Browsing Posts in Information update
“My design team returned from their training day rejuvenated and inspired. From the absolute beginners, to those who were much more advanced, -they couldn’t wait to get back to their pc’s to try out their new skills. Although the course was only one day- the results are already showing with increased confidence and productivity in the team, brilliant!”
Rachel Cooper – Design Director – Scantex Europe
I was training a group of advanced computer graphic artists, who were new to Illustrator. In a discussion about print production, one artist said, “In Photoshop, I can turn off or on various combinations the CMYK ‘plates’ in the Channels panel. I find it useful in seeing how much of a particular color is being used. I know there’s no Channels panel in Illustrator, but is there a way to turn plates on or off?”
“Yes, I answered, in CS4, there’s a new panel called Separations Preview (Window>Separation Preview), which allows you to do just that. It’s also a great way to avoid mistakes and surprises in your Illustrator art. Just recently, I found a CMYK object in a 1-color logo that I designed. When I turned off the CMYK plates in the panel, part of my logo disappeared when viewing just the PMS Spot Color. Even if I looked at a proof, this probably would have slipped by totally unnoticed.”
On behalf of layers magazine.
Select the Star tool, which is hidden under the Rectangle tool. If you click and drag with the tool, you’ll create the classic five-point American Flag Star. But is there a way to click and drag with the tool and increase the number of points? If you’ve been paying attention to my recent tips, I’m sure you know. While clicking and dragging with the Star tool, press your Up Arrow key to increase the number of points in the star, or your Down Arrow key to decrease the number of points.
On behalf of layers magazine.
In Illustrator CS4, when you open more than one document at a time, they are organized in windows that are Tabbed going across the top of the screen. One of the first things I tried in exploring this upgrade was to see if the Tabs could be reordered in the same way as tabbed panel groups in CS3. And the answer is absolutely! To give it a try, open three or more Illustrator documents at one time. To reorder the document Tabs, simply click on the Tab you wish to move and drag it to a new position to the left or right.
On behalf of layers magazine
In Illustrator CS4, there’s been a nice improvement in Aligning and Distributing object using the Align panel. Now when you select the objects to be Aligned or Distributed with your Selection tool (V), and click again on one of the objects to choose it a the Key object, it is highlighted with a much thicker selection. This makes the Key object extremely obvious, which was not the case in CS3. So when you click on an Align or Distribute button in the panel, you can be sure which object all other objects will be Aligned to or Distributed from.
On behalf of layers magazine
There’s something new in Creative Suite applications called the Application Bar, which can be found above the Control panel. My favorite part of this new feature is the ability to arrange two or more open documents in a far more organized fashion using a variety of presets. To give it a try, open four Illustrator documents. By pressing the Arrange Documents button in the Application Bar, you can choose to display your documents with tabs going across the top of the document window, or in a grid, or tiled vertically or horizontally. I finding this feature extremely useful especially when comparing various documents such as logo designs in Illustrator.
On behalf of layers magazine.
One feature that users have been requesting for years is the ability to have multiple pages in Illustrator. In CS3, the Crop Areas feature was a first step toward fulfilling this notion. Now in CS4, you can create documents with up to 100 Artboards right in the Document Setup window (File>New>Document Setup). All you need to do is specify the number of Artboards, the Spacing between them, a Grid/Arrangement, and press OK to open. But, will this ability to create multiple Artboards replace InDesign as a layout application? No I don’t think so. Why? For the same reason that the drawing tools in InDesign do not make it a great program for designing logos.
On behalf of layers magazine
In Illustrator CS4, you can select an object and see a preview of how it will look with any Graphic Style applied before you actually apply it. To see what I mean, draw an object with a drawing tool other than the Rectangle tool. Open the Graphic Styles panel if it’s not already open (Window>Graphic Styles). With your object still selected, Control-click (Mac) or right-click on the Style in the panel you’d like to preview. The selected object will be seen in a preview that pops up over the Graphic Styles panel.
On behalf of Layers magazine
Suzanne Murphy of Thistle Printing Limited, emailed the following question to me. “I work with a particular PMS Library all the time and have to open it each time I launch Illustrator. Is there a way to keep these Swatches open all the time, and for the panel to display the way I want. Every time I open Illustrator I have to set the Swatches to ‘Small List View,’ and ‘Show Find Field’ under the panel’s Options menu. A tad annoying!”
I wrote back, “Great question! If you’d like a particular Color Book panel open all the time, open it and select ‘Persistent,’ ‘Small List View,’ and ‘Show Find Field’ under the panel’s Options menu. Then save a Workspace that includes this particular panel (Window>Workspace>Save Workspace.) Name the Workspace and press OK. Any time you select that Workspace from under the Window menu this Color Book Swatches panel will be open and remain open as part of that Workspace. It will also maintain the Find Field and the List View as part of your Workspace.”
On behalf of layers magazine
