Real World Illustrator

How it's made: Deke vs. Tom Cruise

rwillustrator@gmail.com (Mordy Golding) — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 09:25:52 PST

Special effects, cutting-edge video recording techniques, and high-end video production aren't just for blockbuster Hollywood films anymore. In the right hands, these tools can also help you learn better -- which is especially helpful if you happen to work at a company that provides video-based training.

Having been an author myself, teaching Illustrator through the years, I've always embraced video training, believing that actually showing how something works is better than simply writing about it. At the same time, simply capturing a computer screen or setting up a video camera in the back of a classroom doesn't really take advantage of all that video has to offer. There are conceptual topics and ideas that can be expressed and explained visually by combining video and graphics.

To better illustrate this concept, I thought I'd offer a peek behind the scenes of how Deke McClelland and lynda.com took that idea and actually made it work -- beginning with an innovative introduction to his chapter on how to use the Levels command in Photoshop to make tonal adjustments to an image (from the course Photoshop CS6 One-on-One: Intermediate).

How did Deke and lynda.com do it? Well, let's take a closer look at one of Deke's movies from his follow-up course, Photoshop CS6 One-on-One: Advanced, where Deke talks about how the Curves adjustment in Photoshop works. To create this movie, the awesome production team at lynda.com worked with Deke to make the magic happen. Here's a behind-the-scenes look at how the actual video shoot went -- I was lucky enough to be at the studios that day to watch the process, where Deke explained it as "full on Minority Report live action". Deke gives Tom Cruise a run for his money on this one...

Once the video was captured, it was sent over to the graphics department, where the footage was merged with the Histogram and the Curve.

The final result looks like this:

This is perhaps just one example of the innovative work lynda.com is doing with its authors. For a peek into an author's perspective on how a lynda.com course comes to life, check out this post from illustrator extraordinaire Von Glitschka, who documented his experience.

2013 Illustrator Tool of the Year: Shape Builder

rwillustrator@gmail.com (Mordy Golding) — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 08:06:13 PST

Pantone recently announced the official color for 2013 (Emerald Green #17-5641), so I figured it would be ok if I announced the official Illustrator tool for 2013 as well: the Shape Builder tool.

Since the Shape Builder tool first appeared in Illustrator CS5, I've always thought of it as the "sleeper" feature. You know, the one that doesn't get much attention, but that ends up being one of the most useful tools.

Now that I've had the tool for close to 3 years, I've found that indeed, it has far increased the speed at which I create and edit art. The keyboard shortcut (Shift-M) is now completely automatic, and using the tool requires absolutely no thought. It's not that Pathfinder was bad -- it's just extremely inefficient. I no longer need to move my eyes (or my cursor) away from the art I'm working on, and then figure out which icon in the Pathfinder panel I should click on. Even if I know what specific function I need, it still requires moving my focus away from my art. The Shape Builder is incredibly liberating.

If you're looking for some more information on how to use the Shape Builder, I've assembled a few resources for you:

Fridays with Mordy: Building Art in Illustrator. This is a 45min recording that discusses a variety of techniques for building artwork in Illustrator, and cover the use of the Shape Builder tool (Free).

Illustrator Insider Training: Drawing Without the Pen Tool. This is one of my lynda.com courses that focuses specifically on drawing vector artwork without having to rely on the Pen tool in Illustrator. It covers a variety of approaches and has a chapter dedicated to the use of the Shape Builder (Requires a lynda.com membership).

Here's an overview of the Shape Builder tool from Adobe TV (Free):

So if you aren't already making the most of the Shape Builder tool, 2013 is the year to make it so. Learn how it works, memorize the shortcuts (modifier keys enhance the functionality of the tool as you use it), and you'll be well on your way to a far more efficient drawing experience.

Feel free to share your own experiences with the Shape Builder tool in the comments below. Wishing all Illustrator users around the globe a wonderful and safe Holiday season and a Happy New Year!

The right tool for the job

rwillustrator@gmail.com (Mordy Golding) — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 11:13:13 PDT

Throughout my professional career, I've been bombarded with one kind of question. The question is sometimes phrased differently, but it's always the same intent:

"What tool should I use?"

The context is usually framed within the hope of a firm decision to use one application over another. Illustrator or Freehand? Illustrator or Inkscape? Illustrator or Photoshop? Illustrator or InDesign? Illustrator or Fireworks? Oh the choices are endless, aren't they?

In general, I try to nudge people in the general direction of using the application they are more familiar with. Whatever tool you can use faster without having to think too much about it is the one you should use. If Photoshop seems natural to you, then go with it. In my case it's Illustrator.

Why do I offer this advice?

I offer it because I believe it's a matter of using a tool for what it's best suited for. In my opinion, the most powerful aspect of using a computer is the ability to iterate on a concept. To generate as many variations of a concept as you can.

But we must not forget that before you start iterating on an idea, you have to come up with it in the first place. And a pencil is FAR more powerful of a tool for that. I usually differentiate the two in the following way:

You limit yourself (and your creativity) if you try to explore within the confines of any computer application.

I offer the following example: Here's a logo I was recently working on:

The sketch on the left is one of about 30 or 40 that I doodled, over the course of about 3 days. It took a lot of time. The three vector versions on the right (in blue) took me about 3 minutes. So it was only after I had spent time exploring with basic concepts that I was ready to start iterating on those concepts.

And here's why I use Illustrator. Because I don't have to think about HOW to iterate. I'm fast enough to try multiple iterations without slowing down. And that's why I say if you're familiar with any application -- be it Photoshop, Fireworks, etc -- USE it. Just use it for the right thing. Use your pencil to explore and then use your computer to iterate.

Illustrator CS6: A Closer Look at the New User Interface

rwillustrator@gmail.com (Mordy Golding) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:01:31 PDT

In a previous post, I made mention of the 64bit work that was done in Illustrator CS6, and how that work required Adobe to jettison the existing user interface framework and move to an updated one. It sounds technical (and it is), but it's worth taking a closer look at what this new user interface is all about.

Read just about any review, watch any tutorial, or head to Adobe's website and you'll hear the same thing: Adobe Illustrator CS6 sports a new "dark" user interface. It helps "get the user interface out of the way" and it "lets you focus on your design". That's all true, but that's like marveling at the shiny gift wrap on a new present. It's not the outer wrapping that deserves the focus here -- it's what's inside the box that really counts.

More than just a fresh coat of paint.

In previous versions of Illustrator, the programmers at Adobe used a framework to build panels and dialog boxes. This framework was 32bit and also had certain limitations. Since Illustrator CS6 was going to be 64bit, Adobe had to move to a 64bit framework, meaning that every single dialog box, and every single panel -- in the entire application -- had to be rewritten.

When you rebuild something from scratch (instead of just trying to patch it up), you benefit from the following:

Any old issues automatically disappear (although that doesn't mean you won't necessarily introduce new ones). Still, any issue that happened in the past (i.e. bugs) are gone.
You automatically benefit from newer technology. Meaning if the new interface framework has better support for things like keyboard navigation, then all panels and dialog boxes get that support -- automatically.
You have an opportunity to address or rethink design.

It's that last bullet point that really stands out. Once Adobe was going to have rebuilt all these dialog boxes and panels anyway, they figured that at the same time, it might be a good idea to also revisit the design and function of them.

Redesigned and enhanced.

For example, you'll notice that in Illustrator CS6, every single dialog box now consistently features Cancel and OK buttons in the lower right corner. Previous versions were inconsistent with some panels having these buttons at the top right or elsewhere.

The Color panel has been updated to support a resizable and much larger color sample area, easier to find buttons for Black, White, and None attributes, and specifically with Hexadecimal colors, a single text field so that you can easily copy and paste values.

The Color Panel from Illustrator CS5 (left) and the new one from Illustrator CS6 (right). I set my UI brightness in CS6 to match that of CS5 for easier comparison.

The Transparency panel has been updated to raise awareness of an incredibly powerful feature that has been "hidden" since it was introduced back in Illustrator 9: Opacity Masks. Now, a Create Mask button is clearly found directly within the panel instead of having to dig in the panel's fly out menu.

The Transparency panel from Illustrator CS5 (left) and the new one from Illustrator CS6 (right).

The Save for Web dialog box has been totally revamped, allowing you to see and modify the image size and color settings at the same time, and the dialog is more streamlined, allowing you to export web graphics more efficiently.

The Save for Web dialog box in Illustrator CS5

The Save for Web dialog box in Illustrator CS6

These are but a few examples of what the new user interface in Illustrator CS6 means. It's not about how light or dark the interface is. It's brand new, with new capabilities (rename layers, artboards, brushes, symbols, etc -- all directly inline in the panel), and a smoother and silkier feel. It's kinda like how I always imagined the user interface for Illustrator should have always been.

Illustrator CS6 is 64bit: What does it mean?

rwillustrator@gmail.com (Mordy Golding) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:22:01 PDT

With version CS6 (aka v.16) Adobe Illustrator is a 64bit application. But what exactly does that mean? Sometimes I think it's like that SNL spoof of Verizon's marketing around 4G LTE.

Truth be told, a 64bit version of Illustrator means a lot. Not necessarily because of what 64bit actually *IS*, but really because of what Adobe had to do in order to move Illustrator to 64bit.

Let's start with the basics.

Your computer has two kinds of memory—hard drive space and something called RAM. The hard drive space is storage—like a drawer in your desk. The RAM is like your desktop. A computer can only process information using RAM (what's on your desktop). So for example, when you launch Illustrator, your computer goes to your hard drive and copies that information into RAM so that you can work with Illustrator (like pulling a file out of the drawer and placing it on your desktop so that you can work with it). As you create and open more documents, your desktop (RAM) becomes filled. If you run out of RAM, your computer must "clear space" by temporarily copying stuff to your hard drive so that it can work on what you're asking for. This is why if you have a lot of applications and documents open at once, you could see your system slow to a crawl.

In theory, the more RAM you add to your computer, the larger of a desktop area you have, or the more capacity your computer has to work with documents and applications without having to shuffle information between your RAM and your hard drive. Here's the thing though: while your computer may have the capacity to install 8GB or 16GB (or more) of RAM, a 32bit application can only see (or "address") a maximum of 2GB or RAM (in some circumstances, 3GB of RAM). In contrast, a 64bit application has the ability to address as much RAM as you can squeeze into your computer (theoretically).

So as an example, say you have a computer with 16GB of RAM. And say you were using Illustrator CS5, which is a 32bit application. If you are working with complex files, Illustrator is only able to use a maximum of 3GB of your RAM. With Illustrator CS6, which is a 64bit application, on that same computer, Illustrator would be able to address all the available RAM that you have on your system. Depending on the situation, this could speed up processing time significantly. Of course, this is assuming you have a lot of RAM installed on your machine (at least 8GB), and also assuming that you're working with a lot of files or complex ones.

But as I mentioned earlier, the sheer fact that Illustrator is 64bit, doesn't actually make the application faster or better in any way. It simply means that Illustrator has a bigger playground to play in. The big difference is that in order to make Illustrator a 64bit application, Adobe had to do some work. Wait, let me rephrase that—Adobe had to do a significant amount of work. It's the result of this work that—in my opinion—makes Illustrator CS6 a must have upgrade. In other words, even if CS6 had no other additional features other than this work, I'd recommend the upgrade.

