- [Instructor] All right I'm going to start things off
with a movie I'm calling
Previously on Illustrator CC 2018 One-on-One.
The idea being that I want to pass along
a few highlights from the Fundamentals course
that are specifically designed so that you and I
have a common experience.
So for starters when you first launch
the most recent version of the software,
you're confronted with the Essentials workspace,
which is just these three panels,
and you might see the Libraries panel,
or this enormous Properties panel
which is designed specifically to replace
the control panel.
And at first it seems pretty handy,
that you can for example switch to
a different unit of measure,
or you can lock and unlock the guides
using this icon right here,
and you can even change the keyboard increment,
that is the distance that you move an object
when pressing any of the arrow keys,
which otherwise you can't get to
unless you press Control + K or Command + K on the Mac
to bring up the General panel of
the Preferences dialog box.
The K being for keyboard increment in fact.
All right so I'll go ahead and cancel out.
The problem with this optimistic view
is that it only holds true when the black arrow is selected.
If I switch to any other tool, then we get
pretty much the same options that you otherwise
see in the much smaller control panel.
And when I say much smaller, it is less than
a quarter of the size on most screens.
Now, Adobe has been arguing that
one of the great things about the Properties panel
is that if I were to select something
like the eraser tool, then I have this Tool Options button
in the top right corner, which is not available
in the control panel, and if you were to click on it,
then you can change the angle, and roundness, and size
of your eraser, which is great.
However, you can already get to this dialog box
just by pressing the Enter key
or the Return key on the Mac.
So having this button doesn't really help us out,
which is why at the very least,
I recommend that you switch to Essentials Classic,
which brings back the control panel.
At which point you can see how much, much smaller it is,
and you can also see that it doesn't block
other panels, as the Properties panel
is currently blocking the Libraries panel.
And worse yet, by default,
when you're looking at the Essentials workspace,
Properties blocks Layers.
And nothing in my opinion should block
the Layers panel.
But what I really recommended you do
back in chapter three was create
a custom workspace called One-on-One
that basically brings up the best of all possible worlds,
and doesn't really take up any more room on screen.
Now, speaking of room, notice that we have
these big tabs right here.
They are designed for tablet users,
specifically folks who are working
with Microsoft Surface Pro.
But that's not most of us.
Most of us are working on desktop or laptop computers,
and are perfectly comfortable with smaller tabs,
and so I want to show you how much smaller things get.
I'm going to go ahead and tuck up the bottom edge
of the Swatches panel, so that it's even
with the bottom swatches, and then I'm going to press
Control + K or Command + K on the Mac
to bring up the Preferences dialog box.
And I'll click on this guy, User Interface,
and I'll turn off Large Tabs,
and I want you to see how it happens immediately.
As soon as I turn that checkbox off,
look how much more room we get.
So, it's not inconsiderable.
We get a lot of additional vertical space
which is very important to me on this small screen
when the tabs are smaller.
At which point I'll go ahead and click OK.
All right now I just want you to notice
the toolbox here.
On most screens, like this tiny one,
or a laptop screen, it's going to show up
as two columns in order to fit
all the tools as well as these icons
down here at the bottom.
I however prefer to work with a single column toolbox,
and you can switch between them
just by clicking on the double arrow icon.
And so I just want you to be aware that's the case
so that you can easily find the tool
that you're looking for when you're trying
to track me in the video.
All right now we do have slightly different
cursors these days than you might see
in some of my movies.
The arrow tools no longer have stems,
and if you select the pen tool,
then you get what I'm calling the cloven cursor here,
which looks kind of charred to me,
and it lacks the point that the pen tool used to have.
But, other than aesthetics,
it works exactly the same as it ever has.
All right now notice this numerical option
up here in the control panel.
In this case Opacity.
Well nowadays you can scrub any numerical value
using the scroll wheel on your mouse.
So in this case I'm just hovering over the value
and scrolling down.
I could scroll up in order to increase
that value if I like.
And this works with magic mice, and track pads,
and anything else that scrolls as well.
If you want to scrub in increments of 10,
then press the Shift key as you either
scroll down or scroll up.
All right I'm going to press the V key
to switch back to my black arrow tool,
and I'll go ahead and click on the word Illustrator,
and notice by default we're seeing a bounding box.
And the bounding box has the advantage
of allowing you to transform objects on the fly
just by dragging their handles
or you can drag slightly outside of a handle
in order to rotate the object.
I don't like it though.
I'm going to undo those two changes by pressing
Control + Z or Command + Z on the Mac a couple of times,
and that's because I can't see the anchor points
unless I press and hold the Control key
or the Command key on the Mac to temporarily
switch to the white arrow tool on the fly.
I like to see my anchor points
and I like to be able to drag objects
by their anchor points so that
they snap into proper alignment,
which is why I hide the bounding box
by going to the View menu
and choosing the Hide Bounding Box command.
Now I'm not saying the bounding box
is never useful.
I find it very helpful when working
with area text for example.
Which is why you may want to remember
that keyboard shortcut of Control + Shift + B
here on the PC, or Command + Shift + B on the Mac.
Speaking of which we also have smart guides,
which I have turned off currently,
and that's because it makes objects flash
as I hover my cursor over them,
which is no good for video.
And notice in this case I am making
objects flash that I can't even see.
But I very much like smart guides
and I'll hide them and show them
several times in any given session,
which is why you may want to remember this
keyboard shortcut of Control + U
or Command + U on the Mac.
All right next I'll go up to the File menu
and choose the New command,
so that we can see that these days
Illustrator has this massive
New Document dialog box, which you might quite enjoy.
And one of the good things about it
is that it now runs conversions.
So here I am working in points as you can see,
but I could enter six double quote
in order to convert six inches to points on the fly.
Or I could enter 10 centimeters for example, 10 cm,
and run that conversion as well.
You can also do basic math.
So let's say I want to set the bleed
to a half inch.
I could enter one slash two, so one half inch.
Now that's not going to work the way things
stand right now.
Notice that we have a bad conversion.
A half an inch is really equal to 36 points.
What I have to do instead is enter one inch
divided by two, like so,
and that ends up working.
But I still prefer the old New dialog box
which you can get to by clicking
on the More Settings button,
and notice for the sake of variety
I could enter three slash four,
and it's running that conversion on the fly
in these other values right here,
because they're all linked together.
And then notice as soon as I enter
double quote afterwards, it converts to 54 points
which is exactly right.
So you have a little additional freedom
inside of this old dialog box,
and it's not nearly so huge.
Which is why what I prefer to do
is press Control + K or Command + K on the Mac
to bring up the Preferences dialog box,
and then turn on this guy,
Use legacy File New interface.
Click OK and now if I return to the File menu
and choose the New command, I get the older
more flexible dialog box.
All right so I'll just go ahead and cancel out.
One final thing to know, and this is just an FYI,
let's say you're previewing a document
as we are here, and for some reason
it doesn't look quite right.
Either the strokes are too thick
or your patterns aren't looking right, or what have you.
Then one option is to quit Illustrator
and restart the program, and see if that clears things up.
Another is to go up to the View menu
and choose this command right here.
So, depending on the quality of your graphics card,
Illustrator by default is going to preview
your illustration using the GPU,
which is the graphic processing unit.
If you would prefer to try out the CPU instead,
then just go ahead and choose this command
and you will get a different looking preview.
In my case it looks a little clunkier,
and so I'll return to the View menu
and choose that command's complement,
which is expressed as GPU Preview.
And those are a few highlights
from the Fundamentals course
that will ensure smooth sailing
as you work your way through
Illustrator CC 2018 One-on-One.