Creating and Opening Files


In a program such as Photoshop, you usually start with a scanned image or a digital photograph. With Illustrator, though, you'll most likely be creating new documents often, as well as creating new documents from predefined templates. Of course, Illustrator can also open existing documents.

Creating a New File

To start from scratch and create a new file, choose File, New, or press Command+N (Ctrl+N) to access the New Document dialog box (see Figure 7.6). Here you can give your file a name (you can do this later when you actually save the file, too) and specify your artboard size. You can choose from any of Illustrator's supported measurement systems: points, picas, inches, millimeters, centimeters, ha, or pixels.

Figure 7.6. The New Document dialog box.


By the Way

No it's not a joke. Ha is a real measurement system used in Asia to measure area.


Color Modes

Illustrator lets you create files in one of two color modes, and it's important to know which one to choose. Although you can change color modes later, such changes will cause color shifts. Each color mode has a gamut, or range of colors that can be produced. Some gamuts are wider, or can contain more colors, than others. For example, certain colors can be displayed in RGB that simply can't be reproduced in CMYK (for example, bright greens or oranges or pastel colors). So converting an RGB file to CMYK might cause some colors to become dull or change color altogether because those colors don't exist in CMYK. Let's take a look at each of the supported color models:

  • RGB Color RGB (Red Green Blue) is a color method used to display color on televisions, computer monitors, and video screens. In RGB, you start with black (when your TV is off, the screen is black), and adding values of red, green, and blue results in white. When you're working on files that will be used in video, for broadcast, on the Web, or for onscreen presentations, RGB is the format you should use.

  • CMYK Color CMYK is a color method used to print color on paper. Unlike RGB, in the CMYK color space, if you mix all the colors together, you get black, but if none of the colors is present, you get white. Anything you see in print uses CMYK (a blank piece of paper is white), so obviously, when you're designing content that will be printed in color, CMYK is the color model of choice. CMYK stands for Cyan (a shade of blue), Magenta (a shade of red), Yellow, and Key (Black). Black is referred to as Key because that is traditionally the key color; it reinforces and invigorates the other colors (or so a printer once told me).

By the Way

As I mentioned earlier, the CMYK gamut isn't nearly as wide as most designers would like, so designers use spot colors (for example, Pantone colors) that allow them to pick a specific color ink (including metallic inks, bright colors, pastels, and so on). We cover spot colors in detail later in the chapter.


After you've specified your new document settings, you can click the OK button to create a new Illustrator file.

Creating a New File from a Template

An Illustrator template file is a special kind of Illustrator file, sporting an .ait file extension instead of the usual .ai usually reserved for Illustrator files. Templates are used for designs that are used repeatedly, and they can contain anything a normal Illustrator file can contain, including layers, paragraph styles, symbols, page sizeeven artwork itself. When you open an Illustrator template, the file opens as an untitled document (as if you had created a new file). This prevents you from accidentally overwriting the template file.

Illustrator ships with many professionally designed royalty-free templates you can use. When you choose File, New from Template, Illustrator automatically navigates to the folder where these templates are installed (see Figure 7.7). You can also use Bridge to browse through the templates to get a better idea of what the designs look like.

Figure 7.7. Opening an Illustrator template file.


For those who feel that using prerendered content is beneath them, Illustrator also ships with a full collection of blank templates. These can be quite useful for nearly any user. Of course, you can also create and save your own template files, and we discuss how to do that later in the chapter.

By the Way

Illustrator installs all templates by default; they can be found in the Adobe Illustrator CS2/Cool Extras folder.


The Open Dialog Box

As with just about any computer program, you can open a file by choosing File, Open or pressing Command+O (Ctrl+O) to bring up the standard system Open dialog box. As you highlight files in the dialog box, you might or might not see a low-resolution preview, depending on the file type and what your operating system supports. After you've located the file you want to open, click on the Open button to open the file.

If you want to choose a file from a Version Cue project, click on the Use Adobe Dialog button at the lower left of the dialog box. We talk more about Version Cue in Chapter 11, "Using Adobe Version Cue 2." Of course, you can always use Adobe Bridge to browse for the right file you need.

Illustrator does more than just open Illustrator files. You can open a wide range of files in Illustrator, including PDF, EPS, JPEG, PSD, GIF, PNG, and more (see Figure 7.8). Illustrator can also open native CorelDRAW and FreeHand files (versions 8, 9, and 10 officially, although other versions might work with varying success). In many ways, both Photoshop and Illustrator can be used as utilities to open just about any kind of graphics file.

Figure 7.8. A list of the file formats Illustrator CS2 can open.


Watch Out!

If you need to edit PDF files, you can open them in Illustrator, but you'll have to remember a few limitations. Illustrator can open only one page of a PDF at a time (see Figure 7.9), form data might be removed, and structured text (tagged text) will be lost.

Figure 7.9. When you're attempting to open a multipage PDF file, Illustrator asks you which page you want to open.





Sams Teach Yourself Adobe Creative Suite 2 All in One
Sams Teach Yourself Creative Suite 2 All in One
ISBN: 067232752X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 225
Authors: Mordy Golding

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