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I have noticed that my post a while ago about how frustrating CS4 can be has been one of my most popular articles to date. I took this as you folks have some questions about CS4 and Illustrator in general.

Recently, with the help of Media Militia, I put out a call for your questions to be answered here. I’d like to personally thank everyone who sent in an email with questions. If you have a question that you’d like me to answer then send me a note; I’m happy to add you to the list for Round Two in the future

Illustrator CS4 Questions/Answers Round One

Question One:

What are the most common keyboard shortcuts to know in Illustrator?

Answer:

I probably don’t know all the keyboard shortcuts that there are as there are so many; but I can give you a list of the ones I use the most often, or that I believe are the most important:

This is of course only a small list of shortcuts; if you have a favorite you use often that’s not in my list, please add it to the comments!

Question Two:

This is actually two questions, but they both have the same answer so I’m combining them here.

• My cursor looks like a funny “X” after I select the Pen Tool
• My cursor looks like a “bullsey” or “crosshair” when I select the Eyedropper Tool

Answer:

Check your CAPSLOCK key! Quite a few of the Tools have different “versions” of their cursor icon when the CAPS key is selected. If you’re on a keyboard like mine, there is no indicator light showing you the CAPS key is active so you may be confused if the Tool you selected has a different cursor than expected. Always check to see if your CAPS key is selected first.

Question Three:

How do you make a perfect circle with the pen tool?

Answer:

Well the unfortunate answer is you can’t make a “perfect” circle using the pen tool. It is possible to make a passable circle which though your eye sees as a little “off” is technically a circle.

However, the only method worth using to make a perfect circle is by using the ellipse tool in the Tools panel in Illustrator. It is fast and easy to use. But, I’ll go over how to make a technical circle using the Pen Tool here.

Step 1:
Make a document 800×600.

Step 2:
First off, you’ll need a grid to work on, so with Adobe Illustrator open, click on “Edit -> Preferences -> Guides & Grid…” a dialog box will open that looks like this (click the image to enlarge):

The second set is for the the Grid; these are the settings I chose. Click “OK” and your artboard should resemble this (click the image to enlarge):

Step 3:
Click “View -> Snap to Grid” (the keyboard shortcut is Shift + CTRL + “ )

Step 4:
Select the Pen Tool in the Tools palette. Click on one of the Grid dots -> without letting go of the mouse, hold shift and drag the mouse down the Grid as shown in the diagram (click the image to enlarge):

Step 5:
Let go of the Shift key and the mouse. Hold Shift again and click once with the mouse as shown in the next diagram -> release the mouse after clicking:

Step 6:
Hold Shift and click the mouse where indicated in the diagram -> while still holding Shift and the mouse button, drag up as indicated in the diagram:

Step 7:
Release both the mouse and the shift key again -> Hold Shift once again and click once and release the mouse button where indicated in the diagram:

Step 8:
Hold Shift and Click the mouse where indicated -> keep mouse button and Shift button pressed and drag down as indicated in the diagram:

And there’s your circle; its technically a circle, but it doesn’t look quite right to the human eye… The image below shows the difference between our circle (left) and an Ellipse circle (right):

Thanks again to Media Militia for help in promoting the concept; You rock Jeya!

Thanks FreeIconsDownload.com for the people icons

Here are 2 simple ways you can dramatically reduce filesize of your Illustrator production files:

Step one:

Before exporting your Illustrator file to another more universal format (such as EPS), or even if you are sharing the .ai file you can remove unused swatches, brushes etc from your document; these unused components add to the size of your document!

This step is super-easy too – open your Action pallet by clicking on Window -> Actions:

Now, in the actions panel, scroll down until you see an action for “Delete Unused Panel Items.” If you expand this option you can see it actually removes quite a lot!

Press the Play button and Illustrator will go through each step and remove (like it says) all the unused components in the list!

Step two:

When exporting your Illustrator file to EPS format for sharing purposes, there is one little option which makes all the difference in file size – turning this off can reduce the size of your exported file 50% or more!

So, the typical export: File -> Save As, choose EPS and then Illustrator is going to ask you some questions in the “EPS Options” dialog box; this is where you want to make your change. Under Preview Format, the default is “TIFF 8-bit Color” Click the dropdown and choose None instead – boom, you just drastically reduced your EPS’ file size!

I wanted to write out a quick tutorial on how to create dynamic pattern text using Illustrator CS3.

This will really just cover how to add a pattern to the text, without much fuss or sweat; I did notice that the pattern I chose turned out to not work great in this instance, so be careful on the pattern you choose beforehand to make sure it will tile well (within text).

Okay, let’s get started: First off head over to a really kool site Patternwall.com to find a good tilable pattern.

Patternwall has a really neat system for picking a pattern, simply click on a swatch to see it tiled:

and click the download text to download the pattern you want; I chose to open this JPG file with Illustrator since that’s where we’re going to using it.