So what are the benefits of the work that went into making Illustrator a 64bit application?

Stability

Most crashes occur when a computer runs out of memory (RAM). In theory, a computer should never run out or RAM because when it sees that it doesn't have enough, it temporarily offloads some information to your hard drive to make space. A computer program usually keeps track of how much memory it uses so it knows how much is left when it's about to perform complex functions. If there isn't enough, and your computer can't make enough room with the RAM that you have, you might get an error (along the lines of "there's not enough RAM to complete this operation").

Adobe Illustrator just turned 25, and when I left the team back in 2004, the program contained over five million lines of computer code. Just like an old house is drafty, a computer program of that size can often "leak" memory. That is, the program may use memory to perform a function, but then "forget" to release that memory when the function is complete. So the computer system thinks the memory is available, but it really isn't. So when Illustrator later tries to calculate if there's enough RAM to perform a function, it runs out of memory during processing (kinda like Wile E Coyote running off a cliff before realizing there's nothing beneath his feet). This causes a crash.

In order to make Illustrator 64bit, Adobe had to rewrite a LOT of code. Tons of memory leaks were fixed, which results in a much more stable environment. This, coupled with the fact that Illustrator can use all of the memory in your computer, translates to a far more reliable experience. So in this case, a 64bit version of Illustrator will likely mean you'll no longer see random crashes or out of memory errors. So while it may not always be faster, it is stable and reliable.

Experience

While everyone will instantly notice the newer "dark" user interface in Illustrator CS6, few will appreciate what it really means. Illustrator's user interface was built upon a framework that was 32bit. So in order to get to 64bit, Adobe had to use a newer framework. This translates to two main benefits for us: the newer framework supports more things (i.e. the ability to edit text inline in a panel); and the fact that Adobe had to rewrite EVERY panel and EVERY dialog box in the application.

For example, if you're on a Mac and want to cycle through fonts, you previously had to choose a font from the popup font menu with your mouse each time. Now, you can simply highlight the Font field and tap the up and down arrows to cycle through (and preview) different typefaces. If you want to rename a layer, an artboard, a swatch—you can do that simply by double-clicking on the name in the panel itself—without having to bring up a separate dialog box.

Adobe also had the opportunity to modify panels and dialog boxes. So for example, the Preferences dialog box is much easier to navigate, and the Color panel has a much larger area to sample colors from. Overall, you'll see that the user interface isn't just a darker color (which can be adjusted to a lighter color of course), but that it is silky smooth and has that new car smell.

Future

The Illustrator team has always wanted to add newer features, but was often held back by the older architecture. By laying the groundwork with a modern 64bit architecture in CS6, Adobe is paving the way for what they can do in the future. You can almost think of Illustrator CS6 as a foundation that Adobe can use to build more powerful features upon. For example, many are familiar with the crash-protection feature in InDesign. You can never lose your work in InDesign. Wouldn't it be awesome to have such a feature in Illustrator? I think it would. But Adobe couldn't even think about adding such a feature to Illustrator without first building a foundation for such a feature. So the work that was done in Illustrator CS6 means that in future version, Adobe has fewer roadblocks and more opportunities to build the features we are asking for, and the features that they are continuing to dream up.

Hopefully, this article gives you a better understanding of what a 64bit version of Illustrator means to you. Got questions? Leave a comment below and I'll do my best to answer them.

Illustrator CS6 Sneak Peek!

rwillustrator@gmail.com (Mordy Golding) — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 06:49:13 PDT

If you thought that only Photoshop gets all the love from Adobe, think again. Today Adobe released a sneak peek of what's coming to Illustrator CS6.

The video features Brenda Sutherland, Illustrator Product Manager Extraordinaire, showing a new Pattern Creation feature. Anyone who has ever tried to design seamless pattern swatches with Illustrator knows that it can often be an exercise in frustration. But this new feature makes it really simple to not only create seamless patterns, but also to edit them.

Basically, pattern creation now happens within a kind of isolation mode (much like how you edit symbols for example). Within this "pattern creation mode" as it's called, you can work with your art and Illustrator automatically creates and previews the repeat. To modify existing patterns, you simply double-click on the swatch (what a concept!) and it brings you into the isolation mode where you can either modify the pattern, or make a change and save off a duplicate. It's easy and it's fun!

You can watch Brenda demo the feature here.

One other thing which you'll notice in the video -- Adobe Illustrator CS6 features a dark user interface, similar to what you may have seen in the Photoshop CS6 beta. Just as with Photoshop, this user interface can be lightened and darkened to your preference.

Illustrator Memories

rwillustrator@gmail.com (Mordy Golding) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 00:03:31 PDT

So today is March 19, 2012 -- the day that Adobe officially celebrates Illustrator's 25th Anniversary. I wanted to commemorate this special day and was thinking about those wonderful years when I worked with the wonderfully talented people at Adobe on the Illustrator team.

As you might expect, working on the Illustrator team was an incredibly rewarding experience. By far, the best part was working with the overall team. We had a lot of fun back then, and I dug up a video that Ted Alspach and I put together -- sort of a parody of those late-night commercials that sell a collection of songs on a set of CDs. I hope you enjoy the parody, and more importantly, I hope you appreciate 25 years of Adobe passion, ingenuity, and innovation that we lovingly refer to as Adobe Illustrator.

Happy 25th Birthday Adobe Illustrator!

rwillustrator@gmail.com (Mordy Golding) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 11:55:52 PST

Adobe shipped its first box of Adobe Illustrator on March 1, 1987. Today, March 1, 2012, she turns twenty-five years old. Happy Birthday!

New Horizons: Lynda.com

rwillustrator@gmail.com (Mordy Golding) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 08:34:15 PST

Over the years, I've been passionate about teaching others as much as I can about Adobe products, mainly around the use of Illustrator and other design products and workflows. I've been extremely fortunate to work at great design studios and at Adobe as well. I'm also thankful for the tremendous support I've received from the overall community as an educator and trainer -- covering books, white papers, Fridays with Mordy, and most recently, video training over at Lynda.com. Thanks to all of you -- my dedicated fan base -- for all of your amazing support.

By far, the video training I've been doing at Lynda.com has been the most exciting, as it allowed me to present material in a fashion similar to what I have offered in my live seminars and to my clients. This was especially evident to me in my development of the Illustrator Insider Training series at Lynda.com. Truth be told, there's a lot of innovation at Lynda.com around education in general.

With that in mind, I'm thrilled to announce that I've accepted the position of Director of Content at Lynda.com, covering the Design, Web + Interactive, and Developer segments. In this new role, I believe that I can extend innovation in training across more than just one or two Adobe products.

You'll still be hearing plenty from me... of that you can be sure :)

Building A Better Pathfinder

rwillustrator@gmail.com (Mordy Golding) — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 17:43:54 PDT

It's true. Many of you have heard me utter the words "Pathfinder is dead to me". I'm surprised I haven't even received death threats from the Illustrator faithful for making such a remark. In all honesty, I made that remark when I discovered the power of the Live Paint feature that was added to Illustrator in CS2.

But then Adobe added the Shape Builder tool in CS5. And while I was initially unimpressed with it, I have come to love it. To the point that I've designated it as the surprise sleeper feature of CS5. It gives me the visual aspects of Live Paint, but the edit-friendly paths of Pathfinder without the need for group structure. And I'm able to apply variable-width strokes and brushes (something that Live Paint doesn't support). At the same time, I've been using the original Pathfinder commands every once in a while too.

But I still have a workflow issue with both the Shape Builder tool and with Pathfinder (they both use the same technology to work), and that is that once you use the Shape Builder tool, or once you apply a Pathfinder command, you lose your original paths. All you are left with is the result of the Unite, or the Minus Front, or the Divide (the three most-used Pathfinder functions). This is problematic when you need to reuse one or more of the original paths for other Pathfinder functions, or for other tasks.

Anyone who relies on Pathfinder is probably very much aware of this issue, and it's why many have trained themselves to always copy, paste, and hide, or lock the original paths before applying the Pathfinder. This way there's an original unscathed path that you can always go back to. But because I was away from Pathfinder for so long, this really stood out as an issue for me (this problem doesn't exist with Live Paint).

So I set out to build a better pathfinder -- specifically for the Divide function -- as it is the worst offender when it comes to this issue. My goal was to avoid adding tedious steps, but to make Divide into a non-destructible function so that I wouldn't lose my original paths. I call it "Super Divide" and I employed an Action to make it work. Here's what I did:

1. Create two overlapping shapes and select them. In order to record the Action, we'll need to have something to apply the commands to.

2. Click the Create New Action button in the Actions panel, and name the action (I called mine Super Divide). You can also assign a keyboard shortcut to make life easier if you're into that kind of stuff. Then click Record.

3. Choose Edit > Copy.

4. Choose Edit > Paste in Front.

5. From the Pathfinder panel, click the Divide button.

6. Click the Stop Recording button at the bottom left of the Actions panel.

That's it. You're done. Now, if you need to apply the Divide function, simply press the keyboard shortcut you assigned to the Action. Or, you can choose "Button Mode" from the Actions panel flyout menu and just click the Super Divide action when you want to apply it. It's the exact same click as clicking the button in the Pathfinder, only you still have your original paths to work with.

If you like this technique, then you might also want to create additional Actions for Super Unite and Super Minus Front.

ASK MORDY: Eyedropper Tool Woes

rwillustrator@gmail.com (Mordy Golding) — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 11:50:15 PDT

This question comes in from Dan:

If I have a white rectangle with some transparency applied and it sitting directly over another rectangle with a red fill, what you end up seeing where they overlap is not red, not white but pink. Not rocket science....I know. However if I want to use the eyedropper to pick up that pink color....I cannot do it. I've been researching and fiddling with eyedropper settings but no matter what I do, eyedropper only picks up "white"; it sees the objects, not the color. If I take a screen shot of Illustrator and place that flattened 2-dimensional image back into Illustrator, now eyedropper "sees" the pink and picks it up if I shift-click. How do you make eyedropper pick up the resulting pixel color....not the fill color when you're dealing with transparencies?

That's a great question, Dan. Just to illustrate the "issue" here, say you have two shapes -- a yellow and a blue rectangle -- that overlap. The blue shape is set to multiply, so where the two shapes overlap, you see green. If you use the Eyedropper tool to sample the area that "looks" green, you'll actually pick up blue. That's because the Eyedropper tool is picking up the fill attribute of the rectangle -- not the final color that's a result of the transparent effect.

Sampling from the "green" area will actually result in a blue color.

As Dan mentioned, you *could* turn the artwork into an image (although you don't have to take a screenshot -- you could just rasterize the artwork by selecting both shapes and choosing Object > Rasterize). When sampling from a raster image, you can press and hold the Shift key while using the Eyedropper tool to get pixel values. While that's true, you still have to go through the trouble of rasterizing your artwork. More so, the color that you're sampling is actually an RGB color sampled from the screen. So it's not entirely accurate either.

Sadly, this is a deficiency in the way the Eyedropper tool works. It can only sample pixels from rasters, and if it finds an object, it grabs it attributes, not the color that is seen on the screen.

So what to do?

