Illustrator 9 For Dummies

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

About This Book
What You Don't Need to Read
Foolish Assumptions
How This Book Is Organized
Part I: Driving People Crazy -- Illustrator's Bum Rap
Part II: Drawing and Coloring Your Artwork
Part III: Taking Your Paths to Obedience School
Part IV: Weaving Beautiful Typestries
Part V: Getting Art to Print, to the Web, and to Other Applications
Part VI: The Part of Tens
About All Those Little Icons
Where to Go From Here

Part I: Driving People Crazy -- Illustrator's Bum Rap

Chapter 1: Introducing the World of Illustrator
From Humble Origins to Master of the Graphics Universe
A brief history of Illustrator
Illustrator's place in the cosmos
Starting Up Illustrator and Reing It a Little
What's in a Name (field)?
CMYK or RGB?
Page Size
Exploring the Illustrator Workspace
A graphic handyman's Toolbox
Palettes to suit any artist
Menus with the finest cuisine
Mac and Windows issues spring eternal
Defining the Document Area
Opening Existing Documents
Viewing Illustrator Documents
Zooming in and out of artwork
Scrolling around your document
Using the Navigator palette
Looking at the guts of your artwork
Saving Illustrator Documents
Changing Your Mind
Printing Illustrator Documents
Closing Documents and Quitting Illustrator

Chapter 2: Following the Righteous Path
Whether Paths or Pixels Are Better
Paths: The ultimate flexibility in graphics
Pixels: Detail and realism to spare
How Paths and Pixels Compare
A comparison of path and pixel documents
The big limitations and upcoming solutions
When to use paths and when to use pixels
Paths and the PostScript Language
Which is faster -- a square or a square?
PostScript: The evolution of Bezier cures
What's my vector, Victor?
Gray's Anatomy of a Path
In Illustrator, it's polite to point
You can handle the truth
Drawing Basics

Chapter 3: Doing Everyday Things with Illustrator
Picking Up Stuff and Moving It Around
Discovering Selection tools
Moving and transforming objects
Distorting paths
Organizing Objects
Using the Fun Stuff
Transparency
Blends
Masks
Compound Paths
Entering the Wide World of the Web
Saving the World
Sae
Sae As
Sae a Copy
Sae for Web
Export
Using Illustrator for What It Does Best

Part II: Drawing and Coloring Your Artwork

Chapter 4: Shaping Up, Basically
Creating Basic Shapes
Drawing rectangles and squares
Drawing ellipses and circles
Creating stars, polygons, and spirals
Putting Shapes Together
Creating Objects Using the Pathfinder Command
Crescent moon
Sunrise

Chapter 5: Getting Your Fill of Fills and Strokes
Understanding Fill and Stroke
Filling and stroking paths with color
Making a bold stroke
Filling crossed and open paths
The Swatches Palette
All the colors in the rainbow and then some
Swatch Options for super colors
Swatch libraries
The Color Palette
Parts of the palette
Modes and models
Filling with Patterns and Textures
Applying patterns to paths
Making patterns
Using the Gradient Fill
The Gradient tool
The Gradient palette
Gradient-mania (color-tweaking made simple)
The Secret Gradient

Chapter 6: Selecting and Editing Paths
Selecting with Different Methods
Natural selection
Direct selection
Group selection
Selecting more or less of what you have
Freeform selections
Selecting without Tools
A giant at of really sticky stuff
Specialized selection functions for important occasions
Editing and Adjusting Points
A relocation bonus for points
Fine-tuning cures with direction points
Converting anchor points
Adding and subtracting points (or path math)

Chapter 7: Wielding the Mighty Pen Tool
Performing with the Pen, the Path, and the Anchor Points
Smooth anchor points
Straight corner anchor points
Cured corner anchor points
Combination corner anchor points
Creating Straight Lines with the Pen Tool
Open and closed paths
Creating Super-Precise Cures with the Pen Tool
Taming the draggin'
Following the one-third rule
Following rules for the other two thirds
Drawing the tricky anchor points with the Pen tool
Drawing Shapes with the Pen Tool
Drawing a sad, lumpy circle with the Pen
Drawing a heart

Chapter 8: Wielding the Versatile Pencil Tool
Using the Pencil Tool as a Pencil
Minimal effort and hefty stress reduction
A few unexpected exceptions to all this bliss
Cherishing the Multipurpose Pencil Tool
Making the Pencil tool work just for you
Changing the path not Penciled
Working with the all-natural "Smoothie" tool
Using the Pen with the Pencil
Swapping one tool for another
Precision versus speed: You make the call

Chapter 9: Creating Magnificent Brushstrokes
Brushing Where No Stroke Has Gone Before
Embracing your inner artist
The Paintbrush tool options
Creating a New Brush
Working with the Different Brush Types
Art brushes for when you're feeling a bit wacky
Scatter brushes for when you are a bit wacky
Pattern brushes -- too cool and utterly wacko
Calligraphic brushes for formal occasions

