Adobe illustrator cs4 shape builder tool free

Looking for:

Adobe illustrator cs4 shape builder tool free 

Click here to DOWNLOAD

    ❿  

Adobe illustrator cs4 shape builder tool free.Illustrator Shape Builder Tool (How to Create Shapes)

 

Creating Image Maps. Creating SVG Files. Optimizing Web Graphics. The Flash Text Panel. Saving Mobile Content. Printing Basics. Document Setup. Printing Composites.

Print Dialog Box Options. Printing Color Separations. Process Color Separations. Spot Color Separations. Printing Your Color Separations. Creating Custom Print Presets. Barbara Zuckerman. Janet Allinger. Chris Reed. Heidi Udvardy. Susan Hunt Yule.

Thank you to all my dear friends in New York City and to Scott Carson, Megan Hefflin, and the other teachers and staff at Noble Desktop, each of you help to make every trip to Manhattan a special one. Thank you to all my family and friends around this great country of ours, you know who you are. Adobe Illustrator is the number-one vector graphics program being used today by professionals.

This program is the essential tool for graphic artists, video production artists, web and interactive designers, and professionals in other industries who use graphics to communicate ideas visually in print, on the Web, in motion graphics, and via mobile devices.

Adobe Illustrator CS4 is superior in design features to prior versions of the program. It has better integration with other Adobe applications and a new and improved workspace layout, plus several new and enhanced drawing tools and controls. Who this Book Is For This book is written for illustrators, artists, designers, hobbyists, scrapbookers, craftspeople, and anyone else who wants to take their illustrations, drawings, sketches, page layouts, web designs, patterns, craft projects, and artwork into the computerized vector-art world of Illustrator.

The Structure of this Book How to Do Everything: Adobe Illustrator CS4 introduces and explains all facets of the Illustrator workspace with full-color graphic examples and screenshots to illustrate key concepts and tasks. The book takes you step by step through the process of creating various types of illustrations, and demonstrates professional techniques, shortcuts, and solutions. Even if you have never used any illustration or graphics programs.

This book is divided into four parts with a bonus gallery profiling professional illustrators at the end. Part I - Illustrator Basics The first part of this book teaches you the basics of Illustrator, including getting a workspace orientation, learning how to set up and create new documents, and finding out how to use all the general drawing, painting, selection, and arrangement tools.

Part II - The Basics and Beyond The second part goes into more advanced basic training about working with colors and swatches, using type effectively, transforming and reshaping your objects, exploring the world of patterns and gradients, working with symbols and integrating artwork with Flash, and designing custom business graphs. Learn about creating logos, editorial illustration, print layouts, T-shirt designs, book jackets, and crafts.

Web topics include web layouts, buttons and image maps, and slicing and optimizing web graphics. The last chapter delves into printing topics so you can learn how to best prepare your work for print. Learn about their personal backgrounds and interests, and their favorite keyboard shortcuts. Each profile includes a short bio and samples of their artwork created in Illustrator. How to Make Best Use of this Book This book can be read from front to back or as a general Illustrator reference guide.

I would strongly urge new users read the book from beginning to end in a linear fashion since the chapters teach skills that successively build on one another. Introduction For more experienced Illustrator users, feel free to skip around from chapter to chapter to discover new information as you need it. Each chapter is written to teach you how to best use the workspace, tools, and commands in Illustrator to quickly comprehend new information and start performing new tasks.

With a little know-how and a few clicks of your mouse, you can learn to draw nearly anything your mind can imagine! This chapter will introduce you to the workspace, tools, and panels. The Welcome Screen The Welcome Screen, shown in Figure , is persistent and appears when you first open Illustrator and remains visible even if no documents are open in the workspace. Click a link and the corresponding file or web site opens.

The Workspace With the exception of a few minor platform-specific interface differences and keyboard commands, Illustrator looks and. This book includes keyboard commands for both Windows and Mac, such as the following keyboard shortcuts: Windows Shortcuts. Inside the workspace, the gray bar at the top of the screen is called the Application bar. This bar is comprised of two parts: the Menu bar on top and the Control panel below.

