symbols: This panel displays preset vector symbols
and symbol libraries. It also lets you define and work
with new custom symbols.
Tools: This is your Tools panel, where you can access
and use each of the program’s tools to create and
manipulate the paths and shapes on your artboard.
Transform: Use this panel to apply transformations, such
as scaling, rotating, and shearing, to selected artwork.
Transparency: This panel lets you adjust the opacity
of selected objects, apply blending modes, and apply
special opacity settings to grouped objects.
Type: Use this panel to access text-related panels,
including Character, Character Styles, Flash Text,
Glyphs, OpenType, Paragraph, Paragraph Styles, and
Tabs.
Variables: Use this panel to set database options when
creating data-driven graphics.
Organizing Panels
While you’ll likely grow to love the organized layout of the
docked panels along the right edge of your workspace, there
Work with Panels
With panels you can do any of the following:
To open a panel: select the panel by its name from the Window menu (or use the
keyboard shortcut listed next to the panel name in the Window menu). When a panel
is opened, a checkmark will appear next to the panel name in the Window menu.
To close a panel, click the tiny X on the top right corner of the panel, or right-click
(Win) or CTRL+click (Mac) in the gray area of the panel’s tab to show the context
menu and then choose Close Panel or Close Group.
To dock and undock panels: click and drag a panel by its tab to the new desired
location, which can be inside the existing panel group, into another panel group, into
the dock as its own panel group, or outside the dock.
To adjust the height of some of the panels within the dock: place your cursor above
the dark gray divider line between any two panel groups, then click and drag when
you see the vertical double-sided arrow.
To reset the panel: locations to their default layout positions, press the new
Workspace button on the Control panel (or select Window | Workspace) and choose
the Basic or Essentials layout from the sub-menu.
The Tools Panel
The Tools panel can be expanded,
collapsed, hidden, visible, docked, and undocked for freefloating
placement in your workspace. To see a tooltip
displaying the name and keyboard shortcut of a tool (such as P
for the Pen Tool), hover your mouse over any of the tool icons.
You can also do any of the following:
To hide or show the Tools panel, select Window | Tools.
To use a tool, click its icon to select it.
To undock and move the Tools panel into the workspace,
click and drag it from its top tab.
To toggle between single column and double column
display, click the double arrow in the tab bar at the top
of the Tools panel.
To open a tool’s options dialog box, double-click the
tool’s icon.
Flyout Menus
Each of the tools that has a tiny black
triangle next to it has a flyout menu
beneath it containing a family of
similar tools. To see the flyout menu,
like the one shown in Figure 1-10,
click and hold your mouse on that tool.
When the flyout menu appears, select
any of the other tools by releasing your
mouse when your cursor is floating
above the desired tool.
To cycle through the tools that
are hidden without opening the
flyout menu, hold down the
ALT (Win) or OPTION (Mac) key
while clicking the desired tool.
With the flyout menu showing,
drag your pointer over the tiny
black arrow at the right edge
of the tearoff menu to detach
the flyout menu onto your
artboard.
To close a detached flyout
menu panel, click the close
button in the panel’s title bar.
Tearoff Menus
A copy of the flyout menu can be “torn off” from the main Tools
panel and moved anywhere on the artboard without permanently
removing the same tools from the Tools panel. To tearoff any
of the flyout menus, drag your mouse to the tearoff bar on the
right edge of the flyout menu, as shown in Figure 1-11. After
you release your mouse, the tearoff menu will appear as its own
moveable and closeable mini Tools panel.
Tools and Tool Options
This section will give you a quick overview of the Tools panel.
A complete listing of all the available
tools on the Tools panel including all of the tools hidden in each
of the flyout menus.
Selection Tools
Selection: The default tool used to select and move
objects.
Direct Selection: Used to select specific lines or
segments of an object.
Magic Wand: Used to make selections based on object
fill and stroke color, stroke weight, object opacity, and
blending mode.
Lasso: Used to make selections by dragging around desired objects.
