Sams Teach Yourself Adobe® Illustrator® 9 in 24 Hours

Mordy Golding is the Director of Art Production for a New York advertising agency. He is both an Adobe-certified instructor and certified technical trainer. In his spare time he is also a consultant, writer, graphic designer, production artist and network manager. With a strong technical background, Mordy has been designing on computers since 1990, and has been a featured panelist at Macworld.

Introduction.
I. GETTING STARTED.

HOUR 1. Getting to Know Illustrator.


Raster Versus Vector.



Raster Images. Vector Images: An Objective Approach.



The Illustrator Workplace.



The Illustrator Window. The Toolbox. The Many Palettes of Illustrator.



Views in Illustrator.



Things That Make You Go Zoom! Moving Around Your Page. The Navigator Palette. Custom Views. New Window.



Context-Sensitive Menus. Summary. Q&A. Quiz. Exercises. Quiz Answers.

HOUR 2. Customizing Illustrator.


Creating a New Document. Document Setup.



Artboard.



Printing & Export.



Transparency.



Setting Preferences.



General Preferences. Type & Auto Tracing. Units & Undo. Guides & Grid. Smart Guides. Hyphenation. Plug-ins & Scratch Disk. Files & Clipboard.



Working with Guides, Smart Guides, and Illustrator's Grid.



Rulers. Illustrator's Grid. Snap To Grid.



Creating an Illustrator Startup File. Summary. Q&A. Quiz. Exercises. Quiz Answers.

HOUR 3. Drawing Basic Objects.


Working with Rectangles. Working with Ellipses. Drawing Other Shapes.



The Spiral Tool.



Saving Your Work. Summary. Q&A. Quiz. Exercises. Quiz Answers.

II. GETTING THE BASICS.

HOUR 4. Working with Selections.


The Selection Tools.



The Selection Tool. The Direct Selection Tool.



Grouping Objects.



The Group Selection Tool. The Lasso Tool. The Direct Select Lasso Tool.



Working with Selections.



Area Select. Locking Objects. Hiding Selections. Hiding Edges. Arranging Items.



Summary. Q&A. Quiz. Exercises. Quiz Answers.

HOUR 5. Drawing Bézier Paths.


The Bézier Path. The Pen Tool.



The Anchor Points. Open and Closed Paths.



The Pencil Tool. Summary. Q&A. Quiz. Exercises. Quiz Answers.

HOUR 6. Editing Bézier Paths.


Manipulating Existing Points.



The Direct Selection Tool. The Add Anchor Point Tool. The Delete Anchor Point Tool. The Convert Anchor Point Tool.



Editing Paths.



The Smooth Tool. The Simplify Command. The Erase Tool. The Reshape Tool. The Scissors Tool. The Knife Tool. The Join and Average Commands.



Summary. Q&A. Quiz. Exercises. Quiz Answers.

III. GETTING COLORFUL.

HOUR 7. Coloring Objects.


Fill and Stroke. The Color Palette.



Selecting a Color. Color Models. Custom Colors.



The Swatches Palette.



Viewing the Swatches Palette.



The Transparency Palette.



Opacity and Blending Modes. Transparency Options.



The Eyedropper Tool. The Paint Bucket Tool. Summary. Q&A. Quiz. Exercises. Quiz Answers.

HOUR 8. Fills and Strokes.


Solid Color Fills. Gradients.



The Gradient Palette. Using the Gradient Tool. The Gradient Mesh Tool.



Patterns.



Defining a Pattern. Using the Expand Command.



Strokes.



The Stroke Palette. Offset Path and Outline Path.



Summary. Q&A. Quiz. Exercises. Quiz Answers.

HOUR 9. The Paintbrush Tool.


The Brushes Palette. Drawing with the Paintbrush Tool.



The Calligraphic Brush. The Scatter Brush. The Art Brush. The Pattern Brush.



Summary. Q&A. Quiz. Exercises. Quiz Answers.

IV. GETTING POWERFUL.

HOUR 10. Object Styles.


Anatomy of a Style.



The Appearance Palette. The Styles Palette.



Creating Complex Object Styles.



Working with Appearances. Editing a Style. Expanding an Appearance.



Summary. Q&A. Quiz. Exercises. Quiz Answers.

HOUR 11. Working with Layers.


The Layers Palette.



Editing Layers. Layer Options. Layer Colors. Arranging Layers and Sublayers. Moving or Copying Items Between Layers and Sublayers. Locking and Hiding Layers. Merging Layers and Sublayers. Extra Room Anyone?



Applying an Appearance to Layers. Layer Clipping Masks. Summary. Q&A. Quiz. Exercises. Quiz Answers.

HOUR 12. Compound Paths and Masks.


Compound Paths.



It's All in the Direction.



Masks. Layer Clipping Masks. Opacity Masks. Summary. Q&A. Quiz. Exercises. Quiz Answers.

HOUR 13. Transformations.


The Transformation Tools.



