About Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator is the industry standard vector, or object oriented, drawing program. I've compiled a few of my favorite tips that make working with Illustrator easier, and tutorials using some of Illustrator's creative features. But first, what is a vector program? And why does that make Illustrator special?

Illustrator Classes

Join me for classes in Illustrator CS3 at Eclectic Academy. Classes are $30 for a 6 week session.

Illustrator CS3: Getting Your Feet Wet: the introductory class for Ilustrator CS3

Ilustrator CS3: Learning to Swim: the Level 2 class for Illustrator CS3

Tips and Tutorials

These tutorials were written for Windows but Macintosh users can use them too. Illustrator is virtually identical on both platforms (wish everything was!) and where keyboard shortcuts are mentioned, usually the Mac command key is substituted for the Windows control key. To view and print the PDF versions of the tutorials, you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader 5. It's a free download and available from Adobe.

Tutorials

Pattern Brush Anatomy 101
Making pattern brushes can be baffling. How do you get the pattern to go around corners the right way so you can use the brushes on shapes like squares, stars, and hexagons, or bending lines? This clears it all up and you'll be creating your own pattern brushes in no time!

Loading Brush Libraries
How to load brush and other libraries in Illustrator 9 and 10.

Setting Leading
Illustrator sets leading manually (the space between lines of text), but sometimes it isn't right for the look you want to achieve. Here's how to set it manually.

Weaving a Ribbon Through Text
Here's how to weave a ribbon (or anything else) through text in a few easy steps.

Getting rid of unwanted overlap
When you use the rotate-copy feature of Illustrator, the last petal is on top instead of tucking under the first one. The knife tool is a quick answer to this problem.

Stroking a Placed Image
How can I put a stroke on a place photo? There's a trick to it!

Filters vs. Effects: What's the Difference?
They're both on the menu bar, and they have a lot of the same entries. So what's the difference between them?

Saving Custom Styles
Have you ever made styles you'd like to use again, but can't figure out how toget Illustrator to save them? Then this tutorial is for you!

Text on a path From top to bottom
Want to make text go around the top and bottom of a circle? This is one of the most frequently asked questions! Here's how to do it.

An easy way to make tiling patterns
A surefire method of getting tiles to...well, to tile!

Making Illustrator Brushes with Artlandia SymmetryWorks:

Scatter and Pattern Brushes using Artlandia SymmetryWorks Tiles
Celtic Knot Brushes using Artlandia SymmetryWorks
Using Arlandia SymmetryWorks Filter with Photoshop Styles (Part 2 of a two part tutorial for using Illustrator with Photoshop)

Drawing a Pencil
Here's how to draw the pencil I used in the Illustrator logo for this website.

Resizing and Transformation Tricks
Tricks to make resizing and transforming objects—even multiple objects— a snap!

Paintbrush Tutorial
Drawing a realistic paintbrush in Illustrator. Skills covered: pencil tool, setting shape options, editing a gradient fill, clipping masks. Skills in this tutorial include drawing custom shapes by setting ellipse options, editing gradient fills, drawing with the pencil tool and joining those lines to form a custom shape, and using that custom shape as a clipping mask, and also using brushes in the brush palette.

Using the New Rectangular Grid Tool in Illustrator 10
Tips and tricks for setting options and using Illustrator 10's new rectangular grid tool.

Printable Grids in Illustrator 9
There is a way to make printable grids in Illustrator 9, too. Besides constructing the printable grid, skills here include setting rectangle tool options, and defining a pattern to be added to the Swatches palette to be used as a fill.

Tips

How to turn guides into vector lines

Go to View > Guides > Lock Guides to unlock guides if they are locked. The go to View > Guides > Release Guides and the guides will turn into vector lines.

Changing the Default Illustrator File

Do you ever wish you could load certain symbols, swatches, brushes, or styles into Illustrator every time it opened?

CAUTION! This is only for advanced users, and make sure to make a backup copy of the file before altering it!

If you want a brush, symbol, swatch, or style to be available everytime you create a new document in Illustrator, for instance a logo you use a lot, you can edit the Illustrator Startup documents in the Illustrator plug-ins folder. Just open the file in Illustrator, add the content you want available, and save and close the document. The next time you create a new document in Illustrator it will be there.

Also be warned that unless you do cleanup on every final document you save (by deleting unused brushes, symbols, swatches, and styles), everything you add increases file size! For the same reason, you can also delete items you will never use from the startup file. Once again, this is NOT for the casual user. It's sort of like messing with the windows registry. If you aren't sure you know what you are doing, then don't do it.

Keeping proportions when making a numerical transformation

Enter the new height or width value in the transform palette and hold down the command/control key and hit enter or return. The other value will be entered for you. More transform tricks here.

Vector vs. raster...huh?

Vector graphics are composed of curves connected by points, mathematically defined. A circle is four curves connected by four points. A rectangle is four curves, connected by four points. (No, that wasn't a typo...they are considered curves even though they're straight lines. No, I don't know why...math and I never really got along all that well.) When you want to make the circle larger or smaller, the mathematical formula is redefined, and the circle keeps it's perfect crisp lines. Creature House Expression, Macromedia Freehand, and CorelDRAW are three examples of vector programs. These programs are considered object oriented because everything you make, even text, is an object that can be manipulated independent of other objects and the background (which can also be an object if you put something there, such as a rectangle covering the page.) You can arrange them so they are in front of each other, in back of each other, stack them, or group them. Vector programs are also sometimes called drawing programs, while programs like Adobe Photoshop and Procreate's Painter are paint, or raster programs.

A raster program constructs what you see on screen by using pixels. When you enlarge the picture, the only way it gets bigger is for the pixels to get bigger too, and you lose the nice edges. So when you work in a raster program your best bet is to make your picture the size at which you'll ultimately be using it, because you will be limited in how much sizing you can actually do. And that is the beauty of working with vectors! You can work on a 4" object and enlarge it to 4' if you want. And it'll look just as good at 4' as it did at 4".

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Disclaimer

All designs and images on these pages are copyrighted to me, Sara Froehlich and Northlite Designs. If you want to use something you see, please contact me for permission. Thank you!

©1995-2008 Sara Froehlich

Northlite Designs

Good Thunder, Minnesota