Figure shows an example of the Control panel in support of the Selection tool. Use the various features inside the Control panel to customize your tools and edit your work as you create it. The Status Bar The status bar is located at the bottom left edge of the artboard.

When visible, this area displays three special features: the current magnification of the artboard or zoom level , artboard navigation buttons, and an information display area, as seen in Figure Use the dropdown menu button to adjust the zoom setting. When more than one artboard is detected, the first, previous, next, and last buttons become active, allowing you to quickly jump to or select the desired artboard in the workspace.

The Artboard The artboard is the active rectangular area in your workspace that defines what will be printed, as shown in the example in Figure Different projects can often require different configurations of panels and tools within the workspace.

In Illustrator, you can create and save your own custom layouts and reuse them at any time. To save your own custom workspace, first set up the. Select Window Workspace Save Workspace. In the Save Workspace dialog box that opens, type in a name for this new workspace and click the OK button.

To use the new workspace, select its name from the Window Workspace menu. By default, the dock is collapsed. To expand it, click the tiny left-facing double arrows once at the top of the dock. Panels are grouped into families of similar tools. For example, the Swatches panel is grouped with the Brushes and Symbols, as shown in Figure Most panels share certain features, such as a button bar at the bottom, a flyout options menu, and the ability to expand, collapse, and be docked to the right edge of the workspace.

N Align This panel allows you to align objects. N Appearance This panel lets you view, build, and apply attributes to objects such as multiple fills, multiple strokes, transparency, and effects.

N Attributes Use this panel to view overprinting information and any web URLs associated with a selected object. N Brushes This panel lets you select a brush type. N Color Use this panel to select and apply color to your work. N Document Info Use this panel to view file information such as artboard size, color mode, font details, and ruler units. N Gradient This panel lets you apply and adjust gradients. N Graphic Styles Use this panel to view, create, and apply custom graphic styles.

N Pathfinder This panel allows you to apply transformations to add, subtract, trim, intersect, exclude, and merge objects. N Stroke Use this panel to adjust stroke settings such as weight, miter limit, alignment, dashed line, and cap and join shape. N Swatches This panel displays preset color, gradient, and pattern swatches, custom swatches, and swatch libraries. N Symbols This panel displays preset vector symbols and symbol libraries. It also lets you define and work with new custom symbols.

N To open a panel, select the panel by its name from the Window menu or use the keyboard shortcut listed next to the panel name in the Window menu. When a panel is opened, a checkmark will appear next to the panel name in the Window menu.

N To dock and undock panels, click and drag a panel by its tab to the new desired location, which can be inside the existing panel group, into another panel group, into the dock as its own panel group, or outside the dock.

N To adjust the height of some of the panels within the dock, place your cursor above the dark gray divider line between any two panel groups, then click and drag when you see the vertical double-sided arrow. N To reset the panel locations to their default layout positions, press the new Workspace button on the Control panel or select Window Workspace and choose the Basic or Essentials layout from the submenu, as seen in Figure N Transform Use this panel to apply transformations, such as scaling, rotating, and shearing, to selected artwork.

N Transparency This panel lets you adjust the opacity of selected objects, apply blending modes, and apply special opacity settings to grouped objects.

Not only can you undock any panel or panel group from the docking area and put them back again, you can also completely close and reopen panels as needed, adjust the width, height, and appearance of any panel both inside and outside the dock, and drag on the tabs within a panel group to change the order of their display within the group. Panel tab Input field. The Tools Panel The Tools panel, seen in Figure , can be expanded, collapsed, hidden, visible, docked, and undocked for freefloating placement in your workspace.

To see a tooltip displaying the name and keyboard shortcut of a tool such as P for the Pen Tool , hover your mouse over any of the tool icons.

