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Is Adobe Illustrator Difficult to Learn?
Adobe Illustrator is a vector drawing app, which means it allows you to make artwork that can be scaled indefinitely without losing accuracy. It’s an excellent medium for designing complex vector artwork and experimenting with animated typography style. Still, if you’re coming from Photoshop, you may be unfamiliar with Illustrator’s quirks, so we’re here to support. We, at Blue Sky Graphics online graphic design course teach all three major adobe programs (Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign) in our online course so join today if you want to become a graphic designer from home.
Making Use of Layers
Add on the use of keyboard shortcuts to easily move between the pen, anchor-point, and turn methods, as well as the newest curvature function. It saves you a TON of time by eliminating the need to move the mouse back and forth between the tool panel and your job. Most newcomers don’t understand it, but it’s the secret to effective illustration. Constantly returning to the tool panel to click/switch each tool can be quite distracting to fluid, in-the-flow formation. For a few weeks, hold a cheat sheet printout next to your workstation to force yourself to master some shortcuts. When you are inclined to mouse over to a tool palette or menu, see whether you can find and use a shortcut.
Paths and strokes
Change the weight and form of stroke using the Strokes pad.
Illustrator by default strokes the direction (whether formed with the Pen tool or a form tool, for example) with a 1pt black stroke (and fills your shape with white if you connect up the points). Using the swatches panel, you may adjust the colour or fill (or indeed the tool options bar at the top of the interface).
When the item is picked, the tiny stroke and fill feature under the main tool panel allows you to choose between the two. The Strokes panel allows you to change the weight and form of stroke, as well as when the stroke is applied.
The Appearance Committee
At any point, the Appearance panel provides a short rundown of the strokes and fills.
Using the Appearance panel to provide a brief rundown of your strokes and fills (along with any effects you’ve applied) at any time. You may also easily adjust the stroke and fill form and colour, as well as the opacity, from here. If you’ve already used an impact, you can go back and tweak it by clicking its name. Exceptionally helpful.
Use Brushes Panel
To easily add paint strokes to your lines, use the Brushes panel.
Think again if you believed Illustrator and vector graphics were just for strong forms and non-natural media results. You can easily add paint strokes to your lines by utilising the Brushes panel and Illustrator’s extensive brush library.
You may edit the brush by double-clicking it in the Brushes window, and the adjustments will be mirrored automatically on your illustration. You can also draw your own brushes from scratch using vector graphics. The options are limitless.
Make use of the Symbolism techniques
Symbols may be used to easily generate detailed illustrations.
Similarly, symbols are a perfect way to easily create complex artwork. Assume you intend to raise a flock of chickens. Simply draw one bird, then pick it and convert it to a symbol using the Symbols panel arrow menu. Then, from the tool bar, pick the Symbol Sprayer and spray it across the website.
Then, using the other Symbolism methods, you can scale, colourize, and rotate only specific instances of the sign, creating a more natural impact. Try it, it’s really easy!
Experiment with Both
Experiment with the effects software to achieve exclusive performance.
If the items are too uniform, you may use the effects software to warp, roughen, pucker, bloat, and otherwise alter their appearance.
Click and hold the Width tool in the Tool panel to pull up the effects tools flyout. Then, using one or both of the brushes, gently warp and adjust the piece. You may adjust choices by double-clicking on each method in the flyout – so experiment!
Quickly change the typeface
Illustrator is fantastic for type editing.
Illustrator’s excellent type software are one of the best features. It’s perfect for setting out form in an illustration, but it’s much better for editing type. Make a font larger by utilising the Character panel or the Tool Options bar. Then, pick the type’s box (rather than the text itself) and go to Type>Create Outlines.
Choosing comparable artefacts
You can conveniently adjust the colour of several items at the same time.
Once you’ve gotten used to drawing more complicated forms in Illustrator and have assembled an example, you might want to adjust the colour of many things at once. However, some of those items could be partly obscured behind others, and there may be a plethora of them!
To make it simpler, pick one of your items and then go to Select>Same, where you can select the alternative you like (maybe Fill Colour). Any of your items that have the fill colour will be picked, and you can adjust them all at once using the swatches screen.
Blending is easy
The Blend tool is an excellent tool for creating gradients.
There are a few ways to produce gradients in Illustrator (the Gradient panel and Gradient Mesh software are worth playing with and wrapping your head around), but the Blend method is a perfect way to get started.
Simply construct two shapes with separate colour fills (no stroke for a gradient effect) and then, with the Blend tool chosen, click on the first and then the second object. You will adjust the kind of blend it adds if you double-click the Blend tool in the Tool Panel before doing this (and if you keep your blend objects selected it will apply the changes to that blend).
Presets may be used for the current Pencil Tool
You can construct a smooth, flowing route with less points by using fast presets.
If you use Illustrator as part of the Creative Cloud, you can now use simple presets to build a sleek, flowing route with less points, or a path that more closely suits your drawing purpose.
In addition to curves, you can also conveniently draw straight lines using the Pencil Tool, which you can constrain to 0, 45, or 90 degree angles if desired. Adobe has now introduced the option to draw from the end points of an established course, as well as the ability to close the routes with a curved or straight line. These two videos demonstrate how:
