Overview

Adobe Illustrator CS3 is a fundamental part of the creative workflow, enabling you to efficiently create sophisticated vector artwork for print, web and interactive, and mobile and motion designs.

Live Color

Explore, apply, and control colour variations using Live Color, which lets you select any artwork and interactively edit the colours to see results immediately. Use the Color Guide panel to quickly choose tints, shades, or harmonious colour combinations.

Swatches panel

Organise swatches in groups and view them in organised hierarchies. Automatically name them by their colour values, or name them intuitively. Easily access swatch libraries from a pop-up panel menu, view swatches in Adobe Bridge, and share them with Adobe Photoshop CS3 and InDesign CS3 software.

Live Paint

Easily paint any closed or partially closed area of your artwork with the Live Paint Bucket, which automatically detects and corrects gaps and lets you interactively select colours from a Swatch palette for faster work.

Envelopes and live distortion

Warp, liquify, and distort artwork any way imaginable with envelopes and live distortion tools. Easily access envelope options from the Control panel.

Live effects

Apply live effects without affecting the underlying artwork, so you can edit at any time without starting over.

Unlimited transparency

Expand your design options with blending modes and transparency effects similar to those in Photoshop.

Gradient Mesh

Simulate airbrush and watercolour effects by adding multiple colours and precisely controlling the transitions between colours.

3D effects

Turn 2D shapes into fully editable 3D objects by extruding and revolving paths. Add lighting and wrap images around 3D shapes to easily create objects such as packaging mock-ups, and separate spot colours applied to 3D artwork.

Clipping masks

Use clipping masks to hide areas of an object or group, crop placed images, or cut intricate shapes. Quickly find the clipping mask options in the Control panel.

Course Summary

The Advanced level - 2 day course will give Graphics professionals who need an extensive understanding of the production of vector illustrations, a deeper insight into the advanced features and workings of the many advanced features of Illustrator.

Audience

Aimed at people who have attended the Illustrator CS3 Introduction course and are now looking to extend their knowledge of this application.

On Completion

You will have covered the main advanced features offered by Illustrator aimed at both print and the web content. Conceptual artwork and design projects are used to demonstrate efficient production methods.

Course Content

Creating Complex Illustrations

Make use of Outline Strokes technique
Explore Shape Modes and Pathfinder palette - create Compound Paths for trendy grunge effects
Use Expand Appearance to modify individual elements
Create your own Custom Brushes: Calligraphy,
Scatter or Art, to place objects along a path
Keep your paths Simple & Cleaned Up
Graphs - use your own artwork instead of a simple bar

Modifying Artworks

Envelope Distort & other forms of Warping objects
Clipping Mask for advanced design
Transparency for more polished look
Create drop shadows, glows and more using the
Stylise Live Effects
Share the appearance attributes with Graphic Styles
Explore Gradient Mesh & its ability to add realistic 3D shading and highlights to 2D graphics
Learn the difference between Filters & Live Effects
Blend shapes or groups for advanced compositions

Advanced Typographical Features

Character Palette - adjust the kerning, baseline shift, horizontal & vertical scaling
Paragraph Palette - Justification and Hyphenation options
Use the 3D feature to extrude text and other Illustrator objects

Printing your Artwork

Simulate multiple pages in Illustrator using the artboard and document setup
Flattening Transparency for raster effects like drop shadows, glows and blurs
Creating separations with Spot colour vs. Process colour

Enhancing your workflow

Explore Links & Actions palettes
Export to Flash (SWF)
Use Symbols to create elements used repeatedly in animations and complex artworks
Use the Release to Layers command to distribute all of the objects on a layer onto separate and individual layers for quick web animations
Creating Smart objects, Dragging-and-dropping and exporting layers into Photoshop

Dates

Duration: 2 days
Price: £495