Excerpt from Adobe Illustrator CS4
Digital Classroom

• Page 1
• Page 2
• Page 3

Links

• Additional Resources for Learning Illustrator

What you’ll learn in this lesson

• Working with graphic styles
• Warping text
• Adding a symbol to the Symbols panel
• Using the Color Guide
• Converting artwork
• Erasing paths
• Creating a 3-D object

Adobe Illustrator CS4 Jumpstart

In this lesson, you will complete several exercises and receive an introduction to some of the important capabilities of Adobe Illustrator. Have fun with this lesson—these features are covered in more detail in later lessons. If you feel uncomfortable jumping right in to creating a project, you can skip to Lesson 2, “Getting to Know the Workspace” and come back to this lesson later.

Starting up

Before starting, make sure that your tools and panels are consistent by resetting your workspace. See “Resetting Adobe Illustrator CS4 Preferences” on page 3.

You will work with several files from the ai01lessons folder in this lesson. Make sure that you have loaded the ailessons folder onto your hard drive from the supplied DVD. See “Loading lesson files” on page 4.

See Lesson 1 in action! Use the accompanying video to gain a better understanding of how to use some of the features shown in this lesson. Click here to view this lessonls sample video.

The project

In this lesson, you will create artwork for a CD case and map it to a 3-D object.

1 Launch Adobe Illustrator CS4.

2 Choose File > Browse in Bridge or press the Go to Bridge button () in the application bar at the top of the workspace.

By pressing the Go to Bridge button within Illustrator, you launch a separate application called Adobe Bridge. Bridge is an indispensable application that acts as the central command center for all your CS4 Suite applications and helps you organize your Adobe Illustrator projects. You can use Bridge to help you easily locate files. With Adobe Bridge, you can see a preview of every file within any folder.

3 Once Bridge opens, navigate to the ai01lessons folder within the ailessons folder that you copied to your computer and double-click ai0101_done.ai to open it. The artwork for a CD cover appears. The CD artwork contains objects created in Adobe Illustrator CS4 using auto trace, symbols, the Eraser tool, and Live Color feature. In the following exercises, you will create this file. You can keep this completed file open for reference, or choose File > Close to close it.

The completed CD artwork.

4 The Illustrator CS4 workspace is consistent with the other applications in the Creative Suite 4, which helps you to find the tools you need faster, no matter which application you are using.

Click on the gray bar above the Tools panel to toggle between a one-column and two-column view. The images in this lesson display the two-column Tools panel, but you can choose whichever format you prefer, as both options allow you to access all the tools.

The Tools panel can be viewed as one column or two.

5 For this lesson, you want to have multiple panels showing at the same time. To make sure that you can follow the lesson more easily, choose Window > Workspace > Essentials.

Creating the background

For this artwork, you will create a simple, solid-colored background and then build additional graphics using the Live Trace, Symbols, and Live Color features.

1 Choose File > New. The New Document dialog box appears. Type ai0101 into the Name text field.

2 Choose Print from the New Document Profile drop-down menu. By choosing the Print preset your default colors, patterns, and gradients are built from CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) colors.

Choose Print from the New Document Profile drop-down menu.

3 Make certain that Letter is chosen from the Size drop-down menu, and choose Inches from the Units drop-down menu. Note that the New Document Profile categorization changes to Custom. Press OK; the new document is created. The document window contains a blank artboard, which represents the entire region that can contain printable artwork.

4 Select the Rectangle tool () from the Tools panel. You will use this shape tool to create the initial background for your artwork. Click once on the artboard to prompt the Rectangle dialog box.

5 Type 5 in the Width text field, then click on the word Height; the amount of 5 is automatically entered into the Height text field as well. Press OK and a 5-inch square is created.

Enter 5 in the Width text field, then click on the word Height to enter the same value in its text field.

6 Select the square with the Selection tool (), then click the Fill color swatch in the Control panel to reveal the Fill Swatches panel. Select an orange color. This example uses the orange color with values C=0 M=50 Y=100 K=0. To find this exact shade, place your cursor over the different orange swatches without clicking and a tool tip containing each color’s respective CMYK values appears.

Select an orange fill color from the Control panel.

7 With the square still selected, click the Stroke color swatch in the Control panel and choose None ().

Choose to have no color on the stroke.

8 Choose Object > Lock > Selection or press Ctrl+2 (Windows) or Command+2 (Mac OS) to keep the orange rectangle visible and lock it in its current position.

