Adobe Illustrator, like most other Adobe applications, contains many different tools, palettes, windows, menus, and commands that enable you to get your work done. Adobe calls this environment your workspace, and you can think of it as being similar to the surface of your desk. At any time, you can open individual documents into your workspace and work on those files. Illustrator documents are separate entities and although you can open multiple files at once, you can't work on those files as if they were in one document together. That's okay though because Illustrator files are easily exported into InDesign, QuarkXPress, and other programs if your project requires it. And although Illustrator documents contain a single page, you can specify that a single large page be split into smaller pieces, called page tiles, to simulate multiple pages. But, we're getting ahead of ourselves. You will learn about these capabilities and a whole lot more later in the book. For now, let's explore the Illustrator environment. |