Well, first, in order to get the real color of that overlapping area, we'll need to select both shapes and choose Object > Flatten Transparency. This will actually break up the artwork so that you'll have a physical third shape. This shape will contain the resulting color of the transparency. You could then use the Eyedropper tool to sample that new shape.

But that doesn't really work for me, as I will lose my editable artwork. Let's step back for a second though -- what if we just ignore the Eyedropper tool altogether? I mean, all we're after is the color. What if I told you I could hand you that color as a swatch? Would that work for you? It will take a few steps to do it, but if we record an Action to do it for us in a single click (or keystroke), that might fit the bill. Let's take it one step at a time:

1. Select the overlapping artwork.

2. Open the Actions panel and click the Create New Action button. Give it a name (and if you'd like, assign it to a set). If you want to perform this action later via a keystroke, assign a Function key as well. Then click Record.

3. Choose Edit > Copy.

4. Choose Edit > Paste in Front.

5. Choose Object > Flatten Transparency and then click OK (the default Medium setting is fine for our needs).

6. Open the Swatches panel, and from the bottom of it, click the New Color Group button. Click OK when the New Color Dialog appears.

7. Choose Edit > Clear.

8. In the Actions panel, click the Stop Recording button.

9. Make sure that the Toggle Dialog settings are off for the steps in the Action (otherwise the dialogs will appear whenever you run the Action).

OK, you're done. Now try it out. Create some overlapping artwork that has transparency. Select the artwork and Play the Action. Now you'll find a swatch in your panel that contains the exact color of that overlapping area.

Why Slicing in Illustrator (Still) Matters

rwillustrator@gmail.com (Mordy Golding) — Mon, 02 May 2011 12:43:58 PDT

In 2001, Illustrator 10 was released with a feature called Slicing. For the most part, slicing is a way to "chop up" a large graphic or parts of an overall design into rectangular regions. These regions are then "sewn together" on a web page using HTML tables, where each rectangle -- or slice -- represents a single cell in the overall table. At the time, building HTML content with tables was a common technique.

These days however, the majority of web pages are built with the far more versatile CSS standard. It's also rare that anyone uses Illustrator to assemble full web pages (graphics are usually created in Illustrator and then exported and assembled using CSS in a program like Dreamweaver for example). So the slicing feature in Illustrator today goes unnoticed for the most part.

In truth, those who use Illustrator for interactive design more often create individual art elements such as various-sized banners for ad campaigns, buttons or graphics for web pages, or icons for apps. Even those who design entire web pages in Illustrator usually end up rebuilding them with CSS, and export individual graphics as needed.

So when it comes to using Illustrator for this type of work, a valuable feature would be one that allows a user to easily define multiple areas within a single document that could each be exported in a variety of formats (PNG, JPG, GIF, etc). When the multiple artboards feature first appeared in Illustrator CS4, and when the feature was enhanced in Illustrator CS5, many thought it was a perfect fit for this kind of work.

Why artboards aren't the answer

In my humble opinion, however, for the kind of work that we're talking about here, using slices is still superior to artboards. Here are my reasons:

Artboards don't snap to the pixel grid. It's possible to position artboards in between pixels, and this result in artwork that is exported at incorrect dimensions. Slices are created from objects that snap to the grid, ensuring that they will always be precise and export at the correct pixel dimension.

Artboards don't "remember" file formats or settings. You can choose to export your artboard in a variety of file formats. However, each time to you want to export your artwork, you have to go through the process of choosing file formats and compression settings. Slices remember which export settings are applied to them, so you can have a single document that always exports one piece of art as a JPG and another as a PNG, each with specific settings.

Artboards are difficult to export. The Save for Web feature in Illustrator is a great way to quickly dial in optimized export settings, but you can only load a single artboard into Save for Web at any one time. Meaning if you have 30 artboards in your document, you must use Save for Web 30 times. You can use Illustrator's various export settings, but then must memorize which artboard number represents the art that you need. Save for Web not only lets you export all of your slices in one feel swoop (even if some are JPG and some are PNG, etc), but with Illustrator CS5, you can even select a slice and simply choose File > Save Selected Slices to export specific artwork directly from your document.

Artboards don't have "usable" file names. With Illustrator CS5, you can assign names to your artboards. These names are indeed used in the exporting process but always in the form of filename_artboardname. Often, designers need to use specific names when generating graphics. Slices allow you to apply names which are used however you like, offering far more control. This means you can export artwork and use it immediately instead of dealing with renaming your files after you create them each time.

Artboards can't migrate to Photoshop or Fireworks. Fortunately, designers have a variety of choices when it comes to creating graphics that are optimized for digital devices. While one designer may choose to use Illustrator, another may prefer Photoshop or Fireworks. While you can certainly export each artboard from Illustrator as an individual PSD file that can be opened in Photoshop or Fireworks for further processing, you can dealing with a large mess of files with larger projects. Take a single file from Illustrator with slices however, and you end up with a single file that still contains all of the slice regions – with their export settings intact – that you can open in Photoshop or Fireworks as needed.

Artboards are limited to 100 per document. Some larger campaigns or icon projects may require that you work with a very large number of graphics. A single Illustrator document can contain as many slices as you need.

At this point, you might be thinking that while artboards certainly aren't perfect, they are still far better than the ancient slicing feature that no one uses anymore. But I don’t use the slicing feature in Illustrator to create HTML tables. Rather, I use slices as a way to define smart "export regions". These regions are extremely versatile and memorize a plethora of export settings. If you often design and generate numerous graphics, using slices is a great way to manage your files.

Admittedly, the slicing feature has been dogged by issues over the years, most notably that artwork would export at incorrect sizes, or feature extra pixels of white – all due to antialiasing issues. However, these issues have been addressed with the pixel-snapping features in Illustrator CS5. So if you’re using CS5, slices can almost be thought of as a new – and usable – feature.

How to use slices as smart export regions

Create a new document using the Web profile. This ensures that anything you draw will align perfectly to the pixel grid, and issues like bad antialiasing or irregularly-sized graphics will be avoided.

Create one artboard per campaign or icon set (optional). Artboards are still useful, and can help you separate different sub-parts of an overall project. Keep in mind that each artboard will maintain its own slices, and you'll have to export the slices from each artboard individually.

Create a new layer for the slices. Being that slices are really just export regions, keeping them all on a separate layer can help you manage them easily without real artwork getting in the way. Think of them almost as guides.

Draw rectangles for each export region. Using the Rectangle tool, draw shapes at the exact dimensions that you need. I usually use black fill/no stroke shapes (you can hide the entire layer later, and avoiding strokes will ensure that your pixel boundaries are correct). Keep in mind that you're just drawing the most basic of shapes in Illustrator. Use the Transform panel to ensure dimensions are correct, and remember that you can use the Align panel to easily arrange the shapes as you wish.

Convert the rectangles to slices. Select all of the shapes you've drawn and choose Object > Slice > Make. This creates perfect slices for each of the shapes you've created. The slices are dynamic so at anytime you can resize the shape and the slice will automatically update. Avoid using the Slice tool to draw your own slices, and avoid using other methods of creating slices (like creating slices from guides or selections). Those methods don’t generate dynamic slices.

Create guides (optional). If you choose to hide the slices, you won't actually see their boundaries. Creating guides will not only help you visualize the boundaries of each slice, it will also allow you snap objects to each slice's boundary. Choose File > Select All and then choose View > Guides > Make Guides. In addition, you can also add text or notes outside the slice boundaries to identify its contents, if you'd like. Being the text sits outside the slice boundary, it won't be included when you export your artwork.

Lock the slices layer. Once your slices are set up, lock the entire layer to ensure that you don't accidentally adjust them. If you didn't create guides, you can also hide the layer so that you don't see the shapes you used to generate the slices.

Apply settings to the slices. If you already know how you're going to export your artwork, you can do it now (of course, you can do perform this task at anytime). Once you tell Illustrator how to export each slice, you won't have to do it ever again. Start by launching Save for Web and Devices, and selecting the Slice Select tool. Double-click each user slice (user slices appear in blue, and auto slices appear in gray — more info here). In the Slice Options dialog that appears, give your slice a name. This name will be used as the filename anytime you export your slice. The other settings in that dialog are irrelevant. Then use the settings on the right of the Save for Web and Devices window to choose file format and optimization settings. Click the Done button (not Save) to save the slice settings and return to the Illustrator document. Once you save your document, you won’t have to adjust these settings again (unless you want to, of course).

Draw your artwork. At this point, you have a template that contains all of the information you need to generate your art. Use your talents to create totally awesome artwork and graphics. If your Illustrator skills are lacking, remember you can always visit www.lynda.com to brush up (shameless plug).

Export your artwork. When you need to generate final optimized files of your artwork, you have two options. If you want to export all artwork, simply choose File > Save for Web and Devices, and then click Save. The Save Optimized As dialog appears, and at the bottom, choose Images Only, Default Settings, and All User Slices before clicking Save. If you want to export specific graphics, you don’t need Save for Web at all. You can simply use the Slice Select tool in Illustrator to select individual slices and then choose File > Save Selected Slices (note that in order to use this technique, the slices layer and guides will have to be unlocked so that you can select them).

Convert PDF Pages to Illustrator Artboards

rwillustrator@gmail.com (Mordy Golding) — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 14:27:40 PDT

Each time I show someone the Artboards feature in Illustrator, inevitably, the first question I get is always "so can I open a multi-page PDF file in Illustrator and have it open as a single Illustrator will multiple artboards"?

Sadly, Illustrator can still only open or place one page of a PDF at a time. So you'd have a lot of manual work on your hands -- basically creating your own artboards and then importing the PDF pages one at a time....

OR, you can do it the efficient way and use a script :)

Back when Artboards was first introduced in CS4, my friend and scripting guru Shane Stanley created an AppleScript that would basically allow you to drop any multipage PDF file on it -- and it would turn it into a mutli-artboard Illustrator file, with all the PDF pages -- in one step! Being that the script is written in AppleScript, it will only run on MacOS. The original script didn't support CS5 or Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard).

I'm happy to announce that Shane has graciously taken the time to update his script, so it now works for CS5 and also works on Mac OS 10.6. If you use the script, Shane has humbly requested that in lieu of paying him, you instead make a donation to help those in need in Christchurch and Japan. He suggested this organization, or the Red Cross.

You can download the script here.

Mordy's Favorite (technology) Things: 2010

rwillustrator@gmail.com (Mordy Golding) — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 09:03:48 PST

As yet another year winds down, I thought I'd share a few of my favorite technology things. These are utilities, accessories, apps, and a collection of tips that I rely on throughout my day as a graphic designer. The items I've listed here can all be had for under $100 each, and many of them are free. Of course, the AI, ID, and PS tips are free too :)

I've also gone over this list on a recent episode of Fridays with Mordy, my weekly live chat.

If you've got your own favorites, please feel free to share them with everyone in the comments below.

LYNDA.COM ($25 per month/other plans available)
I know I probably sound biased with this one, being I'm an author for Lynda.com. But hear me out. I use Lynda.com all the time to learn how to use apps that I'm less familiar with. I also love Lynda.com's Creative Inspiration series, which are documentaries about incredibly creative people. It's a chance to see how others do their amazing work.

If you aren't already a subscriber, you can sign up for a free 24 hour pass to Lynda.com.