Moving Objects. Rotate, Scale, Reflect, and Shear. The Free Transform Tool. Transform Each. Makin' Copies! Do It Again! The Transform Palette. The Align Palette.



The Pathfinder Palette.



Unite, Intersect, Exclude, Minus Front, Minus Back. Divide, Trim, Merge, Crop, Outline. Hard and Soft.



The Blend Tool. Summary. Q&A. Quiz. Exercises. Quiz Answers.

V. GETTING STYLIZED.

HOUR 14. Adding Text.


Using the Type Tool.



Point Text. Creating Area Text.



Linking Text Blocks.



Setting Up Rows and Columns.



Placing Type on a Path. Vertical Text. Summary. Q&A. Quiz. Exercises. Quiz Answers.

HOUR 15. Advanced Typography.


The Character Palette.



Font. Size. Leading. Kerning and Tracking. Horizontal and Vertical Scale. Baseline Shift.



The Paragraph Palette.



Justification. Indents. Word and Letter Spacing.



The Tab Palette. The MM Design Palette. Converting Text to Outlines. Change Case. Find Font and Find/Change. Smart Punctuation. Check Spelling. Summary. Q&A. Quiz. Exercises. Quiz Answers.

HOUR 16. Live Effects.


Convert to Shape. Distort & Transform Filters.



Free Distort. Punk & Bloat. Roughen. Scribble and Tweak. Transform. Twirl. Zig Zag.



Path. Pathfinder. Rasterize. Stylize Effects.



Add Arrowheads. Drop Shadow. Feather. Inner Glow and Outer Glow. Round Corners.



Photoshop-Compatible Effects. Live Effects and the Appearance Palette. Summary. Q&A. Quiz. Exercises. Quiz Answers.

HOUR 17. Working with Raster Images.


A Pixel for Your Thoughts.



Placing an Image. The Rasterize Command. Opening an Image. Linked and Embedded Images. The Links Palette. File Formats.



Using Raster Art in Illustrator.



Colorize 1-Bit TIFFs. Use the Autotrace Tool. Use Photoshop-Compatible Filters.



Summary. Q&A. Quiz. Exercises. Quiz Answers.

HOUR 18. Vector Filters.


The Filter Menu. Colors Filters.



Adjust Colors. Blending Objects. Switching Between Color Models. Inverting Colors. Overprint Black. Saturate.



Create Filters.



Object Mosaic. Trim Marks.



Pen and Ink.



The Photo Crosshatch Filter.



Summary. Q&A. Quiz. Exercises. Quiz Answers.

HOUR 19. Charts and Graphs.


Creating a Graph.



Importing Graph Data. Editing Graph Data.



Graph Options. Graph Design. Ungrouping Your Graph. Summary. Q&A. Quiz. Exercises. Quiz Answers.

VI. GETTING THE MOST OUT OF ILLUSTRATOR.

HOUR 20. Saving/Exporting Files.


Saving in Illustrator Formats.



Native Illustrator. Illustrator EPS. Acrobat PDF.



Exporting to Other File Formats.



TIFF. Photoshop 5. GIF89a, JPEG, PNG, Flash, and SVG. PCX. BMP. Amiga IFF, Targa, and Pixar. AutoCAD. Metafile.



Summary. Q&A. Quiz. Quiz Answers.

HOUR 21. Working Smart in Illustrator.


Using Actions. User-Customizable Keyboard Shortcuts. Saving Your Documents.



Using Intelligent Filenames.



Working with Selections.



Hiding and Locking.



Keeping Your Documents Clean.



Cleaning Up Individual Paths.



Scanning and Tracing Art. Preparing a File for Output.



Including Typefaces and Linked Images. Outlining Paths. Blends and the Pen and Ink Filter.



Using Third-Party Plug-ins.



HotDoor CADtools. MAPublisher. Plug-ins by Rick Johnson (Graffix). FILTERiT3 (Mac OS only). Vertigo 3D Words. ILLOM Toolbox 1 (Mac OS only).



Summary. Q&A. Quiz. Exercises. Quiz Answers.

HOUR 22. Printing.


Printing Files.



Document Setup/Page Setup. Tiling with the Page Tool.



Color Separations.



Specifying Colors to Be Separated. Positioning the Plate.



Setting Cropmarks. Troubleshooting. Summary. Q&A. Quiz. Exercises. Quiz Answers.

HOUR 23. Web Graphics.


Designing for the Web. Color on the Web.



Dithered Colors. Using the Web Palette.



Assigning URLs to Objects. Web File Formats.



The GIF89a Format. The JPEG Format. The PNG Format.



Saving Images for the Web.



Setting GIF Format Options. Setting JPEG Format Options. Setting PNG Format Options.



Making Animations.



Creating a Flash Animation.



Summary. Q&A. Quiz. Exercises. Quiz Answers.

HOUR 24. Cross-Platform Issues.


Naming and Saving Files. Patterns and Gradients. Drag and Drop. Font Issues. Compatibility. Summary. Q&A. Quiz. Exercise. Quiz Answers.

Index.