How to Do Everything Adobe Illustrator

Book excerpt: Master Adobe Illustrator CS4 Filled with full-color examples, this hands-on guide explains how to use the latest release of the premier vector graphics program. How to Do Everything: Adobe Illustrator CS4 takes you step-by-step through the process of creating a wide variety of illustrations, and demonstrates expert techniques, shortcuts, and solutions. A gallery profiling professional illustrators and their work highlights real-world examples. With this book, you'll learn how to use all the program's tools and settings to draw just about anything you can imagine! Use the drawing, painting, selection, and arrangement tools Add vibrancy to your illustrations using colors, swatches, and Adobe Kuler Work with layers, format text, and create custom graphs Create patterns, gradients, and blends Apply vector and raster special effects Use Live Paint, Live Trace, the Appearance panel, and the Graphic Styles panel Create logos, page layouts, book jackets, ads, and web graphics Print high-quality work Integrate Illustrator artwork into Adobe Flash to create motion graphics And much more