Quick tip: Watch movies at double speed! Once you’ve logged in, choose My Account and then click Site Preferences. For Player Preference, choose QuickTime Custom, and then save your preferences. If you have a PC, make sure you have QuickTime installed. Then, when you watch movies you’ll see a control to play movies at 2x speed. Learn twice as fast!

DROPBOX (Free for 2GB, plans for additional space available)
Dropbox is an incredibly valuable utility. In its most simplest form, Dropbox is an easy way to back files up to the cloud. However, it can be used to share files across computers and devices, and it's a really easy way for you to share files with others. Perhaps the best part of Dropbox is how well it integrates into your system (Mac/Windows/Android/iOS/Blackberry). Don't have an account yet? Sign up here.

HANDBRAKE (Free)
Handbrake (MacOS/Windows) is probably best known for its ability to RIP DVDs so that you can view them on your iPod. But it's a fantastic video utility for compressing movies if you're trying to put content online or on portable devices. The user interface is done well. Find more information about Handbrake here.

MPEG STREAMCLIP (Free)
While Handbrake is nice, if all you're looking for is a utility that will crunch and compress videos for placing them on an iPad for example, I've found that MPEG Streamclip (MacOS/Win) gives better results. The UI leaves much to be desired, but it works. More info here, and some instructions on how to use it here.

TWEETDECK (Free)
If you aren't using Twitter, what are you waiting for? I'm not talking about the pure social aspects of it. I'm talking about using it as a resource. That's how I use twitter anyway. How often do you do a search on Google only to waste another 30 minutes following links to really get the info you need? Instead, try posting a question on twitter and wait for someone to respond with the exact link you need.

But just being on twitter won't help unless you're using it the right way. For me, that means doing live searches on twitter, and for me, nothing manages that better than TweetDeck. It's available for mobile devices as well as MacOS and Windows -- but I am really only happy with the desktop version. On one screen, you can manage your twitter, facebook, and linked-in feeds, and also do live searches across twitter. You can find more info on TweetDeck here.

TRANSMIT ($34)
Transmit (MacOS) from Panic Software is probably the best MacOS application ever. It makes FTP transfers virtually transparent. Transmit is easy to use, is fast, and it works. It's also another great way to integrate with Dropbox. You can find more information on Transmit here.

TNEFDD (Free)
Clients are always sending me emails with attachments, and being that I'm on a Mac, there are times when attachments arrive in my inbox in an unusable "winmail.dat" file format. Rather than keep asking clients to resend or send files via FTP, I got a hold of this free utility called tnefDD (MacOS). Simply drag any winmail.dat file onto this utility and like magic, the full file appears.

SNEAK PEEK PRO ($20) / SNEAK PEEK PHOTO ($10)
If you're on a Mac, and you work with Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop files, you need this utility. Many people are aware of a feature of MacOS called QuickLook. This feature allows you to press the Spacebar to see a preview of any file format, no matter where you are in the OS. For example, if you're navigating through an Open or Save dialog, or if you're reading an email with an attachment, you can tap the spacebar and see a preview of the file. However, that won't work if the file you're trying to preview is a native Illustrator or InDesign file.

Sneak Peek Pro and Sneak Peek Photo (MacOS) by Code-Line Software (the same guys who bring you the Art Director's Toolkit and Art Files) are QuickLook plugins. Once installed, QuickLook not only displays hi-res previews of native Illustrator and InDesign files, it also lets you view metadata like fonts and color swatches. It's like Bridge, only it's super fast, and it's available anywhere throughout your system.

The folks at Code-Line are also hard at work on an iPhone/iPad version of Sneak Peek, so keep an eye out for that -- which will let you preview native files on those devices.

EVERNOTE (Free)
I'm not really a "note taker" but often enough throughout the day, I find a link to an article I want to read, or I get some information that I know I'll need later. With Evernote, you can capture these little bits of info and then have them synced automatically to all of your devices. In this way, I can grab a link at my desk, but follow up on it later on my iPhone when I have a free moment. It's also a way to quickly record a note or two while on the road, and be assured that info will be at my desk when I get back.

ADOBE IDEAS (Free, $5 for Layers in-app purchase)
If you own an iPad, you should give a look at Adobe Ideas, a fun application for sketching and jotting down notes and ideas. You can then transfer content directly into Illustrator as a PDF file. If you'd like a closer look at Adobe Ideas in action, check out this episode of Fridays with Mordy: Sketching with Illustrator and Adobe Ideas.

GANGSTA LOREM IPSUM (Free)
My buddy David Macy, the product manager for Illustrator, shared this cool link with me, and I've made good use of it. If you're tired using run-of-the-mill Lorem Ipsum copy in your mockups, you might consider jazzing things up with the Gangsta version.

APPLE MAGIC MOUSE ($69, Amazon.com)
I'm at my computer for most of the day, so the tools I use to interact with it are important. Over the years I've tried just about every kind of input device including mice, trackpads, trackballs, and pens. None have come close to the experience of Apple's Magic Mouse. I am so thrilled with this device. It feels extremely comfortable in the hand (left or right), and the gesture support it offers is wonderful. I can't use any other mouse, ever again.

WACOM ART PEN ($89, Amazon.com)
If you already own a Wacom tablet, and if you use the new brushes in Illustrator CS5 and Photoshop CS5, you should look into getting the Wacom Art Pen. It adds additional support, including rotation tracking, that makes digital drawing and painting so much more wonderful.

STAPLES "THAT WAS EASY" BUTTON ($8, Amazon.com)
Throughout a stressful day, it's the little things that really make a difference. Lately, I've found that my Staples "That was easy" button brings me great joy when I complete a task. Just be careful if you work in close proximity of others, who may get annoyed from its constant use :)

ILLUSTRATOR CS5 TIP: ALIGN PANEL
Many people use the Align panel in Illustrator, but many also miss out on some of the more subtle features that really can add a lot. These things include aligning to key objects, and using the distribute spacing functions. Check out this episode of Fridays with Mordy: Smart Guides and Alignment in Illustrator for more details on the Align panel in general.

ILLUSTRATOR CS5 TIP: SHAPE BUILDER TOOL
I call it the "sleeper" feature of Illustrator CS5. The Shape Builder tool acts much like a "Pathfinder Brush" and lets you quickly and easily build artwork in Illustrator. If you own Illustrator CS5, and if you aren't using the tool daily, you should really take a closer look. Check out this episode of Fridays with Mordy: Building Art in Illustrator for more information on using the Shape Builder tool. Folks have claimed this was the single best episode of Fridays with Mordy ever.

PHOTOSHOP CS5 TIP: CONTENT-AWARE FILL
Photoshop has always wowed us with magical features, but by far, Content-Aware Fill is the best. Not only because of how amazing it is, but because of how useful it is. In my live recording (link at the top of this article), I demonstrate how I use the feature to quickly extend backgrounds.

PHOTOSHOP CS5 TIP: CONVERT TO BLACK AND WHITE
I've seen so many folks use the "Convert to Grayscale" command in Photoshop when trying to convert full-color images to grayscale. And it hurts me to see them throw all of that detail away. I use any of three methods, depending on the image, which I discuss in the recording (link can be found at the top of this article).

- The Black and White adjustment, updated in recent versions of Photoshop, allow you to click and drag directly on the image itself to make adjustments in tone and detail.

- The Channel Mixer lets you control how much tone is added from each of the channels in the image.

- Pull the Lightness channel out of the LAB version of the file. This gives you a crisp and clean "Ansel Adams" type of quality to your black and white conversions.

As a side note, you should really learn more about channels in general, and I mentioned a terrific resource: Deke McClelland's incredible Channels and Masks (O'Reilly). Deke also offers his Channels and Masks wisdom in a dedicated title in the Online Training Library over at Lynda.com.

INDESIGN CS5 TIP: PLACING INDD DOCUMENTS
Just about everyone placed native Photoshop and Illustrator files into InDesign layouts, but most people are unaware that you can place native InDesign documents into InDesign documents as well. In addition to the tip I showed in the live episode mentioned at the top of this article, you might find this read interesting as well: InDesign Inside InDesign.

INDESIGN CS5 TIP: QUICK APPLY
InDesign has had Quick Apply for quite some time now. It's a feature that allows you to quickly apply styles to text without having to move your hands off the keyboard. However, in recent versions, Adobe has added more functionality to this feature. So much so, that I now dub this feature "Google for InDesign". Check out the recording mentioned at the top of this article for a demo of the feature, and check out this article from Anne Marie Concepcion: A Quicker Quick Apply.

In closing, I hope you've found this information helpful, and I want to personally thank all of my readers and followers for all of your continued support. Have a GREAT New Years -- be safe, be healthy, and have fun -- and we'll see you all in 2011!

Web designers rejoice AGAIN! New HTML5 "canvas" support for Illustrator!

rwillustrator@gmail.com (Mordy Golding) — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 12:32:12 PDT

A few weeks ago, Adobe released the HTML5 Pack for Adobe Illustrator CS5. I wrote up some information on it, detailing the support Adobe added for CSS3, more robust SVG, and some limited support for the canvas tag. Basically, Illustrator generates a canvas with a raster version of your artwork within it.

It is certainly exciting to see Adobe putting this kind of emphasis into Illustrator. However, to really take advantage of the HTML5 Pack for Illustrator CS5, you either had to be a developer, had to have a high level of development skills, or you had to work with a developer in order to get any real results. In truth, Adobe talks about the designer-developer relationship, where content can easily be moved between design and developer applications. In this regard, the HTML5 Pack brings a valid and solid workflow to the table, allowing designers to create their masterpiece in Illustrator, and at the same time, hand off something more useful than just a whole bunch of sliced up images to their developer.

But what about all the things that HTML5 promises? What about the real power that the canvas tag exposes? Wouldn't it be cool if you could generate great-looking and useful HTML5 content (with interactivity, motion, interaction, etc) DIRECTLY from Illustrator? Now you can -- with a new FREE plugin for Illustrator.

The plugin, called AI2Canvas, ingeniously allows you to treat layers as JavaScript functions, and allows you to specify attributes for those functions directly from the Layers panel. It supports attributes like rotation, motion along a path, timing, easing, events, and interaction. It even has debugging capabilities.

While it’s true that you’re actually writing code, it is admittedly as easy as learning to write the most basic of CSS. In fact, I was able to do the following literally within 2 minutes (and that includes installing the plugin):

Create a new layer, and name it background();
Draw a rectangle on the layer
Create a new layer, and name it star();
Draw the artwork for a star on the layer
Modify the name of the star layer to star(origin: 0.5, 0.5; rotate-direction: cw);
Choose File, Export and choose Canvas HTML as the format

Layer names become JavaScript functions

The AI2Canvas plugin adds a new format to the Export dialog

You can view the result here (feel free to view source). I’ve tested the page on a Mac using Safari, Firefox, and Chrome, and I’ve also tested it on my iPhone and iPad. I also tested it on Windows with the Internet Explorer 9 Beta. The content displays and animates flawlessly. What’s totally cool about this plugin is that it almost turns Adobe Illustrator into Adobe Flash Professional—only it publishes to HTML5 instead of SWF. It kind of blows your mind.

