Previously on Illustrator CC 2018 One-on-One

- [Deke] I'm gonna start things off with a movie that I'm calling, Previously on Illustrator CC 2018, One-on-One. The idea being that I wanna pass along a few highlights from the advanced and fundamental courses that will help ensure that you and I have a common experience. Now, when you first launch the most recent version of Illustrator CC, you'll see the new Properties panel taking up an enormous area on screen and the decades-old Control panel, which normally lives at the top of the screen, altogether absent.

Now, I documented my displeasure with this arrangement at the beginning of the advanced course, but it can be boiled down to a single sentence. The Properties panel is too darn big. Notice, if I go up to the Window menu and choose the Control command, I bring back the horizontal Control panel which consumes roughly one-quarter as much space as the Properties panel on screen. Now, I'll switch to the Type tool which I can get by pressing the T key and notice over here in the Properties panel, we have Fill, Stroke, and Opacity.

Up here in the Control panel, we have Fill, Stroke, and over here we have Opacity. In the Properties panel, we have a few Character and Paragraph-level formatting attributes. Up here in the Control panel, we have even more Character, as well as Paragraph-level formatting attributes. Which is why my favorite thing to do with the Properties panel is right-click on its tab and choose Close, but it gets even better. After a bit of noodling around, I put together the one-on-one workspace which I've intentionally designed to accommodate my small screen.

The one that you see me using in my videos, as well as the super high resolution displays included with modern laptop computers. This workspace also serves as a good jumping off point for large, flat-screen monitors. Though, of course, I invite you to customize your interface to suit your specific needs. The practical upshot is that you'll see three panel groups over here on the right-hand side of the screen. The top one includes the Color, Color Guide, and Swatches panels. The lower one contains Layers, Appearance, Artboard, and Libraries.

Sandwiched between them, we have Stroke, Gradient, and Transparency which are mostly collapsed. To toggle the state of a panel, click this tiny double arrow icon or just double-click on its tab. To the left of these panels, we have this column of icons which represent panels that are collapsed, but you can expand any one of them at a moment's notice just by clicking on its icon. This first guy brings up the Brushes panel about which we'll learn more in chapter 33. Here we have the Pathfinder operations.

This is the Character panel with all your text formatting options. Then, we have Info, Navigator, and so on. To see how I put this workspace together, watch the movie called, Customizing Your Panels, Important! In chapter three of the fundamentals course. Now, notice that I'm seeing large tabs at the top of the panels which are specifically designed to accommodate tablet users. In particular, folks who use Microsoft Surface Pro. If you're using a standard computer, however, you can reclaim some screen space by making the tab smaller.

By way of demonstration, I'll scale the Swatches panel to the very bottom of the grayscale color group and then I'll press Ctrl + K, or Cmd + K on a Mac, to bring up the Preferences dialogue box. Next, I'll click on User Interface here in the left-hand column and then I'll turn off the Large Tabs checkbox. Just like that, I open up this much vertical space right there at which point I'll go ahead and click OK. Now, you might say, well, that's not really a big difference, but, in fact, it's enough room to see another layer down here in the Layers panel.

All right, over here on the left-hand side of the screen, we have the vertical toolbox which often comes up in two columns. I prefer a single column, however, which you can achieve by clicking on this little double arrow icon up here at the top of the toolbox. All right, I'll go ahead and click on this text that I've converted to path outlines in order to select it and now notice this numerical value up here in the Control panel, in this case Opacity. Well, nowadays, you can adjust any numerical value using the scroll wheel on your mouse.

In this case, I'm just hovering over the value and scrolling down. Now, it doesn't have to be a scroll wheel, by the way, it can be any scrolling device and you can also press the Shift key to scroll in increments of 10. All right, I'll go ahead and scroll this guy back up to a 100%. Next, notice here in the Document window that by default we're seeing a bounding box around the selection. The bounding box allows you to transform a selection on-the-fly either by dragging a handle or dragging just outside a corner handle.

I'll go ahead and undo those changes. The problem is that you can't see the anchor points. I like to see my anchor points and I like to be able to drag path outlines by their anchor points so that they snap into alignment with other paths. Which is why I hide the bounding box by going up to the View menu and choosing the Hide Bounding Box command. Notice, now I can see my anchor points on screen. Now, I'm not saying the bounding box is never useful. I find it very helpful when I'm working with area text, for example, which is why I also find it helpful to memorize the commands keyboard shortcut which is Ctrl + Shift + B here on the PC.

That's Cmd + Shift + B on the Mac. Pressing Ctrl + Shift or Cmd + Shift + B brings back the bounding box. Pressing those keys again makes it go away. Also available in the View menu is the Smart Guides command. Now, I'm a big fan of Smart Guides which help you precisely align objects, but I usually have this command turned off and that's because otherwise we get a lot of flashing on screen, as you're seeing right here, even around invisible objects which is no good for video.

Fortunately, this command also has a keyboard shortcut, albeit an odd one, of Ctrl + U, that's Cmd + U on the Mac, which allows me to hide and show Smart Guides several times in any given session. One final thing to know and this is just an FYI. Let's say you're previewing a document and for some reason it doesn't look right. I'll go ahead and adjust my preview so you can see what I mean. In my case, the strokes inside David here are too thick and we have a few jagged edges as well.

Well, one option is to quit Illustrator and restart the program, and then see if that clears things up. Another is to go up to the View menu once again and choose this command right here. Depending on the quality of your graphics card, Illustrator by default is going to preview your illustrations with the help of the GPU. That is the graphics processing unit. If you wanna try the CPU instead, then choose this command and you will get a different looking preview. In my case, the thin lines inside David look much better and we get smoother edges as well.

If that's not what you want, then return to the View menu and choose that command's complement which is expressed as GPU Preview. That's it, you're now ready to move forward with my personal assurance that throughout the many movies to come, my experience and yours will be the same.