You can also do any of the following:. N To hide or show the Tools panel, select Window Tools. N To use a tool, click its icon to select it. N To undock and move the Tools panel into the workspace, click and drag it from its top tab. N To toggle between single column and double column display, click the double arrow in the tab bar at the top of the Tools panel.

Flyout Menus Each of the tools that has a tiny black triangle next to it has a flyout menu beneath it containing a family of similar tools. To see the flyout menu, like the one shown in Figure , click and hold your mouse on that tool. When the flyout menu appears, select any of the other tools by releasing your mouse when your cursor is floating above the desired tool.

N With the flyout menu showing, drag your pointer over the tiny black arrow at the right edge of the tearoff menu to detach the flyout menu onto your artboard. To tearoff any of the flyout menus, drag your mouse to the tearoff bar on the right edge of the flyout menu, as shown in Figure After you release your mouse, the tearoff menu will appear as its own moveable and closeable mini Tools panel. Tools and Tool Options This section will give you a quick overview of the Tools panel.

Figure shows you a complete listing of all the available tools on the Tools panel including all of the tools hidden in each of the flyout menus. N Magic Wand Used to make selections based on object fill and stroke color, stroke weight, object opacity, and blending mode. See Chapter 4. See Chapter 3. N Type Used to add text to the artboard. See Chapter N Line Segment Used to make line segments, spirals, and grids. N Rectangle Used to draw primitive shapes such as rectangles, rounded rectangles, ellipses, polygons, stars, and flares.

See Chapter 5. N Scale Used to scale a selected object. N Warp Used to warp transform a selected object. See Chapter 2. N Slice Used to cut selected artwork into slices prior to optimizing graphics for the Web. See Chapters 3 and Stroke and Fill Tools N Used to specify the stroke and fill color for any selected object or path. You can toggle the active status of the Fill and Stroke icons by pressing the X key on your keyboard. N Fill To specify the fill color of a selected object, click the square Fill icon to activate the fill and change the color using the Swatches or Colors panel.

N Stroke To specify the stroke color of a selected object, click the Stroke icon to activate the stroke and change the color using the Swatches or Colors panel. Screen Mode Tools N Click here or press the F key on your keyboard to toggle between three different screen modes for the workspace:. N Normal Screen Mode Shows full screen with application bar, document groups bar, artboard, rulers, Tools panel, and panels.

N Full Screen Mode Shows expanded artboard with rulers. All other workspace features are hidden. To get out of this mode, press the F key on your keyboard.

Use these shortcuts at any time to access tools and features without using your mouse. To create a custom keyboard shortcut, perform the following steps: 1. Select Edit Keyboard Shortcuts to open the keyboard shortcut dialog box. Click the Save button to create a duplicate copy of the Illustrator Defaults keyboard shortcuts with your own name in order to preserve the original and keep your shortcuts separate.

You will now see this new name displaying the Set menu at the top of the dialog box. Select Tools or Menu Commands from the dropdown menu below the Set menu to see a listing of the existing tool or menu command keyboard shortcuts at the bottom of the dialog box. If the shortcut is already taken by another tool or menu command, an alert message will display in the bottom of the dialog box.

If this occurs, try a different keyboard shortcut. If the shortcut is available, the field will accept your input. Repeat steps 4 through 6 to create additional custom shortcuts. Click the OK button to close the window and begin using the new shortcuts.

In addition to these, Illustrator allows you to either work with existing presets for creating transparencies, tracings, prints, PDFs, and SWFs, or create your own custom presets for each of these, which can then be loaded into the application when working on specific projects.

Preferences To access the Preferences dialog box, seen in Figure , select Edit Preferences Win or Illustrator General Preferences Mac and then choose one of the options from the flyout menu. Once open, you can scroll through the different screens using the Previous and Next buttons to make adjustments to the different settings. Presets The Edit menu contains a list of preset options that refer to the default settings Illustrator will use when creating flattened transparencies, making image tracings, printing, creating PDFs, and exporting SWF files.

