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• Enhanced Gradient Tool: Now you can modify gradients with controls that appear
directly on the selected object, changing and adding colors on the gradient, and
changing the gradient position with intuitive controls.
• Transparency in Gradients: You can now specify opacity for color stops on a gradi-
ent, in addition to applying color.
• Appearance panel: You can now perform many operations directly in the
Appearance panel without invoking menus or other panels. Select individual
Appearance components in the panel, and alter the options.
• Smart Guides: Smart Guides now make it easier to snap objects to the centers and
edges of other objects
Bleed
While it's always been possible to create artwork that includes adequate material for bleed, there
has been no formal bleed "zone" until Illustrator CS4. Now, you can specify a bleed area that is
recognized when printing and exporting an Illustrator file, in much the same way as you can
in InDesign. You can snap objects to the bleed lines. To turn off the view of bleed guide lines,
choose View > Guides > Hide Guides.
To create a defined bleed, you can either specify a bleed value when creating a new document,
or add it once the document is open. To add a bleed area to an existing document, choose File >
Document Setup and enter the appropriate amount in the bleed fields. By default, all bleed values
are linked; changing one value changes them all. But you can unlink the bleed fields and specify
a different value for each side of the artboard. Note that in files with multiple artboards, all art-
boards will have the same bleed value.
In print and Save as PDF dialogs, be sure to check the option to Use Document Bleed Settings
under the Marks and Bleed topic. Note that if you check this setting, but have not specified a
bleed zone for the document, no bleed is generated; only artwork within the artboard trim area is
printed or retained in the resulting PDF. If you have not specified a bleed zone, you can manu-
ally enter a bleed value when saving as PDF or when printing, and correct bleed will be included,
assuming the chosen print media is large enough.
Working with multiple Artboards
Long requested (especially by FreeHand users switching to Illustrator), multiple Artboards allow
the user to create multiple individual drawing areas within a single document. While this does
not mean that Illustrator is now a page layout application (for example, there is no provision for
master pages or automatic page numbering, as in InDesign), it provides the ability to hold multi-
Setting Bleed Value
The bleed fields are linked; enter a
value in any field, and all fields are
automatically updated . To specify
different bleed amounts, click the
chain icon (circled) to unlink the
fields, and then enter the values in
individual fields .
Specified Bleed
The red line indicates the bleed
area around an artboard, which can
be invoked during print and export
to ensure correct bleed amount on
output .
Adobe Creative Suite 4 Printing Guide
74
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