Learn Illustrator CS3 Tutorial

This site provides you with a foundation for working with Adobe Illustrator. Follow along with the tutorial, download the lesson files, and view the videos. For more Adobe Illustrator training options, visit AGI’s Illustrator training classes.

Excerpt from Dynamic Learning - Illustrator CS3

Taking cropping to the max

By default, Illustrator crops—trims to a selected region—artwork to the boundaries of the artboard, whose settings you specify when you create a new document. You can control your cropping with the new Crop Area tool, which allows you to crop an area that you wish to output when printing or exporting. The Crop Area tool offers preset crop areas, as well as the opportunity to crop using options that make visually creating crop areas an easier endeavor.

1 Select the Crop Area tool () from the Tools panel, then click and drag around the musician’s upper body. No specific region is necessary for this part of the lesson.

A crop area is created. Use the anchor points around the selection you just created to adjust the crop area.

You will now find out where you can define the crop area when outputting this image.

2 Choose File > Print, or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+P (Windows) or Command+P (Mac OS). The Print dialog box appears.

3 Select Setup from the list on the left side of the Print dialog box. Choose Crop Area from the Crop Artwork to drop-down menu.

4 If you have a printer set up and connected to your computer, press Print; otherwise, press Cancel. What prints, or what would print, is just the area you selected with the Crop Area tool.

Using the Crop Area tool you can create multiple crop areas in the same artwork, though you can only have one crop area activated at a time. Take advantage of the Crop Area capabilities by printing only a selected area of your image when printing a hard copy (called printing to output) or when creating a PDF (print to postscript).

5 Switch back to the Selection tool (), then choose File > Save. Keep this file open for the next part of this lesson.

Improved isolation mode

Illustrator’s isolation mode lets you easily isolate a single group or sublayer. By double-clicking on a group, symbol, or sublayer, you enter an editing mode that grays out (and locks) all other objects on your artboard. Using this feature helps you avoid selecting, moving, or changing objects that should be left alone.

1 Using the Selection tool (), double-click on any of black curved lines coming from the musical instrument.

These lines are grouped, so double-clicking on any of them enters you into isolation mode. Notice that all other objects on the page are faded out and inaccessible.

2 Using the Selection tool, click to select the top line and then Shift+click to select the bottom line as well. It’s so easy to select independent parts of a group in isolation mode!

Notice that along the top of the artboard is a gray border, called the isolation mode border. It is here that the isolated group’s name (Group), sometimes referred to as bread crumbs, appears.

3 Press the Fill color swatch in the Control panel and choose Pantone 144 C. Both of the selected lines turn orange.

4 Exit isolation mode by clicking anywhere on the isolation mode border at the top, or on the arrow to the left of the word Group at the top of the document.

You will find out more about using isolation mode in Lesson 4, “Illustrator Essentials.”

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

Live Color

With the new Live Color feature, you can discover new color combinations, quickly test them, and then save and reuse them. You can preview changes to your artwork, shift an artwork’s entire tone by playing with the color wheel, or adjust one color with maximum precision.

1 Activate the Selection tool (), then choose Select > All, or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+A (Windows) or Command+A (Mac OS).

2 On the right side of the workspace, locate the Color panel. To the right of the Color panel is the Color Guide tab. Select it to bring the panel forward.

3 Press the Edit or Apply Colors button () at the bottom of the Color Guide panel. The Live Color dialog box appears. There are a number of tools you can take advantage of in the Live Color dialog box, but for now you’ll just perform a simple color change.

4 At the top of the Color Guide dialog box is the Harmony Rules drop-down menu. From this menu, choose Right Complement. The colors in the artwork reflect the different harmony rules having to do with your base color (the first color in the Color Guide), which, for this lesson, is the Pantone 144 color that you added to the Swatches panel earlier.

5 Press the New Color Group button () to the right of the Harmony Rules drop-down menu. A new group has been added to the list of color groups on the right side of the dialog box.

6 Double-click on your color group’s name; the Edit Name dialog box appears. Type mycolors in the Name text field and press OK. Press OK again. If you receive a message asking if you want to save changes to swatch group mycolors before closing, press Yes.

7 Your document’s color scheme has changed dramatically with the application of the color group. If the Swatches panel is not visible choose Window > Swatches. Notice that the mycolors color group has been added to the Swatches panel. Pressing Yes in response to the warning message in the previous step saved the new color group to the Swatches panel.

8 Choose File > Save, then File > Close to close the file. You won’t need it any longer.

Better integration with Adobe Flash

Thanks to the support added to help you maintain text, layer, and symbol attributes, you can now move easily between Illustrator and Flash. You can even create objects in Illustrator and cut and paste them directly into Flash CS3. Try out this improved integration in Lesson 12, “Using Your Artwork Outside Illustrator CS3.”

Symbols

Symbols are a means of storing frequently used artwork for use in other artwork. They maintain a dynamic connection to the original, or master, symbol, which in Illustrator means that you can create artwork, use it multiple times on your artboard, choose to update it once and update all occurrences of that symbol, even in other artwork. Take advantage of Illustrator’s power by working with symbols that are now easier to create, and can more easily and practically be used in Flash files.

9-slice scaling

You can use 9-slice scaling (scale-9) to specify component-style scaling for movie clip symbols destined for export to Flash. With the 9-slice scaling feature you can designate areas of your symbol that you do not want scaled up or down when placed in Flash. You might choose to do this if you do not want artwork, like the star shown in the figure below, to become distorted when the black bar is scaled, or if you want to keep text a consistent size across a number of buttons, for example.

You will find additional new features introduced throughout the following lessons. Some, like the new features introduced in this lesson, will have a significant impact on how you create artwork in Adobe Illustrator, and some will just make working in Adobe Illustrator a little easier and more comfortable.

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