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Chapter 4:
Over its product life, Adobe Illustrator has evolved from a sturdy vector-drawing program for
creating logos and illustrations to a full-featured creative environment with painterly brushes,
soft-edged effects, and 3-dimensional design tools. Illustrator is used predominantly to create
artwork that will be placed into another application, such as InDesign, but many artists work
exclusively in Illustrator to create final artwork, especially in packaging environments. Illustrator
files can be saved as native Illustrator (AI) files, PDF files, or EPS files—even TIFF and Flash
(SWF) formats.
Each new version brings enhancements that provide design functionality far beyond the origi-
nal, basic vector-drawing capabilities of Illustrator. As your customers begin to use the more
advanced features of Illustrator, it is helpful for you to know how to ensure that their files will
print as expected. Illustrator CS4 offers enhancements and new controls that allow you to more
easily and efficiently edit customer files when necessary. There are a number of new features and
enhancements to existing tools in Illustrator CS4, including:
• Multiple Artboards: Illustrator now offers the ability to create documents that
contain multiple artboards within a single file. Artboards can be of different dimen-
sions, and can even overlap each other. For example, the letterhead, envelope and
business card for a client can be created within one Illustrator file. This can simplify
the creation of common components such as swatches and symbols; rather than
needing to duplicate such assets across multiple Illustrator files to create multiple
pieces of a job, they can be contained within one Illustrator file and used on multiple
artboards.
• Separations Preview: View individual inks in color, as well as overprint effects.
Selectively show and hide individual spot and process colors to preview color separa-
tions on screen, so you can quickly and easily identify potential printing problems
early in a job.
• Bleed Support: You can now define a bleed zone of any width, as in InDesign.
Bleed values can be different on each side, and are applied to all artboards in the
document.
• New Defined Workspaces: Under Window > Workspace (or from the Workspace
pulldown menu in the Application bar), you can choose new options that will con-
figure the workspace to resemble FreeHand, InDesign, or Photoshop environments.
You can also choose a workspace that targets a particular task, such as Printing and
Proofing, Typography, or Web.
• No More Filters: There was considerable duplication between the visual operations
available under the Filter menu and those available under the Effects menu. Filters
created literal, embedded, pixel-based content, or permanently altered affected
objects. Effects remain editable throughout the life of the job, and, as such, are
much more flexible. To remove the redundancy, the Filter menu entry is now gone.
Most options that were available under the Filter menu can now be found under the
Effects menu, or the Edit menu. Third-party filters that used to appear under the
Filter menu will now be available under the Object > Filter menu when installed.
Enhancements to Existing Features
• Isolation mode: Work in Isolation mode with more object types, including com-
pound paths, gradient meshes, clipping paths, opacity masks and images.
• Type on a Path: Improved composition of type on paths, requiring less manual
kerning for smooth text flow.
• Alignment to a key object: While it's long been possible to designate one of several
objects as a key object for alignments, this feature is now more obvious. Select
several objects, then click on one of the objects to earmark it as the key object. The
selection edge of the key object becomes bold; any transforms will now be based on
the position of that key object.
Adobe Illustrator CS4
Adobe Creative Suite 4 Printing Guide
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