Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One

Starting back with CS4, you can snap objects to guides using smart

guides, even if the guides are hidden or locked at the layer level; this

wasn’t the case for previous versions of Illustrator.

If you’d like to save your work, press Ctrl+Shift+S (or -Shift-S on

the Mac) to bring up the Save As dialog box. Name your fi le “Horus

with guides.ai,” and click Save. Otherwise, discard the fi le, and

move along with me to the next exercise, which also deals with

organization—this time, of your workspace.

Creating Custom Workspaces

Like most Adobe software, Illustrator’s interface can be described

as panel intensive. Lurking under the Window menu are 34 panels

(not counting the toolbox and control panel, and certainly not in-

cluding the vast number of libraries, which are also housed in pan-

els), though mercifully the various workspaces narrow them down.

A workspace is a predefi ned collection and placement of panels. Il-

lustrator CS5 has nine (that’s right, nine) default workspaces, each

geared toward different uses. Some are designed to mimic applica-

tions you may be familiar with, such as Freehand, Photoshop, or

InDesign. In each workspace, a panel can either stand on its own

or be nested with other panels inside a docking pane. Illustrator’s

Essentials workspace places just eleven panels (in fi ve clusters) on

the right side of the screen in a single docking pane. As you can see

in Figure 1-26, they appear simply as icons.

Clicking any icon temporarily expands the

corresponding panel until you click to send

it back in line.

So with all these workspaces for different

uses (and different users), why make a cus-

tom one? Chances are none of the default

workspaces will have all the functionality

needed for the most important user—you.

By way of example, this exercise shows you

how to set up and save a custom workspace

well-suited for the work you’ll be doing in Il-

lustrator as you go through this book. You’ll

also learn how to switch between a custom

workspace and the defaults.

Figure 1-26 .

28

Lesson 1: Starting a Document

P E A R L O F W I S D O M

When shooting the fi gures for this exercise, I maintained a screen resolution

of 1024 by 768 pixels, which is defi nitely on the skimpy side when using

Illustrator, or really any of the Creative Suite apps. (I also turned on the

Application Frame to minimize distractions.) I hope you’re using a monitor

with a higher resolution, and possibly even two monitors, one for the

document window and another for panels. In other words, the fi gures in this

exercise demonstrate a sort of worst-case scenario. So if your screen doesn’t

look exactly like mine, that’s probably a good thing.

1.

Start with the Essentials workspace. Assuming you haven’t

done any panel redecorating that you care to keep, choose

Window→W

orkspace→Essentials. Better yet, select Essen-

tials from the workspace control pop-up

menu, as in Figure 1-27. Either method

switches to the Essentials workspace.

2. Open a sample document. To

ensure that we’re on the same

page, open the Spring in the city.

ai fi le, from iStockphoto artist Studiovi-

sion, located in the Lesson 01 folder. The

artwork appears in Figure 1-28.

3.

Zoom in on the leaf tips. Zoom in on the

area around the end of the branch, right

where the leaf silhouettes are nearest

the sun fl are in the center of the image.

Press the Z key to access the zoom tool,

and click to zoom in to 400 percent. (It

took me four clicks, but your experience

may vary.)

4.

Detach the document from the docking

pane. For the most part, I like using

tabbed documents so that I can switch

easily between them, without all the

window clutter. In this case, however,

I want the interface to stand on its own

as much as possible. Click the tab in the

top bar, drag it anywhere in the applica-

tion window, and release. Then click the

size box in the lower-right corner of the

document window and drag it so that

only a small amount of the artwork is

visible, as shown in Figure 1-29.

Figure 1-27 .

Figure 1-28 .

Figure 1-29 .

29

Creating Custom Workspaces