Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with illustrator

Illustrator CS4 Problem

nostrich — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 09:45:57 -0800

Efficient cross-hatching (and distortion thereof) in Illustrator CS4? I'm fairly new to Illustrator, so forgive me if this is a simple problem.

I need a cross-hatch-type grid, which I've successfully created with the line tool and judicious use of cmd+c. (I'm on a Mac, by the way, if it makes a difference.) Is there a better way?

This screenshot shows where I'm at. I need to copy that grid into the right diagram (it's a before and after) and alter the shape of it in the same way I've altered the pink part. What's going to be the best way to do that?

How do I create overlapping arrows in a circle (Illustrator)?

The Dutchman — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:40:23 -0800

What's the "right" way to create an arrows-in-a-circle diagram such as this one or these? The last post in that second link works (in Illustrator) if I then expand, ungroup, and bring the last arrowhead to the front...but it seems like a crude solution. Is there a better way? Illustrator seems like it's the right sofware for the job, but I'm open to other ideas, too. Thanks!

Name this book illustration blog!

actionpact — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 16:39:34 -0800

Help me name my illustrated book blog project! Some illustrator friends and I are starting a blog up where in 2010 we each will draw a scene of a favorite book of ours, every month. (There are eleven people, so eleven books, illustrated at least once a month) These aren't all children's books-- I'm doing Alice in Wonderland, but among some of the other books are One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Tarzan, and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Sounds good, right? Well, I am bad at naming and the first thing I came up with, Picture Book Club, sounded good enough to go with. However I just found that there is a picturebookclub.com, which is a book review blog. Plus since not all the books are all ages/childrens' oriented, maybe picture-book as a term isn't a good one. I am struggling to come up with a better name so I'm hoping you Me-fites might have some awesome suggestions!

Basic starter words to get you thinking: books, illustrations, drawings, stories, storytelling, scenes, reading, worlds, color, mood, narrative.

I was thinking something like Storytelling/Storytellers' Society/League/Club/Lodge or something but I bet you guys can think up something ten times more awesome than that!

Thanks hivemind!

How do I Live Trace the images in a PDF in Illus CS3?

cobra_high_tigers — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 10:47:25 -0800

How do I Live Trace the images in a PDF in Illustrator CS3? So, a friend has mocked up a program for a conference that he's arranging on a shoestring budget in Microsoft Word. The printer was ready to charge like $200/hr for converting this document to a printable format, which is out of the budget range my friend is working with. Basically, he said that it needed to be in a vector format in CMYK color space.

Since I have a mac, the first thing I did was to print the document to a pdf, to convert all the text to glyphs. Next, I opened a page in Illustrator, and it was easy enough to convert the color space to CMYK from RGB. Finally, I went to convert the raster images inserted in the document (.jpgs and .gifs) to vectors. The tutorials I had seen for Live Trace made it look pretty simple, but I can't figure out how to make it happen on my document.

It isn't that I'm displease with the results, it's that I can't make it happen at all. With the image selected, the Object->Live Trace->Make menu option is grayed out.

What do I need to do to the images in this imported pdf to make it so that Illustrator allows me to Live Trace them?

Thanks for the help!

Illustrator: set corner point as default?

Mayor Curley — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 08:59:30 -0800

In Adobe Illustrator, is there a way to make the pen tool default to corner points rather than curve points? It's a PITA if you're drawing something jagged (like a map border) and you have to click on every point that you set to make it a corner point.

Looking to up my presentation skills in NYC

kenzi23 — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:04:30 -0800

I'm looking for a job doing presentation graphics (in law firms, possibly financial firms); this is about 30% of my current job at a law firm. I'm one of very few "experts" at my firm which isn't very technologically advanced in this area, so I'm afraid that my skills won't cut it in the outside world. I need advice on how to upgrade my skills. I want to upgrade my skills so that I can show a better portfolio and talk about those skills with more confidence.

I'm pretty strong in all the Microsoft Office products and how they integrate, especially in Powerpoint and Visio. I also am quite skilled and experienced in Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.

Since we don't really use Powerpoint to its full potential at my current job, I want to learn more advanced skills, and I feel like I need to improve my Excel skills to integrate better with Powerpoint. From the job listings I have seen, I think I should learn Flash, but what else is essential for a presentations job?

I'm in NYC so if you have any recommendations for places to get the kind of training I need, I would love to hear them.