The AI2Canvas plugin works on both Mac and Windows versions of Illustrator CS3, CS4, and CS5 (Adobe’s HTML5 Pack only works with CS5), and it’s free. And get this: the plugin is written and distributed by Mike Swanson, who actually is an evangelist for Microsoft (Mike has told me that this was a personal project of his though — it isn’t a Microsoft product). You can get the free plugin directly from the Mix Online website.

I hope to have some more examples up shortly, and I also plan on covering the capabilities of this plugin, along with Adobe's HTML5 Pack for Illustrator, in an update to my recent video training title at Lynda.com, Illustrator CS5 for Web and Interactive Design.

Illustrator CS5 for Web and Interactive Design now available on Lynda.com

rwillustrator@gmail.com (Mordy Golding) — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 09:38:32 PDT

My latest title, Illustrator CS5 for Web and Interactive Design is now available for viewing in the Lynda.com Online Training Library. Over 6 hours in length, the title covers the use of Illustrator in a variety of workflows covering general web and application design. The course is useful for anyone who designs graphics that are destined for display on a digital screen.

You're probably already familiar with some of the new features that Adobe added to Illustrator CS5, especially around better antialiasing. This allowed me to completely rethink this title from the ground up as I was able to focus more on workflow and instruction and less on workarounds (which were necessary in previous versions of Illustrator). The title also focuses on designing content no matter what your final delivery requires -- HTML+CSS, or Flash.

We all know that Illustrator isn't a web or mobile development tool -- however it *IS* an incredibly powerful graphics editor that can integrate with just about any other application that designers and developers use. To that end, the title has dedicated chapters that cover working with Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash Catalyst, Flash Professional, and even Flash Builder. And thanks to the generosity of Jon Hicks, I've also included his template for designing icons for iOS apps as well.

After I completed the recording of this title, Adobe released the HTML5 Pack for Illustrator CS5, so I wasn't able to include those features in this title, but I'll be recording additional movies to cover these features shortly, and when complete, those movies will be rolled into the title -- I'll let you know when those have been completed.

So if you use Illustrator for web and interactive design -- or if you want to learn how to use Illustrator for these tasks, be sure and check out Illustrator CS5 for Web and Interactive Design!

Of course, I always welcome feedback -- if you have suggestions for how I can improve this title, or if you have other ideas for additional titles you'd like to see from me, let me know!

OT: Life as a parent and a designer

rwillustrator@gmail.com (Mordy Golding) — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 06:23:08 PDT

As the parent of a 16 year old girl, one would expect to fight many a battle on a variety of topics. However, I was totally unprepared for what transpired yesterday. In all honesty, I'm struggling with the whole thing.

In school, my daughter is taking a required class on Microsoft Word. As if that weren't bad enough, in class yesterday, her teacher gave them a project: Create a document that uses at least 8 serif fonts and at least 8 sans serif fonts, all of various point sizes. Extra points were awarded for those who added color (the teacher justified this by stating that if everyone used Black, she couldn't award points for originality if students used the same fonts).

I used to think that all those people who believe that they must use every font on their computer for every document, and use all the blindingly bright RGB colors in Word was Microsoft's fault. As a parent though, I try. I really do. My daughter uses Apple's Pages for all of her reports, and they all look clean, neat, and lovely. Being my wife and I are both designers, our home and our conversations are filled with examples of good design.

The parent in me says not to teach her to contradict her educators. The designer in me says to tell my daughter to rebel and to type a single letter-spaced word set in Helvetica, colored black, at the center of the page. Wait, I guess that would be Arial. Sigh.

Web designers rejoice! Adobe releases HTML5 pack for Illustrator CS5

rwillustrator@gmail.com (Mordy Golding) — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 07:28:42 PDT

If you use Illustrator for web design, and if you consider yourself on the cutting edge of web design, life just got a whole lot more interesting. Adobe has just released an HTML5 Pack for Illustrator CS5 that introduces some advanced SVG support, support for the HTML Canvas tag, and support for export to CSS3.

Adobe released the Adobe Illustrator CS5 HTML5 Pack as a technology preview on Adobe Labs (you can get it here) so it isn't a full-blown solution -- it actually takes a bit of grunt work to get it installed. Then again, HTML5 and CSS3 aren't anywhere near complete or fully supported across all browsers, either. Consider this a peek into the future, and a GREAT way to experiment on your own, and live on the blistering edge of web design and development.

So what exactly does the Illustrator CS5 HTML5 Pack bring to the table? Here's a quick overview:

Parameterized SVG
You can designate certain attributes (i.e., fill, stroke, opacity) as variables right from the Appearance panel in Illustrator. When saved as SVG, developers can easily change the variable definition to "reskin" or modify the art. You can even create global variables.

Multi-screen SVG

You can create multiple artboards in Illustrator at various sizes, for example to design art for different screen sizes. You might do this to create different designs for mobile, tablet, and desktop versions of a design for example. You can then save your file as SVG and include all the different artboards. Illustrator creates an HTML file and a CSS file, along with separate SVG files for each artboard. The CSS uses media queries to detect the screen size and automatically serves up the correct SVG image.

Mark objects as canvas in SVG

You can select an object on the Illustrator artboard and then choose Object > HTML5 Canvas > Make. These elements are rasterized and included as canvas elements when saved as SVG, giving developers the ability to control the elements via JavaScript.

Export named character styles as CSS

You can define character styles in your Illustrator document, and then export those character styles as a valid CSS file. You can do this directly from the Character Styles panel.

Export artwork appearances as CSS
You can select an object in Illustrator and export valid CSS directly from the Appearance panel. Of course, if you mockup an entire page in Illustrator, you can simply select all of it and export it to a single CSS file. IDs are picked up from the Layers panel (so you want to name artwork carefully), and Illustrator can export Fill, Stroke, Opacity, and Absolute Position and Dimensions.

Include selected Graphic Styles as CSS in SVG
You can select styles from the Graphic Styles panel and choose to have them exported when you save your file as SVG. What's really cool is that you can include styles even if they aren't applied to your artwork. This would allow you to deliver multiple styles to a developer within a single SVG, and even programmatically swap styles.

Where can I learn more?
So according to the double rainbow guy, what does all of this mean? At the very least, it's a peek into the future. With our continued feedback to Adobe, we're sure to see more robust tools coming to Illustrator and other great applications. Adobe released a similar HTML5 Pack for Dreamweaver a while back, and recently, Adobe actually rolled those features into Dreamweaver CS5 proper with a recent update. One can assume that something similar will follow here as well.

You can get all of the details on the Adobe Illustrator CS5 HTML5 Pack on the Adobe Labs webpage, and you can find a press release from Adobe here. You can also participate in the dedicated discussion forum here.

Of course, if you're a web designer who needs to brush up on some Illustrator skills, my Illustrator CS5 Essential Training course at Lynda.com or my Real World Illustrator CS5 book should cover the basis. To add to all of this excitement, my latest Lynda.com title, Illustrator CS5 for Web and Interactive Design is going live later this month (9/27).

If you'd like more information on HTML5, check out James Williamson's excellent HTML5 First Look title at Lynda.com as well.

Got questions? Let's talk! Leave a comment or send me an email.

When Pixels Snap: Antialiasing in Illustrator CS5

rwillustrator@gmail.com (Mordy Golding) — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 08:38:05 PDT

Over the years, designers using Illustrator to create web graphics have faced two main issues:

Graphics and text often appear soft or fuzzy when exported, especially when compared to similar graphics or text exported from Photoshop
Extra pixels are sometimes added when artwork is exported, resulting in images with incorrect pixel dimensions

Both of these issues are actually caused by antialiasing, which is a double-edged sword. Antialiasing is supposed to make your art look better on a digital screen, but sometimes the side effects work against you. There are ways to build your art carefully to try to avoid issues, but with Illustrator CS5, Adobe added a slew of features that can help your artwork look better after being antialiased. The question is, at what cost? In this article, we’ll get a better understanding of what antialiasing is and how you can learn to control your art’s destiny when using Illustrator CS5.

What is antialiasing?

Digital displays usually have low resolutions, measured in pixels per inch (PPI). While the myth is that "web graphics are 72 ppi" the reality is that most of today's monitors have resolutions of at least 120ppi and the Retina display on the iPhone 4 boasts a spectacular 326ppi. Still, these resolutions are far lower that what you would find in high-end output devices which usually have resolutions that exceed 2500dpi (while digital devices measure resolution in pixels per inch, or ppi, print devices are measured in dots per inch, or dpi).

The lower resolution on digital screens causes a problem with curved lines, as the human eye can detect the stair step effect of the pixels, which are traditionally called "the jaggies". In order to make artwork appear smooth, digital screens employ a technique where high contrast areas (places where one color ends and another begins - also referred to as "edges") are slightly blurred. By softening the contrast, the artwork appears to have a smoother appearance, and the jaggies disappear. This technique of blurring artwork to achieve a smoother appearance is called antialiasing.

A graphic without antialiasing (left) and a graphic with antialiasing (right). The boxes show a section of each graphic enlarged to 500%, to better see the antialiasing.

There are a variety of algorithms used to control how artwork is antialiased, but while the benefits of antialiasing are readily apparent, there are also some side effects. For example, antialiasing can make artwork appear too soft or blurry. It can also sometimes make small or fine type appear too blurry to read.

How does antialiasing cause problems in Illustrator?

Illustrator does indeed apply antialiasing to your artwork when you're in Preview mode so that your artwork looks nicer on screen (you can disable it in preferences if you're so inclined), but that has no effect on the artwork when it is exported from Illustrator.

The preference setting makes your artwork look better on screen, but has no effect on the art when it is exported.

In Illustrator 9, Adobe added many features that would allow designers to create web graphics more easily, including Save for Web and Pixel Preview. Along with this also came the ability to antialias artwork on export or whenever vectors were converted to rasters.

Of course, well before there were web features in Illustrator, there were vector drawing features. One of those features, called snap to grid, makes it easy to draw and move anchor points by aligning them to an invisible grid in your Illustrator document. In addition, by default, Illustrator distributes the weight of a stroke along the center line of a vector path. When combined, these two features bring out the worst in antialiasing.

When you draw a path in Illustrator, the anchor points snap to this invisible grid, which is what Pixel Preview uses, and which is hard-wired at 72ppi. This is a good thing, because it ensures that your shape will line up perfectly with the pixel grid. However, if you add a 1pt (or 1px) stroke to your artwork, then Illustrator is faced with a problem.

With the path snapping to the grid, and with the stroke weight set to align itself along the centerline of that path, the 1px stroke lies in between pixels. Pixels are either on or off – you can’t fill just half of a pixel. This is similar to a curved path that passes through a part of a pixel, and antialiasing kicks in, thinking there are jagged lines that need to be smoothed out. The result is a 2px stroke instead of a 1px stroke, and the color is lightened to give a softer appearance.

The "fat line" syndrome is caused by antialiasing (click to enlarge)

To make matters worse, if you were looking to create an object at a specific pixel measurement (for example, a 468x60 ad banner), the antialiasing has now caused your artwork to export at 469x61. So you get art that doesn’t look great and that also is of the wrong size. If you create slices in Illustrator, this same issue can cause your slices to export with the wrong dimensions as well. Of course, my example of using a 1px stroke is but one case, but the softening of artwork in general would happen anytime artwork doesn’t line up perfectly with the 72ppi pixel grid, which can happen is the Snap to Grid setting is turned off, or if your art doesn’t fit perfectly to the grid (i.e., you scale or rotate it, etc).

