Entertaining, up-to-date, and comprehensive, Real World Adobe Illustrator 10 is the definitive, everything-you-need-to-know guide to the world's leading vector-based illustration program. Go under the hood of Illustrator 10 with veteran author Deke McClelland, as he covers every tool and feature--and shares his hard-won tips and shortcuts each step of the way.

Written expressly for designers and artists who use Illustrator on the job, the book's industrial-strength production techniques give you new and concrete solutions for streamlining your work and conquering common Illustrator dilemmas. Thoroughly updated for Illustrator 10, this edition includes insightful how-tos on new symbols and slicing options for Web graphics; enveloping, warping, and liquefying distortion tools; and dynamic, data-driven graphics. Entertaining, up-to-date, and comprehensive, Real World Adobe Illustrator 10 is the definitive, everything-you-need-to-know guide to the world's leading vector-based illustration program. Go under the hood of Illustrator 10 with veteran author Deke McClelland, as he covers every tool and feature--and shares his hard-won tips and shortcuts each step of the way. Written expressly for designers and artists who use Illustrator on the job, the book's industrial-strength production techniques give you new and concrete solutions for streamlining your work and conquering common Illustrator dilemmas. Thoroughly updated for Illustrator 10, this edition includes insightful how-tos on new symbols and slicing options for Web graphics; enveloping, warping, and liquefying distortion tools; and dynamic, data-driven graphics.

Contents

• Introduction

Welcome to Illustrator

• Meet Illustrator 10
• The interface
• The artborad
• Files and formats

Working with shapes

• Creating lines and shapes
• Exact points and precision curves
• Modifying and combining paths
• Developing a flair for the schematic
• The magic of transfomations and distorsions

Type, symbols, and graphs

• How to handle typical type
• Some of your wackier text effects
• Symbolic acts
• This is your brain on graphs

Color and effects

• The slippery science of color
• Fills, multi-fills, and fab fills
• Strokes and brushes
• Blends, masks, and pen & ink fills
• Transparency
• Hog-wild special effects
• Becoming master of the raster

Going public

• Creating web graphics
• Animation and data-driven graphics
• Illustrator and other programms
• Printing your illustrations
• Illustrator actions
• Index