Living in Your Workspace


Whether you use Illustrator an hour a week, an hour a day, or all day long, you have to feel comfortable using it. Adobe applications in general are customizable to the point that you can really arrange your work area, or workspace, to address your particular needs. In order to know what works best for you, get to know the various menus and tools well and learn how to best utilize them for your particular workflow or project. We'll offer some suggestions in this book where a customized workspace can improve workflow; Appendix C at the end of the book lists preferences in one handy resource.

Working with Tools and Palettes

As with most Adobe applications, Illustrator is loaded to the gills with tools and palettes. Each palette is designed to perform a specific function, and some of them are used all the time (like the Color palette or the Layers palette), while others aren't used nearly as often (such as the SVG Interactivity palette). Palettes can be hidden or shown as needed and all appear listed in alphabetical order in the Window menu. A check mark next to a palette's name indicates that the palette is open on your screen.

Adobe calls these palettes floating palettes because they sit above your Illustrator artboard and are always accessible (Figure 1.8, next page). At the same time, because these palettes float above your workspace, they can get in the way of your ability to see and work with your design. Depending on the size and resolution of your screen, organizing the palettes is important so that you can work efficiently. It's with good reason that Adobe has designed Illustrator palettes so that they can be easily rearranged.

Figure 1.8. The Illustrator workspace.


You can reposition a palette by clicking and dragging its tab (where the name of the palette appears). You can create a cluster of palettes by dragging one palette into another existing one (Figure 1.9). You can also dock one palette to another by dragging a palette to the bottom edge of an existing palette (Figure 1.10). Some of Illustrator's palettes have multiple states or views to allow you to use them in different ways. For example, the Transparency palette contains a state that shows just the Blend Mode pop-up menu and the Opacity slider. Clicking the little up and down arrows that appear to the left of the name of the palette toggles these different states. Alternatively, you can double-click a palette's tab to toggle between states.

Figure 1.9. Dragging the Swatches palette into the Symbols palette results in the palettes being clustered. Notice that a heavy outline appears around the Symbols palette.


Figure 1.10. Dragging the Swatches palette to touch just the bottom of the Symbols palette results in the two palettes being docked. Notice that a heavy outline appears only at the base of the Symbols palette.


Everything you see here about palettes applies not just to Illustrator, but to Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, and GoLive as well. With the exception of some small nuances, the functionality is consistent across the applications.



By arranging the palettes you use most on your screen, you can set up a work area that you're comfortable with and where you can easily find the functions or settings you need. Of course, you can always access the palettes you use less frequently by opening and closing them as needed.

Pressing the Tab key on your keyboard will instantly hide all of your palettes. Pressing Tab a second time will bring them back.



The Control Palette

The Control palette is a context-sensitive bar that contains often-used settings from different palettes. Unlike Photoshop's Tool Options bar, which is tool-centric, the Control palette in Illustrator is selection-centric, meaning it changes based on what objects are selected. Also, with the Control palette open on your screen, you can keep more palettes closed to free up more screen real estate. This is possible because of some cool features you'll find on the Control palette. First of all, you can dock the Control palette to the top or the bottom of your screen, or you can have it float, just like any other palette. You can also control what is displayed in the Control palette by choosing options from the Control palette menu (Figure 1.11, next page).

Figure 1.11. You can choose what information is displayed in the Control palette, which is especially useful on smaller resolution screens that don't have as much space.


At the far left of the Control palette, you'll see notification of what your targeted selection is (Figure 1.12). Additionally, you'll notice that some items are pop-up menus or text fields, and some labels are shown as underlined blue text. The blue underlines indicate links, and clicking them brings up their respective palettes. For example, you can set the opacity of an object by entering a value in the Opacity field in the Control palette. However, if you want to apply a blend mode to an object, that option doesn't appear in the Control palette. If you click the word Opacity (which has a blue line under it), the entire Transparency palette appears temporarily and you can choose a blend mode; then the palette disappears (Figure 1.13). This behavior really alleviates the need for you to ever have the Transparency palette open.

