The Dynamic Design Duo

If you want to understand InDesign, you have to get to know its faithful partner, Illustrator—after all, Illustrator was Adobe’s first commercial product, its first tool, invented in the 1980s to provide a human face for an ugly programming language called PostScript. More importantly, if you want to be efficient with InDesign, you should understand how to combine the unique superpowers of these two programs, and how together they make an unbeatable design duo.

If you’re familiar with Illustrator, you’ll have a solid head start for using InDesign. Sadly, this doesn’t work the other way around: Illustrator has its own unique workflow and way of behaving, and you just have to knuckle down and work with it.

The two apps work well in partnership, however, each offering functionality that’s lacking in the other. Typically you’ll use Illustrator to create vector artwork—logos, diagrams, illustrations, even graphs—which you’ll then assemble into page layouts alongside text and Photoshop images in InDesign. But while single pages can be created entirely in Illustrator, you’re always going to be better off making use of InDesign’s superior layout and typographic controls.

There are three ways you can move artwork from Illustrator into InDesign. You can save an Illustrator file and import it into your layout using the Place command; you can simply copy and paste from one application to the other (a process which has some distinct advantages, as we’ll see later on); and you can use Creative Cloud libraries, which offer you a secure and effective way to share assets between all your CC applications.

The Place Command

The most traditional (and often “safest”) method for getting artwork from Illustrator to InDesign is saving and then placing. You can save your Illustrator files in a variety of formats, including AI or PDF (you could also choose EPS, but that format is outdated, so I don’t recommend it).

When you import a file into InDesign using File > Place, it behaves just like any other graphic: you can resize it, you can crop it, but you can’t access the individual paths of which it’s composed. That’s because placed Illustrator artwork is treated as a PDF file, even when it’s saved in native Illustrator format. In fact, even if you save your Illustrator file in the native AI format, it cannot be imported into InDesign unless you also enable the “Create PDF Compatible File” option when saving.

The first thing you’ll notice when placing Illustrator artwork into InDesign is that it may appear jagged and low resolution when your display is set to Typical Display quality. To see it at high resolution, you need to choose View > Display Performance > High Quality Display, but bear in mind that this may slow down your InDesign editing, as the application will have to take time to render all images at high quality. The alternative is to Ctrl-click or right-click important placed elements, such as logos, and change their Display Performance setting to High Quality. That way, they’ll look clear irrespective of the quality setting for the rest of the document.

(Note that if you have a suitable graphics card and screen, InDesign may enable GPU Performance, so your screen may already be set to High Quality by default. For more information, see this article.)

If you turn on the Show Import Items checkbox when you place an Illustrator graphic, you’re then presented with a set of options. You can choose how you want to crop the imported artwork—the default is to crop to the Bounding Box, which means that all the white space around the original is ignored. This is usually the best method, as it means you won’t be dealing with unwanted extra space. But if you wish, you can crop to the original full artwork size, or to the size of crop marks if you’ve included these.

If you use the File > Place approach, the placed item is linked to the original file on disk. If you update that file in Illustrator, you’ll see a warning in InDesign’s Links panel telling you that the file has changed and needs to be updated (Figure 1).

Note that the updating does not happen automatically unless you use InDesign’s Edit > Edit Original feature. If you don’t notice the warning—you might have the Links panel hidden—then when you try to output a PDF from the InDesign document, the Preflight process will detect the change and warn you.

Copy and Paste

As I said earlier, if you import Illustrator artwork onto a page in InDesign using the Place command, you won’t be able to edit it directly in InDesign. However, if you copy the artwork in Illustrator and then paste it into InDesign, you’ll be able to edit the individual paths, just as if the artwork had been created in InDesign in the first place. However, there are a few gotchas you should be aware of.

You’ll need to use Object > Ungroup first, and then you’ll be able to work with the image just as you were doing in Illustrator. Well, not exactly like in Illustrator: multiple strokes, variable widths, and other Illustrator-specific effects and features will probably be outlined and converted into individual filled objects. Also, some of Illustrator’s fancier effects may simply not come across—for example, objects filled with a gradient mesh. Because of this, it’s usually best to reserve copy and paste for simple artwork—basic paths work best.

Other advantages of using Copy and Paste include the fact that pasted artwork will always be displayed at full resolution (Figure 2) and the ability to distort a pasted object and still maintain a uniform stroke width (Figure 3).

The downside, of course, is that if you edit the original Illustrator file, your changes won’t be reflected in the version pasted into InDesign.

Using CC libraries

The third way to move artwork from Illustrator to InDesign is through a shared Creative Cloud library. In InDesign, you can find these by choosing Window > CC Libraries. In Illustrator, it’s just Window > Library. You can add Illustrator artwork to a library either by dragging it into the Libraries panel or by selecting the artwork and clicking the + button at the bottom of the panel. Clicking the button brings up options so you can choose how you want to add the element. You can choose whether to add items as graphics, plain text, paragraph or character styles, or text fill color—depending on the objects you drag into the panel (Figure 4).

After you’ve added an item, you can change its name to make it easier to identify.

If you open a logo in Illustrator and add it to your library, then it will be stored as a separate graphic object in its own right. You won’t be storing the original logo here—that remains on your hard disk, independent of the library version. This is really important because it means changing the version on disk won’t change the version in the library, as it would if you used the Place command to place the object into InDesign using the Place dialog box.

If you simply drag a CC library item from the library into your layout (or right-click on the item and choose Place Linked) any changes made to the library item in Illustrator will automatically be reflected in your InDesign file. Placed objects that are linked to a CC library are marked with a small cloud icon in the top left corner. Alternatively, you can create a new instance of an item that is independent from the version stored in the library by holding the Option or Alt key as you drag the item into your layout (or by right-clicking on the item and choosing Place Copy).

As with using the Place command, you can’t edit the contents of Illustrator objects in InDesign. To edit a library item, double-click the item in the CC Libraries panel to open it in the app in which it was created—so a logo will typically open in Illustrator. The name that appears in the file title bar won’t be the name of the original file, but a 32-character hexadecimal string that includes the date the file was created, encoded for security reasons. When you’re done editing, simply save this temporary file and close it. When you return to InDesign, the artwork will be updated automatically.

