Adobe Illustrator CS5
Darren Winder
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Adobe Illustrator has yet again done a great job of upgrading to CS5 with powerful and sophisticated drawing tools, life like brushes and numerous time saving commands and tools. Below is a list of features now available in Illustrator CS5.
- Variable Width Strokes
- Dashed Line Adjustments
- Precise Arrowheads
- Stretch Control for Brushes
- Brushes with Corner Control
- Perspective Grid
- Bristle Brush
- Crisp Graphics for Web and Mobile Devices
- Multiple Artboards Enhanced
- Shape Builder Tool
- Symbol Enhancement
- Artboard Ruler Origin and Coordinates
- Path Join
- Select Behind
- Draw Behind and Inside
- Roundtrip Editing with Adobe Flash Catalyst CS5
- Resolution Independent Effects
- Pixel Grid Alignment
- Enhancements of the Gradient Mesh
Let’s go ahead and take a look …
Variable-Width Strokes
There are a number of new features that have been introduced to Adobe Illustrator CS5 that make designing with strokes even more powerful, flexible and easier to use than ever before. You can control stroke width, dashes, arrowheads, and stretch brushes along a path.
The Width tool is available in the Tools panel. Use the Width tool to draw strokes with variable widths that can quickly and smoothly adjust at any point, symmetrically or along either side. You can also create and save custom width profiles, which can apply to any stroke.
Figure 01 - Width Point Edit for strokes.
Dashed Line Adjustments
New options in the Stroke panel now allow you to control the alignment of dashes. You can choose to align dashed strokes symmetrically around corners and at the end of open paths or preserve the dash and gaps in strokes. Choose between adjusted and preserved dashes and gaps.
Figure 02 - Preserves exact dash & gap lengths.
Figure 03 – Aligns dashes to corners.
Precise Arrowheads
You can now select and define arrowheads using the Stroke panel. Resize the tip and end of the arrowheads independently by using the Scale option. Also you can choose to lock the tip or base of the arrowhead to the path endpoint.
Figure 04 – Arrowheads.
Figure 05 – Using the Profile option to change the tip and base.
Stretch Control for Brushes
Scaling for art and pattern brushes along a path. Choose areas of the brush graphic to be stretched and those that need to be kept in proportion.
Example: To extend the middle of a banner graphic while keeping the detailed curly ends of the banner from stretching.
Figure 06 – Stretch controls for brushes.
Brushes with Corner Control
Apply art and pattern brushes to a path and get clean results at tight bends or corners. Where strokes of different widths join, or they form acute angles, choose options to correctly fill points where joins occur.
Figure 07 – Pattern Brush.
Perspective Grid
The new Perspective Grid tool allows you to turn on a grid that supports drawing directly on planes of true perspective. The perspective grid allows you to draw shapes and scenes in accurate 1, 2, or 3-point perspectives. The new Perspective Selection tool allows objects to be moved, scaled, duplicated, and transformed dynamically in perspective. You can also move objects perpendicular to its current location using the Perspective Selection tool.
- With Perspective Grid tool group; work quickly and easily in a preset perspective.
- Use Perspective Grid to draw and add vector objects to a reference photograph or video placed on your Artboard.
- Example: easily add a number of street lamps, or fence posts to a landscape scene.
The following features in Illustrator facilitate drawing in perspective:
- Control different perspective defining parameters interactively.
- Utilities to define or edit 1, 2, or 3 vanishing point perspectives in a document.
- Create objects directly in perspective.
- Bring existing objects in perspective.
- Move or duplicate objects toward a perpendicular movement.
- Transform objects in perspective.
- Define work objects and draw objects with real world measurements in perspective.
Figure 08 – Perspective Grid.
Bristle Brush
The Bristle brush, resembles real world brush strokes but in vector. Draw and render artwork the way you use a natural media such as watercolors and oils, with the scalability and editability of vectors. The Bristle brush provides a breakthrough control of painting. Set bristle characteristics, such as size, length, thickness, and stiffness, in addition to setting bristle density, brush shape, and paint opacity. The brush will create an object with opacity variation similar to what you get from using a real brush with bristles. Paint on masked areas that are automatically created when you choose Draw Inside mode. For best result with this tool use a Wacom tablet.
Figure 09 – Bristle Brush Options.
