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Archive for the 'Illustrator' Category

Get More-Natural Adjustments with the Illustrator “Reshape” Tool

November 28, 2007 | Posted in Illustrator | 64 Comments »

A hidden gem in my opinion, Illustrator’s “Reshape” tool can come in very handy in a variety of situations. In a nutshell, the Reshape tool allows you to drag a single point on a path and it tries to retain the overall shape of the entire path, while you only move the one anchor point. What? I’ll explain below.

The Illustrator Reshape Tool
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Requested Tutorial: Crop Excess Illustrator Artwork

November 13, 2007 | Posted in Illustrator | 55 Comments »

This tutorial was requested (by David) and I’m happy to report, it’s really not very hard to do. If you’ve ever used a clipping mask to hide all of the extra artwork that hangs off the edges of your Illustrator artboard, and wished you could just get rid of the excess, here’s how…

Requested Tutorial: Crop Excess Illustrator Artwork
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Illustrator: Rock-Solid Alignment using Anchor Points

November 6, 2007 | Posted in Illustrator, OS X | 15 Comments »

We all know that alignment is a huge part of any design. The more control we have over alignment, the better. After a certain point, 100% alignment control gives way to new opportunities to make Illustrator even more useful, like making seamless patterns for example. I want to show you how “anchor points” work in Illustrator, and hopefully send you into control-freak bliss.

Illustrator: Rock-Solid Alignment using Anchor Points
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Illustrator Brush-Making Tip: Colorization Method

October 24, 2007 | Posted in Illustrator | 23 Comments »

Making a custom brush in Illustrator can be easy and frustrating at the same time. No matter which type of brush you create, one of the most important settings to pay attention to is the ‘colorization method.’ If you don’t change the colorization method from the default setting, you won’t be able to customize the colors of your (custom) brush strokes later. Here’s what you need to do…

Illustrator Brush-Making Tip: Colorization Method
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Illustrator 101: One Gradient Across Multiple Paths

October 8, 2007 | Posted in Illustrator | 36 Comments »

Again, this is a rather trivial Illy skill, but with a program as robust and sometimes mystical as Illustrator, you can often get something to work and never know why. Other times you can’t get something to work, something that seems like it makes a lot of sense, and all you are missing is a simple ‘bitt’ of knowledge to rid you of your frustrations. In this quick tip, we will touch on the importance of compound paths, as opposed to groups, when applying a single gradient across multiple shapes in Illustrator.

Illustrator 101: One Gradient, Multiple Paths
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