CC libraries can hold almost any kind of graphic asset: logos, images, graphs, colors, text, styles, and much more. Retrieving a logo from a library is far quicker than searching for it on your hard disk or network drive, and by storing logos in this way you can be sure that you’re always using the most up-to-date version—as long as it has been updated using the method described above.

For more information, see Steve Werner’s article on CC libraries in Issue #83.

The Trouble with Text

If you copy a block of text from InDesign and paste it into Illustrator you may be in for a surprise: you’ll be copying just the raw text—none of the formatting is supported (Figure 5)!

Text copied from Illustrator and pasted into InDesign retains its formatting but becomes an uneditable embedded vector object. Users have been frustrated by this inability to copy and paste live formatted text between applications for years

Fortunately, now there’s a partial solution: you can add a block of text to your Creative Cloud Library by clicking the + button at the bottom of the panel. When you do that, you can choose between three different ways of adding that text. If you choose to add it as a graphic, when you drag the object out of the library to place it, it will appear exactly as the text block you initially placed in the CC library—the same size, with the same formatting. But you won’t then be able to edit the text or change the fonts, although you can of course scale it to the size you want.

If you add it as text, then it will appear unformatted, and you can use it as regular text in any document. This is useful for boilerplate text, mail and web addresses, company information, and anything else where you want to reuse the content. If you double-click the text in the library and edit it, then the edited version will appear everywhere the library text has been used—even if you had formatted it with a different font and size.

If you edit the text in the library in Illustrator, any font changes you’ve made in InDesign will be replaced with the fonts you choose in Illustrator, and any text edits you’ve made in InDesign will be lost if you then edit the library version in Illustrator. For this reason, it’s best to hold Option/Alt as you drag it from the library into InDesign, so you place it as a copy that isn’t linked to the original.

You can also choose to add both paragraph styles and character styles, if these are present in text blocks copied to the library. This means you can easily share styles between Illustrator and InDesign without having to reproduce them manually in each application (Figure 6).

However, if you drag a text block containing more than one style into a library in InDesign, you may find that only the first style is picked up. To get the subsequent styles as well, click in the paragraph containing that style, and then add it to the library separately using the + icon at the bottom of the panel.

You can also drag text objects from InDesign into the library, and retrieve them in Illustrator. But note that some text elements are present only in InDesign, such as certain underline styles, footnotes, tables, and numbered and bulleted lists. Text in these formats will simply appear as plain text in Illustrator. Any text formatted in Illustrator, however, will appear in exactly the same way when you drag the object into InDesign.

Working with Colors

When you create a new document in Illustrator, you must choose whether to work in RGB or CMYK—unlike InDesign, Illustrator files are always one or the other. The standard rule is to use RGB color mode images for on-screen documents, such as web pages, and CMYK mode when working on documents that will be printed. If you’re creating a PDF that will primarily be used on-screen, such as software operating instructions, then you probably want to output it from InDesign in RGB mode so that the colors accurately reflect those seen in the app you’re documenting. But there are important exceptions to this rule!

It’s important to remember that, by default, CMYK files will not be color managed by InDesign, while RGB images will be. So when you’re creating an Illustrator document, you need to ask yourself: What is more important, color fidelity or CMYK values? For example, if you are creating a diagram in Illustrator and the background is 50% cyan, then you probably want it to be 50% in InDesign and in the final output. In that case, be sure the Illustrator file is set up in the CMYK mode.

However, if you are using Illustrator to create a photorealistic piece of art, with gradient meshes and rich colors, then you may want to use the RGB mode, even if the artwork is destined for print! That way, when you save as PDF or AI and place into InDesign, the image will be color managed, and you can get the best quality color, whatever your final destination output.

But again, for most graphics you’d make in Illustrator, such as a company logo or any other regular artwork, be sure to create it in Illustrator in CMYK rather than in RGB, to avoid InDesign having to perform a conversion later.

When it comes to sharing color swatches so that you can use the same colors in both Illustrator and InDesign, the best solution is—once again—the CC Library. It’s a good idea to keep all the house colors associated with a company or job in your CC library, so they can be retrieved with a single click. As with logos, though, you should distinguish between RGB and CMYK versions of those colors, to ensure that you use the RGB versions for web files and the CMYK versions for print. You can hover your cursor over a color in a CC library to see if it is CMYK or RGB, but the foolproof solution is to rename each swatch as you add it to the library, so you can always tell which is which (Figure 7).

Special Considerations

There are a few special kinds of objects and formatting that you should know about when moving files and objects between Illustrator and InDesign, including gradients, effects, graphs, and layers.

Gradients

While you can add an Illustrator object filled with a gradient to a library, the only library item you get is the entire selected object; you can’t add the gradient, or any attached strokes, shadows, and so on, as separate styles. But there is a useful solution here.

Illustrator ships with swatch libraries stuffed with fantastic gradients; InDesign doesn’t. And there’s no way to open your Illustrator gradient swatch libraries directly in InDesign. You also can’t add gradients to your CC libraries as swatches, only as objects. But if you make an object in Illustrator and apply your chosen gradient to it, you can then copy that object and paste it into InDesign, and the gradient will be added to your Swatches panel. You can then apply this gradient to any object in InDesign, including text. Note that this trick only works when the Illustrator file was created in CMYK mode.

Also note that while this works with simple gradients, more complex gradients won’t be added as swatches in InDesign (if the gradient contains transparency, for example). Instead, the pasted Illustrator object will be converted to individual solid color shapes (Figure 8).

For more information, see Getting Cool Illustrator Gradients into InDesign and Moving Gradient Swatches Between Illustrator and InDesign.

Drop Shadows and Other Raster Effects

While Illustrator is primarily a tool for creating artwork with vectors, it does offer the ability to add some raster (bitmapped) effects—for instance, drop shadows. If you use these kinds of effects, you must pay attention to two critical concerns. First, these effects almost never end up looking good if you copy and paste them. For example, if you copy and paste an object with a drop shadow from Illustrator into InDesign, the shadow comes in as a separate object and is grouped with the vector path (Figure 9).

I strongly recommend you select the bitmapped object and delete it—it’s better to apply effects like drop shadows to objects directly inside InDesign.