Drawing, Painting, and Type Tools
Pen: Used to draw straight line segments and Bézier
curves. See Chapter 3.
Type: Used to add text to the artboard. See Chapter 10.
Line Segment: Used to make line segments, spirals,
and grids.
Rectangle: Used to draw primitive shapes such as
rectangles, rounded rectangles, ellipses, polygons, stars,
and flares.
Paintbrush: Used to paint lines and shapes.
Pencil: Used to draw freehand lines and shapes. See
Blob Brush: Used to paint lines with compound paths.
Eraser: Used to erase strokes and fills from objects
Reshaping, Symbol, and Graphs Tools
Rotate: Used to rotate a selected object.
Scale: Used to scale a selected object.
Warp:Used to warp transform a selected object.
Free Transform: Used to transform a selected object.
Symbol Sprayer: Used to create master symbols and
instances.
Column Graph: Used to generate data-driven business
graphs and charts.
Special Painting and Blending Type Tools
Mesh: Used to apply mesh gradients to selected
objects.
Gradient: Used to apply gradients to selected objects.
Eyedropper: Used to select objects by appearance
attributes.
Blend: Used to create shape and color blends between
selected objects.
Live Paint Bucket: Used to apply Live Paint to a Live
Paint group.
Live Paint Selection: Used to select specified areas
within a Live Paint group.
Slicing, Artboard, Moving, and Zoom Tools
Artboard: Used to draw single and multiple artboard
layouts.
Slice: Used to cut selected artwork into slices prior to
optimizing graphics for the Web.
Hand: Used to reposition the view of the artboard
within the workspace.
Zoom: Used to zoom in and out of the artwork.
Stroke and Fill Tools
Used to specify the stroke and fill color for any selected
object or path. You can toggle the active status of the Fill
and Stroke icons by pressing the X key on your keyboard.
Fill: To specify the fill color of a selected object,
click the square Fill icon to activate the fill and
change the color using the Swatches or Colors panel.
Stroke:To specify the stroke color of a selected
object, click the Stroke icon to activate the stroke
and change the color using the Swatches or Colors
panel.
TIPS: To remove the color completely from an object’s stroke and/or fill, select the object and click
the None icon (the white square with the red diagonal slash) below the stroke and fill icons
on the Tools panel. You can also apply the None color attribute to the active stroke or fill by
pressing the (/) key on your keyboard.
Screen Mode Tools
Click here (or press the F key on your keyboard) to toggle
between three different screen modes for the workspace:
Normal Screen Mode: Shows full screen with
application bar, document groups bar, artboard,
rulers, Tools panel, and panels.
Full Screen Mode with Menu Bar: Shows full
screen with application bar, artboard, Tools panel,
and panels.
Full Screen Mode: Shows expanded artboard with
rulers. All other workspace features are hidden. To get
out of this mode, press the F key on your keyboard.
Custom Shortcuts
If there’s a tool or action you use repeatedly that doesn’t have a
keyboard shortcut assigned to it already, make your own!
To create a custom keyboard shortcut, perform the
following steps:
1. Select Edit | Keyboard Shortcuts to open the keyboard
shortcut dialog box.
2. Click the Save button to create a duplicate copy of the
Illustrator Defaults keyboard shortcuts with your own
name in order to preserve the original and keep your
shortcuts separate.
3. In the Save Keyset File dialog box, enter a name (for
example, MyShortcuts) for the new shortcuts file and
click the OK button. You will now see this new name
displaying the Set menu at the top of the dialog box.
4. Select Tools or Menu Commands from the dropdown
menu below the Set menu to see a listing of the existing
tool or menu command keyboard shortcuts at the bottom
of the dialog box.
5. Scroll down to the tool or menu command you’d like to
create a custom shortcut for.
6. Click your cursor in the blank Shortcut field next to the
command line you’d like to customize, and then enter
the desired keyboard shortcut. If the shortcut is already
taken by another tool or menu command, an alert
message will display in the bottom of the dialog box.
If this occurs, try a different keyboard shortcut. If the
shortcut is available, the field will accept your input.
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