By default, three resolutions are available: High, Medium, and Low. Use High for all your press outputs and high-quality proofs; Medium for onscreen proofs and files printing to PostScript color printers; and Low for publishing web files, exporting to SVG, or files to be output on black-and-white desktop printers.

When using the Live Trace tool to trace placed artwork, the tracing presets can be selected to determine how different types of artwork should be traced. You can modify these presets and create your own through the Tracing Presets dialog box. Print Presets When printing, you can create on-the-fly printing output settings through the File Print dialog box, or you can create and use custom Print Presets, or output settings, to match jobs to specific printers.

Edit these files through the Print Presets dialog box. Preset options include Flash Player Version, type of export, curve quality, frame rate, and more.

Undoing and Automation One of the greatest things about Illustrator is the ability to undo and redo steps in your work. Illustrator supports unlimited undos, giving you the flexibility you need to try things out, change your mind, and make corrections as you go! You can also revert your file completely to its starting point and automate repetitive tasks using the Actions panel. Repeat the Undo action as many times as needed to revert your work to the desired state.

Likewise, when you open a file, you start with a clean slate. The Actions Panel To help speed up the process of repetitious work, Illustrator comes with a whole library of prerecorded actions inside the Actions panel. Simply put, an action is a series of prerecorded steps or operations—such as selecting a tool, selecting an object, transforming that object, and optimizing the file as a web graphic—that can be played back at the push of a button.

You can use the Actions panel to play existing actions, as well as record, play, edit, and delete your own actions. Actions can include stops, where you can perform specific tasks like drawing with the pencil tool , as well as modal controls for entering specific values into a dialog box during playback. To view the Actions panel, select Window Actions. The panel, shown in Figure , contains 22 prerecorded actions inside the Default Actions folder.

A folder in this panel is called. You can create your own Sets and fill them with your own custom actions. Actions displaying a dialog icon next to it in the Dialog column of the panel will automatically open dialog boxes requiring user input. This option can be toggled on or off in this column. Creating an Action To create a custom action, perform the following sample steps: 1. Click the Create New Set button to create a new folder for all your custom actions.

With the new Set folder selected, click the Create New Action button. In the New Action dialog box, enter a name for your action, and if desired, assign a function key and highlight color. Then, click Record. Select the object s on your artboard and perform the action s. When finished, click the Stop button to stop the recording.

In fact, one of the things that makes this tool so powerful is that it pulls its online help files from community-generated del. To open the panel, select Window Adobe Labs knowhow. The panel, shown in Figure , lets you get quick access to online information about a selected tool or search term.

Note: You must have a live Internet connection for this feature to work. Deleting an Action To delete an entire action, a step within an action, or even an entire Set folder , drag and drop the action, step, or Set into the Delete Selection trash icon at the bottom of the panel. It can either be a blank file set up for a print, mobile, video, or web project, or you can start with one of the many free Illustrator template files provided by Adobe.

Setting up the file properly before you begin will help you avoid some common output mistakes. To change the document settings after you start working, select File Document Setup. N Name Enter a name for your document here. Use each profile as is, or as a starting point for creating a custom document profile. Choose the Browse option to select and use your own custom and third-party profiles. N Number of Artboards Create files with multiple artboards by entering a number other than 1 in the Number Of Artboards field.

Spacing and Rows fields will then become active, as well as the buttons to specify grid flow and layout orientation. N Units Choose a unit of measure for your file and the document rulers. Options include points, picas, inches, centimeters, millimeters, or pixels. N Bleed The default Bleed options are typically set to zero, which is fine for most situations. The typical setting is a minimum of 0. Projects with bleeds are printed on oversized paper and then trimmed down. When set, bleed guidelines appear outside the edges of the artboard as an aid during layout.