However, if you apply a drop shadow or bitmapped effect in Illustrator, and then save it to disk—or if you add an item with the effect to a CC Library—then when you place that file or library item in InDesign, the shadow will show up perfectly on your page background, just as you’d expect. Again, when it comes to special effects, that’s a safer workflow than the dodgy copy-and-paste method.

Graphs

If you create a graph in Illustrator, when you copy and paste it into InDesign you’ll find you’re able to edit it directly; you can change the height of bar graphs, for instance, by simply clicking on them and changing their height (Figure 10).

This means that if you need a load of graphs with the same basic design, you can create one in Illustrator and then modify all the rest in InDesign.

Layers

When placing files (note this doesn’t work when placing from a CC Library), you also have the ability to hide and show specific layers within the file, and you can access this functionality at any time afterwards, using Object > Object Layer Options (Figure 11).

This is a useful technique, as it allows you, for example, to place an InDesign headline between two layers in a placed Illustrator file. To do this, first place the object as normal, and then duplicate it. Use Object Layer Options in the duplicated version to hide all but the uppermost layers, and then place your headline between the two versions. This article by David Blatner shows the technique, but with a Photoshop document instead of Illustrator.

Another use of working with layers is when you want to save a group of logos—social media logos, for instance—in a single Illustrator file. Then, when you import that file into InDesign, you can choose which layer to display in each location.

Copying InDesign Artwork into Illustrator

So far we’ve looked exclusively at copying and placing artwork from Illustrator into InDesign. But there are times when you’d want to work the other way around, and place an InDesign page design into Illustrator: if, for example, you want to design a graphic to exactly fit a space in the layout.

There are two ways to move artwork in this direction. You can drag it into your CC Library in InDesign, which will make it available in Illustrator. But when you drag the item from the library into Illustrator, you won’t be able to edit it further. That’s because the assets are stored in the library as PDF files, rather than individual InDesign components, and as such won’t be individually editable.

Alternatively, you can simply copy the text and objects in InDesign, and then paste them into Illustrator. This way, the text and objects will remain individually editable. But you’ll find that Illustrator is unable to process InDesign’s text frames using this method; instead, each line of text will be a separate text object upon import. It will be editable, but the text won’t reflow as you edit it, so only use this approach if you’re sure you won’t want to change the text afterwards.

Super Friends

Every superhero needs a trusty sidekick to help save the day. Fortunately, Illustrator is always ready to lend a hand (or a vector), to bring a happy ending to your design projects.

At the dawn of desktop publishing, in days of myth and mullets, two ’80s titans dueled it out to determine who would rule the world of design and layout. It was QuarkXPress versus Aldus PageMaker in a battle for the ages (and pages). QuarkXPress eventually came out on top and reigned supreme for many years. But, around the turn of the millennium a new challenger arose from the ashes of PageMaker—yes, it was InDesign. This young upstart crackled with energy, intelligence, and a burning desire to dominate the desktop. Once InDesign got up to speed there was no stopping it, and for many designers the days of QuarkXPress faded from memory like an unused keyboard shortcut.

But even with its primordial foe vanquished, InDesign could never rest easy. For another rival, an elder sibling in the Adobe family, was always threatening to steal away the hearts and minds of designers. To this day, Illustrator remains InDesign’s greatest rival, because despite their obvious differences, there is a great amount of overlap in the two programs. So it can be hard for many users to choose one or the other for a particular project.

In this article, we’ll have a spirited head-to-head debate on the relative strengths and weaknesses of Illustrator and InDesign to help you choose the winner for any project you’re undertaking. Ari will take the side of Illustrator, and Mike will advocate for InDesign. So, without further ado, let’s get ready to rumble!

Setting Up New Documents

Ari Weinstein: There’s an awful lot that Adobe Illustrator can do aside from its main function of creating vector artwork. Illustrator functions well as a production application to create sets of related documents with specific requirements, thanks to its support for templates. For example, you can save an Illustrator file as a template that includes all of your favorite assets: color swatches, graphic styles, symbols, brushes, and text styles. Create or import the assets you want to have available in the template and delete the ones you don’t need.

Next, use the Artboards panel (Window > Artboards) to add new pages; you can rename and arrange them here too (Figure 1). Illustrator creates new artboards at the same size as the selected one. Any artwork you create or place on the artboards is also saved with a template.

   

When saving an Illustrator file for the first time (or using Save As), select the Format menu in the Save dialog and choose Illustrator Template (AIT).

By using Illustrator templates and the Artboards panel, you can easily set up multi-page documents that you can reuse again and again.

Mike Rankin: That’s all very good to know, and I agree that it will work quite well for relatively simple documents: cards, flyers, posters, and the like. When it comes to setting up pages in complex, long documents, however, InDesign is the clear choice. After all, Illustrator doesn’t even know what facing pages are! 

InDesign also sports a slew of features for setting up long document infrastructure—stuff like master pages, automatic page numbering, tables of contents, indexes, sections, cross-references, footnotes, endnotes, and so on. 

And Illustrator isn’t the only program that makes templates: In InDesign, all you need to do is change the file extension to INDT, and voilà, you got yourself a template that will spawn fresh new files when double-clicked.

That said, I will admit that Illustrator has some uniquely nifty page-related features that make me jealous: things like Edit > Paste on All Artboards, the ability to convert any object to an artboard, and to size an artboard to a selection. Those are awesome; but again, they’re really only relevant for single-page artwork or very short documents.

Grids and Guides

AW: I know you InDesign users are fastidious bunch, but InDesign doesn’t hold an exclusive patent on efficiency or accuracy. Rulers, guides, and grids in Illustrator allow us to compose page layouts with precision. The View menu gives you access to these features: Turn on Rulers and Grids (View > Rulers > Show Rulers and View > Show Grid), and then you can drag guides from the rulers onto your artboards. Right-click a ruler to change units, say from inches to picas or millimeters. Customize the grid and guide options under Preferences > Guides & Grid. 

By the way, why is it that InDesign doesn’t offer a pixel preview or pixel grid like Illustrator does? It sure comes in handy when you need to precisely position and size objects in web and mobile projects (Figure 2). Not to mention Illustrator’s transparency grid for revealing all the transparent areas of your document, and perspective grids for designing in one-, two-, or three-point perspective. I don’t see those powerful features anywhere in InDesign.

