Hello, welcome to this tutorial! Let's see in a very short time all the
main features you need to know to start using Adobe Illustrator 2020!
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extra content, tips and free tutorials for Adobe Creative Cloud!
In respect to Photoshop, Illustrator is one of the best products to make
exclusive drawings, including complete tools for vector drawing, graphic
design and logo creations. Being part of the Creative Cloud suite,
Illustrator is available only under a subscription plan.
When opening Illustrator its Home Screen page shows up with tips and
options to start from your most recent documents and files.
On the left you can either use Open to open .ai Illustrator projects, .psd
Photoshop documents and ready images or use Create new to create a new
Illustrator document, taking any ready template from the list above and
setting custom options inside Preset Details on the right, such as name,
size under Width and Height, orientation, number of pages under Artboards
and also distance from the page margins under Bleed. Use Create to finish
creating the project.
All new projects and files open are shown on the main interface as
Illustrator documents, each with its own tab and file name. You can click
on any to show the interested document on the main preview.
Every Illustrator document is made by two kinds of objects: the images and
the vectors. The images are rendered files made by pixels, which may lose
quality and resolution when edited and resized. Whereas vectors are
graphic elements that are not rendered yet, so they can be edited and
modified without losing quality and with the maximum flexibility. For this
reason all professional drawings start from vectors rather than images.
All the tools to manage and edit objects can be found on the Toolbox on
the left and on the panels on the right side. These can change according
to the kind of workspace chosen from the top right corner: in this video
we will see the simplest Essentials one. In case you miss any panel, you
can always recover any by going to the Window tab.
The Toolsbar collects the most important tools you need to draw inside
Illustrator. Some of its buttons show a white corner where you can right-
click to see the list of tools collected together. You can also
double-click to view and change the tool options, such as brush size or
shape.
If you do not find any tool on the Toolbox, make sure to click on the last
button to get the full list of tools inside Illustrator.
Use the Line Segment Tool and the Shape Tools to draw straight lines and
regular 2D shapes by clicking and dragging on the document. You can also
click once to drop the object by defining its properties precisely.
Below these you have the tools to draw freehand, such as the Pencil, the
Paintbrush and the Blob Brush Tool.
The Pen Tool is a very advanced tool to make straight and curved shapes
with full control. Click on the document to fix the shape vertices (or
anchors) and finish the drawing by either closing it or using the Escape
key. At this point you can hold down the ALT key and drag the anchors
to create curves, adjusting their angles with the blue handles.
The Pen Tool can also be used to reshape existing objects. Hold down the
CTRL (or CMD) key to select any object and click on it to add new anchors
that you can move with the CTRL (or CMD) key and make curved with the
ALT key. If you make any mistake, you can undo any action by using CTRL
(or CMD) and Z.
Remember to hold down the ALT key and use your mouse wheel to zoom in
and out if you need.
You can also use the Text Tool to drop any text paragraph. Just click and
drag to define a text contour delimiting text and then type in,
horizontally or vertically depending on the tool chosen. This contour can
be edited with the Pen Tool as well, creating custom text areas with the
shape you like most.
You can also use Type on a Path Tool to type by following any object path.
Illustrator has several aids to make drawings easily. When drawing any
shape you get a small box indicating its width, height, length and
inclination in progress and also its basic skeleton in blue color, from
which the object is made with stroke and fill color. This skeleton also
allows easy snappings to its object path, anchor or directions and can be
edited to reshape the object it belongs to. With the Selection Tool
enabled click and drag the skeleton to move the object, use its white
nodes to scale and drag from outside to rotate. When selecting any text
box you can size it to adjust the text distribution and also double-click
on the blue node to resize text from its box directly.
Use CTRL (or CMD) and Z to undo and use CTRL/CMD and X, C and V to cut,
copy and paste any selected object. You can cut-paste any image to import
it into the current document. Its skeleton will be simply its basic
contour, which can be used to move and scale the image itself.
Use the Delete key to remove any selected object. Whereas use the Eraser
tool to delete any part of it by brushing on it.
The Properties panel on the right collects all the properties related to
the object selected. Under Transform adjust the object position, size and
inclination and under Appearance set the transparency level with Opacity
and its colors, properties and thickness for Stroke and Fill. This way you
can apply any Stroke color to change the color of any path or contour and
add any Fill color to apply filling to a closed shape. Blob Brush drawings
are unique, having both Stroke and Fill on each brush.
In case of text objects, Fill is the text color and Stroke the contour of
each letter.
To remove any Stroke or Fill you can select the white rectangle with a red
line, indicating complete transparency.
Besides the solid colors you can also open the Gradient panel to apply
great color gradients. Choose between the object Fill or Stroke and select
the kind of gradient, its inclination and color on the slider below.
Inside Appearance you can also click on the fx button to apply amazing
effects on objects, selecting these from the list. All the effects added
are collected inside the Appearance panel, that you can open by clicking
in the bottom right corner.
You can also use special tools from the Toolbox to apply effects on the
objects by brushing on these. Check these out!
In case of selected text the Properties panel also shows the Character
section with all the options for the text content such as font family,
style, size and distribution.
With the Layers panel you can manage the visibility of groups of objects
called Layers. By default all objects belong to a single layer called
Layer 1, sharing its same blue color on their skeletons. You can go to
Create New Layer at the bottom to create a new independent layer and drop
any object on it by clicking and dragging it. The skeleton will also
change its color, assuming the same one of the new layer.
The Layers panel also sets the visibility order between objects that may
overlap on the document: all the objects placed on top of the list are
always shown above all the objects on lower positions.
Now let's see how to save and export your work!
To save the current Illustrator document go to File and then to Save As,
defining name and destination folder. This way you can reopen it anytime
from the Home Screen page.
Whereas to render and export your work go to File and then to Export.
Choose Export As to export the document in several formats, including
AutoCAD .dwg, Photoshop .psd and many others; choose Export for Screens..
to render as an image in .jpg, .png or .pdf.
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