Total Crud Face Universe and Galaxy

Juliet Banana — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:13:39 -0800

I am obsessed with artist&writer Lynda Barry, and don't believe she has any peer or equal in the world of comics. Prove me wrong; who else would I love? I like how the art is appealing but from a totally different planet than the enviable mechanical precision of, say, Chris Ware.

Her work represents how my youth actually was; instead of a bland suburban innocence that doesn't really exist, she depicts the bloody skinned knees and lack of parental supervision and messy school assignments and gnawing anxiety and fear and destructive crushes and cruel teachers and wild neighborhood dogs and bittersweet memories of childhood.

Reading her work is having the feeling "I had no idea anyone else felt like that!" over and over. She manages to be nostalgic without kitschiness or saccarine sugar overload.

The closest I've found is Rebecca Kraatz's House of Sugar. I know I'm totally slacking by not having read any Ariel Schrag. Your suggestions don't have to be female, or even comic book artists, if you feel the feeling fits.

I know bonus questions are frowned upon, but how many Ask theads about Lynda Barry can I possibly start? I want to know how many more Lynda Barry books I need to buy before I have a reasonably complete collection of all the Marlys-Maybonne-Freddy-Arna-Arnold stories. I currently own Down the Street, It's So Magic, The Freddy Stories, and The Best of Marlys (which collects a lot of the strips, but not all). I still need My Perfect Life, Come Over Come Over, and The Fun House, I know. Do any of her other books contain Marlys-Maybonne-Freddy-Arna-Arnold stories?

Best online school to learn Illustrator 101?

msoffab — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 02:10:44 -0800

Best online school to learn Illustrator 101? Considering a site called eclasses, but I was wondering if anyone had other recommendations on a good online school for Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

Need Illustrator reference recommendations

karmaville — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 10:51:44 -0800

I can competently use Illustrator CS3 and do so daily for my job but want to increase my knowledge base and skills. I currently would call myself a mid-range user but typically use illustrator for simple designs--usually integrated with photos from Photoshop--and signs, cards, posters, etc. I'd like to expand my knowledge into custom shapes, vectors, and some other upper level stuff as I am mainly self-taught on an as needed basis.

Any recommendations on tutorials, web sites, people to follow, essential books, etc.? I use the Visual Quickstart Guide for CS3 as my basic reference but want more. Step by step tutorials either web or video are my preferred option but anything else would be great too.

Setting Color Options in Illustrator

ChloeMills — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:57:06 -0800

I need more Illustrator/Photoshop color help! We got Adobe Creative Suite 4 for our office. There are some color settings that I'd like to set as defaults but can't figure out how to do so. a) When I open a file in Illustrator or Photoshop - is there a way for it always to default to RGB instead of CMYK. So anytime we open start a new file it would be RGB unless we change it. It seems this should be easy. But I can't find it!

b) When printing I found the best printing color profile for our printer is: Epson Standard RGB Gamma 1.8. But that is not the default so every time we go to print in a new file it goes back to the standard default setting. So you have to go into color management every time you print. I saved an option so everyone can just scroll down to it but they still forget to do it. We are wasting a ton of paper. There has to be a way to do this.

I am definitely no expert and our IT isn't much help! Would appreciate any help!

Illustrator Pencil Tool Help

ChloeMills — Wed, 20 May 2009 13:53:47 -0800

Is there a way to change the options for the PENCIL TOOL in ILLUSTRATOR so that it just draws a new line once you pick it up and put it down again - (no matter how close you are to the previously drawn line)? Sorry - this is confusing to word - but if you have the same problem I am sure you will no what I am talking about.

For example - say I want to draw hash marks with the pencil tool.
As soon as I draw one line and try to draw the next one - it either a) replaces the first line or b) connects to the first line.

I want it to just keep the first line and draw a new one. It's more natural.

The only work around I have is to draw a line far away and then come back and draw the in betweens - but that is not as natural.

It drives me nuts. Thee has to be a way to fix it.

I am in CS3 on a Mac and CS4 on a PC.

Let me know.
Thanks :)

Design Dunce.

the NATURAL — Wed, 20 May 2009 04:54:01 -0800

Adobe Filter: Please help me with my graphic design woes. So, I'm starting my own little bootleg t-shirt company, and I'm interested in two types of operations:

1. Cutting an image from its background, then reducing the colors of the image to a reduced grayscale to make it more affordable to print (pretty basic, I know).