If you need to reposition a shape, choose Object > Unlock, or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+2 (Windows) or Command+Option+2 (Mac OS).

9 Choose File > Save. In the Save As dialog box, navigate to the ai01lessons folder. Since you named the document ai0101 when you created the new file, ai0101.ai automatically appears in the Save As text field. Press Save.

10 When the Illustrator Options dialog box appears, press OK. Keep the file open for the rest of the lesson.

Taking advantage of graphic styles

Adobe Illustrator CS4 gives you the ability to save combinations of attributes such as fills, strokes, and special effects collectively as a graphic style. Graphic styles save you time and help keep your styles and colors consistent across a document or series of documents. When using a graphic style, you can apply interesting effects to multiple objects at once. In this example, you will create a graphic style using the Effects menu and the Appearance panel.

1 Press the letter D on your keyboard. This reverts you to the default colors—a white fill and a black stroke.

2 Click and hold on the Rectangle tool () in the Tools panel and select the hidden Ellipse tool ().

Select the hidden Ellipse tool.

3 Hold down the Shift key while you click and drag on the artboard. This creates a perfect circle. Release the mouse before releasing the Shift key; don’t worry about the circle’s size.

4 Choose Window > Transform or use the keyboard shortcut Shift+F8. When the Transform Panel appears, click the Constrain Width and Height Proportions button () and type .25 in the W text field, then press the Tab key. The width and height are changed to a quarter of an inch.

Change the size of your shape after creating it.

5 Press the Appearance button () in the dock on the right side of the workspace to reveal the Appearance panel. The Appearance panel displays the attributes that have been applied to the selected object. In this example, the only color attributes that are visible are a fill, a stroke, and the default opacity, but you will see more attributes added to the list as you work in this lesson.

The Appearance panel.

6 Choose File > Save. Keep this file open for the next part of this lesson.

One object, multiple fills and strokes

Illustrator objects can have more than one fill and stroke. In this part of the lesson, you will use this feature to add multiple strokes and make one object appear as though it’s made of multiple shapes.

1 With the circle selected, select the Stroke listing in the Appearance panel, then press the Duplicate Selected Item button () at the bottom of the Appearance panel. You now have two strokes. You can’t see the second stroke around the object, since it was created on top of the initial stroke.

2 Now you will duplicate the stroke, creating a total of three strokes, using a different method. With the topmost stroke still selected, drag it to the Duplicate Selected Item button at the bottom of the Appearance panel. You now have three identical strokes listed in the Appearance panel.

Duplicate a stroke by clicking or dragging to the Duplicate Selected Item button.

3 Select the second stroke in the Appearance panel and choose Effect > Path > Offset Path. The Offset Path dialog box appears. Check the Preview checkbox and see that this effect offsets the selected path from its original location.

4 Type .1 into the Offset text field and press OK. The stroke is offset by .1 inches. In the Appearance panel, press the arrow to the left of the second stroke to see the effect applied.

Change the offset path to .1 inches.

5 Select the second stroke again in the Appearance panel, and click the Stroke color swatch to reveal the Stroke Swatches panel. Choose CMYK Yellow. The offset stroke is now a different color from the original black stroke.

The Appearance panel allows you to change the stroke and color directly in the panel.

6 With the second stroke still selected, choose 4 pt from the Stroke Weight drop-down menu that is built right into the Appearance panel; the second stroke’s width changes to 4 points. Notice that the attributes of the stroke are now listed in the Appearance panel.

The Appearance panel lists the stroke’s The 4-point, CMYK Yellow offset path. adjusted attributes.

7 Now select the topmost stroke in the Appearance panel and choose Effect > Path > Offset Path. In the resulting Offset Path dialog box, type .15 in the Offset Path text field and press OK.

8 Select the topmost stroke in the Appearance panel again to make sure that it is selected, then choose 2 pt from the Stroke drop-down menu next to the Stroke listing in the Appearance panel. The outside stroke changes to 2 points.

9 Press the Stroke box in the Appearance panel and choose the blue color that displays the combination of C=85 M=50 Y=0 K=0. The outer stroke is now blue.

The object with multiple strokes.

Adobe Illustrator Training Class Locations

AGI offers regularly scheduled and private Illustrator classes at our training centers. Adobe Illustrator Training in or near Boston, Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, Orlando, and London, England. Visit our Adobe Illustrator training class locations page.