W4D's Blog

I just got a call from an old CS3 student who had just installed CS4 on his computer. “What’s with that gray scratch area outside of the Artboard?, he asked. “Is there a way to make the area outside my document white again? I find the gray distracting and could not find a preference to change it back,” he continued.

I said, “There is an easy way to make your scratch area white again, but you won’t find it in Preferences. Just double click on the Artboard tool and uncheck ‘Fade region outside Artboard’ in the Global section and press OK. Your scratch area should bleach right out to white again.”

On behalf of layer magazine.

If you hold down Shft + Right Arrow, Left Arrow, Up Arrow, or Down Arrow this will make your item move 10 x times faster then without shift depending on what your keyboard increment is set to in preferences.

Change the Default font for new documents to any font you want. Open the startup profile (found inside <Username/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Illustrator CS4/New Document Profiles>) open the Character Styles Panel and set your preferred font in the [Normal Character Style] and then save the file. The font you set will now be default for all new documents created with that startup profile.

Before erasing objects that use brushes or vector effects, select them and choose Object > Expand Appearance. Now the eraser will erase what you want without re-applying the brush or effect attributes to the path. You can do the same thing for stroked objects by choosing Object > Expand.

I got a call from an artist friend who had just upgraded to Illustrator CS4 with a question about changing the size of an Artboard. He started, I’ve just completed an illustration, and I’d like to resize the Artboard to the size of my finished art. Is there a quick way to do this.

I answered, “Sure! Select the Rectangle tool (M) and click and drag across your finished illustration to set up your desired ‘cropping’ of the art. Choose the Artboard tool (Shift+O) and double-click anywhere within the rectangle. The Artboard will instantly resize to the selected rectangle. Then just delete the rectangle.”

On behalf of layers magazine.

In an advanced Illustrator class one artist asked, “Is there a quick way to switch to Stops in the Gradient panel. I’d like to switch two of the middle Stops without changing their position in the Gradient Ramp.”

I answered, “No problem! Simply hold down your Option key (Alt on PC), then click and drag either of the two Stops and drop it on top of the other Stop. The colors of the two Stops will swap places and maintain their original positions on the Gradient Ramp.

On behalf of layers magazine.

Finally, in CS4, the answer is no! Select an object, and apply a Radial Gradient Swatch from the Swatches panel. Then open the Gradient panel (Window>Gradient) and in the first field on the right, enter a number that’s less than or greater than 100%. Doing this changes the ratio of the height of the radial Gradient as compared to the width. In other words, the Gradient is no longer circular, it’s elliptical. If you enter a number of degrees other than 0 in the Angle field to the left, the elliptical Gradient will rotate. Wow! An easy way to create a rotated elliptical gradient, something that’s been on my Illustrator wish list since Gradients were first introduced in Illustrator 5.

On behalf of layers magazine.

You can get to Preferences in a whole new way in CS4. Deselect any selected objects (Command+Shift+A [PC: Control+Shift+A]). Look in the Control panel and click the new Preferences button. You’ll go directly to the General section of Preferences. At last there’s a quick way to get into Preferences that’s exactly the same on a Mac as it is on a PC.

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.

Before Effects existed in Adobe Illustrator, Filters were the most common way to change the look of an object. The problem with Filters has always been that they changed the actual vector of the original object, so once you applied them, there was no easy way to go back. Because of the incredible flexibility of Effects, with each new version of Illustrator, they’ve become more and more important as the value of Filters diminished. In CS3, some long-standing Filter menu commands were moved into other menus, which was a sign of things to come. Because now, in CS4, the entire Filter menu is gone.

But is there a way to make Effects work like Filters? Yes! After you’re totally happy with the Effects applied to a selected object, you can go to Object>Expand Appearance, and the vector will change as if a Filter had been applied.

On behalf of layers magazine.