Chapter 10: Extreme Fills and Strokes
Messing Around with Meshes
Making Objects Partially Transparent and Blending Colors
Fade away with opacity
Big fun with math! Blending graphics with Blend Modes
Discovering How Strokes Work
Joins, Bends, and Dashes
Caps
Joins
Dashes
The Effect Menu
Applying "lie" effects to objects
Removing and changing effects
Here's the catch . . . rasterization!
Clipping Masks

Chapter 11: Keeping Up Appearances, with Style(s)
The Appearance Palette
Reading the Appearance palette
Adding Fills and Strokes
Changing the appearance of groups and layers
Applying effects to strokes and fills
Going back to adjust settings
Removing appearances
Killing lie effects until they're dead
Figuring Out Styles
Applying styles to objects
Creating and editing styles
Spotting the difference between graphic and text styles
Applying graphic styles to text

Part III: Taking Your Paths to Obedience School

Chapter 12: Pushing, Pulling, Poking, and Prodding
Understanding the Fie Transformation Sisters
Move
Scale
Rotate
Reflect
Shear
Additional Transformation Tidbits and Distortions
The Transform palette
Copying while transforming
Transform Each
Transform Again
Partial transformations
Punk and Bloat
Roughen and Scribble and Tweak, oh my!
Zig Zag
Blending: The Magic Transformation

Chapter 13: Organizing Efficiently
Stacking Illustrator Artwork
Stacking order
Moving art up front or back down in the stacking order
Managing the Mess
Using the Layers palette
Lock and Unlock, View and Hide
Copying layers (quickly and completely)
Viewing objects and groups
Using your options on layers, groups, and objects
Imposing Slavish Conformity with Groups
Lining Up
Electronic graph paper
Guides that are truly smarter than most of us
Let the rulers guide you . . .
I'm a path, I'm a guide
Alignment

Part IV: Weaving Beautiful Typestries

Chapter 14: Introducing Letters and Such (Type 101)
Using the Word Processor from Outer Space
Controlling type in Illustrator
The Type tool
The Character palette
The Paragraph palette
Introducing the Strange Land of Type
Fonts, typefaces, and font families
Serif and sans serif
The biggest Don't Do It that we can think of
Exploring Size, Leading, and Other Mysterious Numbers
Measuring can be just plain odd
Measuring can be just plain annoying
Spacing out while staring at type
Putting type on the rack
Moving on up and down
Adjusting Entire Paragraphs
Changing the alignment of a paragraph
Changing the space around the paragraph

Chapter 15: Studying Advanced Typography (Type 1,000,001)
Typing on a Path
Getting type to stick to a slippery slope
Soling the age-old type-on-a-circle mystery
Typing inside a Path
Typing around a Path
Flowing Type from Path to Path
Adjusting the Path (Not the Type)
Using Type as a Mask
Converting Type to Paths

Part V: Getting Art to Print, to the Web, and to Other Applications

Chapter 16: Printing Your Masterpiece
Printing Quickly
What You See Is Roughly What You Get
Setting Up Your Page to Print (You Hope)
Printer type and page size
The only options you need to care about
Printing Mechanics
Printing composite proofs
Important printing options
All About Way-Scary Separations
Remember, separations are not in color
Looking at Separations Setup

Chapter 17: Putting Your Art on the Web
From Illustrator to the Web
Using Web colors only
Working in Pixel Preview mode
Choosing a file format
So which file format is best, already?
Creating Web-Specific Pixel Graphics
GIF
JPEG
PNG-8 and PNG-24
Creating Web-Specific Vector Graphics
Flash
SVG

Chapter 18: Moving Files into and out of Illustrator
Bringing Files into Illustrator
But which is better, linking or embedding?
Managing links
Getting Files out of Illustrator
Working with Illustrator and Photoshop
Making life easy: Copy and paste, drag and drop
Placing
Now opening in an application near you
Exporting
Using Adobe Illustrator with Nearly Everything Else

Part VI: The Part of Tens

Chapter 19: Ten Production-Enhancing Tips
Punching Holes
Whoa! Don't Use That Photoshop Filter!
When White Isn't Nothing
Expanding for Simplicity
Quick! Hide!
Take a Tip from Illustrator
Change Your Units Whenever You Want
Reuse Your Brushes, Swatches, and Libraries
Aid Russian Dolls
Selecting Type When You Want

Chapter 20: Ten Tantalizing Techniques
Making Text Three-Dimensional
Tracing Hastily
Neon Glow
Ancient Type
Making Artwork on a (Shoe)String
Cleaning Up After Illustrator
Getting Animated
Perspective Shadows
Haunted by a Ghost(ing)
Cubing the Square

Chapter 21: Ten (Or So) Ways to Customize Illustrator
Positioning Palettes
Changing the Items on the Menu
The Flexible Toolbox
The Startup Document
Changing the Default Settings
Changing Hidden Commands You Never Knew About
Using a Master Document
Action Jackson
Sticky Settings

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