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

Illustrator CS4 Tryout

Free goodies from Adobe! If you have a fast connection, you can download a free, fully-enabled tryout of Illustrator CS4 from Adobe's site. It's good for 30 days, but the clock doesn't start ticking until you install the file you downloaded. If your connection ain't so fast, you can order a trial DVD of the entire CS4 Creative Suite for $10.99 and have it mailed to you.

 

What's New in Illustrator CS4

New tools, new features, new look. The last upgrade had an awesome color makeover in the form of Live Color, improved Live Trace, added an eraser tool, and more. What does CS4 have in store to top that? Read all about the new stuff on Adobe's page promoting Illustrator CS4.

 

Let Me Count the Ways to Import Illustrator Artwork into Photoshop

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. It's titled for CS2 and CS3, but the content is still valid for CS4.

 

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 and you can convert it to a vector drawing with its Live Trace feature. Not quite getting it? When on-line help isn't helping, turn to this PDF. Even though it says CS2, it's still good info to get you started. Though admittedly there are improvements to Live Trace in CS3 that you can't read about here.

 

Working with Type in Illustrator (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. Another good read that Adobe didn't update for CS3 or CS4. Oh well, read it anyway. it's still good info.

 

Adobe Printing Guide for Service Providers (PDF, 3.8M)

The white papers that Adobe writes up for commercial printers are a goldmine of information for designers as well. This 139 page tome covers Photoshop, InDesign, and acrobat as well as Illustrator and will teach you 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.Also useful: The self-help guide Color Workflows for Adobe Creative Suite 3.

 

Transparency in Adobe Applications: A Print Production Guide (PDF, 5.1M)

This 58-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 CS3 versions of Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator and Acrobat.

 

A Designer's Guide to Transparency for Print Output (PDF, 5.5M) and
Getting Started with Transparency (PDF, 4.3M)

The designer's guide was updated for CS3, and even though the getting started guide hasn't been updated since CS2, both are still "must" reading for any designer doing print work with any of the Adobe CS apps.

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 Professionals Forums

I just came acoss this forum, but a glance through the posts there show it to have some real promise.

 

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

 

Lynda.com's Adobe Illustrator Lessons:
Illustrator CS4 | Illustrator CS3 | Illustrator CS2

Top-notch trainers like Deke McClelland, Mordy Golding, and Burt Monroy and top-notch video and sound quality make Lynda.com a hot ticket for training. They have a huge library of training titles with over 50 hours of video training for Illustrator CS3 and 12 hours already for CS4. You can buy individual DVD collections of their training and watch it on your TV at home or subscribe for online viewing and get access to every title they produce.

Virtual Training Company's Illustrator Lessons
Illustrator CS4 | Illustrator CS3 | Illustrator CS2

VTC is one of my favorite on-line Quicktime Tutorial sources. Through their site 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. They have a terrific video training library with all of the other titles including InDesign CS4, Photoshop CS4 and Flash CS4 and they keep the older training materials on-line as well so if you're still working on earlier versions, there is something here for you too. You can 'try before you buy' as the first 3 chapters of every title are free.

 

Total Training Illustrator Lessons:
Illustrator CS4 | Illustrator CS3

CS4 training for Illustrator is available via online subscription and on DVD collections as well. Either way you'll get a couple day's worth of Illustrator training that is top-flight and fun to watch. Trainer Geoff Blake takes you through the CS4 introductory videos and shows you what's new and exciting. Noted Adobe guru and long-time author Deke McClelland is the man behind the CS3 videos and he does an excellent job of covering that software from A to Z. Each of Total Training's training products comes with a CD containing project files so you can follow along with the instructor.

Other Illy-centric Web Sites with Good Stuff

Mordy Golding's Real World Illustrator Blog

Mordy's indispensable book (see the sidebar) now has an indispensable Blog! This is chock full of great information from a guy who really knows Illustrator. This is a 'must' Illustrator resource.

IllustrationClass.com

At this site you get to peek over the shoulder of Von. R. Glitschka, a prolific illustrator, author, and teacher and work through a whole passel (isn't that a great word?!) of his vector art projects. You'll also want to check out his federal bureau of illustration site to see his investigations into design crimes.

Kevin Hulsey's Illustration tutorials

Not for the faint of heart! Jaw dropping technical illustrations on this site are worth looking at even if if you're too overwhelmed to even try the tutorials. If you're looking to get the most out of Illustrator's technical capabilities, this site is for you.

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 totaling 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 Graffix) 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 CS3 and will probably work in CS4, but he still sells v5–v12 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?

HotDoor Plugins for Adobe Illustrator

HotDoor has a number of powerful plugins for illustrator that can really change the way you use the program. If you're sticking to CS3, check out Multipage. It lets you have more than one artboard or page, letting you keep up with the CS4 Joneses. Other plug-ins include CADTools, Perspective, and Vector Studio, among others.