Adobe Illustrator CS4 means superior results faster, with new features and enhancements that help you create and manage your images more easily and efficiently. The indispensable new and improved features help graphic web designers, photographers, and video professionals create the highest quality images, with the control, flexibility, and capabilities that you expect from the professional standards in desktop digital imaging.
Each new release of Illustrator brings with it new features, improvements, and added sophistication. This edition is aimed at the Web designer, interactive media professional, or subject matter expert developing multimedia content, and the application developer.
If you’re already familiar with Illustrator CS3, you can access and download all the tasks in this book with Adobe Illustrator CS4 New Features to help make your transition to the new version simple and smooth. The Illustrator CS4 New Features as well as other Illustrator CS3 to Illustrator CS4 transition helpers are available on the Web at www.perspection.com.
If you’re searching for what’s new in Illustrator CS4, just look for the icon: New!. The new icon appears in the table of contents and throughout this book, so you can quickly and easily identify a new or improved feature in Illustrator CS4. The following is a brief description of each new feature and its location in this book.
Tabbed Document Window (p. 6, 18-19, 26) Display multiple documents in a tabbed view or open them side by side so you can easily compare or drag items from one document to another. Simply click a document’s tab to open it, or click Close (x) on a tab to close it.
Application Bar and Workspaces Menu (p. 6, 56) From the application bar at the top of each Creative Suite application, provides menus and options in one easy to access place. Use the workspace switcher to quickly jump to different workspace configurations to meet your specific needs. Also along this bar, you can access Adobe Bridge and the document arrangement panel
Arrange Document Window (p. 18) Use the intuitive Arrange Documents window to quickly arrange your open documents in a variety of configurations.
Community Help (p. 22-23) Illustrator Help uses a Community Help site on the web at adobe.com (which is updated regularly) to help you find the information you need. When you start Illustrator Help, your browser opens, displaying a web site with Illustrator help categories and topics. Along with help text, some help topics include links to text and video tutorials. In addition, comments and ratings from users are available to help guide you to an answer.
Adobe Product Improvement Program (p. 23) This is an opt-in program that allows you to test Adobe products and make suggestions for future products. This program enables Adobe to collect product usage data from customers while maintaining their privacy.
Multiple Artboards (p. 34-37) Create multi-page files containing up to 100 artboards of varying sizes. You can create artboards that overlap, appear side-by-side, or are stacking on top of one another. You can also save, export and print artboards independently or together. Multiple artboards have replaced the Crop Area tool.
Smart Guides (p. 50-51) Smart guides are now even more practical with unobtrusive appearance and behaviors. Instant pop-ups appear with alignment and measurement information, such as deltas between objects and angles of rotation (that you can specify) and when moving or transforming objects. Of course, objects still snap to any alignment you choose to make it easy to arrange and transform objects exactly how you want.
Key Object Alignment (p. 84) The Align panel and Control panel now provide quick access to the key alignment option. A key object is the one object that you want other objects to align to. You specify a key object by selecting all the objects you want to align, including the key object, and then clicking again on the key object. When selected, the key objects appears with a thick blue outline, and the Align To Key Object icon appears in the Control panel and Align panel. Simply choose an alignment option, such as Horizontal Align Left or Vertical Align Center, and all the other selected objects align to the key object.
Kuler (p. 106) Kuler is an extension that provides access to the Kuler online community. The Kuler application is added as a panel in Illustrator. You can add the Kuler color theme to the Swatches panel.
Gradients Panel (p. 134-136) The Gradient panel now provides a menu of all your saved gradients, directly access color panels, and apply transparency to individual color spots, among other things.
Transparency in Gradient (p. 135) Create gradients with two to many colors and define the opacity of any or all individual colors. By specifying different opacity values for the different color stops in your gradient, you can create gradients that fade in or out and reveal or hide underlying images.
Gradients Tool (p. 137) Using the enhanced Gradient tool, you can interact with gradients on the object itself by adding or changing color stops, applying transparency to color stops, and changing the direction or angle of a linear or elliptical gradient.
Blob Brush Tool (p. 154-155) Use the Blob Brush to draw paths that merge with existing artwork. The Blob Brush draws paths that are fill only - no stroke - and can merge with existing artwork that has the same fill, and no stroke. The Blob Brush can merge with existing artwork that has complicated appearances (as long as there is no stroke on the artwork and the Blob Brush is set up to paint with the exact same fill and appearance settings. For example, if you’ve created a yellow filled rectangle with a drop shadow applied, you can set up the Blob Brush with those attributes and then draw a path across the rectangle, and the two paths will be merged. You can easily select and edit the resulting shape. Use the Blob Brush together with the Eraser tool for truly intuitive vector painting
Clipping Masks (p. 160-163) Adobe Illustrator now displays only the masked area while you are moving or transforming a masked object. Double-click the masked object to open it in Isolation mode, where you can view and edit the mask independently of all other objects.
Graphic Styles Panel (p. 231, 234-235) The newly updated Graphic Styles panel provides you with a quick and easy way to view and apply styles to objects in your document. Use the Use Text For Preview option to view a style as it appears on text, or right-click a thumbnail to quickly preview how that style will look on a selected object on the artboard. Effect-only styles now display the outlines of the object on which the style was created, so you can recognize your effect-only styles at a glance. Merge a style with an object’s existing style or merge two or more different styles on an object by simply using the Alt or Option key when applying the style.
Appearance Panel Editing (p. 236-237) Select an item in the Appearance panel to view and use the enhanced full-featured controls. Click hyper-links to open option dialog boxes for effects, strokes, and fills. Click a visibility icon for any attribute to easily turn it on or off.
Flex Support (p. 360) Efficiently deliver more editable, workable content to developers for web, interactive, and RIA projects. For instance, use the Flex Skins for Illustrator to create and export vector skins in the Adobe Flex format.
Separations Preview Panel (p. 337) Preview your color separations on your monitor before printing to avoid color output surprises such as unexpected spot colors and unwanted overprinting. The Separations Preview panel lets you easily turn colors on and off so you can see how blending, transparency, and overprinting will appear in color-separated output.
Export Multiple Artboards (p. 348, 351, 354, 354-359) Creating documents with multiple artboards now makes it easy to create multi-page documents for exporting. You can export artboards to any of the following formats: PDF, PSD, SWF, JPEG, PNG, and TIFF. Or import a multiple artboard Illustrator file into Adobe InDesign or Adobe Flash. You can now easily create multiple-page PDFs. When exporting to Flash SWF format, multiple artboards export as multiple files.
Adobe ConnectNow (p. 406, 419) The Share My Screen command on the File menu allows you to connect to Adobe ConnectNow, which is a secure Web site where you can start an online meeting and collaborate on any design project across platforms and programs.
Adobe Drive (p. 406, 421) Adobe Drive is an AIR program that allows you to connect to hosted services, such as Version Cue CS4 servers.
Adobe Bridge (p. 407, 409-411, 417) General improvements include faster asset management and a Quick Search bar, from which you can search keywords, file names, and folder names. You also have a choice of commonly used Workspaces on the Application bar, as well as a “breadcrumb” file path so you can easily link back to the source folder for any file you’re viewing. Bridge allows you to create PDF slideshows, contact sheets, PDF layouts for printing, and web galleries.