N Raster Effects Raster Effects are special bitmap effects like a drop shadow that are drawn with pixels instead of vectors. Select High ppi for all your Print projects, Medium ppi for your onscreen projects, and Low 72 ppi for your Web, Mobile and Devices, and Video and Film projects. N Transparency Grid This option appears when the Video and Film profile is selected so you can create work on a transparent background.

You may access these options through the View menu. Choose Default to see your work as vectors in full color. Select Pixel to see your work as it would appear if the art was converted from vector to rasterized pixelated art.

Select Overprint to preview your work onscreen to see roughly how transparency, blending, and overprinting will look in colorseparated output. This feature is not compatible with PDFs. Click it to launch Device Central to preview your file in a variety of simulated mobile devices. The template itself remains intact no matter how many times you open instances of it.

To open and begin using a template, open one of the themed folders, select the desired file from the listing, and click the New button.

Once the file is open, be sure to save the file using the File Save command. All you have to do is set up a file the way you like it—including customized settings such as swatches, brushes, rulers, grids, guides, and magnification level—and then save it as a template by selecting File Save As Template.

However, you can still modify the number of artboards in your file after the file is already open. When creating multiple artboards by hand, as described in the following, keep in mind that as you create each new artboard, an artboard order number is automatically assigned to it.

The number displays in the top left corner of the artboards when the Artboard tool is selected. Figure shows an example of a file with three artboards when the Artboard tool is selected.

To set up or change the number of artboards in your open document, follow these steps: 1. Select the Artboard tool at the bottom of the Tools panel. Once the tool is selected, the main artboard in your file becomes active. When the cursor turns into a double-sided arrow, click and drag to adjust the size. To add another artboard, click and drag in the workspace to draw a new artboard shape.

Repeat steps 3 and 4 to add new artboards and reposition artboards in your layout. You may also delete an artboard, whether selected or not, by clicking its close box.

Select the Artboard tool from the Tools panel. Use the Artboard tools and settings on the Control panel, seen in Figure , to adjust the attributes of the selected artboard:. N New Artboard Click this button to add a new artboard to the center of your layout. You can then click and drag the new artboard to another location. N Display Options Menu Each artboard can have the following features turned on or off with these toggle buttons.

The icon of the last selected menu item will display to the left of the menu. N Show Cross Hairs Click here to add green cross hair guides representing the horizontal and vertical center of the artboard. With multiple artboard files, the artboards will print as separate pages in the order they were created regardless of their placement on the artboard unless you specify that some of the artboards print while others do not.

Since the size of the overscan varies from TV to TV, use a video safe area as a guide for content placement to ensure your text and graphics will fall within the action safe area of the TV screen. You can also launch it by double-clicking the Artboard tool in the Tools panel. N File Save This opens the Save As dialog box, inside which you can choose a location for the saved file, type in a File name, select a file type from the Save As Type dropdown menu, and save your file. If the file has already been saved, the Save command will update the existing file with any recent changes.

N File Save As Similar to File Save in that you will be confronted with a Save As dialog box, but your original file is closed and the Save As file becomes the opened active document in the Illustrator workspace. N File Save A Copy This option saves a copy of the open file in your desired location with your desired file name, while leaving the original file opened. Native File Formats You should typically consider four file formats when saving your files. Also supported by some desktop publishing and drawing applications.

These files support documents containing bitmap and vector graphics, text, and fonts. The EPS format is a generic vector format and the option of choice if you plan to place the file into nonAdobe programs such as Microsoft Office programs or QuarkXPress.

SVG Use this high-quality vector format when creating web graphics and art for interactive web files, such as Flash animations. After saving in one of these formats, you can safely export or create a copy of the file in any of the supported non-native file formats, as described next. All this is done through the Illustrator Options dialog box, shown in Figure , which opens immediately after you save your file with a filename and an AI file type.

Exporting Files When you need a copy of a native Illustrator file in a non-native format, use the File Export command. The dropdown menu in the Export dialog box lists all the supported file types.