The only solution to this problem is to be vigilant in making sure that all the appearance of the artwork that you create is aligned perfectly to the pixel grid. That means avoiding the use of strokes altogether. In Illustrator CS3, Adobe added the ability to align strokes to the inside or outside of a path instead of along the centerline, but this feature only is available for closed paths. In addition, there were several bugs that would still result in odd antialiasing resulting in blurred straight lines or errors in pixel dimensions during file export. Of course, even if you aligned all of your artwork carefully, you’d still have to make adjustments every time you moved or scaled your artwork.

Keeping all of this in mind, the key issue is that while Illustrator does a great job snapping anchor points and paths to a grid, it doesn’t do that when it comes to the appearance of your artwork. And since the appearance of your art is all that matters when it comes to pixel-based web graphics, we’re faced with these issues.

“Pixel aligned graphics” in Illustrator CS5

Adobe addressed all of these issues in Illustrator CS5 with a collection of features that fall under a category described as “pixel aligned graphics”. Essentially, Adobe added a new object attribute, called Align to Pixel Grid, which can instruct an object to ensure that its appearance is aligned perfectly to the 72ppi pixel grid. Illustrator looks for art with straight line segments, and if the artwork is “off the grid”, Illustrator will make any necessary adjustments to the path to ensure the straight lines (and any strokes that may be applied) align perfectly to the grid. The feature has no visible effect on artwork that doesn’t have straight line segments (it also won’t work on raster images placed within Illustrator).

When you are working in Illustrator, you can apply this attribute to selected artwork by clicking the Align to Pixel Grid option that appears at the bottom of the Transform panel. If you want all of your artwork to have the attribute applied automatically as you draw, you can check the option named Align New Objects to Pixel Grid, which appears in the Transform panel menu.

The Align to Pixel Grid feature doesn’t work on text objects, as letterforms require careful consideration. Illustrator CS5 features several new antialiasing options that can be applied directly to text objects, as you can in Photoshop. These settings are found in the Character panel (in its fully-expanded state).

The Align to Pixel Grid feature poses a potential problem when working with Symbols. This is because symbols must match all of their instances. In Illustrator CS5, you’ll see a setting called Align to Pixel Grid when you define a symbol. With the option checked, any instance will snap to the pixel grid, granted it is set to 100%. Instances that are rotated or scaled may not snap perfectly (Illustrator CS5 features a new Reset button that appears in the Control panel whenever a symbol instance is selected, allowing you to remove any transformations you’ve applied to that instance).

Of course, chances are that if you’re working on web graphics, you probably always want your art to look clean and sharp, and export at the right size, right? Adobe added a new option to the Advanced section of the New Document dialog box called Align New Objects to Pixel Grid. This setting is actually on by default when you create a new document based on the Web profile, so for the most part, you don’t have to do anything other than just create your art using this profile.

The side effects of pixel alignment

As I mentioned at the onset of this article, antialiasing is a double-edged sword. And when you use the Align to Pixel Grid setting in Illustrator, there are some side effects that you’ll want to be aware of. In this way, you can avoid any unwanted behavior and ultimately use Illustrator to create great looking artwork for any device.

STROKE WEIGHT: With Align to Pixel Grid turned on, it’s impossible to specify fractional stroke widths, as they don’t align to the pixel grid. For example, if you try to give a rectangle a stroke weight of .5pt, Illustrator will automatically change the stroke weight to 1pt. Illustrator will always round to the nearest full integer, so a stroke weight of 1.4 becomes 1 and a stroke weight of 1.5 becomes 2, etc.

OBJECT ALIGNMENT: One of the great new features in Illustrator CS5 is that each artboard maintains its own ruler coordinates. Each artboard that you create sits within the overall canvas in a document, but if your artboard isn’t aligned perfectly to the pixel grid, your artwork won’t be able to align perfectly to the artboard (the artwork will appear correct and snap to the grid, but the coordinates for that artwork may be odd). This can happen if you manually move or resize your artboard when in Artboard Edit mode. To “fix” this problem, go into Artboard Edit mode and use the Control panel to enter full integer values for the coordinates of the artboard.

OUTLINED TEXT ISSUE: As discussed above, text is a special case, and Illustrator offers a variety of different antialiasing algorithms optimized specifically for text that you can work with. However, if you convert text to outlines (which I do every so often, especially with logos), then the words are no longer text objects. And if you have Align to Pixel Grid turned on, then Illustrator will also try to find straight lines in that text and try to align it to the grid. This can cause text to look wonky and sometimes downright ugly. In such cases, try to avoid converting type to outlines, or make sure the Align to Pixel Grid setting is turned off for that object before you convert it to outlines. If the logo is a symbol, you’ll need to keep the text live if you plan on using the Align to Pixel Grid setting on the symbol.

In the top graphic, the text is still editable. In the lower graphic, the text has been converted to outlines. Snap to Pixel Grid is turned on for both graphics, but you can clearly see that the text in the lower graphic appears badly distorted, especially so in the word "explore", and in the lower serifs in the word "california" (click to enlarge graphic).

ROUNDED CORNERS: The pixel alignment feature in Illustrator CS5 is pretty smart. Considering how popular rounded corners are in web design these days, the feature also looks for objects that have 8 anchor point, where 4 paths are straight and 4 paths are curved. In such cases, the feature not only makes sure the straight segments snap to the grid, it also makes sure the corners appear symmetrical and smooth – even if that isn’t your intention. My friend Michael Murphy (of The InDesigner fame) actually tripped upon this when he was trying to create a button with inverted rounded corners. He created them with pixel snapping turned off, but when he checked the Align to Pixel Grid option in the Transform panel, the rounded corners were reshaped. The workaround is to add an anchor point anywhere along the path before applying the Align setting.

Before Align to Pixel Grid (left) and after it is applied (right).

So there you have it – everything you ever wanted to know (and some things you didn’t) about the new pixel alignment behavior in Illustrator CS5. Got more questions about these features, about using Illustrator for web design, or about Illustrator in general? You know what to do – leave a comment or drop me an email!

I also just wrapped up recording my latest Lynda.com training video title, “Illustrator CS5 for Web and Interactive Design” which should be up and available in the Lynda.com Online Training library within a few weeks. I’ll post when it becomes available.

Create your own vector avatar with Illustrator

rwillustrator@gmail.com (Mordy Golding) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:43:18 PDT

I don’t consider myself an “artist” as I’ve never had any formal drawing training (for the record, my background is more in corporate identity and layout – you know, lots of Helvetica and lots of white space). However, I’ve had the opportunity to work and spend time with many talented illustrators over the years. Being I know a thing or two about using Adobe Illustrator, I’ve always been inspired to try to draw things on my own.

My daughter recently had to draw a self-portrait for her art class, and the project inspired me to do one on my own. With all the vector avatars I see people using, I thought it would be a good project. After all, I figured someone like me should have a vector avatar. At first, I thought it was a stupid idea. I didn’t even know where to start. But surprisingly enough, after about 30 minutes, I actually created something that I thought looked pretty good, and the techniques are all pretty basic. It may appear like there are a lot of steps in this tutorial, but I do spend some time explaining as I go.

As you go through this fun tutorial, I’ll remind you that I’m not an artist, which means two things. First, anyone can really do this. Second, it probably isn’t perfect, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I violated any rules of illustration. But then again, this is art – the only thing you can possibly do wrong is not try it at all…

1. START WITH A GOOD PHOTO. It took me a while to find an photo that I was happy with. I cleaned it up a bit in Photoshop and cropped it as I needed.

2. SET UP YOUR ILLUSTRATOR FILE. Create a new Illustrator file. Since this was going to be used as an avatar, I used a web profile. I also set up my artboard at 200x200 pixels. Perhaps one of the more overlooked benefits of using Illustrator for screen graphics (over Photoshop for example) is the ability to work in scale, but still be able to zoom in really close for detail work. As we’ll see later, we can easily export our art at any size we need.

3. PLACE THE PHOTO INTO ILLUSTRATOR. Choose File > Place and position the image on your artboard. I actually realized I was leaning somewhat in the photo, so I rotated the image a bit (I used the eyeglasses for alignment). To make your life easier, create two layers in your document. You’ll have the image on one layer and your drawing on the other. In this way, you can easily hide and lock the photo as needed.

4. PICK A PLACE TO START DRAWING. This was the hardest part for me, and sometimes just getting started can get the creative juices flowing (in my writing classes, my professor used to tell us to write “I’m stuck” over and over when we had writer’s block, as the process of writing something would help things along). I figured the glasses would be the easiest to create, so I started there. You might look for other parts that are easy to draw, such as eyes, etc.

Change the opacity of the photo to something like 50%, lock the photo layer and switch to the draw layer. Use the Pen tool to draw the glasses (I created a compound path to define the hollow part). I actually drew one side first and then flipped a mirrored copy to create perfect symmetry (adjusting the temples somewhat to compensate for the slight angle). Remember this is an illustration, so you can make things perfect even if the photo isn’t. Take some creative license. To make it easier to see what you’re doing, use a fill set to none, and a stroke set to .25 point.

5. ADJUST YOUR EYEDROPPER TOOL SETTINGS. The easiest way to color your artwork will be to sample colors directly from the photo. To do that, you’ll use the Eyedropper tool to both sample and apply color simultaneously. By default, the Eyedropper tool samples the exact pixel you click on. However, you can set the Eyedropper tool to be more forgiving and choose a color from a larger sample. Double-click on the Eyedropper tool and towards the bottom of the dialog where it says Raster Sample Size, choose 5x5 Average. Click OK to accept the setting.

6. APPLY COLOR TO YOUR ART. Unlock the photo and set its opacity back to 100%. Select the Eyedropper tool. Press Command (Ctrl on Windows) to temporarily activate the Selection tool, and click on the glasses path. Then release the Command key. Press and hold the Shift key and then click on the area of the glasses in the photo. This will simultaneously sample the color from the photo and apply the color to the path.

Note that with the Shift key and the mouse button both down, you can move the Eyedropper tool around and watch as the color indicator in the Tools panel changes in real time. When you see a color you like, just release the mouse button. Set the photo back to 50% opacity so that you can start drawing more paths. In truth, you may find it easier to leave a copy of the photo at full strength off to the side so that you can easily sample colors without having to constantly adjust the photo.

Remove the black strokes from the shapes as you apply colors to the fills of the objects.

7. DRAW THE EYES AND MOUTH. Zoom in close to the photo and draw basic shapes for the eyes and mouth. To save time, I drew one eye and one side of the mouth and then simply copied and flipped them. Maybe in real life my left and right eyes are different, but in my vector avatar, they are in perfect symmetry.

8. ADD COLOR TO THE EYES AND MOUTH. My eyes are blue, but they weren’t lit very well in the photo. Rather than sample a color from the photo, I chose a nice blue color for the eyes. I then used the same technique with the Eyedropper tool to apply color to the other areas. Don’t worry if the colors seem bold or harsh at this point – things will end up blending in just fine later.