So this is your swatch opened in Illustrator – some swatches from Patternwall.com are bigger than others.

So at this point we want to convert this rasterized, 72 dpi image into a vector image with points/paths etc. We are going to use the Live Trace function to achieve this, but before you go hitting the “Live Trace” button on your toolbar there, we need to approach it from a better angle:
With the pattern image selected, click on Object -> Live Trace -> Tracing Options:

And you get a dialog box that pops up like so:

Choose “color” as the mode, and the default of 6 colors is fine; if you check the “preview” box you will see the output results on your screen – this is very handy when playing with something and not knowing the best results beforehand.

When you see the results you like, hit the “Trace” button in the box; the dialog box will disappear and you will be back on the main stage of Illy. Close to the upper-right of the toolbar has a button labeled “expand”. while the traced object is still selected, click on Expand.

Now open your Swatches palette by clicking on Window -> Swatches if it’s not already open.

Drag the expanded object from the stage into the Swatches pallet. This makes a swatch from the selected artwork.

Now start with a blank document – we’re going to type out some text.

Once you have your text, keep it selected and make sure the “fill” not the stroke is selected on the main toolbar. Then click on the pattern we created in the Swatches pallet.

The pattern is applied to the Fill of the text, but the first result isn’t ideal. We are going to transform the pattern inside the text to find a better fit.

Open the Transform dialog box by clicking on Window -> Transform.

For this step we want to make sure we transform only the pattern and not the object. In the upper-right corner of the Transform box there is an icon that looks like 3 lines and a downward-pointing triangle. Click this and choose from the dropdown menu “Transform Pattern Only”

You can play with the numbers until you get a result you like.

Adding a stroke to the outside of the text will help it stand out from any background you may be using.

I wasn’t too thrilled with the pattern at the very end so decided to try another pattern from Patternwall; here is the final result:

There is a lot you can do with this feature, and the text is completely editable so can be changed to read whatever you like. I hope you found this useful.

I have some dynamic text for you to download; with a choice of 5 different camouflage patterns. These can be typed into any words/sentences you need – using any font you want! I made these in Arial Black since most people will have that font by default, but feel free to play with the fonts/sizing/offsets to get the just-right look you need.

I had so much fun making my last set of Illustrator Brushes that I wanted to try something new! These are 15 geometric (squares, rectangles, circles) brushes.

I’ve added a quick little fun “drawing” using the supplied brushes.

I hope you can find these useful.

Installation:

1. Download the brush set after the jump
2. Unzip the .ai file
3. Browse to your Illustrator Presets/Brushes folder
4. Copy Orkron_brush-set-02.ai to this folder
5. Reload Illustrator if already open
6. Click Window->Brush Libraries->Orkron_brush-set-02
7. Enjoy!

Download: Orkron Brush Set 02 (118) ZIP File (78 KB)

I was playing around with some tools in Illustrator CS3 today, and found myself making some fun & interesting brush sets. So, naturally I decided to keep making more and offer them for download here!

The set comes with 10 unique brushes, each one ready for color and your creative ideas. Use the spiral tool, use the brush tool, set the fill to blank, and the stroke to any color you like. Load my brush set and start playing around!

Here’s a quick preview:

Installation:

1. Download the brush set after the jump
2. Unzip the .ai file
3. Browse to your Illustrator Presets/Brushes folder
4. Copy Orkron_brush-set-01.ai to this folder
5. Reload Illustrator if already open
6. Click Window->Brush Libraries->Orkron_brush-set-01
7. Enjoy!

Download: orkron_brush-set-01.zip (63 KB)

I spend a large percentage of each day creating Newspaper and Magazine Advertisements through the design firm I work for. I’d say a good 70% of each day is focused primarily on that.

If you’re familiar with doing these types of ads, you’ll know that you get some of the weirdest dimensions to work with; forget the difference between picas and pixel, or inches vs. points: I’m talking when the work order slides onto my desk with a 3-column inch by 4.997 inch height…

Okay, so you get the specs and you’re looking at something like: 4.265″ wide x 4.997″ high (or whatever). The thing about Illustrator is that when you create a new document, it only goes two decimal places out and that’s just not okay to lob off your client’s ad-space (even if it is virtually nothing).

I’m writing this article to explain the best practice method I’ve come up with over the years; hopefully it will help you streamline your workflow by removing the struggle you might face if you happen to set up your document wrong in the beginning.

I’m writing this for Illustrator CS3, but CS4 works the same. Other versions of Illustrator have these option but they may be placed a little different.

If you’re ad is smaller than a sheet of paper, simply choose the standard document size to begin with.

We do this because our advertisement has a 3-decimal place dimension, but Illustrator only allows 2 for the document size…

Now at this point, I always set up my center points (using the guides and Rulers); this just makes alignment easier during the actual design process.

