Adobe Illustrator CS and CS2 Tips, Hints and Resources: The Best Info for Learning and Mastering Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator Tips and Resources

An edited collection of the best Adobe "Illy" Illustrator resources for beginners and beyond.

Adobe Illustrator is, at its heart, PostScript that speaks human. You could write out a few lines of PostScript code to describe a curve mathematically — or you could use Illustrator's designer-friendly interface to define the curve (the Bezier Pen tool) and Illy will write the code for the curve for you. Open the file in a text processor to see the code it made.

Same thing applies from the simplest rotation of a rectangle to the most complex gradient mesh. It's a pure PostScript translator, a bridge between left and right-brain activities. between art and math. Dr. Bezier would be proud. (Who was Pierre Bezier? Hint: he graded his students on a curve.)

Adobe Illustrator Tips from DesignGeek e-zine

Best Adobe Tutorials and Resources for Illustrator

llustrator CS2 Tryout: Free goodies from Adobe! If you have a fast connection, you can download a free, fully-enabled tryout of Illustrator CS2 from Adobe's site. It's good for 30 days, but the clock doesn't start ticking until you install the file you downloaded.
What's New in Illustrator CS2: Finally, Ily gets custom Workspaces (palette arrangements) and a Control palette. Lots of fun new drawing and painting features too. Read all about them in Adobe's page promoting Illustrator CS2.
Let Me Count the Ways to Import Illustrator CS/CS2 Artwork into Photoshop CS/CS2: You know the old saying, there's more than one way to skin a cat? Well, there's more than one way to import Illustrator artwork into Photoshop. Each way offers a different degree of versatility. Adobe has gathered several Illustrator-to-Photoshop importing options and written them up in this Tech Note.
Details on that Cool Live Trace Feature (PDF, 1.5M): Take any bitmapped artwork (a scan of a pencil drawing, a photo, a web graphic, etc.) into Illustrator CS2 and you can convert it to a vector drawing with its new Live Trace feature. Not quite getting it? When on-line help isn't helping, turn to this PDF.
Working with Type in Illustrator CS2 (PDF, 1.8M): Want to become an Illustrator type whiz? This 17-page PDF introduces you to the Illustrator type engine, and covers working with Open Type, advanced typography, dealing with legacy text (from older Illustrator files) in illustrated detail.
Adobe Illustrator CS Printing Guide for Service Providers (PDF, 3.8M): These white papers that Adobe writes up for commercial printers are a goldmine of information for designers as well. I haven't seen an update for Illustrator CS2 (links to general guides for CS2 apps follow), but virtually all of this 80+ page tome is still applicable. Learn how transparency and live effects are translated to something that can be printed, how to deal with legacy type, troubleshoot EPS problems, and how to prevent problems in the first place.
Transparency in Adobe Applications: A Print Production Guide (PDF, 5.1M): This 50-page guide is meant for print providers but is fascinating and illuminating reading for anyone who's ever wanted to use transparency features in their projects but were afraid they wouldn't print well. It covers all the technical aspects of maintaining and flattening transparency in the CS2 versions of Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator and Acrobat.
A Designer's Guide to Printing with Transparency (PDF, 6.5M): A simpler version of the CS2-specific Transparency Print Production Guide above, these 35 pages are aimed smack-dab at the nervous designer. It has lots of pretty pictures (thus the larger file size) and simple language that even an MFA can understand.
Illustrator Central at Adobe Studio Exchange: Plug-ins, add-ons, actions, gradients, effects and more. Why reinvent the wheel? (You'll have to register with the Studio site and/or log in before you'll be brought to this link. Yes, it's a pain, but at least it's free.)

Best Ways to Get Help from Other Illustrator Users

Adobe's Forums: Mac Illustrator | Windows Illustrator: There is a lot of problem-solving going on in here. This is usually my first stop when trying to figure something out and I need help. Chances are somebody has had the same problem you've had, and there might be a solution. Reading is painless (click "login as guest" button), posting/replying requires free registration.
Illustrator World Forums: A lively online bulletin board dedicated to illustrators who use Illustrator, divvied into topics like Work in Progress, General Problems, Printing Problems, and Shop Talk (how to deal with difficult clients, how to promote your illustration business, etc.). Note: The site had a disaster recently — their server hard drive crashed and lost much of the site's content, including forum archives. The site's still up and people are posting to the forum, let's hope they can resurrect some of the older, still useful content.
Illustrator Listserv?: For the past ten years I've been searching for an Illustrator e-mail list to no avail. Well there've been a few (still limping along is the Yahoo Ilstrtr group) but they're quite sparsely populated, which sort of defeats the purpose. If you know of a good one, please suggest it!.

Best Illustrator Online/Video Training

Total Training Illustrator Lessons: Illustrator CS2 | Illustrator CS: A couple day's worth of Illustrator training that is top-flight and fun to watch. Noted Adobe guru and long-time author Deke McClelland is the man behind these videos and he does an excellent job. Each of Total Training's training products comes with a CD containing project files so you can follow along with the instructor.
Virtual Training Company's Illustrator CS Lessons: VTC is my favorite on-line Quicktime Tutorial source, but they're still catching up to CS2; and Illustrator CS2 isn't offered (yet). (They do have InDesign CS2, Photoshop CS2 and QuarkXPress 6.); If you never really understood CS, though, the lessons could still be quite useful (and the first three chapters online are free). You can learn Illustrator online in the privacy of your web browser as short, optimized-for-the-web online Quicktime movies (over 150 lessons), or order all of them on a CD for $99 to get the highest quality Quicktime files. Either way, all sample files used in the lessons are included.

Other Illy-centric Web Sites with Good Stuff

Gradient Swatch Collection: Graphicxtras has put together 100s of gradient swatches for InDesign & ILlustrator CS/CS2. For less than $10 Mac and PC users can use these royalty-free swatches as often as you'd like. Don't forget to check out the rest of the site for plug-ins, brushes and graphic styles for Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign. Ugly site, great content.
Free Nature/Science Symbol Libraries: Over 32 symbol libraries totalling over 1,500 beautifully-rendered artwork symbols for science, nature and ecology (including ecosystem landscape diagrams); a searchable index, a Quicktime tutorial, a free symbol creation service; all royalty- and cost-free, a gift to the community from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. Mind-boggling! Have these people won an award from Adobe yet?
Graffix Plugins for Adobe Illustrator: Rick Johnson (the man behind Grafix) is a full-time illustrator for a magazine publisher up in Wisconsin, and has been creating plugins for Mac/Windows Illustrator for years. Most of them have been updated for CS2, but he still sells v5–v11 compatible ones; and they're all very affordable. His plugins are the ones that we really need. Take Square-Up, for example: "This plugin will convert a selected path's anchor points to corner points, and adjust the path segments so that lines within 20 degrees of vertical and horizontal will be made square." Can there be any greater plugin for making fast work out of tracing logos?