   

Furthermore, in Illustrator you can also convert any shape or path to a guide, by selecting it, then choosing View > Guides > Make Guides. You can duplicate an artboard with those guides; choose View > Guides > Unlock Guides first, then select Duplicate Artboards from the flyout menu in the Artboards panel. And finally, you can rotate guides just by selecting them and using the Rotate tool or the Control panel. When’s the last time you rotated a guide in InDesign, Mike?

To keep your artwork and text precisely placed as you’re working, Illustrator offers the Snap To options from the View menu. You can snap to the grid, to points, and even to glyphs (Figure 3). Don’t try that with InDesign! And with Smart Guides turned on you will also be able to snap to guides and intersections of paths. 

   

With all these great page layout aids, really, who needs InDesign?

MR: Okay, you got me with all those fancy grids and guides abilities. They go way beyond what InDesign has. Although I will point out that InDesign comes with a script called Add Guides, that can place guides anywhere around an object (Figure 4). We also have Smart Guides, although they aren’t as capable as Illustrator’s. 

   

InDesign does have one guide feature that Illustrator doesn’t, and it once again points to the nature of long-document versus short-document design. The feature is baseline grids, which you can apply to either a whole spread or just a text frame. You Illustrator users should check it out sometime! You really don’t know what you’re missing.

Text Handling

AW: Everyone knows that InDesign has paragraph and character styles for efficiently formatting text, but did you know Illustrator does too? Choose Window > Type > Paragraph Styles to show both the Character Style and Paragraph Style panels (they are grouped by default). Now you can set up and save formatting for repeated use. You can save the styles to your CC Libraries and in an Illustrator template file, as noted earlier.

Another text feature available in Illustrator is threading. Working with area text, you can click on the square near the bottom right of the text area and flow the text into another shape.

Rows and columns are also available! With an Area Text shape selected, choose Type > Area Type Options or click Area Type in the Control Bar and enter options to arrange the text optimally within the layout (Figure 5). This dialog box also controls the text inset, baseline position, alignment within the area, and flow direction. In some cases, you can use this feature as an alternative to InDesign tables. 

   

And try not to be envious of Illustrator’s features for rotating individual text characters (either with a style or on the fly with the amazing Touch Type tool), setting the first baseline to the Em Box Height, and the ability to include hung punctuation as part of a style. How is it possible that InDesign doesn’t have those things? I thought you guys were all about great typography?

MR: Um, we are all about great typography. That’s why our paragraph and character styles are much more powerful than Illustrator’s. Check out Steve Werner’s article in Issue #121 if you want to know all the details. We also have table styles and cell styles to handle complex table formatting with a few clicks.

In addition to having baseline grids as mentioned above, we also can balance ragged lines, control the spacing between paragraphs formatted with the same style, and set the last line indent, which is incredibly handy for tables of contents—but then, I don’t suppose Illustrator users would be making any of those unless you’re paid by the hour.

Because we’re used to working with a lot of text (and making it look easy) we also have the ability to base styles on other styles, so we can make a change once to the parent style and then see it reflected in all the child styles. We have nested styles and GREP styles and even line styles, each of which helps automate character-level formatting based on patterns of text. Oh, and did I mention borders and shading to add distinctive looks to text, keep options to make lines and paragraphs stick together when text reflows, and bullets and numbering for making lists? Yup, InDesign has those too.

Since I’m going full-nerd here, I’ll also throw in the fact that we can assign keyboard shortcuts to styles in InDesign. Maybe someday you’ll be able do that in Illustrator, but not now.

As for the ability to rotate characters, we InDesign users can achieve that, either by borrowing a character style from Illustrator via CC Libraries, or with a script. (That said, I do agree that Illustrator’s Touch Type tool is pretty awesome… although most Illustrator users don’t even know it’s there.)

But let’s get real: Can you show me how to set a drop cap as part of a style in Illustrator? Can’t do that? Aw, shucks. That’s the kind of thing that InDesign makes easy!

Formatting Objects

AW: For efficient formatting of objects, Illustrator users graphic styles, which allow us to save and apply any combination of strokes, fills, and effects with just a click. In fact, we have entire Libraries of useful styles and swatches at our fingertips (Figure 6). 

   

Illustrator also has symbols, which you can use to create any number of instances of a particular object without bloating your file size. Symbols can be dynamic, as well, so they don’t have to be exact replicas of the original. 

We also have some pretty cool formatting features like the Appearance panel (which allows us to apply multiple strokes and fills to an object), plus vector brushes, opacity masks, patterns, mesh gradients, Photoshop filters, stroke width profiles, and a slew of arrowheads that don’t look like they came straight out of 1995. We can also easily draw things like spirals and arcs (or any arbitrary shape for that matter) with the Shape Builder tool. It’s a snap to create extruded 3D versions of objects, apply blurs, warp objects… the list goes on and on. Since drawing and formatting objects is the reason Illustrator exists, this one’s no contest.

MR: I (mostly) concede the point, with the one observation that InDesign’s object styles are a lot more powerful that Illustrator’s graphic styles, which don’t even offer a dialog box to see and modify the settings. Issue #133 contains a great article by Laurie Ruhlin on using object styles.

InDesign users can also apply our object styles to text frames and the formatting gets applied to the frame, not the text, like it does with Illustrator’s styles. (Oops!) Object styles also allow us to set the size and position of an object, which is incredibly useful. But yeah, you folks can make cooler looking drawings, for sure.

Accessing Assets

AW: Another feature that can help you avoid using InDesign for document assembly is CC Libraries. In Illustrator, choose Window > Libraries to show the panel. Libraries can store colors, color themes, brushes, character and paragraph styles, text, and graphics. Graphics available in a Library can be vectors or raster images from any Adobe CC application. Using assets stored in a Library can speed your Illustrator workflow. Create something once, reuse it as many times as needed.

MR: Hey, InDesign has had Libraries for almost two decades—long before CC came along. Today, InDesign can manage both CC and traditional varieties of Libraries. It also allows users to save any page objects as Snippets (File > Export > Format: InDesign Snippet). These files are self-contained and tiny because they’re composed of XML code, so they’re a very convenient alternative for storing and sharing page elements with colleagues.

