Jenkins - How to do everything Adobe Illustrator CS4 [maximize all the tools and settings ; create logos, graphs, ads, and illustrations ; design graphics for the web ; full color throughout]

Sue Jenkins

How to Do Everything Adobe Illustrator CS4

About the Author

Sue Jenkins is an illustrator, web and graphic designer, photographer, teacher, and writer, and the owner and creative director of Luckychair ( www.luckychair.com ), a full-service design studio serving businesses across the United States since 1997. When not designing, this Adobe Certified Expert/Adobe Certified Instructor teaches three-day courses in Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and Photoshop at Noble Desktop in New York City. In addition to this Illustrator book, Sue is the author of Dreamweaver All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies (Wiley), Web Design: The L Line, The Express Line to Learning (Wiley), and Web Design All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies (Wiley). Sue is also the software instructor in three of ClassOnDemand's award-winning Adobe training DVDs, namely Dreamweaver for Designers (winner of a 2008 Bronze Telly Award), Designer's Guide to Photoshop, and Designer's Guide to Illustrator. Sue lives with her husband and son in Pennsylvania.

About the Technical Editor

Mara Zebest is a graphic artist who uses her knowledge and skills in both volunteer and commercial work. Mara has taught classes on Adobe and Microsoft programs for a local school district, and has also been a guest instructor at a nearby community college. She has experience working in a graphic marketing department, which has also afforded her printing production experience. Mara has been a contributing author and technical editor for numerous books covering a multitude of Adobe and Microsoft products. Mostly she hates talking about herself in the third person so she'll stop now.

A warm and heartfelt thank you goes to my agent, Matt Wagner, for getting me this wonderful and creative project; to Roger Stewart, Sponsoring Editor, for his kindness and down-to-earth professionalism and his suggested five obstructions; to Carly Stapleton, my Acquisition Coordinator, for keeping everything organized and on track; to Mara Zebest, my Technical Editor, for carefully reading through every word and offering great suggestions to improve this book throughout all of the iterations of the beta software; to Jody McKenzie, David Zielonka, Mike McGee, Julie Searls, Jim Kussow, Jeff Weeks, Vastavikta Sharma, and everyone else in Editorial/Production at McGraw-Hill and ITC for working to make this book look good; and to illustrators Barbara Zuckerman, Chris Reed, Heidi Udvardy, Susan Hunt Yule, and Janet Allinger who contributed to the gallerygreat work everyone! Thank you to all my dear friends in New York City and to Scott Carson, Megan Hefflin, and the other teachers and staff at Noble Desktop, each of you help to make every trip to Manhattan a special one. Thank you to all my family and friends around this great country of ours, you know who you are. Most importantly, I'd like to thank my sweet husband, Phil, and our delicious son, Kyle, for their love, support, and patience while I spent most of our lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer write, write, writing.

Welcome to How to Do Everything: Adobe Illustrator CS4! Adobe Illustrator is the number-one vector graphics program being used today by professionals. This program is the essential tool for graphic artists, video production artists, web and interactive designers, and professionals in other industries who use graphics to communicate ideas visually in print, on the Web, in motion graphics, and via mobile devices. Adobe Illustrator CS4 is superior in design features to prior versions of the program. It has better integration with other Adobe applications and a new and improved workspace layout, plus several new and enhanced drawing tools and controls.

This book is written for illustrators, artists, designers, hobbyists, scrapbookers, craftspeople, and anyone else who wants to take their illustrations, drawings, sketches, page layouts, web designs, patterns, craft projects, and artwork into the computerized vector-art world of Illustrator. Whether you're new to Illustrator or upgrading from an earlier version, you will discover in these pages how to master the most important features of Illustrator CS4.

You don't need any prior experience with Illustrator to read this book, but you should already know how to use a computer and a mouse, know the difference between a click and a double-click, and understand the basic workings of a software program in order to do things like access commands from the main menu, use keyboard shortcuts and the context menu, and open and close windows and dialog boxes.

How to Do Everything: Adobe Illustrator CS4 introduces and explains all facets of the Illustrator workspace with full-color graphic examples and screenshots to illustrate key concepts and tasks. The book takes you step by step through the process of creating various types of illustrations, and demonstrates professional techniques, shortcuts, and solutions. Each chapter begins with a "How To" listing outlining the essential skills you will be taught.

Here you will learn how to use all the program's tools and settings to draw just about anything you can imagine. Even if you have never used any illustration or graphics programs before, you will be able to jump in and learn by example in each chapter. Later in the book you'll even discover how to create logos, editorial illustrations, page layouts, book jackets, magazine ads, and business graphs for business, not to mention all the essential techniques and tools you need for creating graphics for web sites, blogs, and MySpace and Facebook pages, as well as integrating Illustrator artwork into Adobe Flash to create motion graphics.

This book is divided into four parts with a bonus gallery profiling professional illustrators at the end.

The first part of this book teaches you the basics of Illustrator, including getting a workspace orientation, learning how to set up and create new documents, and finding out how to use all the general drawing, painting, selection, and arrangement tools.

The second part goes into more advanced basic training about working with colors and swatches, using type effectively, transforming and reshaping your objects, exploring the world of patterns and gradients, working with symbols and integrating artwork with Flash, and designing custom business graphs.

In this next part, you'll learn how to use some of the more advanced special tools and techniques that Illustrator CS4 has to offer, including how to work with blends, clipping paths, and masks; how to use transparency and blending modes; how to apply special effects and use third-party plug-ins; how to create and edit custom graphic styles through the Appearance and Graphic Styles panels; and how to create artwork using the Live Paint and Live Trace tools.

In the previous parts, you learned how to get around the workspace and use Illustrator's tools and commands. In this part, you'll discover what it takes to create professional projects in the worlds of print, graphic, and web design. Learn about creating logos, editorial illustration, print layouts, T-shirt designs, book jackets, and crafts. Web topics include web layouts, buttons and image maps, and slicing and optimizing web graphics. The last chapter delves into printing topics so you can learn how to best prepare your work for print.