W4D's Blog

 I received by email a wonderful piece of artwork from teacher and Layers Tips of the Day reader, Mike Skocko. Mike wrote, “Thought you might appreciate the attached art. It was NOT created using Live Trace. It’s 23.5 hours of Pen tool mastery by Jeff Payne, one of my students. But here’s the question. Is there a way for Illustrator to count the individual points? I was just wondering how many times my student, Jeff, clicked to make this magical illustration come to life?”

I replied, “Beautiful art! And yes there is a way to count all of the Paths and Anchor Points in this amazing illustration. Start by Selecting All (Command+A [Control+A on PC]) and looking in the Document Info panel (Window>Document Info). If the information is not showing in the panel, select ‘Objects’ from under the Options menu of the panel.” Illustrator counted 2132 Paths (666 open, 1466 closed) containing an astounding 19,714 Anchor Points. Wow!

 On behalf of layers magazine.

In response to a tip I wrote a while back, I got the following question from Layers Tip of the Day reader, Wilson Kolim. “I was reading your tip, ‘Master Pages in Illustrator,’ and I was wondering what’s the difference in saving a file as AI and AIT for use as a Template? Is there some benefit in saving an AIT that AI doesn’t offer?”

I responded, “You could use an AI file as a Template. There is very little difference between the two. But with a real Template (AIT), you have absolutely no chance of overwriting the original design, because it will always open as an untitled document. How important is this? Not very, until that one time you make a mistake and totally mess up your AI template. Been there, done that.”

 On behalf of layers magazine.

Like lots of other artists, I use Suitcase to automatically open fonts that are contained within Illustrator and InDesign files. After I upgraded to Suitcase Fusion 2, I immediately realized that the application has some new, unexpected features in its bag of tricks.

When I looked under the Type menu in Illustrator, I discovered a new menu listing for Suitcase Fusion 2. Contained in its submenu is a ‘Collect Fonts for Output’ command, which answers the longtime question “What fonts are used in this file and where do I find them on my computer?” When you select the Collect Fonts command, a window opens to name a fonts folder and save it where you’d like on your computer.

 On behalf of layers magazine.

I got a call from one of my recent Illustrator students with a problem that happens to everyone at some point or another. She was working on a map for a brochure with a lot of type labels throughout the art. No matter how hard she tried she kept selecting her type labels instead of the part of the map she really wanted to select. “She said, “I’m being really careful and I know my aim is not that bad. How can I avoid selecting type unintentionally?”

I replied, “You need to change your Preferences to make it harder to select type objects by accident. Press Command+K (Control+K on PC) and go to the Type section. Check ‘Type Object Selection by Path Only’ and press OK. Type will now only be selected when you click precisely on its Baseline (Path or Area Type edge). You may also want to turn on Smart Guides under the View menu, so when your Selection tool is positioned to select a Type object, the object will be highlighted. Don’t forget to change your Preferences back when you’re done.

On behalf of layers magazine.

Aligning groups of objects to your Artboard keeps getting easier and easier. With the last major alignment improvement in a previous version of Illustrator, you could use the Align panel (Window>Align) to Align objects or grouped objects to other selected object as well as to the Artboard.

In CS4, there’s another way to Align objects or groups to your Artboard, which in most cases is even easier. Make sure Smart Guides are enabled (View>Smart Guides), then select the objects that have been grouped (Object>Group) with the Selection tool (V). Then drag the Group toward the center of the Artboard. When Smart Guides displays the word “center,” the Group is perfectly centered to the Artboard. Smart Guides just keep getting smarter.

 On behalf of layers magazine.

“Is there a quick way to find the center of your Artboard in Illustrator?” one artist asked as we discussed Alignment in a training session. I answered, “Yes! You can actually mark the center of your Artboard, by double-clicking on the Artboard tool. In the Options window that opens, check the Show Center Mark option in the Display section, and press OK. This creates cross hairs to mark the center of your Artboard. If you change the size of your Artboard, the cross hairs will automatically recenter themselves.”

On behalf of layers magazine.

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.

I got an email from one of my students, who was using the knowledge she gained from InDesign training to learn Illustrator on her own. She ran into a problem however, when using Illustrator’s Type tool (T). Why? In InDesign, clicking with the Type tool on a empty area of your document does nothing. In Illustrator, clicking with the Type tool creates a Point Type object, which is type that starts at a point and is not contained within a Frame. The second major difference becomes apparent when you deselect a object that was created with any of the Type tools in Illustrator. Type objects that have no Stroke or Fill cannot be seen when not selected. By the time she realized what was happening, she had countless invisible type objects. Her question, “Is there a quick way to find and delete all of these unneeded objects?”

I answered, “If you look under the Select menu>Object and choose Stray Points, all unseen single point objects will be selected. What a lot of users don’t know is that those invisible, unused Type objects, including Area Type Frames, are also select by the Stray Points command. Once selected all of these Strays can easily be deleted by pressing the Delete key.

On behalf of layers magazine.

The following tip came from a question asked by fine artist Idaherma Williams, one of my Illustrator students. She was printing a design at 100% and some of the art on her Artboard, all of which was within the printable area, was not printing. How could that possibly happen?

Here’s a little-known fact. In the window that opens when you go to File>Print, you can click on the Print Preview and drag it to a different position. That’s exactly what happened with a slip of the mouse, which moved half of her artwork outside of the printable area of the page.

On behalf of layers magazine.

In a recent tip, I discussed setting up your own custom Preflight Profiles. You can easily Embed a saved Profile into a layout by opening the Preflight panel (Window>Output>Preflight) and clicking the Embed Profile button (a document with a paperclip icon) to the upper right in the panel. The question is, should you Embed a profile in a layout?

If you want to use a particular Profile, it’s not a bad idea to Embed it. If you don’t, the default Working Profile will be used instead the next time you open the layout. You can actually Unembed a Profile at anytime, by going to the Preflight menu (next to the Errors indicator to the bottom left of the document window) and choosing Define Profiles. In the window that opens, choose Unembed Profile from the popup menu to the lower left of the window and press OK. So it’s not a big deal to change your mind.

On behalf of layers magazine.