Figure 1.12. The active targeted selection is highlighted in the Control palette, acting as a reminder when you are applying certain effects and masks.


Figure 1.13. Accessing the full Transparency palette from the Control palette means you can open it when you need it, and it doesn't take up valuable screen space.


The Control palette not only saves screen real estate by relieving the need to keep certain palettes open all the time, but it also helps reduce keystrokes and mouse clicks by making certain menu items accessible. For example, when you select a raster-based image in Illustrator, you can apply a Live Trace preset directly from the Control palette instead of digging into the Object menu.

Custom Workspaces

As we explored in the Introduction, there are many different kinds of Illustrator users. Depending on the kind of work that you do, you may need to access certain tools or palettes more often than others. Experienced users carefully arrange the palettes on their screen so they have access to the features they use most often. Many designers perform a variety of tasks on a daily basis and use a wide range of features. This means that they are constantly opening and closing numerous palettes and arranging them on the screen, which often leads to confusion or loss of productivity because they are trying to find where a particular palette is. Although big monitors may help users keep more palettes open, it also takes users longer to scan such screens to find the right palette. If only there was a way to manage all of these palettes.

Thankfully, there is, and it's called Workspacesthis feature is identical to that found in Photoshop, InDesign, and GoLive. As mentioned earlier, the setup of your screen, which includes a listing of which palettes are open and their location on your screen, is what Adobe calls your workspace. Illustrator allows you to save a workspace and then return to it at any time by selecting Window > Workspace, and the name of the saved workspace. For example, you may arrange your screen for troubleshooting files, where you'll have just the Control, Appearance, Layers, and Flattener Preview palettes open. You would then choose Window > Workspace > Save Workspace to name and create a new workspace. You could create additional workspaces for other kinds of tasks as well. Each time you need to perform a different task, just switch to the workspace you've already defined and the palettes that you need will appear just as you've specified (Figure 1.14).

Figure 1.14. Choosing between several saved workspaces. Even having just one or two saved workspaces can save you a tremendous amount of time, especially if you're working in an environment where you share your computer with others.


Keyboard Shortcuts

Ever have someone ask you for a phone number and you can't remember it? Do you walk over to a phone and watch as your fingers automatically dial the number to remember what it is? The same phenomenon happens to many computer users whose fingers seem to know what to press without much thought. Although the mouse was a nice invention, you can get things done a lot faster by pressing the keys on your keyboard.

Workspaces are saved in the Adobe Illustrator CS2 Settings folder found in your user Preferences folder.



One of the benefits of using Adobe products is that many of them share similar keyboard shortcuts, so there are fewer to remember. However, as you can imagine, there are tons of commands and tools in Illustrator and it's impossible to assign keyboard shortcuts to all of them. So Adobe assigns keyboard shortcuts to the commands they believe most people will use most often. As an individual user, however, you know what commands you use most often, so it's comforting to know that you don't have to live by what Adobe considers an often-used feature. That's because you can customize your keyboard shortcuts and tailor them to the needs of your fingers.

Illustrator keyboard shortcut sets are stored in the Adobe Illustrator CS > Presets > Keyboard Shortcuts folder.



For example, if you're an animator and use the Blend feature a lot, you might need to access the Blend Options setting frequently. Out of the box, Illustrator doesn't have a keyboard shortcut assigned to that function, but you can choose Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts to assign your own keyboard shortcut for that command. If you try to assign a keyboard shortcut that's already taken by another feature, Illustrator conveniently alerts you to the fact, asking if you're sure you want to give up the other keyboard shortcut (Figure 1.15). You can save different sets of shortcuts if you'd like, which can be helpful if you share your computer with other users.

Figure 1.15. Illustrator alerts you if you try to reassign an already-used keyboard shortcut, keeping you from accidentally overwriting other keyboard shortcuts.





Real World Adobe Illustrator CS2
Real World Adobe Illustrator CS2
ISBN: 0321337026
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 147
Authors: Mordy Golding

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