Crisp Graphics for Web and Mobile Devices
Create vector objects precisely on the pixel grid for pixel-aligned artwork. Standard web graphics at 72ppi resolution need to look sharp, this is critical when designing artwork for Adobe Flash Catalyst, Adobe Flash Professional software, and Adobe Dreamweaver. Pixel alignment is also useful for video resolution rasterization control. In Adobe Illustrator CS5, new web graphics tools include type enhancements. Choose one of four text anti-aliasing options for each of your Illustrator text frames. Choose among Sharp, Crisp, Strong, and Smooth, which match the text anti-aliasing in Adobe Photoshop®.
Figure 10 – Text anti–aliasing options.
Multiple Artboards Enhancements
Work on up to 100 Artboards of various sizes, organize and view your way all in one document. The new features include a new Artboards panel, which allows you to create new Artboards, reorder Artboards in the Artboards panel, rearrange Artboards, and create duplicate Artboards. Specify custom names for your Artboards using the Control panel and the Artboards panel. You can paste objects at a particular location on the Artboard and paste artwork on all Artboards at the same location using the new Paste in Place and Paste on All Artboards options. You can also set the option to automatically rotate Artboards for printing.
Figure 11 – Multiple Artboards.
Figure 12 – Rearrange Artboards options.
Shape Builder Tool
The Shape Builder tool is an interactive tool for creating complex shapes by merging and erasing simpler shapes. It works on simple and compound paths, intuitively highlights edges and regions of the selected art, which can be merged to form new shapes. Draw a stroke across the middle of a circle and quickly create two half-circles without opening any panel or choosing another tool. The Shape Builder tool can break overlapping shapes to create distinct objects and easily adopts art styles when objects are merged. Also enable the Color Swatch cursor to select colors for your artwork.
Figure 13 – Shape Builder tool options.
Symbol Enhancements
Illustrator CS5 provides enhanced 9-slice scaling support. You can now directly use 9-slice scaling on symbols in Illustrator making it easier to work with web elements such as rounded rectangle.
Figure 14 – Enhanced 9-slice scaling.
Artboard Ruler Origin and Coordinates
Artboard ruler origin and coordinates are now oriented from the upper left. Scripts that use a previous coordinate system also work correctly with this enhancement. You can also choose to work with a global ruler (document ruler) that provides coordinates across all your Artboards, or work with local, Artboard-specific rulers.
Figure 15 – Rulers.
Path Join
Join open paths in a single keystroke with the objects selected. You can choose to join open paths using corner joins or smooth joins. You just need two or more open paths selected and apply Ctrl / Cmd + J or Object > Path > Join to have the selected paths join into one open path. More than two paths can be joined together in one go.
Figure 16 – Path Join.
Select Behind
Use a keyboard shortcut to easily select an individual object located behind other objects. In Adobe Illustrator CS5, you can select objects that lie underneath other objects using Ctrl / Cmd + Click.
Draw Behind
- The Draw Behind mode allows you to draw behind all artwork on a selected layer.
- The artwork need’s to be selected first for the new object to be drawn directly beneath the selected object.
Draw Inside
- The Draw Inside mode allows you to draw inside the selected object.
- Draw inside mode is enabled only when there is a single selected object (e.g. path, compound path, or type.
- Draw inside mode automatically creates a clipping mask from the selected object.
Figure 17 – Drawing Modes.
Roundtrip Editing with Adobe Flash Catalyst CS5
Use Illustrator CS5 for interaction design, enabled by new Adobe Flash Catalyst CS5, available with all the Adobe CS5 products. Develop ideas and design your interface in Illustrator. Open your artwork in Flash Catalyst and add actions and interactive components, without writing code.
Figure 18 – FXG Options.
Resolution Independent Effects
With Resolution Independent Effects, raster effects such as drop shadows, blurs, and textures can maintain a consistent appearance across media. Maintain the appearance of raster effects irrespective of any change in resolution setting.
Pixel Grid Alignment
Generate clean, sharp raster graphics by turning on Align to Pixel Grid. Objects are automatically nudged to the closest pixel edge. Zoom in to see the grid the objects will be aligned. The alignment control is located in the Transform panel.
Figure 19 – Pixel Grid Option.
Figure 20 – Align to Pixel Grid Option.
Enhancements of the Gradient Mesh
The enhancements of the Gradient Mesh are very good. Gradient Mesh nodes can have individual or independent opacity values - meaning you simply select one or more mesh nodes and set an amount of opacity on it from the Transparency/Appearance Panel or the Opacity slider in the control panel.
The Gradient Mesh is more powerful and useful than it’s ever been before. If you use meshes heavily in your design, no more creating masks to get that fading look in your artwork.
Figure 21 – Gradient Mesh Transparency.
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