Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One

LIVE TRACE, PAINT, AND COLOR

THE FEATURES COVERED in this lesson

have one major thing in common: They can make your

life easier. Oh yeah, and they each have—or at one point

had—the word “live” slapped in front of them, which

conveniently allows me to group them all in the same

lesson. Live, in Adobe-speak, means you can change

the parameters of your modifi cations on the fl y, then

rethink what you’ve done and retrace, repaint, or re-

color your artwork with no penalties or damage to your

illustration. There is no requirement for you to do this

in front of an audience or even use a living subject, as

is evidenced by the various treatments of our decidedly

dead pirate friend in Figure 11-1.

These are all relatively recent features, popping up in

Illustrator CS2 or CS3. Live Trace is a dialog box-driven

function that traces imported raster-based images with

vector-defi ned path outlines. Live Paint lets you fi ll and

stroke shapes you see (rather than areas specifi cally de-

fi ned by paths) using a couple of tools and a few options

in the control panel. The Live Color group of features

(as they were known when they were introduced in

CS3) lets you assemble color libraries and recolor se-

lected artwork using an assortment of options divided

between two panels and a dialog box. The point is when

you use these features, you’re sending instructions auto-

matically as opposed to doing meticulous (and tedious)

hand-work. All are highly automated and exceedingly

powerful. And while the repetition of the term live is

misleading—the Live Color feature in particular applies

static color modifi cations—one can’t help but admire

the control and integration that they afford.

Figure 11-1 .

ABOUT THIS LESSON

you’ve downloaded the lesson fi les from

www.oreilly.com/go/Deke-IllustratorCS5, as

directed in Step 2 on page xiv of the Pref-

ace. This means you should have a folder

called Lesson Files-AIcs5 1on1 on your

desktop (or whatever location you chose).

We’ll be working with the fi les inside the

Lesson 11 subfolder.

In this lesson, I’ll introduce you to the “live” features in Illustrator,

which can seem intimidating at fi rst, but turn out to be some of the

easiest, coolest, and most entertaining features in Illustrator.

• Turn a raster-based fi le into editable

vector artwork. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 388

• Trace a full color drawing automatically.. . . . . . . page 403

• Use Live Paint to dynamically fi ll in shapes. . . . . . page 413

• Change all the colors in an illustration into

different colors automatically. . . . . . . . . . . . . page 419

Although the new Perspective Grid tool in Illustrator CS5

doesn’t go by the name “live” like the other features in

this lesson, I’ve introduced it in this the lesson’s video

because it too works automatically. With the Perspective

Grid tool, you can automate much of the work of putting

shapes and even text into alignment with your grid.

To see the new Perspective Grid tool in action, visit www.

oreilly.com/go/deke-IllustratorCS5. Click the Watch but-

ton to view the lesson online or click the Download but-

ton to save it to your computer. During the video, you’ll

learn these shortcuts:

Operation Windows shortcut Macintosh shortcut

Perspective Grid tool Shift+P Shift-P

Activate the left plane Number 1 key Number 1 key

Activate the ground Number 2 key Number 2 key

Activate the right plane Number 3 key Number 3 key

Turn off grid Number 4 key Number 4 key

Toggle in and out of Outline mode Ctrl+Y -Y

Add anchor point

Ctrl+Alt+

(backslash key)* -Option- (backslash key)*

Increase text size

Ctrl+Shift+Alt+

(period key) -Shift-Option- (period key)

Tighten text leading Ctrl+Shift+ +Shift+

Video Lesson 11: The Perspective Grid Tool

* Works only if you loaded the dekeKeys keyboard shortcuts (as directed on page xviii of the Preface).

386

Lesson 11: Live Trace, Paint, and Color