Illustrator CS5: Advanced

Print Design Courses

Designed for those already familiar with Adobe Illustrator who need to get the most from this leading graphics application, this is a two day Adobe authorised ?power user? course. The course has been developed for those who wish to increase their productivity and explore more creative options when using Adobe Illustrator. This course covers Illustrator?s advanced features including creative text effects, advanced drawing and path editing including perspective drawing, using adjustable strokes, getting the most from the Bristle brush, layering and masking techniques, transparency techniques and advanced use of symbols. This practical, hands-on course explores the most efficient ways of producing professional artwork for both print and the web and has been designed to enable you to realise your creative and productive potential.

Course Description

DAY ONE

Advanced drawing and path
editing
• Drawing complex bezier shapes
• Setting anchor point and handle
display preferences
• Using the Control panel to
edit paths
• Manipulating paths, points and
direction handles
• Outlining strokes

Advanced use of colour
• Editing colours using menu commands
• Extracting colours from artwork
• Using the Colour Guide panel
• Using Live Colour
• Editing colours with Live Colour
• Modifying colour in artwork

Appearances and effects
• Document Raster Effects settings
• Applying resolution-independent raster effects
• Using the Appearance panel
• Targeting object attributes
• Adding multiple attributes to a single object
• Manipulating the appearance stacking order
• Creating complex transformations
• Applying Live Effects
• Editing Live Effects
• Expanding appearances

Using Clipping Masks
• Working with clipping masks
• Modifying clipping masks

Advanced painting techniques
• Using the Bristle brush
• Simulating real brush strokes
• Setting Bristle brush characteristics
• Creating variable width strokes
• Creating variable width profiles
• Using Drawing Behind and Drawing Inside
• Working with Gradient Meshes

Compound shapes and paths
• Using Shape Builder to combine, edit and fill shapes
• Understanding compound shapes and paths.
• Creating shapes with Pathfinder options

DAY TWO

Drawing in perspective
• Choosing a Perspective Grid preset
• The Perspective Grid tool
• The Perspective Selection tool
• Setting Perspective Grid options
• Setting plane options
• Adjusting the perspective grid
• Drawing new objects in perspective
• Attaching art to a perspective plane
• Mapping a perspective grid to a photo or drawing
• Using the Plane Switching widget
• Defining and editing grid presets
• Using keyboard shortcuts to speed up drawing

Advanced use of symbols
• Creating and editing symbols
• Managing symbols
• Creating symbol libraries
• Using 9-slice scaling options with symbols
• Symbols and Flash

Creating transparent art
• Displaying transparency
• Applying transparency to attributes, objects, groups and layers
• Working with opacity masks
• Guidelines for successful output

Creating patterns
• Creating symmetrical patterns
• Saving pattern swatches

Working in 3D
• Creating custom 3D shapes
• Creating 3D type
• Using lighting effects
• Wrapping artwork onto 3D art

Creating high resolution PDFs
• Creating PDFs
• Global PDF export options

Preparing for print
• Cleaning up your files
• Advanced printing concerns

Questions and answers