Illustrator CS5 Advanced

Course Description:

New perspective tools add an exciting dimension to Illustrator, eliminating the need to create your own horizon lines and vanishing points when you wish to draw a scene or an object in perspective. With the Shape Builder tool, you no longer use the Pathfinder panel—you simply sweep your cursor across overlapping objects to merge and divide shapes. And you can even paint watercolor strokes that remain vectors, now with new edge softness and subtle control of transparency. These powerful new features make Illustrator CS5 a must-have, but along with the dramatic advances, you’ll find great improvement to familiar favorites. Strokes now have fully controllable width handles, and the Draw Inside mode creates masks automatically when you draw or when you place an image—no extra clicks.

With enhanced integration among Adobe products, you can move easily between Illustrator CS5 and products, such as Adobe Flash Catalyst CS5 software, where you can add interaction to your designs. And new CS Live online services provide effective collaboration, efficient reviews, and more.

Using Illustrator CS5, you can get the job done efficiently but beautifully, moving quickly from multiple ideas to multiple outputs with complete control, and delivering exactly what you had in mind.

Our two day course will provide you with the advance skills you need to make the most of this extremely powerful application.

Course Outline:

Lesson 1: Masking techniques

• Clipping masks
• Using Draw Inside mode
• Transparency masks and groups

Lesson 2: Creating and editing paths and complex elements

• Working with Beziér curves - understanding the principals, tips and tricks for efficient creation of complex paths
• Compound paths
• Using Pathfinders to combine elements
• Transformations - tips and tricks, repeats, envelopes, scaling strokes and effects

Lesson 3: Web graphics

• Using Pixel Preview
• Aligning elements to the pixel grid

Lesson 4: Color and other attributes

• Creating Color Groups
• Working with Live Color: recoloring artwork, working with color schemes
• Transparency and Blending modes
• Understanding Global colors
• Complex patterns and gradients
• Controlling dots and dashes.

Lesson 5: Layers and Artboards

• Working with multiple Artboards
• Making the best use of layers
• Copying and moving elements between layers.

Lesson 6: 3D, Mapping, Effects

• Creating 3D vector elements from complex objects
• Lighting and rendering properties
• Transparency effects
• Mapping artwork to 3D elements
• Choosing color settings and ensuring compatibility with Photoshop, InDesign and Acrobat
• Working with Perspective grids - drawing in perspective, mapping artwork to a grid
• Using Live Trace - selecting tracing styles, customizing output
• Expanding complex elements and appearances
• Effects - applying to elements and Layers
• Live Paint - coloring artwork, gap detection options
• Working with Blends and Gradient Meshes
• Appearances - combining effects, fills and strokes
• Rasterizing and filtering artwork
• Creating Templates