2. Taking an image (say, of a person), reducing it to grayscale, then reducing it to a number of composite single-color dots -- when viewed from afar, these dots constitute the original image. I've seen the effect done before on clothes, but I can't find a good image to use as an example (sorry!).

Which Adobe program should I get (and get familiar with) so that I can complete these tasks? Better yet, could I use a cheaper program (for Macs)?

Futuristic American illustrator from the 1940s/50s

gentle — Mon, 18 May 2009 14:54:09 -0800

I'm looking for an American illustrator from the 1940s/50s who painted detailed, photorealistic, optimistic visions of the future, often with scientific explanations of how and why things would pan out this way. I came across an extensive collection of pictures on the net a year or two ago (and I vaguely remember them being presented as though he was a great but "forgotten" genius), but now I can't find it again. I'm pretty sure it wasn't Arthur Radebaugh, but I'm not completely sure; I say that mostly because (a) I can't find many Radebaugh pictures on the net, and (b) the ones I do find don't look familiar at all. But Radebaugh is definitely very similar in the way he envisioned automobiles, cities and so on.

Get the gray out.

inoculatedcities — Fri, 15 May 2009 09:44:40 -0800

How do I make an image pure black and white (transparent) in Photoshop or Illustrator so that it is suitable for printing on a shot glass? My band is ordering shot glasses (from here) emblazoned with our name and a bit of the Boston skyline as a promotional item. This is the graphic -- which contains a fair amount of gray that must be eliminated for it to be printed on glass using only black ink. I'm wondering how best to alter the image in Photoshop or Illustrator so that the only color that shows is pure black with no intermediate grays, while still retaining some of the detail of the original image.

How to Curve a Multi line text box in CS2

Man_in_staysis — Mon, 11 May 2009 21:51:18 -0800

How do I curve a text box in Adobe Illustrator CS2 I have Adobe Illustrator CS2 and I'm looking for a way to curve a text box.

I know you can curve a single line of text along a path however, you don't seem to be able to curve a multi line text box along that same path.

I have also seen how you can apply an arch or other similar effects to a multi line text box bt hese do not seem to work very well.

If anyone knows how to do this, it would save a life time of extra work.

Learn To Draw In Only Twenty Seconds Using The Internet

scrump — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:07:57 -0800

I'm a writer who needs to learn how to draw illustrations for my manuals. And I need to learn fast. I'm a technical writer with access to Photoshop, Illustrator, Paint Shop Pro and GIMP. My company has decided that we need to do our illustrations in-house instead of outsourcing the work.

I have no real experience drawing, and need to be able to generate good-looking, PDF-ready illustrations describing DNS software and concepts using these tools. What are the best, quickest, freely available tutorials I can use to get up to speed on how to draw things and make them not look like my four-year-old did it?

We do not have budget or time for formal classes: we have to learn to do it ourselves. The desired outcome is a step above Visio line diagrams, but the company doesn't expect us to become Picasso, either. Some good examples of our intended outcome are here, here or here.

Some of you may want to editorialize in this space about how this is insane and my company is insane for wanting this. Please don't. I'm operating under the constraints given above, and them's the breaks. I have no influence whatever over the decision, and it is not up for discussion.

Adobe CS compatibility question

JoanArkham — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:53:15 -0800

Adobe CS vs. CS2 vs. CS 4 compatibility...what are my options? I currently have InDesign CS and Photoshop and Illustrator 7.0 at home. I have CS2 at work, and a slim-to-none chance of getting an upgrade anytime soon.

I want to make a pitch to my boss to work at home at least every now and then. In order to work on files at home and be able to then work on them at the office, would it be better to just work with what I've got or upgrade to CS4 at home? (I can get an edu discount but that's still a chunk of change.)

I mostly use InDesign, some Photoshop, and very occasionally Illustrator. No one else will be using the files, so I'm not worried about staying compatible with anyone else.

Thank you, Hive!

How do I bend an image around a sphere in Illustrator?

namith — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 07:11:39 -0800

Illustrator CS3: How can I 'bend' an image around a sphere like this? I tried the steps here, but I cannot make the sphere invisible, so my shape is shown on a colored sphere. I don't want to see the sphere, just the perspective on the shape. Thanks.