Actions & Scripts

AW: For even more speed when handling repeated tasks like exporting, consider using Illustrator’s Actions. Choose Window > Actions to show the panel, and you can explore some of the included Actions (Figure 7). You can record any sequence of tasks including menu selections, panel settings, and tool actions to create your own repeatable workflows that speed your work. No such luck in InDesign.

   

Illustrator’s Scripts menu (File > Scripts) gives you access to additional functions that would be time-consuming to perform manually. Scripts differ from Actions as they’re written in code, such as JavaScript, and make direct “calls” to Illustrator’s underlying application features, so they are extremely fast and powerful. 

Scripts and Actions written by third parties are available from a variety of sources. Free sources include Github, where you can find scripts like these, and Illustrator user communities, such as this Illustrator Help & Support Group on Facebook with over 12,000 members. Commercial sources who often bundle actions with custom brushes, patterns, and symbols, include aggregators like Envato and Creative Market. 

Actions and Scripts enable Illustrator to compete well with workflow features found in InDesign. What say you, Mike?

MR: Man, you really know how to hurt a guy. Like many users, I’ve wished for the ability to record actions in InDesign since, well, forever. For a while Rorohiko was offering a type of action recorder plug-in, but it fell by the wayside. 

Scripts are a different story. As any regular reader of this magazine can tell you, there are more great scripts for InDesign than you can shake a pointer at. Many of them are free or cost very little. Scripts are so essential in the life of an InDesign user that we recently started featuring a Script of the Month. Stefano Bernardi has amassed an incredible collection of over 200 InDesign scripts at Redokun.com. You can also find compilations of must-have scripts in Issue #100, Issue #127, and Issue #138. Also, CreativePro is the proud home of Peter Kahrel’s collection of InDesign scripts. To call that resource “a goldmine” is faint praise. It’s more like platinum mine encrusted with diamonds.

Plug-ins

AW: Illustrator has long supported plug-ins. Suites of plug-ins are available from a number of publishers that significantly extend the application’s built-in capabilities. Examples include Hot Door’s Control and CADtools plug-ins and the incredible Astute Graphics suite. Single plug-ins that perform special functions from smaller developers include Randomill and Magic Exporter.

These third-party tools go beyond making great artwork, they can help with pre-press, file management, color management, and other production tasks.

MR: Sure, the Astute Graphics plug-ins are among the most powerful third-party plug-ins that I’ve encountered for any Adobe software. 

But of course, I’ve also seen a ton of great add-ons for InDesign. We devoted a cover story to the most valuable InDesign plug-ins in Issue #137, so I won’t rehash the whole list here, but in5 and Multi-Find/Change are must haves. I’m just glad that there are such talented developers around to support InDesign and Illustrator users and fill in the gaps in those programs. I wouldn’t want to imagine how we’d get along without them.

That said, the difference between Illustrator and InDesign add-ons is not their quantity or quality, but rather their focus. Once again, the vast majority of Illustrator plug-ins focus on helping you draw something or create a certain effect. InDesign add-ons tend to be about efficiency, workflow, and document automation. Whether it’s data- base publishing, translation services, or accessibility tagging, InDesign add-ons are essential for many companies’ workflows.

Exporting Content

AW: Illustrator’s built-in Asset Export feature enables you to parcel out selected artwork or entire artboards for export to a variety of formats. Choose Window > Asset Export to show the panel, then click the button to launch the Export for Screens dialog to explore all the features (Figure 8). If you ever have to make graphics for web, UX, or video, this feature in Illustrator is far better than anything you can do in InDesign.

   

One of the file formats that’s particularly well-supported by Illustrator is PDF. PDF options are presented when you export or save to that format. They include all the same important pre-press settings that ­InDesign’s PDF export does. More importantly, Illustrator can re-open and edit any PDF it saves, as well as many other PDFs generated by third-parties, too. It’s the most robust PDF editor aside from Acrobat Pro. InDesign can only export to PDF and read comments in existing Acrobat files—no roundtripping like we have in Illustrator. It’s kind of strange considering Adobe created PDF technology and most InDesign files end up exported as PDFs at some point. On top of that, other page layout programs like Affinity Publisher and even old QuarkXPress can place PDFs as editable content. 

MR: I fully agree with your take on InDesign’s inability to place PDF as editable content. It’s almost embarrassing that InDesign can’t do that in the year 2021, when those other apps can. 

As for exporting content, InDesign does have the ability to export any selection as JPG, PNG, or EPS files (remember them?), but I agree that the options are downright primitive compared to Illustrator’s Asset Export. Believe it or not, we InDesign users actually have to use math (or a script like Keith Gilbert’s Export Images for Web) to export to a specific set of pixel dimensions. And you guys can export to formats like layered PSD, SVG, and TIFF. InDesign users can’t, although there are some third-party scripts that can help—like the one for exporting PSD files that we featured as the Script of the Month in Issue #144.

When it comes to exporting PDF for print or interactive documents, InDesign has some important features Illustrator lacks. For print, I’m thinking about things like the slug area and the ability to export a multi-page document as single pages. For onscreen PDF, InDesign allows you to include bookmarks, interactive elements (you can’t even make a hyperlink in Illustrator!), and such important accessibility options as tagging, document titles, and language.

Going Mobile

AW: Illustrator for iPad is a killer app. With its release, this award-winning application has made it possible for Illustrator users to work on the go, seamlessly switching between mobile and desktop (Figure 9). Adobe fonts and multiple artboards are fully supported on Illustrator for iPad. This is a capability InDesign cannot match: There is no mobile version of that application. How’s that for productivity, Mike?

   

MR: I’m not going to lie, Illustrator’s iPad version is very cool, and like you say, InDesign users have nothing like it. Yes, there is the Touch workspace that’s available on devices with a touchscreen, but it’s very limited and I’ve never really found a good use for it. My only retort is there’s something about laying out complex long documents that feels like you should be tethered to a desk, not out enjoying sunshine, fresh air, and Starbucks. Consequently, we InDesign users have evolved to thrive with crappy fluorescent lighting, uncomfortable chairs, and stale office coffee. It’s part of our lifestyle and we wear it as a badge of honor (because we have no other option).