9. DRAW THE BASIC SHAPES OF THE FACE. When I first tried this, I failed miserably. Then I started working backwards and got much better results. I started by drawing a base shape with the Pen tool that would eventually become the main skintone of the face. I then drew main areas of shadow that would eventually define the parts of the face.

For example, instead of trying to draw a nose and chin, I drew the shadows that were cast from those facial features, which resulted in clearly defined features. It will help if you can visualize how you will eventually color in the shapes when you're done -- I've included a screenshot below to better understand the progression. I drew the ears separate from the face so that I could layer the hair between the face and the hair in the stacking order.

Defining the nose and chin using a shadow shape.

10. DRAW SHAPES FOR THE HIGHLIGHTS AND SHADOWS. Take a good look at the photo to see where the large shadow and highlight areas are. Don’t worry about small detail – just look for main areas of distinction. Use the Pen tool to draw paths to define these areas. Don’t worry about trying to get paths that are perfect. Once you’ve drawn the paths, use the Smooth tool to get any kinks out of the paths, and to generally get a smoother appearance on the paths. You'll find that this will define more organic areas, and this will also reduce the number of anchor points.

11. START BLOCKING IN THE MAIN COLORS. Using the Eyedropper tool, sample and apply color to the main face shape, the ears, and the hair.

12. DEFINE THE SHADOWS AND HIGHLIGHTS. To make things easier, you can use blend modes to define the highlights and shadows. That means we’ll be using shades of gray to fill the objects we created for those areas. By default, Illustrator includes a color group called Grays in your Swatches panel, which you can use to easily apply color. You can also use regular white-to-black gradients. The thing is, we have to work in reverse. Use darker grays for the highlight areas, and lighter grays for the shadow areas.

It looks funny at first, but that will change once we apply the blend modes. Select all highlight shapes (filled with dark grays) and use the Transparency panel to change the blend mode to Screen. Then select all the shadow shapes (filled with light grays) and use the Transparency panel to change the blend mode to Multiply. At this point, you can adjust the gray value of each individual shape to your liking, if necessary.

13. SOFTEN THE SHADOWS AND HIGHLIGHTS. Right now, the art features clean sharp lines, which may actually give you the vector look you’re going for. However, I was looking for more of a realistic tone to my avatar. I wanted it to look clean and sharp, but also real enough to make you take a second-look and wonder if it’s really a drawing or not. Select all of the shadow and highlight shapes and choose Effect > Stylize > Feather. I used a value of 3 pixels, but you can experiment to your liking. You may even find that Effect > Blur > Gaussian Blur gives better results, but I stayed with Feather because it’s doesn’t suffer from some of the technical issues that Gaussian Blur does.

14. ADD JUST A TEENY BIT OF REALISM. The avatar looks pretty good as it is, but I really wanted to add a bit of texture to really give it depth. This step is optional, but I moved the layer with the photo to the top of my stacking order. I then set the image to have an opacity value of 30%. I then used a mask to hide the background of the photo (creating the mask was as easy as making a copy of all the art and using Pathfinder Unite to define a single shape of the entire head). With the transparent image as a nice overlay on the vector drawing, I get some texture in the hair and more subtle shadows and highlights across the face. Drop in a gradient for the background and you’re done.

15. EXPORT THE ART AS NEEDED. Perhaps the greatest benefit of using Illustrator is the ability to export your art at virtually any size (you can always remove the overlay from step 14 for really large uses). I created this artboard at 200x200 pixels because that’s a size I use often when uploading avatars, but here’s how you can quickly export your avatar for any size you need.

Don’t resize the art on the artboard – resize it in Save for Web. Choose File > Save for Web & Devices. Choose the file format of your choice (I used PNG), and then in the Image Size tab, make sure Constrain Proportions and Clip To Artboard is checked. You can then enter a Percentage or the exact Width and Height value you need. Then click Apply (if you don’t, the settings won’t take), and then click Save.

Of course, you can follow many of these steps to create all kinds of art. Be it an avatar, icons, or anything else. I hope you find this tutorial useful, and if you’d like to see more things like this, let me know!

Simulating the CSS Box Model in Illustrator

rwillustrator@gmail.com (Mordy Golding) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:36:40 PDT

Illustrator is a great tool for mocking up websites. In Illustrator CS5, Adobe added an Align to Pixel feature that ensures crisp antialiasing, and in a recent episode of Fridays with Mordy, we spoke about using Illustrator for various web design projects.

When designing for the web -- specifically for sites that will be built with CSS -- it's a good idea to get into the right mindset, so that you can easily translate what you create in Illustrator into code later on. In a previous post, I spoke about limited CSS export from Illustrator, but today, I'd like to share a way that you can simulate the CSS box model in Illustrator, which will ultimately help you create better design mockups.

Before you get started, I would suggest that you first activate the Use Preview Bounds preference setting in Illustrator, as this will ensure that the values you see in the Transform panel are accurate (by default, values are only of the vector path itself). In addition, it will also ensure that you can use the Align functions in Illustrator and get the results you want.

Start by using the Rectangle tool to create a shape. For web design, I rarely eyeball it, and choose to click once with the tool on the artboard. This brings up the Rectangle dialog box where you can specify the exact width of your rectangle. As we'll see, the length isn't important right now.
Select the Type tool and click anywhere along the path of the rectangle to convert it to an Area Text object. When you see the text cursor blinking, you can add some text.
At this point, we have a regular box that contains text within. However, we often don't want the text to come right up to the edge of the text frame, which we can control with the Inset command in Illustrator. In CSS, we refer to this as Padding. With the Rectangle selected, choose Type > Area Type Options. In the Offset section, specify a padding setting by modifying the Inset value, and click OK.
When positioning boxes with CSS, you can also specify an attribute called Margin. To simulate this value, do the following: With the text frame selected, click the Add New Fill button in the Appearance panel. Apply a color to the fill and then drag the fill so that it appears beneath the Characters in the Appearance panel. With the fill still targeted, choose Effect > Convert to Shape > Rectangle. You'll want to work with the Relative values, and choose both Width and Height values to simulate the margin attribute. Click OK.

It's important to realize that margins can be set independently on all sides of the box, and here, we've only been able to specify extra width and height, and these values are distributed evenly. In other words, if you specified a margin width of 20px, then you'd see 20px added to either side of your box. What if you only wanted 20px on one side, but not the other? Well, first, you'd specify an extra width of just 10px, and then, with the same fill still targeted, choose Effect > Distort & Transform > Transform. In the Move section of the Transform Effect dialog box, specify a Horizontal value of 10px and click OK.

(Click image to enlarge)

Since we're working with an Area Text object, you can use the Selection tool to simply adjust the height of the frame to match the amount of text you have. Here is some more information on scaling Area Text frames in Illustrator.

If you use Character and Paragraph styles to simulate CSS for styling the text, you can take this to the next level. What would be really cool is if Illustrator could be able to export all of this as a CSS stylesheet. But for now, at least, you have a better way to visualize how you might build your mockup with CSS.

Update: Books, Videos, and Blogs

rwillustrator@gmail.com (Mordy Golding) — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 11:58:43 PDT

Hey there everyone! I know, it has been a while. And I wanted to bring you up to date to let you know what I've been busy with.

Books
Real World Illustrator CS5 is complete and off to the printer. It should be shipping as of the first week of August. As always, you can find it online at Amazon, or at your local bookstore. The book has been updated to cover all of the features found in Illustrator CS5 including perspective drawing, variable-width strokes, bristle brush, enhanced artboards and symbols, better web design tools, and more.

Videos
I've published quite a few video training titles over at Lynda.com since CS5 has been out. You'll find titles that include Illustrator CS5 New Features, Illustrator CS5 Essential Training, and Flash Catalyst CS5 Essential Training. I'm also currently working on three new titles that should be out shortly: Illustrator CS5 for Web and Interactive Design, Illustrator CS5: Drawing and Painting, and Illustrator CS5: Typography and Special Effects. If you aren't already a subscriber to Lynda.com, you can sign up for a free 7 day full-access pass here.

Blogs
You may have noticed that I've freshened up the place a bit here (there's plenty more coming). In addition, I'm starting to systematically go through all my years of posts, updating them along the way. As newer versions of Illustrator have come out, newer functionality has addressed certain features. At the same time, much of the info I've written about still applies even today. So hopefully, you'll find all of this new information helpful.

Finally, in a few weeks, Fridays with Mordy returns with all-new episodes of learning and fun! If you missed any of the past shows, don't worry -- they are all recorded! So sit back with a cool lemonade or other preferred summer beverage, and watch a few!

Fridays with Mordy

rwillustrator@gmail.com (Mordy Golding) — Fri, 28 May 2010 12:25:21 PDT

I think back to how I got started in this business. I was always interested in technology and art, and at the time, those two worlds were beginning to collide. Sure, I remember burnishing rub-down Letraset fonts, losing parts of fingers to X-Acto #11 blades while carefully cutting rubylith, fumbling around the darkroom to find the box of film for the stat camera, and sniffing awesome Pantone markers and rubber cement. But I also remember my first Quadra 700, using the first design application I purchased with my own money (Deneba Canvas), and spending hours and hours in front of the 16" RGB screen -- just knowing that one day, it was going to be the focus of a designer's toolbox.

One of the things that really pushed my learning further was that I was a member of AOL and there was a Vector Forum that I participated in. That's were I first "met" the likes of Sharon Steuer, Sandee Cohen, Ted Alspach, Sree Kotay, etc. Every Tuesday evening, the Vector Forum would have a live one-hour chat, where we'd pick a topic and discuss all things vector. I learned so much from those chats, and I was also able to share what I was learning with others.

I'd like to bring that concept of a weekly chat back -- and so I'm starting Fridays with Mordy -- a weekly chat each Friday for about 30 minutes where we talk about Illustrator or anything else that matters to a designer in the world of technology.

We'll pick a different topic each week, based on user feedback, and it will be a great opportunity for all of us to share advice, information, and ideas. And we'll make new friends!

Fridays with Mordy "airs" LIVE each Friday at 2:00 pm Eastern time (US) and the URL is:

http://experts.na3.acrobat.com/fridayswithmordy

Here's a link to some recorded sessions:
- Recoloring Artwork in Illustrator (aired 03/12/2010)
- Resolution & File Formats in Illustrator (aired 03/19/2010)
- Making Selections in Illustrator (aired 04/09/2010)

- Illustrator CS5 Overview (aired 04/12/2010)
- Illustrator CS5 & Flash Catalyst CS5 (aired 04/16/2010)
- Envelope Distortion in Illustrator (aired 04/23/2010)
- Smart Guides & Alignment in Illustrator (aired 04/30/2010)
- Making Illustrator YOURS (aired 05/14/2010)
- Building Art in Illustrator (aired 05/21/2010)
- Working with Illustrator and Photoshop (aired 05/28/2010)

You can suggest topics for future Fridays with Mordy sessions here in the comments, or on Twitter. In fact, if you aren't already following me on Twitter, you should consider doing so, since it's the primary way I connect with my viewers these days (I gladly answer Illustrator questions that people send my way). You can follow me at @mordy on Twitter.

