If you use Illustrator regularly then you know the program can be a bit annoying at times, just like it's cousin, Photoshop. In this article I'm going to share some of the useful tips, tricks, and treats I've discovered in my time using AI (Version CS). Hopefully these will help you as well and make using the program more of a joy than a pain.
To help me describe some of the following I will be enlisting the help of my trusty robot friend here.
If you like to grill (as I do) then you need to invite this guy to your next BBQ.
Ok, so on with the show ...
Tips & Tricks
Locate That Object
Have you ever clicked on an object/path/fill/stroke and wondered 'Where is it?' If your Illustrator documents tend to get lengthy (as mine often do) then it can be quite annoying having to scroll through the layer palette looking for the object you just clicked on. Next time you do this simply click the little arrow in the upper right corner of the Layers Palette and choose 'Locate Object'. This will take you right to the layer that you clicked on. Neat-O.
Copy Group
Have you ever wanted to copy an entire group of objects to a whole new layer? I often do this to experiment with changes I want to make without effecting the original group. To do this simply make a new layer right above the group you want to copy, then select the group and (while holding down the Alt key) click and hold on the small red square to the right of the grouped layer and drag it up onto your new layer. Viola! New group. Nifty, eh?
Align Objects
Sometimes I want to align an object to another object without having all the other objects join in. To align a single object with another select them all, then click one more time on the one object you want to remain stationary. This will apply the alignment in relation to the fixed object.
Rotate the Baseboard
Sometimes I like to have a guide to use other than horizontal or vertical. For those times I set the grids and other defaults to different angles. In the General Preferences (Edit > Preferences) set the Constrain box to the required angle you want (in this case I typed in '50') and the grid will adapt, as will such occurrences as drawing rectangles (as you can see in the image below). Unfortunately, guides will stay the same as usual.
Align to Artboard
I have Illustrator CS and I was always envious of my friends who had the newer versions of the program, because they had access to one feature I did not: align to artboard. Then one day I was fooling around and discovered I do have this feature. It's just hidden away.
When you have an object that want to align to the artboard simply click the little arrow in the upper right hand corner of the Align Pallete and select Align to Artboard from the fly-out menu. Now you'll always have this option available to you and you won't have to be jealous of your friends anymore.
Shrink Your File Size
If you're submitting your vector artwork to someplace like iStock you want to make sure your AI files are not too large. In order to make this more efficient you need to save them without all the palette items that you haven't used (brushes, symbols, etc.). To get rid of all these unused items, Illustrator comes with an Action that is automatically installed into the Actions palette called Delete Unused Palette Items. This was nice of Adobe, I think.
Use Smart Guides
One of the biggest annoyances (at least for me) is trying to grab hold of those dang corner handles. If Illustrator was a game remote I'd broken it long ago throwing it across the room in aggravation. Well, it's easy to remedy this little quirk by simply turning on Smart Guides (View > Smart Guides). Smart Guides are exactly that - smart. They'll tell you when your pointer is over an anchor or a handle and also illuminate the outlines of other paths if you hover over them. This can be incredibly useful because if you're trying to align a path to another path Smart Guides will tell you by showing the word "intersect".
Change Corner Radius
An easy way to change the corner radius on the fly is by simply using the up and down arrows on your keyboard while drawing out your rectangle on the canvas.
Create Multiple Objects
To create multiple objects as you draw hold down the tilde (~) key. The image below was created simply by drawing with the Rectangle while keeping the tilde key depressed. I still had the grid tilted at 50 degrees when I did this. Drawing out shapes like this would be cool for making those neat abstract header backgrounds. This will work for the rounded rectangle, ellipse, polygon, and star shapes, too.
Treats
Plug-ins
Here's a nifty new plug-in I found for Illustrator. It's called 'Select Menu' by Rick Johnson of Graffix Software. Download it, unzip it, then drag it into your Plug-ins folder and you're good to go. To use it simply go to Select > Object and you’ve now got a whole new set of options. The ones I use the most are Open Paths and Stray Points. Don't forget to check out some of the other cool Illustrator plug-ins while you're on Rick's site - such as Concatenate, Nudge Palette, Cutting Tools, and Square-Up.
I found out about this awesome plug-in while reading Explaining Illustrator 8.0 EPS Files by Jennifer Borton. This is an excellent article about Adobe Illustrator 8.0 EPS files so if you submit your artwork to places like iStock I would highly recommend giving it a read.