Now create a rectangle in the size of your design: to make the rectangle to exact specs, choose the rect. tool and click once in the artboard area. A dialog box will pop up and you can set the dimensions in the width and height fields. Here is where Illustrator will allow you to create a 3-decimal (or even 4) shape.

Make sure the rectangle doesn’t have a stroke, and choose a simple color (it really doesn’t matter) like black. Then center the Rectangle using the premade guides we set up before.

Now you need a duplicate of this shape. My favorite method for this is – select the rectangle, and press Control + F (Command +F for Mac users). This duplicated the object and places it directly above the first.

Now a very important step (explained later) is to set your crop area. I’m explaining this for Illustrator CS3 not for CS4 because it’s slightly different results in CS4.

To set the crop area, select the top Rectangle and choose Object -> Crop Area -> Make.

This sets the crop area and removes the second rectangle (in CS4 the rectangle won’t go away so you will really only need the one).

So now you have crop marks, and a rectangle you don’t want left -  that’s okay, because now we’re going to put that last rectangle to good use!

Select that last rectangle and choose View -> Guides -> Make Guides.

Alright! Now we have Center Guides, Crop marks, and a Rectangle Guide.

Now I like to keep my Guides and my Artwork separate. Create a new layer; name the Guide layer “Guides”, and the Art layer “Art”. I prefer to lock the Guides layer so I don’t accidentally select something in it and move it.

95% of the ads I create need to be published as Press-Quality PDF’s. The reason to set the crop marks in advance to the exact dimensions is so when you save to the PDF format, the artboard will be cropped perfect without the need to post-crop it from within Acrobat.

This system also works great if the output is for JPG (make sure to choose RGB rather than CMYK in those cases).

I hope you find this useful; I’ve found that this method shaves minutes off every design I do!

]]> http://www.orkron.com/2009/03/31/designing-for-magazine-newspaper-ads-in-illustrator/feed/ 7 http://www.orkron.com/2009/03/21/illustrator-cs4-cool-but-frustrating/ http://www.orkron.com/2009/03/21/illustrator-cs4-cool-but-frustrating/#comments Sat, 21 Mar 2009 06:47:33 +0000 Orkron http://www.orkron.com/?p=471

I, like some of you, recently upgraded to the Adobe CS4 family.  The new interface is very nice; I especially like the tabbing between open windows function.

There are some frustrating differences between CS3 (and older) and the new CS4 version.

I wanted to go over the two differences that caused me the most headaches; I’m hoping this article will help some of you get past a couple obstacles that are not so obvious to figure out otherwise.

Number 1:

One of the things I tend to do most (for some reason) is go into the File -> Document Settings to make adjustments to the file size in CS3 (like at work) this is easy enough: Navigate to the menu and make your changes (picas to inches, inches to pixels or whatever) in the Document Settings dialog box.

Illustrator CS4 has changed the way you make changes here; and it’s not exactly easy to get right away.

To make a change to the document, navigate to File -> Document Setup (like before), but in the dialog box that opens, you will need to click the button that reads “Edit Artboards”.  This will take you back to the document but with a marque-style border around the document.  At this point you can either click-drag the selection area, or use the input fields at the top of the screen for a precise width/height.

Once you have made your changes, click the Selection Tool (the black arrow) and the document will return to normal, with the new sizing.

Number 2:

Where oh where did the Crop function go?

I create a LOT of print-ready work (especially newspaper and magazine ads) that require a Press-Quality PDF as the final artwork.  I always set up my document in the beginning to have a cropped area in the shape and size needed (like a 5″ x 4.917″ ad).

That was simple, create a standard document (8.5 x 11), create a rectangle exactly to the size (because the document can’t go to 3 decimal places but the rectangle can this is the ideal way to set up the document), select the rectangle, click Object -> Crop Image.

This was simple until I upgraded to Illustrator CS4 and wouldn’t you know it: Object -> Crop Image wasn’t there anymore!  Another headache.

Thankfully, it’s not gone, it’s just been moved (why Adobe, why?).

Now to make your crops, you need to choose Effect -> Crop Marks – doh!

One thing to note here: In Illustrator CS3, you could create crop marks without having anything selected.  This new method, however requires an object to be selected to work.  I have yet to discover a way to set the crop marks to the document size like we could do so easily in CS3; If you know how, please tell us in the comments!

I hope this helps anyone trying to learn the differences.  Please comment below.

Hi Folks,
I have for you today an Illustrator (CS, CS2, and CS3) template for a postage stamp.
These are great for designing fun, printable portraits, or being used for interesting frames for artwork.  The images here are for web-size, however the stamp file is scalable to any size (even for posters, or lol a billboard!).
I have these available in EPS format, after the jump.

Stamp CS1 EPS (1 MB)
Stamp CS2 EPS (1 MB)
Stamp CS3 EPS (1 MB)
Stamp CS4 EPS (800 KB)