Adobe Creative Suite Upgrade

ChloeMills — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 11:46:30 -0800

We want to upgrade from Adobe Creative suite 1 to at least CS 3 at our office. We use mostly Illustrator and Photoshop. But the upgrade seems to be more important for Illustrator than photoshop. -It needs to be relatively cheap to get approved so I am wondering the following: a) Would it make sense to just upgrade illustrator or would that cause compatibility issues with the older version of photoshop? b) We need to upgrade on 4 machines? How many upgrades would we need to buy. c) What are the benefits of CS 4 vs CS 3? d) Sicne CS4 is out does that mean CS 3 is cheaper?

Monitor recommendation for design work

karmaville — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 10:36:54 -0800

The boss said "tell me what you need and we'll get it" so I need advice on a monitor for daily CS3 Photoshop and Illustrator work primarily for print with some web work. A few notes:
- I got thrown into the job and am succeeding on the creative ends but need a little technical help
- I am at a nonprofit so I have some hardware/software limitations due to donated software. In essence, "buy a Mac" isn't possible at this point since all of our software and current equipment is PC. We have no real tech department and the person internally who handles our current IT needs is PC only. Mac monitors would be fine--I think--but other hardware is a nonstarter for at least another 12-18 months.
- I am currently using a cheapie 19" widescreen LCD that I would transition to use as a second monitor for my office/email apps.
- Color management isn't as critical as it could be since I have been using the crappy monitor with no real color management to date. My sole source print shop color corrects to color samples I provide off our office color laser (Konica Minolta BizHub). I also use the BizHub for roughly 50-60% of my output for retail signage, inhouse flyers, etc.
- I would prefer LCD since I have a limited workspace (my nonprofit cube is tiny in desk depth but fairly wide) and would prefer the biggest monitor that is reasonable. 30" feel gratuitous but 20" feels too small.

I have seen recommendations for Dells, Macs, LaCie and Eizo here and elsewhere. I think the Mac displays would be my first choice but since I have zero experience myself with Macs. From my reading it seems their new monitors are designed for use with laptops. The Eizo and LaCie seem overkill for my situation--both in price and features--and the Dell's I have no idea about.

Any thoughts plus recommendations on other things I may not be thinking about would be appreciated

Matching colors for print

ChloeMills — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 09:53:34 -0800

How do I make my colors print the same in Illustrator and Photoshop? Currently we match colors twice - match one color to print from Illustrator and one to print from photoshop. It seems like a waste of time and there should be away to avoid this. Shouldn't the same CMYK value in Illustrator print the same way as that same value in Photoshop.

We have the most number of colors match for illustrator which is currently running on "Emulate Illustrator 6.0" color setting.

How do I get photoshop to run the same way?

I want to just be able to open my Illustrator palette in photoshop and eye drop the colors and have them print the same.

And be able to import files from one to the other. I mean since they are all adobe shouldn't they all be printing the same. I don't understand! Why is getting consistent color always such a PAIN!!

Oh and I am working on CS1.

Specifically right now this what I did - that isn't working.
I made a fabric swatch in Photoshop in Index Colored mode b/c its a crazy plaid and is way to big to fill bodies with. So I opened my illustrator palette in Photoshop and picked the colors from their. Saved it. Opened it in illustrator and made a swatch - and the colors print completely different than the original illustrator colors.

DIY Forced-Perspective wall-hanging art/mathematics advice sought.

jjjjjjjijjjjjjj — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 04:39:08 -0800

3-D folks, Mathematicians, and Artists: Trying to create my own Trompe-l'œil / forced perspective illusionary image to hang on my wall (e.g. the awesome parking garage signage everyone's already seen... more examples here, and here). I'm having trouble faking it with 2-D programs, and the math is puzzling me. So without going into too much detail, here are the facts:

1. Wanting to put artwork in a simple 90°/90°/90° corner where two walls meet a ceiling.
2. In theory: My ugly corner, plus this nice logo [svg d/l], equals this cool effect when viewed from the correct angle.
3. "correct angle" is pillow-height from the head of my bed... perhaps best visualized in this map/schematic/layout.