Fridays with Mordy is sponsored by Lynda.com, who now also offer an iPhone app that allows you to log into your account and few thousands and thousands of high quality training from some of the best trainers in the industry. For more information on the Illustrator Lynda.com training that I offer, click on the big yellow banner that appears on the right.

I look forward to seeing you at a future Fridays with Mordy!

Ten Illustrator power moves you MUST know

rwillustrator@gmail.com (Mordy Golding) — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 16:56:20 PDT

In most professions, one goes through intense training—intended to help a person develop the ability to act on instinct—where the body learns to act automatically in response to a situation without the need to mentally go through each required step.

Even in everyday living, we’ve learned to adapt to our environment that allows us to perform basic functions without losing focus on the task at hand. Examples are dialing a familiar phone number, or adjusting the radio in your car. I’ve seen teenagers (like my own for example) who can literally unholster their mobile phone, send a text, and reholster the phone faster than Neo can dodge a bullet (all while holding a conversation).

When using Illustrator, you want to get to a point where basic functions become instinct – you do them without thinking about it. That’s a power move. In the title of this article, I referenced ten such moves, but the truth is, I’ve broken these down into ten specific feature areas, encompassing far more than just ten power moves—well over 30 in fact. I list Mac OS keyboard shortcuts, followed by Windows equivalents in square brackets.

If you’re serious about becoming an Illustrator speed demon, learn these power moves. Don’t just read them—practice them again and again. Force yourself to use them—even if it takes longer the first few times you do it. Trust me, you’ll thank me later. In yet another Matrix reference, “What are you waiting for? You’re faster than this. Don’t think you are… know you are…”.

MASTER THE NUDGE
This has nothing to do with your spouse (or your mouse for that matter). In Illustrator, using the arrow keys on your keyboard (up, down, left, right) to move your objects in small increments is called “nudging”. The default increment amount is 1pt (.0139 inches), but you can choose a value more relevant to your task at hand. For example, if you’re working in scale, use a number that is easily divisible. Or use specific amounts, like .0625 inches, so you can tap the arrow key 4 times in quick succession and know you’ve moved the object exactly .25 inch. I’ll often adjust the increment value several times a day, as needed.

Cmd-K [Ctrl-K]: Opens the preferences panel and highlights the keyboard increment field. Just enter a numeric value and hit the Enter key to change it.
Arrow: Nudges selected artwork the amount specified in the Preferences dialog.
Shift-Arrow: Nudges selected artwork 10x the amount specified in the Preferences dialog.
Option-Arrow [Alt-Arrow]: Nudges a copy of the selected artwork the amount specified in the Preferences dialog.
Shift-Option-Arrow [Shift-Alt-Arrow]: Nudges a copy of the selected artwork 10x the amount specified in the Preferences dialog.

ALIGN WITH INTELLIGENCE
With Illustrator CS4, you can snap an object’s boundaries to other objects or guides (previous versions only allowed you to snap your cursor to other objects or guides, requiring you to grab objects by their edges or anchor points). To get this to work, however, you have to have Smart Guides turned on—a feature that many find annoying or too “in your face”. Rather than get rid of it, learn to control it. First, open the Smart Guides preferences panel and uncheck all boxes except for Alignment Guides, then press OK. Now you can use a keyboard shortcut to turn Smart Guides on and off as you need it.

Cmd-U [Ctrl-U]: Toggles Smart Guide behavior on and off.

SELECT FASTER
We probably make use of the Selection tools in Illustrator more than anything else, so it’s important to get familiar with NOT constantly switching between them. Instead, learn to use the shortcuts to make them all behave as one cohesive unit.

V: Selection tool (Solid arrow) — the inverted “V” looks like an arrow.
A: Direct Selection tool (Hollow arrow) — the “A” looks like an arrow with a hollow center.

Rather than constantly switch between the two arrow tools, most power users use the Direct Selection tool most often and use these shortcuts:

Cmd [Ctrl]: Temporarily toggles to Selection tool.
Option [Alt]: Temporarily toggles to Group Selection tool.

On the subject of making selections it can often be easier to select art without using tools at all:

Cmd-A [Ctrl-A]: Select all.
Shift-Cmd-A [Shift-Ctrl-A]: Deselect all.

CHANGE OBJECT ATTRIBUTES
How many times do you apply a color only to realize you adjusted the stroke when you meant the fill? How many times do you just want to get an object back to a white fill and a black stroke? Don’t answer—just learn the power moves:

D: Resets an object’s appearance to white fill, 1pt black stroke.
X: Toggles the focus between Fill and Stroke.
Shift-X: Swaps the colors of an object’s fill and stroke.
/ : Applies the None attribute.
Cmd-/ [Ctrl-/]: Applies a new fill (via the Appearance panel).
Shift-Cmd-/ [Shift-Ctrl-/]: Applies a new stroke (via the Appearance panel).

ADJUST STACKING ORDER
I cringe every time I see someone move their mouse up to the Object menu every time they want to bring an object to the front or send it to the back. Due to the stacking nature of vector graphics, these power moves are essential. While there are four possible settings here, the most important ones to remember are Bring to Front and Send to Back.

Shift-Cmd-] [Shift-Ctrl-]]: Bring to front.
Shift-Cmd-[ [Shift-Ctrl-[]: Send to back.
Cmd-] [Ctrl-]]: Bring forward.
Cmd-[ [Ctrl-[]: Send backward.

LOCK AND LOAD (AND HIDE)
Complex artwork—especially those laden with multiple masks—can make for difficult selections. While the new isolation behavior in Illustrator CS4, which allows you to double click on any object to temporarily lock it and bring it to the top of the stacking order, is brilliant, there are still many times when locking or hiding elements can be useful, especially when spending a lot of time focusing on smaller parts of a larger overall illustration.

Cmd-2 [Ctrl-2]: Lock selected object(s).
Cmd-Option-2 [Ctrl-Alt-2]: Unlock all.
Cmd-3 [Ctrl-3]: Hide selected object(s).
Cmd-Option-3 [Ctrl-Alt-3]: Show all.

Since there’s no way to unlock a specific object, most pros will Unlock all, Shift-click on the object they want unlocked (which deselects it), and then Lock in quick succession. Same applies for Hide/Show.

YUMMY PASTE
Paste was delicious when you were younger, and just because you’ve grown up, it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it now. The Paste command in Illustrator places art in the center of your screen, but you can also paste objects in place — either in front or in back. For those who were familiar with FreeHand, Paste in Front is the same as the feature once known as Clone. Paste in Front and Paste in Back are also helpful when you want pasted objects to be placed within groups or masks.

Cmd-V [Ctrl-V]: Paste.
Cmd-F [Ctrl-F]: Paste in front of the copied object.
Cmd-B [Ctrl-B]: Paste behind the copied object.

PAN AND ZOOM
The Zoom tool and the Hand tool should be treated like museum artifacts—they can be looked at, but are not to be touched. Truth be told, those scroll bars along the bottom and right edge of your document are also off-limits. Learn the power moves to quickly navigate within your documents.

Space: Hand tool.
Cmd-Space [Ctrl-Space]: Zoom in.
Cmd-Option-Space [Ctrl-Alt-Space]: Zoom out.

A particular problem one runs into is that when you’re editing text, you can’t press Space to switch to the Hand tool, as doing so will actually add space characters to your text string. In those cases, this secret handshake will give you joy: Press Cmd-Space [Ctrl-Space] to access the Zoom tool, and then release just the Cmd [Ctrl] key, while still holding Space. This will give you the Hand tool. Release to return to editing your text with the Type tool.

Since we’re talking about navigating within documents, these are helpful as well:

Cmd-` [Ctrl-`]: That’s a Tilde, which appears just over your Tab key on US keyboards, and allows you to toggle between open tabbed documents.

EFFECTIVE EFFECTS
You want to quickly add a few drop shadows, but want to make sure they all use the same settings. Sure, you could define a Graphic Style, but that’s too much of a bother, right? Instead, use a quick power move.

Shift-Cmd-E [Shift-Ctrl-E]: Apply last-used effect with the same settings.
Shift-Cmd-Option-E [Shift-Ctrl-Alt-E]: Bring up the dialog box of the last-used effect.

PATHFINDER, RINSE, REPEAT
The Pathfinder functions—specifically Unite (Add), Minus Front (Subtract), and Divide—are used constantly when creating artwork in Illustrator. True, I’m a big fan of the newer Live Paint functionality in Illustrator, but for quick fixes here and there, Pathfinder proves valuable. While there aren’t keyboard shortcuts for the Pathfinder functions (in theory, you could always define an Action for them and apply a shortcut to the Action), there is a power move to re-apply a Pathfinder function—helpful for when you’re performing lots of shape editing—especially since you don’t have to shuttle your cursor between your art and a floating panel.

Cmd-4 [Ctrl-4]: Repeat last-applied Pathfinder function.

WANT MORE?
Want power shortcuts for Photoshop or InDesign? Check out these great titles from Michael Ninness over at Lynda.com: Photoshop CS4 Power Shortcuts, and InDesign CS4 Power Shortcuts.

Got your own favorite power moves to share? Post them in the comments!

Illustrator and Dreamweaver Integration - TAKE 2

rwillustrator@gmail.com (Mordy Golding) — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 11:19:29 PDT

A while back, I blogged about using Illustrator for web design. Specifically, I wrote about using Illustrator and Dreamweaver together, lamenting about the lack of integration between the two applications. I've even had numerous discussions with the product managers for Dreamweaver over at Adobe about the topic.

To summarize, I questioned the apparent lack of support for moving art quickly from Illustrator into Dreamweaver via Smart Objects. The team kept asking me why I would care to bring vector art into Dreamweaver, and whatever would I do with it once it got there? My response was that I didn't want the vectors - I wanted Dreamweaver to generate pixels a la Smart Objects from the GoLive days.

Boy was I shortsighted. What was I thinking?

Each year, Adobe has their MAX conference. Unfortunately, due to a variety of reasons, I was not able to attend this year's conference in LA. One of the best sessions is something called "MAX SNEAKS" where Adobe shows tasty nuggets of technology from their labs. I'll mention that these aren't usually sneaks like features from the upcoming releases. Rather, the demonstrations are from Adobe's engineering scientists and generally cover things they are "messing with" that are often a while out, if at all. These are rarely polished demos and as I stated, the presenters aren't professional demo masters (of the likes of Greg Rewis or the incredible Jason Levine).

So take a look at this video that someone captured from this year's Adobe MAX Sneaks session -- a demo of technology showing integration between Illustrator and Dreamweaver. If it isn't clear in the video clip below what is happening, I'll spell it out for you: He starts by taking art drawn in Illustrator and copies it to the clipboard. Then he goes into Dreamweaver, selects a DIV and chooses a function called Smart Paste. Dreamweaver then pastes an FXG conversion of the Illustrator art directly into the page. If you aren't familiar with FXG, it's basically a better SVG (you can get more information on the open source FXG spec here). In other words, you draw in Illustrator, copy and paste into Dreamweaver (which converts it to code), and the art displays as vector art in a web browser. What's more, the engineer proceed to actually bind XML data to the chart.

As I mentioned, I think this is probably something that is way way off in the future, but it's still quite incredible. Maybe there's some hope for us all, after all :)

Thanks for the tasty treats Adobe! Can't wait to see the day when features like this come to life!