Wild Card Round

AW: Are you ready? Seven more useful Illustrator features you won’t find in InDesign: Blends, Graphs, Image Trace, Vertical Text, Select Same, Convert to Grayscale, and Custom Toolbars.

MR: To that, sir, I simply reply: GREP Find/Change, Text Wrap, Anchored Objects, QR Codes, Conditional Text, Preflight, and InCopy integration. Don’t go looking for any of them in your Illustrator menus.

Reconciliation Time

AW: Okay Mike, we’ve trash talked enough. How about we both say something nice about the other guy’s program? I’ll start.

There’s no denying that InDesign has some powerful and unique features. Its ability to place a variety of assets from different locations makes it perfect for assembling documents with a large number of elements. Its text handling abilities enable it to format and arrange long runs of text with reading aids, such as tables of contents, footnotes, running headers, and cross-references. Its style options for paragraphs, characters, objects, and tables give users industrial-strength capabilities for handling large, complex publications. And the GREP Find/Change capabilities are unparalleled. I don’t always need InDesign, but I will admit that for certain jobs, it’s not only the right application—it can run circles around Illustrator.

MR: I agree with everything you just said, but I’ll always love Illustrator, too. It was the first Adobe program I learned, and the first one I made a living with, long before InDesign even existed. While I’d never want to make a book with it, I’d feel fine making almost any kind of single-page publication with Illustrator, for print or screen. And of course, in the right hands it can be used to make beautiful vector art, logos, illustrations, and graphics for anything from T-shirts to movies. So, in that sense it’s more flexible than InDesign, and I totally get why designers might gravitate towards it. If you like drawing, it’s just more fun to work in Illustrator.

Tie Goes to the Users 

In the end, we both acknowledge that Adobe CC applications are designed to work together. Pairing InDesign with Illustrator—along with other tools, such as Photoshop—gives designers far more capabilities than are available in a single application. Creating artwork in Illustrator, then combining it with Photoshop images and text across multiple pages in InDesign is a powerful workflow that can serve diverse publishing needs. It allows each of the applications and the people who use them to play to their strengths (Figure 10). CC Libraries work across applications, smoothing the workflow among team members.

   

As far as Illustrator and InDesign are concerned, designers may favor one or the other, but it’s great to have both of these powerful applications in your arsenal.

Vectors (aka paths) are very powerful items. Unlike pixel art that can look lousy when scaled beyond a certain point, vectors are mathematical objects that can be scaled up and down with no loss of information.

Most designers use Illustrator to create their vector graphics. But there are vector tools in InDesign and Photoshop as well. Someday you may find that you need the vector shapes created in one program in another. That’s where the ability to move vectors becomes important.

Moving vectors between Illustrator and InDesign

When it comes to working with vectors, your primary vector drawing program is most likely Illustrator. (I do know one famous InDesign expert who uses a page layout program, such as InDesign, as his primary drawing program, but he did the same when he used QuarkXPress.)

So why do so many people use Illustrator as their primary vector-drawing program? Isn’t the Pen tool in both programs the same? Well, yes, but there are so many effects or techniques that InDesign just can’t do. Illustrator has the tools to create shapes such as spirals and arcs that would be difficult to do in InDesign. Illustrator’s live effects make it easy to warp simple objects into special shapes. And much clip art comes in EPS (vector) format.

 

So, why not do everything in Illustrator, and then just place the file as a linked image? Because it’s easier to work with those shapes if they are actual paths inside your InDesign layout instead of placed images from Illustrator. For instance, if you want text on a path, you’ll find it easier to make changes to the text or typeface if the path is in InDesign. You may want to insert images inside the vector shape. Or you may just want the convenience of changing colors as part of InDesign’s object styles.

Moving across the divide

It’s easy to get paths from Illustrator into InDesign. Just copy and paste. Or, if you’ve got loads of screen real estate, drag the paths over the edges between the two applications. The paths plop down on the InDesign page. Once the paths are in InDesign, they behave exactly like paths that you create in InDesign.

 

There are times when you won’t be able to move vectors from Illustrator into InDesign. For instance, if the Illustrator artwork contains too many points or too many objects, InDesign throws up its figurative hands and protests that it can’t handle that many items. Instead it embeds the objects as EPS art. This is worse than if you had just placed the artwork as an Illustrator file, which can at least be modified back in Illustrator.

 

If you get the message that your artwork will be embedded into InDesign, my suggestion is to click OK, and then undo the command. (There is no “Cancel” button.) If you do embed the artwork into InDesign, and then want it out, you’ll have to copy and paste. See the section “Moving Vectors from InDesign into Illustrator.”

What you lose going from Illustrator into InDesign

Going from Illustrator into InDesign, you lose all pixel effects like drop shadows, glows, and any of the Photoshop effects in the Effects menu. Opacity settings are lost, even if the resulting objects would be vectors. But pure vector effects, such as blends, warps, distortions, multiple fills, and multiple strokes get converted as if you had expanded the artwork in Illustrator.

 

Moving Vectors from Illustrator to Photoshop

Why would you want to move vectors from Illustrator into Photoshop? For the same reason you do it in InDesign. There are so many effects that you can’t do in Photoshop that you can do in Illustrator. In addition, Photoshop has its own path features that can be used to enhance Photoshop’s native pixels.

It’s easy to move paths from Illustrator into Photoshop. Just copy the paths in Illustrator, switch to Photoshop, and paste. You will be confronted with a dialog box asking you to choose the format for the art. Each choice gives you its own ways of working w
ith the artwork.

Once you’ve got vectors in a Photoshop document, you can manipulate them with the same vector selection tools you have in either Illustrator or InDesign. 

Pasting as Pixels

If you choose to paste as pixels, the paths appear in Photoshop with transform controls. Drag the handles to scale, skew, rotate, or otherwise distort the artwork with no loss of resolution. Photoshop resamples the images from the original vectors. But once you click Enter or Apply, the paths are rasterized. Bye, bye vectors.

