Scale Text Frame But Not Text

To make a text frame bigger, so the text reflows, click with the Selection tool (V) to make the bounding box visible. Then click-and-drag on a handle to resize the text frame without affecting the size of the type. In contrast, if you select a text frame with the Selection tool, and then use the Scale tool (S) or Free Transform tool (E), any adjustments to the text frame will scale the size of the text inside the frame.

Multiple Glyph Choices

Take a look in the Glyphs palette (Window>Type>Glyphs), and if an OpenType font is selected in the pop-up menu at the bottom of the palette, you will see a small black triangle at the bottom right of some of the characters. The triangle indicates that there is more than one choice for that character. Click-and-hold on one of these characters to see the choices, move your cursor over the character that you want, and release the mouse button to add that character to the artboard . This palette also serves as a great preview of a font—just choose a different typeface from the pop-up menu for an instant preview of the characters in that font.

Effecting a Stroke or a Fill

One of the advantages of the Appearance palette (Windows>Appearance) is the option to affect only the stroke or only the fill of a selected object. A great example of that is to apply an effect (not a filter) to only the stroke, or only to the fill. In the Appearance palette, click on the word Stroke and then apply an effect from the Effect menu. (In our example, we used the Roughen effect under Distort & Transform in the Effect menu—first applied just to the stroke, and then applied only to the fill.)

Transform Again

Don't be fooled by the shortcut for this command: Command-D (PC: Control-D). In many applications that's the shortcut for Duplicate, but not in Illustrator. In this program the command is called Transform Again, and it's quite different from duplicating (in a very good way). Transform Again is a shorter way of saying, "Whatever you just did, do it again." So if you just rotated an object 30°, pressing Command-D (PC: Control-D) will rotate the object another 30°. The object will not be duplicated unless that's part of the original transformation. For example, if you drag an object with the Option key (PC: Alt key) held down to move a copy, Transform Again will move another copy the exact same distance and angle. This is an extremely powerful command that has many uses! (Just remember not to do any additional operation, or you will alter your Transform Again command.)

Create Your Own Crop Marks

You can easily create crop marks around a graphic (to indicate where a graphic should be trimmed , for example). Just draw a rectangle that represents the crop area (don't worry about fill or stroke, they'll automatically change). With the rectangle selected, go to Object>Crop Area>Make. If you ever need to change the crop marks, use Object>Crop Area>Release and then edit the rectangle. ( Note: The cropping object must be a non- rotated rectangle that is not being used as a clipping mask.)

Open a Template

Adobe was kind enough to provide many useful templates and a simple way to make use of them, so why not take advantage of it? If you need to design artwork for a CD, for example, choose File>New From Template. You should be directed to the templates folder (Illustrator CS2\Cool Extras\Templates), where you select from the various folders. In this example, we opened the template in the Extreme Sports folder called DVD Label.ait. A new, untitled document is created that contains all the artwork, ready to edit, and the original template artwork is untouched, ready for next time.