Thanks, Jen :)
Saving As Illustrator 8.0 Compatible
Speaking of EPS files ... just recently I submitted some artwork to iStock and one of their requirements is that you save your artwork as a vector EPS file (Adobe Illustrator 8-compatible). I'd never done this before so I had to look up how to do it on Google. The majority of information I found all basically said the same thing.
The only problem with this is that I didn't have any of those options when I went to File > Save a Copy. Instead all I had was this little dialogue box with some Font and PDF options. No format menu. No drop-down menu. No way to save my file as Adobe Illustrator 8-compatible. And then I found this excellent help group called AllExperts where you can ask experts your questions on a whole slew of topics. I found the Illustrator experts and asked about this and the reply was ...
Thanks, Amy :)
Extra Treats
When I got my Creative Suite I didn't worry about anything other than installing Photoshop and Illustrator. I didn't need Version Cue and I was never a fan of InDesign. Unfortunately, I was unaware that there is a huge amount of 'cool extras' that came installed with Illustrator. It can be accessed through a button on the Welcome screen called (naturally) Cool Extras. If you've disabled the welcome screen you can just go to Help > Welcome Screen to bring it up.
Clicking this button will bring up a huge PDF file containing a treasure trove of items. They're grouped into sections - including sample pages, fonts, templates, brushes, borders, gradients, patterns, Web elements, symbols, and swatches. Before going to the Internet looking for vector objects, first check the bounty in your Illustrator folder.
Well, folks, that's it for this episode of Everyday Illustrator. If the response to this article is good enough I'm thinking of making it a regular bi-weekly event so make sure you take a moment and leave a comment. To keep abreast of this and future articles be sure to subscribe to TBODC.
Have fun!
To help me describe some of the following I will be enlisting the help of my trusty robot friend here.
If you like to grill (as I do) then you need to invite this guy to your next BBQ.
Ok, so on with the show ...
Tips & Tricks
Locate That Object
Have you ever clicked on an object/path/fill/stroke and wondered 'Where is it?' If your Illustrator documents tend to get lengthy (as mine often do) then it can be quite annoying having to scroll through the layer palette looking for the object you just clicked on. Next time you do this simply click the little arrow in the upper right corner of the Layers Palette and choose 'Locate Object'. This will take you right to the layer that you clicked on. Neat-O.
Copy Group
Have you ever wanted to copy an entire group of objects to a whole new layer? I often do this to experiment with changes I want to make without effecting the original group. To do this simply make a new layer right above the group you want to copy, then select the group and (while holding down the Alt key) click and hold on the small red square to the right of the grouped layer and drag it up onto your new layer. Viola! New group. Nifty, eh?
Align Objects
Sometimes I want to align an object to another object without having all the other objects join in. To align a single object with another select them all, then click one more time on the one object you want to remain stationary. This will apply the alignment in relation to the fixed object.
Rotate the Baseboard
Sometimes I like to have a guide to use other than horizontal or vertical. For those times I set the grids and other defaults to different angles. In the General Preferences (Edit > Preferences) set the Constrain box to the required angle you want (in this case I typed in '50') and the grid will adapt, as will such occurrences as drawing rectangles (as you can see in the image below). Unfortunately, guides will stay the same as usual.
Align to Artboard
I have Illustrator CS and I was always envious of my friends who had the newer versions of the program, because they had access to one feature I did not: align to artboard. Then one day I was fooling around and discovered I do have this feature. It's just hidden away.
When you have an object that want to align to the artboard simply click the little arrow in the upper right hand corner of the Align Pallete and select Align to Artboard from the fly-out menu. Now you'll always have this option available to you and you won't have to be jealous of your friends anymore.
Shrink Your File Size
If you're submitting your vector artwork to someplace like iStock you want to make sure your AI files are not too large. In order to make this more efficient you need to save them without all the palette items that you haven't used (brushes, symbols, etc.). To get rid of all these unused items, Illustrator comes with an Action that is automatically installed into the Actions palette called Delete Unused Palette Items. This was nice of Adobe, I think.
Use Smart Guides
One of the biggest annoyances (at least for me) is trying to grab hold of those dang corner handles. If Illustrator was a game remote I'd broken it long ago throwing it across the room in aggravation. Well, it's easy to remedy this little quirk by simply turning on Smart Guides (View > Smart Guides). Smart Guides are exactly that - smart. They'll tell you when your pointer is over an anchor or a handle and also illuminate the outlines of other paths if you hover over them. This can be incredibly useful because if you're trying to align a path to another path Smart Guides will tell you by showing the word "intersect".
