Book Image

Adobe Illustrator for Creative Professionals

By : Clint Balsar
Book Image

Adobe Illustrator for Creative Professionals

By: Clint Balsar

Overview of this book

Adobe Illustrator is a vector-based art tool for visual creatives. It is an industry-standard tool that helps you take a design from concept to completion, including the process of peer collaboration and client feedback. Complete with step-by-step explanations of essential concepts and practical examples, you’ll begin to build confidence as you master the methods of successful illustrators in the industry by exploring crucial tools and techniques of Adobe Illustrator. You’ll learn how to create objects using different tools and methods while assigning varied attributes and appearances. Throughout the book, you’ll strengthen your skills in developing structures for maintaining organization as your illustration grows. By the end of this Adobe Illustrator book, you’ll have gained the confidence you need to not only create content in the desired format and for the right audience but also build eye-catching vector art based on solid design principles.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
1
Part 1 – Reviewing the Necessary Knowledge
4
Part 2 – Advanced Illustrator Methods
10
Part 3 – Real-World Applications

Anchor-level editing

Anchor-level editing gives you complete control of any path. Being able to select specific anchors could allow you to create a raindrop from a circle, for example. Selecting just the top anchor of the circle and then moving it upward could allow you to have a very nice droplet shape.

It is very important that you learn the benefits of editing anchors either individually or in selected groupings. The Selection tool (V) allows you to pick an entire object, the Direct Selection tool (A) allows you to select any individual anchor so that you can make further refinements to it. In addition, you can add additional anchors by holding down the Shift key while clicking them.

Looking at the following figure, you can see that the first adjustment was made by selecting one anchor with the Direct Selection tool and lowering it, the second adjustment was made by holding Shift, selecting two anchors, and then lowering them, and the final adjustment was made by holding...