W4D's Blog

If I had to pick the features that have changed the most in CS4, I would have to include Gradients. So you can expect to see many upcoming tips about this greatly enhanced feature. A lot of the Gradient options that could only be accessed through the Gradient panel, in previous versions of Illustrator, have been blended right into the Gradient tool itself. When you have a Gradient filled object selected and choose the Gradient tool, the new Gradient widget appears over the object, showing the beginning, end, and angle of the Gradient. Hover over this widget with your mouse and a Gradient Ramp, and Stops appear. You can click and drag on the Stops to move them or their Midpoints. You can also double-click on a Stop and a Color panel pops up to change the Color or even the Opacity of the Stop. That’s right, Transparent Gradient Stops. How cool is that?

 On behalf of layers magazine

By default, the Blob Brush, will consume and join with any object of the same color Fill (with no Stroke) as you click and drag over the object making the resulting object one big vector shape. These eating habits include both selected and unselected objects. Is there any way to make the Blob only combine with selected objects? Sure! Just double-click on the Blob tool in the Tools panel to open its Option window. Check “Selection Limits Merge” and press OK to apply. Now the Blob will only merge with the selected objects that it comes in contact with.

 On behalf of layers magazine.

I doubt many of you are old enough to remember the 1958 classic sci-fi thriller “The Blob” staring Steve McQueen. It was about an alien life form that consumes everything it comes in contact with, as it grows and grows to an immense size. That’s exactly what the new Blob Brush does in Illustrator. To give it a try, press Shift+B to select the Blob Brush from the Tools panel. Click and drag to scribble a bit with the tool and release your mouse. You’ll find it to be very similar to painting with a real brush, in that, all overlapping areas, as you paint, become one large filled shape. Scribble some more over an existing object of the same color and the new Blob Brush object consumes the old object becoming one bigger vector shape. It’s fun to use in combination with the Eraser tool (Shift+E) to remove parts of an existing Blob object.

On behalf of layers magazine

Finally, if you need to create artwork in Illustrator with a Bleed, it’s simple in CS4. Simply go to File>New to open the New Document Setup window. In the new Bleed section of the window, click once on the top part of the Blue button to add an eighth of an inch additional Bleed with each click. The four Bleed setting are Linked together by default to keep them all equal. Press OK and your document will open with Bleed Guides just like InDesign. If you set up multiple Artboards, each will have its own Bleed Guides.

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