Inside Adobe Illustrator

With all there is to choose from at MAX, be sure to not miss these great sessions that focus on design, inspiration, and all-things Illustrator.

Get Inspired

Jacek Utko
Can Good Design Save the Publishing Industry
Jacek Utko is an extraordinary Polish designer whose redesigns for newspapers in Eastern Europe not only win awards, but increase circulation. Jacek shows how designers can combine content, strategy, business, and art to deliver new solutions to the complex problems we face today. For anyone who cares about the power of design for any media, this is a must-see.

Jonathan Jarvis
Learn How Design Can Make Complex Concepts Clear and Provide New Roles for Designers
Jonathan Jarvis is a young and very talented media and interaction designer with a lot to say. Come see how the complexity of today's issues, such as the recent (ongoing?) credit crisis, demands designers' skills to make these confusing, convoluted issues clear to others.

Joshua Davis
New Experimental Work from Joshua Davis
Joshua Davis is a New York-based artist, designer, and technologist who hardly needs an introduction to the MAX audience. Come see why Joshua's work is always "infinitely interesting."

Chevon Hicks
How to Create Vector Portraits with Illustrator CS4
Chevon is president and creative director at Heavenspot in LA, and his vector portraits of celebrities and actors go way beyond the photorealism to capture the personality of the subjects. Come see how to inject power and personality into your own work.

Get Moving

Chris Georgenes
Basic Character Animation with Illustrator CS4 and Flash CS4 Professional
Chris is the art and animation director for Acclaim Games, whose background in the fine arts, printmaking, illustration and art history and coalesced when Flash came on the scene. His excitement for animation is contagious; come be a part of it and learn how to take you Illustrator artwork and make it move in Flash. You can see more of Chris' work on his portfolio site Mudbubble.

Chris Jackson
Learn Basic Character Animation with Illustrator CS4 and After Effects CS4
Chris Jackson is a computer graphics designer and professor at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), who will show you how to take your Illustrator artwork and turn them in to motion graphics that let you communicate in memorable ways.

Get Inside

David Macy
Hot Tips and Cool Tools in Illustrator CS4
Come get it from the source. Adobe Illustrator senior product manager David Macy gives you the scoop on the latest in Illustrator features as well as those critical techniques you need to know to master this essential design tool.

As a lot of you have heard, CS4 versions of Adobe's Creative Suite apps have been tested with Snow Leopard and the few problems we found were mostly minor. For more a whole lot more info and perspective, read John Nack's post "Adobe Snow Leopard FAQ"

This entry on Infinite Resolution is meant to give you a bit more specific information about Illustrator. We have done extensive testing of CS4 on Snow Leopard, as well as a shorter set of tests with CS3. Although we certainly have not done the exhaustive tests with CS3 that we would need to do in order to say that we officially support this configuration, I can tell you that for the most part both CS4 and CS3 versions of Illustrator work well on Snow Leopard.

So, what problems have we found that you should know about?

• Both .ai and .eps files saved from Illustrator open with Preview instead of Illustrator, until you tell the OS to use Illustrator for the file types. See this KB article for more details.


• Saving files to a server through SMB protocol may cause crashes. This looks like it is not specific to Adobe applications. See this KB article

If any new information surfaces, I'll update this blog to let you know.

Contributed by Brenda Sutherland, Illustrator Team Geologist

Tuesday is garbage day at my house. . . . In preparation, I run around the house emptying all the trash bins, gather up the recycling and haul out the green waste container and park it all on the curb. Hopefully timing these tasks before that big noisy truck comes along and takes it all away.

The experience is both tedious and cathartic. While I can think of an infinite number of things I'd rather be doing than my weekly trash chore, there is something refreshing about knowing that all of those things I no longer need or want have been taken away, and I'll never have to smell, trip over, or store them away again.

Of course, some people are much better housekeepers than I am, and would be horrified to see my last minute scramble down the driveway. But at least I get it done! And I think designers are a bit like this with their files as well. Some are meticulous about handing off files that have been scrubbed clean, without a single erroneous anchor point or unused swatch. Every layer, sublayer and group has a unique and meaningful name, and there are no hidden objects, unpainted paths, or dead links to be found. I have seen these files, and they are a thing of beauty.

Think about when you pick your car up from the mechanic. How would you feel if you found the old spark plugs or empty oilcans lying in your car? Not to mention greasy handprints on the hood. When you pick up your car, you expect it to be ready to go, without any sign that someone's been working on it. And you especially don't want to be cleaning up after them!

Now think about how your clients feel when they get your files. When they open them up and the swatch panel contains not only all of the swatches from the Startup Profile, but also every spot color you tried out while working out your color scheme, every variation of a particular pattern or gradient you were working on, and all the different brushes you experimented with on that one object you ended up deleting anyway. And then of course are the objects no longer in use but still present in your document. They may not be visible, but their presence can have repercussions that can cost you time and money later. So it's well worth the taking a few minutes to scrub your files before handing them off. Not only do tidy files look more professional, removing these items reduces the file size, and prevents problems and confusion further down the production line as people other than you open and work with them.

Many designers budget time into their schedules for file cleanup. Not that it takes a lot of time, as Illustrator provides time saving tools to help you sweep your files cleans of unnecessary clutter. Hopefully, you are already doing this. If not, read on and I'll share some tips with you that will help you add this step to your workflow as efficiently and painlessly as possible.

Contributed by Neeraj Nandkeolyar, Illustrator Workflow Team

Haven’t we all tried to create ruler guides as accurately as possible, but found after zooming in we found the guides were off? This is one of the reasons why most of us drag ruler guides out at maximum zoom. Here are some quick ways to get accurate ruler guides, without having to work zoomed in.

Choose the desired ruler units, either from Preferences, or control-click (on Mac) or right-click (on Win) on the rulers.

Contributed by Rohit Guglani, Illustrator Team
A lot of time we hear from our users to have the default settings of a new document changed to suit their requirements. Document Startup Profiles – control the properties of new document. Following settings can be controlled using the startup profiles:

1. Swatches
2. Brushes
3. Symbols
4. Character Styles
5. Paragraph Styles
6. Graphic Styles
7. Page Size
8. Units
9. Orientation
10. Language
11. Highlight options
12. View Settings
13. Transparency Flattener Settings
14. Preview vs Pixel vs Overprint preview
15. Page Tiling
16. Edges
17. Guides
18. Grid
19. Transparency Grid
20. Rulers
21. Smart Guides
22. Document Raster Settings (resolution, preserve spot)


So, next time you want to customize your default profile just create a new document and customize the various settings and save the file to any of these locations:

Mac : {user}:Library:Application Support:Adobe:Adobe Illustrator CS4:{lang}:New Document Profiles
Win : {drive}\Documents and Settings\{user}\Application Data\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS4 Settings\{lang}\New Document Profiles

and the new profile starts appearing in the new document dialog.