Having no proficiency of any kind in any 3-D package (which I suspect might make this quite easy), I resolved to figure it out with pencil and paper and then distort the three sections of the image accordingly by using a vector 2-D program (with which I do have "B-" proficiency). After many pitched hours of re-learning long-lost trigonometry (no sweat, really... glad for the opportunity), I have hit a brick wall that I need help breaking through. I suspect that there is a way to do this in Illustrator, but I'm at a loss for what it might be. CS2's neutered "3-D effects" were of no use to me either.

So, in summary: This is how the image is divided visually (just a sketch... not exact), and these are the wall assignments for each of the three pieces. I suspect that the final product will be distorted in ways superficially resembling this (completely speculation and not anything close to exact... visual reference only). Need to find a way -- hopefully repeatable, and ideally customizable to other viewing angles/corners -- to output this into three "distorted" vector files to be run on a plotter.

If anyone's got some advice to go on, I'd be very appreciative. If additional measurements/project files/clarifications would help, please do let me know. If I can find some easy and explainable way to pull this off, I'll throw a tutorial up on Instructables or something to help anyone who has a similar project/idea in the future. Thanks a ton.

(I know I could just do the old "Trace the projected transparency onto the wall" trick, but I was wanting to cut this out of vinyl on a plotter... and for that I'm going to need 3 vector files... one for each wall.)

How to make a paint-by-number in Photoshop?

macrowave — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:20:07 -0800

What's the simplest way to create a series of paint-by-number patterns from digital photos? I have access to Photoshop and Illustrator. My Photoshop skills are a bit rusty (it's been a few years) and my Illustrator/vector understanding is pretty lame. My DIY xmas idea for the family this year is to create paint-by-number kits of all of the siblings/parents/grandparents and package them with paints/brushes,etc. Nothing too fancy... I just want to print numbered line drawings onto thick cardstock.

I'm assuming that Illustrator is the way to go. Is there anyone out there that knows it well enough to break it down to a few easy steps? I'm assuming that all I really need to do is break my family's headshots down to four or five colors and then outline and number the color fields.

Instructions anyone? Or links to a tutorial? The hints that come up in my google search involve just tracing with the Photoshop pen tool and/or tracing manually with carbon paper. There has to be any easier way, no? I vaguely remember the livetrace Illustrator command from school, but, again, really don't know how to mess with vector graphics.

Also- I'm on a mac and don't want to buy any extra software.

Thanks!

Creating links to Adobe files

Joleta — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 08:26:34 -0800

How can I link to downloadable Adobe Illustrator and EPS documents on our intranet? We'd like to make our corporate logos available in in a variety of formats on our intranet, for download by employees who have graphics programs. We all use IE 6.0 by corporate mandate. (I don't have the problem described below when I use Firefox, but that's not an option for other employees.)

I uploaded the logos as Photoshop, Illustrator and EPS files and created links to them. When I click on a Photoshop file, I get a box with the option to open or save the file, but when I click on an Illustrator file I get nothing. If I right-click on an Illustrator file, the only "Save As..." option I get is Adobe Acrobat (PDF). My EPS file links allow saving only as a PostScript file, through either left or right clicks. How can I make my Illustrator/EPS files available for download?

In search of self-taught illustrator

[user was fined for this post] — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 22:09:31 -0800

Help me find a certain article about a young, self-taught illustrator (possibly living/working in London). Vague and inconclusive details inside. Approximately two years ago, I read a profile on a website (the name of which I can't recall) of an illustrator (whose name I can't recall). What I do remember is that he didn't picture himself as a professional artist growing up and had little or no formal training, but one day he felt compelled to essentially lock himself in a room and do nothing but draw, which he continued to do for two years. When he emerged, he found agencies willing to pay for his talents and is currently working as a professional illustrator.

There are a few details that I may recall, but I'm not 100% sure about any of them:

- I read the article about two years ago, and I think it had been newly published around that time (so it might be about 2-3 years old).
- I'm fairly sure he lived/worked in the UK, and I'm somewhat less sure it was London.
- The article was published in a website that covered topics of art, design or both, and probably contained other individual profiles like this one.
- I'm kinda sure the illustrator was in his early or mid-twenties when the article was written.

I found the profile inspirational and would like to send it to someone who will also enjoy it, but given my inability to recall the names of the man or the site, I haven't made any headway searching for it. I'm hoping this entirely inadequate collection of half-remembered details will seem familiar to someone whose memory is better than mine.

If you know of a similar article in which one or more details disagree with what I (think I) remember, please assume I'm wrong and post it anyway. Thanks in advance!