Change Corner Radius
An easy way to change the corner radius on the fly is by simply using the up and down arrows on your keyboard while drawing out your rectangle on the canvas.
Create Multiple Objects
To create multiple objects as you draw hold down the tilde (~) key. The image below was created simply by drawing with the Rectangle while keeping the tilde key depressed. I still had the grid tilted at 50 degrees when I did this. Drawing out shapes like this would be cool for making those neat abstract header backgrounds. This will work for the rounded rectangle, ellipse, polygon, and star shapes, too.
Treats
Plug-ins
Here's a nifty new plug-in I found for Illustrator. It's called 'Select Menu' by Rick Johnson of Graffix Software. Download it, unzip it, then drag it into your Plug-ins folder and you're good to go. To use it simply go to Select > Object and you’ve now got a whole new set of options. The ones I use the most are Open Paths and Stray Points. Don't forget to check out some of the other cool Illustrator plug-ins while you're on Rick's site - such as Concatenate, Nudge Palette, Cutting Tools, and Square-Up.
I found out about this awesome plug-in while reading Explaining Illustrator 8.0 EPS Files by Jennifer Borton. This is an excellent article about Adobe Illustrator 8.0 EPS files so if you submit your artwork to places like iStock I would highly recommend giving it a read.
Thanks, Jen :)
Saving As Illustrator 8.0 Compatible
Speaking of EPS files ... just recently I submitted some artwork to iStock and one of their requirements is that you save your artwork as a vector EPS file (Adobe Illustrator 8-compatible). I'd never done this before so I had to look up how to do it on Google. The majority of information I found all basically said the same thing.
1. Open the file in Illustrator and choose File > Save a Copy.
2. Specify a name and location for the copy, choose Illustrator (.AI) from the Save As Type menu (Windows) or choose Adobe Illustrator Document from the Format menu (Mac OS), and then click Save.
3. Choose Illustrator 8.0 from the Compatibility pop-up menu, select Preserve Appearance, and then click OK.
4. Click OK when Illustrator returns the alert, "You are saving this document in Illustrator 8.0 format. Saving this document in an older format may disable some editing features when the document is read back in."
The only problem with this is that I didn't have any of those options when I went to File > Save a Copy. Instead all I had was this little dialogue box with some Font and PDF options. No format menu. No drop-down menu. No way to save my file as Adobe Illustrator 8-compatible. And then I found this excellent help group called AllExperts where you can ask experts your questions on a whole slew of topics. I found the Illustrator experts and asked about this and the reply was ...
If I recall, CS was strange that way. I believe all of those legacy options were tucked under the File > Export menu. So you have to Export instead of Save. Look for them there. With CS2, that function moved back to the save menu.
-Amy Pace, AllExperts
Thanks, Amy :)
Extra Treats
When I got my Creative Suite I didn't worry about anything other than installing Photoshop and Illustrator. I didn't need Version Cue and I was never a fan of InDesign. Unfortunately, I was unaware that there is a huge amount of 'cool extras' that came installed with Illustrator. It can be accessed through a button on the Welcome screen called (naturally) Cool Extras. If you've disabled the welcome screen you can just go to Help > Welcome Screen to bring it up.
Clicking this button will bring up a huge PDF file containing a treasure trove of items. They're grouped into sections - including sample pages, fonts, templates, brushes, borders, gradients, patterns, Web elements, symbols, and swatches. Before going to the Internet looking for vector objects, first check the bounty in your Illustrator folder.
Well, folks, that's it for this episode of Everyday Illustrator. If the response to this article is good enough I'm thinking of making it a regular bi-weekly event so make sure you take a moment and leave a comment. To keep abreast of this and future articles be sure to subscribe to TBODC.
Have fun!
Good Tips & Trick Doug....
Tricks are regarding the Macro media Flash, how to works with the Macro media Flash. Create the Layers in the Flash all the tricks are describe in this...
Well I responded to my previous post asking visitors to this blog what they would like to see featured here and wrote this Illustrator tutorial. So far I've only received two replies. Unless more people take the time to leave comments to my articles I have no idea what visitors like or dislike.
Until that starts happening I'm not going to knock myself out trying to come up with things people want. I have many talents, but ESP isn't one of them.
From now on I'm simply going to write what I want and if you frequent my blog and like what you read (or don't like it) you'll have to invest a few seconds and leave a comment about it.
These trips are quite similar to the macromedia flash. I am able to learn how to create a layers and motion movies. Thanks for sharing.
exactly why I don't use adobe, paint shop pro ftw
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