- [Instructor] In this movie, I'll show you how
to open a document inside Illustrator
just by double-clicking on its icon
here at the Windows desktop.
If you're working on the Mac,
go ahead and skip to the next movie.
Now obviously we all know how to double-click on a file.
The trick is to make sure that when you do so
that file, if it's supported by Illustrator,
opens automatically inside Illustrator
and not inside some other program.
So currently I'm looking at the contents
of the 01_create_doc folder, which is available
to those of you who have access to
the Exercise Files that are included
along with this course.
I'm also looking at the thumbnail view,
which you can invoke in the lower right corner
of the folder window.
Now if you're working along with me
you should see among other files
these three files called Welcome.
Now you may ask, how can three files have the same name?
Well they actually have different extensions,
which the Windows operating system
hides by default.
However, when you're working with Illustrator,
as well as any of the other
Adobe Creative Cloud applications,
you definitely want to see your file name extensions.
And to make that happen, click on the word View
up here at the top of the folder window.
Now I should be able to see a few checkboxes.
In my case my window is too narrow,
so I'll go ahead and make it a little wider
so that I can see this checkbox right here,
File name extensions.
You'll want to go ahead and turn that checkbox on.
And that will show those extensions,
which for the Welcome files turn out
to be .ai, .eps, and .svg,
which are the three major file types
that you'll be using when working with Illustrator.
Now we're going to start with this guy, the EPS file.
EPS stands for encapsulated postscript,
and it's an old school file format
that was originally designed to allow you
to export graphics from programs like Illustrator
and then import them into page layout programs
such as, well originally PageMaker,
and later QuarkXPress.
Now once upon a time EPS was a state of the art file format.
These days, not so much,
but EPS is still a common standard in some countries,
and it's a common file format for clipart as well.
And so the good news is, if you find such a file
you can open and edit it inside Illustrator.
And I'm going to do just that by double-clicking
on the file's thumbnail, in which case
you'll see the file open inside of Illustrator, like so.
And you can tell that I'm working in Illustrator
by the appearance of this orange Ai icon
up here in the top left corner of the screen.
And that's a very good thing
because unless you open your artwork in Illustrator
you can't take advantage of Illustrator's
vast array of features.
And I should say, this is a file
that I drew from scratch inside Illustrator,
thus demonstrating that it is sufficiently powerful
to create full blown professional quality artwork.
Now when I showed this orange depiction
of Michelangelo's David to a couple of people,
they were under the impression that he looks angry.
In fact, he looks apprehensive,
and the reason is that Illustrator
is an extremely challenging program.
It is in fact the most powerful vector drawing program
there is, and in as much as we would like
to hope otherwise, that power comes at a price.
But just as David conquered Goliath,
we are going to conquer this program, I assure you.
All right now so far everything is working
the way it should, but that's not necessarily
how things are going to turn out for you.
I'm going to go ahead and click on the Minimize button
in the top right corner of the screen
in order to hide Illustrator for the moment,
and now notice this document right here, Welcome.ai.
AI stands for Adobe Illustrator,
and it is Illustrator's native file format.
99 times out of 100, this is the file format
that you're going to use when you go to save your files.
But for whatever reason, on this particular machine,
AI files are associated with
the free Acrobat Reader, which is specifically
designed to open PDF documents.
And as a result, if I go ahead and double-click
on this file, I'm going to see it open
inside the Reader application.
Now, it's a great thing that you can
open illustrations inside this free Acrobat Reader,
which by the way you can locate
and download at adobe.com.
And the reason this is so great is that
it means other people out there
who don't have Illustrator can actually
view your illustrations, and in great quality as well.
So I can go ahead and zoom into 100% for example,
and then I can drag David's face around,
and as you can see we have the super smooth lines.
The problem of course is that I'm not going to
be able to edit this illustration
with anything resembling the degree of control
I can get out of Illustrator.
So what I want to do is associate .ai files with Illustrator
on this machine forever more.
And so I'll start by closing Acrobat Reader,
and then I'll right-click on this file, Welcome.ai,
and I'll choose Open with, which brings up this submenu.
Next, I'll choose this last command right here
which may read Choose another app
as it does in my case, or Choose default program
depending on your version of the Windows operating system.
Now I'll locate the most recent version
of Illustrator CC and I'll click on it.
And now if you see this checkbox,
Always use this app to open .ai files,
go ahead and turn it on, and then click OK,
and that will not only open
the illustration inside of Illustrator
as we're seeing right here, but if I go ahead
and once again minimize the program,
we can see that the icon is updated as well
to these orange and white letters, AI,
against a brown background.
Finally we've got this file, Welcome.svg.
Now SVG stands for scalable vector graphics,
and it's a popular file format for creating
scalable graphics that you intend
to distribute on the web, or view on a smartphone,
tablet, or other screen device.
And as with AI and EPS files,
your best tool for editing a scalable
vector graphic is Illustrator.
But notice on this particular machine
if I go ahead and double-click on this file
it opens in Microsoft Edge,
which is Windows default web browser.
And notice it doesn't even look right.
David is gray instead of orange,
and the border is green which clashes
with the rest of the design.
That's no good of course, so I'll go ahead
and close this file, and then I'll run through
those same steps.
So I'll go ahead and right-click on that file,
Welcome.svg, then I'll choose Open with
followed by this last command here.
And then I'll select the most recent version
of Illustrator CC.
If necessary, go ahead and turn on
Always use this app to open .svg files,
and then click OK.
And a moment later the artwork opens inside Illustrator.
David appears orange, the border appears brown,
and I can edit this file to my heart's content.
And that's how you set things up
so that you can open AI, EPS, and SVG files
inside of Illustrator just by
double-clicking on the document's icon
at the Windows desktop.