Getting Your Feet Wet

Despite the initial bewilderment you deal with when faced with a new program, you'll soon find that your FreeHand experience proves advantageous in Illustrator. If you are proficient with FreeHand, you already have a conceptual understanding of the principles of vector drawing.

The key to quickly achieving a matching proficiency in Illustrator is to try to discover the underlying behavioral principles. Don't worry so much about locating each and every specific tool or command. Even if you find the tool you're looking for, you might find that it doesn't seem to work correctly, or that it seems frustratingly backward or illogical. When this is the case, run a mental check on the underlying principle and do a little experiment off to the side to boil down the essential issue; you'll find that you are merely struggling with a different interface layered on a familiar principle. At this point, you will begin to see your "adversary" in its true smaller perspective, and you will feel much less overwhelmed.

This is the strategy we'll employ in the following pages. Rather than memorizing a dizzying catalog of specific commands, you will use the understanding of basic vector path principles that you already possess and then figure out the way Illustrator "thinks" as you go.

The overall goal here is to give you, the already-experienced FreeHand user, a boost over that initial frustration hump so that you can get on with exploring the myriad features found throughout the rest of this book.

Understanding Features vs. Understanding Principles

When trying to adapt to a program that is supposed to be so functionally similar to one we already know, many of us make a basic assumption and commit a basic error: We tend to think it is just a matter of finding corresponding commands and memorizing their locations. We get frustrated when we find out it isn't quite as simple as that.

This naive assumption leads to nasty surprises and confusion, especially when two programs are so similar in purposeand even general designas FreeHand and Illustrator.

What we fail to consider is that even if the "equivalent" command we seek is present, it may operate according to a different set of givensa different set of underlying principles of behavior. In fact, as you shall see in a moment, even the mere location of a command may cause it to act quite differently what we'd expected based upon years of experience and habit in another program.

Comparing Underlying Similarities

First, take a deep breath and rest assured that the basic paths, points, and handles that make up Illustrator's vector paths are the same objects as those you are accustomed to creating and manipulating in FreeHand. Both programs draw Bézier paths. As in FreeHand, the following are true for Illustrator:

• Paths are either open or closed and can be filled and/or stroked.

• Paths are connected by, or end at, anchor points.

• All paths have an inherent "direction," and, even if closed, they have a start/end point.

• Points are either corner anchor points or smooth anchor points (there is no Connector Point in Illustrator).

• Smooth anchor points have two direction handles each, which can be individually extended or retracted to affect the shape of their associated segments.

So the basic building blocks of Illustrator vector objects are practically identical to those in FreeHand. It follows, then, that the basic things that you can do with paths are also very similar:

• You can combine multiple paths into composite paths (called compound paths in Illustrator) to create shapes with holes in them.

• You can group multiple paths (with or without other objects) so that you can manipulate them as a unit.

• You can use paths as masks for other paths (a clip path in FreeHand is called a clipping path in Illustrator).

• Stacks of paths can be automatically generated to give the appearance of smooth color and/or shape transitions (called blends in both programs).

• You can add or subtract paths from each other to create new paths (via Combine operations in FreeHand and Pathfinders in Illustrator).

But even while you are performing the same kinds of operations upon the same kinds of objects, there are some differences. Each command can employ a different method of accomplishing its purpose, can present the user with a different set of parameters, and can exist within a different organizational scheme than those of the more familiar program.

Conceptual Differences: Working with Color

To both illustrate and emphasize the above conceptual gibberish, we'll start with what may be a mildly startling example. What could be more basic than the simple matter of selecting and applying a fill color to a path? Surely this process is practically identical in both programs? Well, let's see.

FreeHand and Illustrator both have the expected Color palette, where colors are mixed, (called the Color Mixer palette in FreeHand) and the Swatches palette, where defined colors are stored. Colors, of course, can be applied to either strokes or fills. So far, so good. But there's a not-so-subtle difference, which makes all the difference: In FreeHand, the Fill/Stroke indicator resides in the Swatches palette, whereas in Illustrator, it resides in the Color palette.

This is just an organizational thing, but one with confusing consequences. In FreeHand, because the Fill/Stroke indicators are in the Swatches palette, it doesn't matter if a path is selected while you adjust the mixer sliders; the path is unaffected (Figure B.1). But in Illustrator, where the Fill/Stroke icons are right there in the same palette as the mixer, the selected object's color changes as you drag the sliders (Figure B.2). You're not just mixing a color; you're mixing a color and applying it to a fill or a stroke at the same time, and you'd better be aware if anything is selected, because whatever is selected will change in color.

Figure B.1. FreeHand: The Fill/Stroke icons are not in the Color Mixer palette. Changing values does not affect the selected objects because you are mixing a color that is not necessarily yet a swatch, fill, or stroke.

Figure B.2. Illustrator: The Fill/Stroke icons are right there in the Color palette. Changing values affects selected objects because you are adjusting a color that is either a fill or a stroke.

So you see? Just knowing where to find the corresponding Fill/Stroke toggles within the two programs doesn't really help you understand the program. You have to examine the underlying principlesthe ramificationsof what that change of location entails before you come to grips with that nagging confusion you feel when you're mixing and applying colors.

Can one method be called right and the other wrong? Probably not. It can be argued that the FreeHand approach encourages you to define color swatches before you actually apply the colors to objects. On the other hand, the Illustrator approach enables something you may not discover even after years of working in the program. Suppose you have two (or more) objects selected. Each has a different fill color, but they both share a particular component value (say, they both have a 10% K component). In such a situation, the slider handle and value appear only for that common component in Illustrator's Color palette. You can adjust that component for all the selected objects in a single move (slide the K slider to 20%, and you have darkened both selected paths by 10%) (Figure B.3). If the value of a particular component differs across the selected objects (say one contains 10% C and another contains 5% C), you can equalize them in one move by entering a value for that component. (Enter 15% in the C field; the other components remain unaltered.)

Figure B.3. The treatment in Illustrator means you can adjust a shared component of all selected objects at once without affecting the other components.

FreeHand has a similar capability in its Color Control Xtra. But here also, the organization principle is different between two "corresponding" features. The sliders in this dialog start at zero and add the value(s) you enter there to the present values of each selected object.

A Word of Encouragement

Many years of engrained habit can be difficult to reprogram, but don't sell short that marvelous analog computer between your ears. Many (no, not all) of the difficulties that seem so awfully tedious at first are short-lived. You will undoubtedly find yourself pleasantly surprised that after the initial frustration, somewhere fairly early along the way, the mental bells will go off about the underlying principle involved ("Of course! The selection is affected when I mix colors! The Fill/Swatch selectors are right there in the Color palette!"), and you will stop stumbling over this difference.