Pasting as Paths

If you choose to paste as paths, and no layer is selected, the paths appear in Photoshop’s Paths panel as a Work Path. This can be saved as a named path. However, if a layer is selected, the pasted paths appear as a Vector Mask, which clips the contents of the layer within the vector mask. The crisp edges of the vector shape are maintained in the Photoshop file when you print directly out of Photoshop. This is similar to placing Photoshop art inside a vector shape in either Illustrator or InDesign. It’s the closest thing Photoshop has to InDesign’s graphics frames.

However, if you place a Photoshop file with a vector mask into InDesign, and then print the file, the vector mask is rasterized. Fortunately, if you save the file as a Photoshop PDF, the vector mask keeps its crisp, vector edges when printed.

Bringing paths from Illustrator into Photoshop also lets you add those paths to Photoshop’s wide variety of custom shapes. These shapes can then be applied to the canvas using the Custom Shape Tool. Just select and right-mouse click on the shape to choose Define Custom Shape.

Pasting as Shape Layers

A Shape Layer creates a vector shape that is similar to pasting as a path. A vector mask is created over pixels. However, instead of masking a layer of an image, the shape layer is filled with a solid color. This is the foreground color. However, if a shape layer is selected, the new shape layer takes on the color of the selected layer.

Shape layers can only contain one color. You can’t have an image in the layer, just a solid color. However, you can use any of the Photoshop layer effects (such as a gradient or pattern fill) on the shape layer to modify the solid color. 

Like pasting as paths, shape layers allow you to have sharp, vector paths that outline the artwork. These paths are vectors when printed directly out of Photoshop. They are rasterized when the PSD file is placed into and printed from InDesign. However, when saved as a Photoshop PDF, they print as vector paths.

Pasting as Vector Smart Objects

Smart objects are a hybrid combination of paths and raster images that travel from Illustrator into Photoshop. However, unlike the shape layers that can contain only one color, Vector Smart Objects maintain all the swatches, gradients, effects, and other elements in the Illustrator file.

You create a Vector Smart Object by choosing Vector Smart Object when you paste Illustrator paths into Photoshop. Transformation handles let you scale or modify the art before it is entered as a Vector Smart Object. You can also use the File > Place command to choose an Illustrator file to embed as a Vector Smart Object.

Editing the Vector Smart Object

A Vector Smart Object is more than just artwork on a layer in a Photoshop file. It is actually the entire, original Illustrator file hanging around inside of the Photoshop file. So, if you need to edit any part of the original Illustrator art, you simply double-click the Vector Smart Object thumbnail or choose Edit Contents in the Layers panel menu. An alert box appears with a lot of text. All you have to do is remember to save your work when you’re finished making the changes in the Vector Smart Object. Adobe says choose File > Save, but Cmd/Ctrl-S works just as well.

 

When you edit the Vector Smart Object, you’re no longer in Photoshop. You’ve launched Illustrator and are editing the artwork within Illustrator. But you’re not editing the original Illustrator file. You’re editing a stripped down version of the file that doesn’t contain all the libraries and goodies found in the original file. You can tell this isn’t the original file as the title is Vector Smart Object.

 

Once you choose File > Save, you can close the Vector Smart Object file and return to Photoshop. Your changes are immediately applied to the Photoshop information.

As far as editing, Vector Smart Objects are totally Illustrator files with all the characteristics of vector art. However, the artwork is rasterized into pixels when the Photoshop file is printed. There’s nothing that can stop it. Vector Smart Objects play dumb when it comes to printing.

Vector Smart Objects from InDesign

You can create Vector Smart Objects from InDesign in Photoshop files. Select the objects in InDesign, copy, and then paste into Photoshop. You won’t get a choice as to how to paste; the artwork automatically creates a Vector Smart Object.

However, when you choose to edit the Vector Smart Object, the command doesn’t open InDesign. Instead, it launches Illustrator where you can make changes.

Back in 1986, Adobe introduced a postscript-based drawing program called Illustrator. A lot has happened since then, including Adobe’s acquisition of Macromedia and Apple’s adoption of Intel-based hardware. Now, more than 20 years since its first release, Adobe has released Illustrator CS3, which is part of the Adobe Creative Suite 3 family of products.
Considering how little competition Illustrator has (FreeHand, which seems to be in limbo, is also owned by Adobe), you might think that Adobe has little incentive for putting much effort into a new version. But one look at Illustrator CS3 and it’s obvious that Adobe hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down. With innovative new features, improved integration with other applications, and many small enhancements, Illustrator CS3 impresses on many levels. The $599 ($199 upgrade) question is, does it impress enough to part with some of your hard-earned cash? Let’s take a look.
Get Your Work Done Faster
Getting your work done quickly is paramount, and Illustrator CS3 helps you make your deadlines and even make it home in time for dinner in several ways. Adobe has promised better performance in past upgrades, but Illustrator CS3 is the first version where you can actually believe it. Illustrator ships as a universal binary application and therefore runs native on Intel-based and PowerPC-based Macs running the Tiger OS. Illustrator also runs on both Windows XP and Windows Vista. While you can feel the performance enhancements on just about any system, CS3 really takes advantage of systems with multiple processors. On my PowerMac G4, Illustrator redraws complex artwork twice as fast. And large files simply fly on my MacBook Pro.
Making it easier to navigate within the application, Illustrator CS3 features a new panel-based user interface that lets you turn panels (formerly known as palettes) into icons and dock them to the sides of your screen (Figure 1). The new interface is consistent with Photoshop, InDesign, and even Flash CS3.

Figure 1. You can reduce panels (the new name for palettes) to icons that attach to the side of your screen. Clicking an icon activates that panel. Click on the image for a larger version.
The context-sensitive Control panel at the top of the screen now offers links to more functionality, and it’s also aware of your monitor resolution (Figure 2). The Control panel adjusts its content according to how much room is on your screen.

Figure 2. If Illustrator senses there’s not enough room to display icons for each function, hyperlinks appear instead. In this example, one click gives you access to the entire Align panel. Click on the image for a larger version.
Creating new documents is less of a chore with New Document Profiles, which contain important document settings, such as document size, color mode, preview mode, measurement settings, and even raster effects resolution settings (Figure 3). Illustrator ships with profiles optimized for print, Web, mobile and devices, and video and film documents, and you can add your own customized profiles, as well. With these profiles, you can create a new file with all of the correct settings with a single click of the mouse.