Opening Files Illustrator lets you open existing Illustrator files as well as files created with other programs. You can open a file in four different ways:. Placing Artwork Placing importing artwork from another file into an open Illustrator document is different from pasting copied artwork into a file. Illustrator supports the placement of many different file types, which are visible in the Files Of Type dropdown menu in the Place dialog box.

N Linked art This gives you a low-resolution view of the linked artwork and maintains a connection with the original file. When you print the file, the linked artwork will print in full-resolution. N Embedded art This embeds a full-resolution copy of the original art into your file, which could result in a higher file size. Placed files, whether linked or embedded, are easily identified in the Control panel when the object is selected and in the Links panel, which can be opened by selecting Window Links.

Use the Links panel to view a list of all linked and embedded files and to select, update, embed, and access source artwork. Figure shows an example of both linked and embedded art.

Other icons that may appear in the panel include an exclamation, indicating the linked file needs to be updated due to changes in the original artwork , and a question mark, which indicates the linked file is either missing or has been moved and the path location to the file needs updating. Moving Around the Workspace The following tools and panels will help you change the magnification of your page; reposition your view of the artwork when zoomed in or out; adjust the page orientation and units of measure on rulers; use grids, guides, and smart guides; and look at your work in the different preview modes.

The Zoom Tool Use the Zoom tool, which looks like a magnifying glass, to zoom in and out of your workspace. The area will zoom into view, filling the entire screen at the new magnification, as shown in Figure In the video Shapebuilder is used to create the pencil's tip by overlaying a triangular and a rectangular surfaces, uniting the two shapes with Shapebuilder.

I am working with CS4 Illustrator and there is no Shapebuilder available. What is the best way to do the same task without Shapebuilder? This tool also allows you to join, add, subtract shapes and until very recently was my main tool for doing so. I am working with CS4 Illustrator and there is no Shapebuilder available. What is the best way to do the same task without Shapebuilder? This tool also allows you to join, add, subtract shapes and until very recently was my main tool for doing so.

Posting to the forum is only allowed for members with active accounts. This chapter demonstrates how to create documents that have multiple Artboards pages. A two-page publicity document for a house for sale is created. It includes using the Artboard tool to add or delete Artboards, create Artboards of different sizes, duplicating Artboards and laying out Artboards to create six-sided pamphlets.

The scale is determined at the start and content accurately drawn and positioned. It includes the use of layers, Rulers, grids, placing objects and the Measurement tool.

To complete the module some of Illustrator's handy tools are demonstrated, including saving images for the web, saving in other formats, drawling graphs, adding arrowheads to lines, using Photoshop effects and saving styles. Currency Calculator. Module 2 covers advanced Adobe Illustrator CS4 features. Module 1 Introduces the different components of the Illustrator screen, drawing simple shapes, using the Ruler and Grid, entering and formatting text, copying and moving objects, using the Paintbrush, Pencil and Blob Brush Tools, using Live Paint, applying Fill and Gradient effects, creating 3D shapes, using images and symbols, applying distorting effects on shapes and using layers.

Module 2 Covers using the Pen Tool, applying the Mesh Tool, displaying shapes in envelopes, Live Tracing, creating Masks, applying blends, adjusting Paths, creating realistic 3D shapes, using multiple Artboards in documents, using the Artboard Tool, creating accurate designs, saving images for the web, drawing graphs, applying Photoshop effects and applying Graphic Styles.

Module 1 Chapter Descriptions Chapter 1: Introduction to Adobe Illustrator This chapter introduces the Adobe Illustrator screen ad its basic tools for drawing lines, arcs, rectangles, ovals, polygons, stars, etc, and how these shapes can be edited. Prices are in Australian dollars and include GST.

Chapter 1: Introduction to Adobe Illustrator 24 pages. Chapter 3: Combining Objects into Designs 12 pages. Chapter 4: Drawing and Painting Tools 16 pages. Chapter 5: Using the Blob Brush Tool 14 pages.

❿     ❿