Figure 3. Due to the enhanced performance in Illustrator, the Print document profile sets the Document Raster Effects setting to 300 dpi — automatically. Click on the image for a larger version.
Some Kind Of Colorful
Go to Adobe’s Web site and you’ll see lots of talk about a feature the company refers to as “Live Color,” but in the app itself, you won’t find any tool, menu item, or panel called by that name — only one dialog box has the name Live Color in it in all of Illustrator CS3. In fact, Adobe’s marketing draws so much attention to this thing called Live Color that you can overlook what Illustrator CS3 really has — robust color support throughout the entire application. Put another way, if there’s anything at all that you want to do with color, there’s a good chance Illustrator can do it. For example, ever tried looking for the closest Pantone color that matches an existing process color? Ever tried to change a color within a pattern or a gradient (or gradient mesh)? Ever tried to convert all of your vector art to grayscale? How about turning one of those boring charts with all those shades of gray into something more exciting? Illustrator CS3 can do all of these things.
Before I get ahead of myself, let me start by describing some of the color enhancements you’ll find throughout the application. You can create groups of swatch colors, making it easy to organize your colors and manage their relationships. I have swatch groups that contain colors for different clients, and for different parts of an Illustrator file. For example, to simplify coloring fall leaves, I created a group of several shades of red, orange, and yellow (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Groups of colors appear as folders within the Swatches panel.
Speaking of different shades of colors, Illustrator CS3 features a new panel called the Color Guide, which is designed to inspire your color choices. Anytime you pick a swatch color, the Color Guide gives you variations of that color. You can choose the kinds of variations that the Color Guide provides, but the real power is when you can feed the Color Guide a specific palette of colors to choose from (Figure 5). For instance, if you’re working on a job that will be printed in spot colors, you can instruct the Color Guide to only suggest variations from a library of Pantone colors.

Figure 5. By limiting the Color Guide to a specific library of colors, you’ll see suggested color variations that already conform to your needs.
The feature Adobe calls Live Color is actually a single dialog box that contains two seemingly simple functions: editing colors, and assigning colors. These tasks appear as separate tabs in the Live Color dialog box. Notice that I said “seemingly” simple. There are so many little buttons and pop-up menus and options in this one dialog box that you’d think you were flying the Space Shuttle.
Compounding this confusion is the fact that you often have to move back and forth between the Edit and Assign tabs to perform tasks. For example, in the Edit tab, Illustrator identifies every single color in my selection with a circle that appears on a color wheel. I can recolor my artwork simply by dragging the circles around on the color wheel. To see which circle corresponds to the artwork in my document, I need to switch to the Assign tab, click a button to highlight where the selected color appears on my artboard, and then switch back to Edit to make a change (Figures 6, 7, and 8).

Figure 6. Upon launching the Live Color feature, all colors in my artwork appear as circles mapped to a color wheel in the Edit tab of the dialog. Click on the image for a larger version.

Figure 7. To find out the leaf stems color, I use the Assign tab, which has a magnifying glass icon that highlights the selected color on the artboard. Click on the image for a larger version.

Figure 8. Having identified the correct color, I can return to the Edit tab to adjust the color on the color wheel. Click on the image for a larger version.
Like the Color Guide panel, you can instruct the Live Color dialog to only work within a specified range or library of colors. This is extremely helpful when you’re trying to convert a full-color illustration to two Pantone colors (Figure 9). You get total control over all of the colors in your file, and it works on gradients, meshes, patterns, symbols, live effects — everything other than placed linked or embedded raster images. With Live Color, you don’t have to be a color scientist to do some pretty cool color studies and adjustments with your artwork. The problem is, you just may have to be a rocket scientist to figure out how to use it.

Figure 9. Having created a color group with two spot colors, I was easily able to remap all of the colors in my file to those two colors. The two color bars (called rows) identify which colors are being mapped to each spot color. Click on the image for a larger version.
However, you can benefit from all of this color technology without even going to the Live Color feature. Illustrator CS3 has one-click options to convert art to grayscale or to adjust color saturation, both accessible from the new Edit Colors submenu in the Edit menu. Also, built-in support for N-Channel (also referred to as Device-N) makes it possible to now place native Photoshop duotones and files with spot channels — very helpful for those in the packaging industry. It also means that you can use multiple spot colors with gradient mesh, and the file will separate correctly.
Illustrator Embraces Flash
Flash was one of the driving forces behind Adobe’s acquisition of Macromedia. It’s refreshing to see from changes to Illustrator CS3 that Adobe recognized that designers have always used Illustrator to design artwork that was later brought into Flash for development. (It’s obvious that the Flash team is aware of this as well, because Flash CS3 Professional has numerous enhancements that come from Illustrator.)
Symbols are the lifeblood of Flash, and while Illustrator has been able to create Symbols since version 10, the feature had many shortcomings, such as the hoops you had to jump through to edit symbols. In Illustrator CS3, you simply double-click on a symbol to edit it, just as you do in Flash. Illustrator also allows you to define symbols by pressing F8 — again, same as in Flash. Symbols have certain properties that are specific to Flash so they’re easily referenced from ActionScript code. Illustrator CS3 now lets you define a symbol as graphic or movie clip, specify registration, and set guides for nine-slice scaling (Figure 10). You can even name each symbol instance in your layout. Beyond symbols, there’s an entire new Flash Text panel, in which you can define interactive text right from within Illustrator (Figure 11).

Figure 10. After tapping the F8 key to define a new symbol, you can specify Flash-specific settings for the Symbol. These settings have no effect on a symbol’s behavior within Illustrator.

Figure 11. Instead of waiting to do it in Flash, Illustrator CS3’s new Flash Text panel is the place for defining interactive type.
The question of course is, how do you get your rich information from Illustrator into Flash? Past versions of Illustrator required you to export your artwork as SWF, and the results were never pretty. You would think this would be easy considering that Flash and Illustrator are both vector-based applications, but their underlying graphic engines were different. Flash CS3 incorporates Illustrator’s graphics engine, so path fidelity, clipping masks, gradients, text, and more are all preserved beautifully. You can either copy and paste from Illustrator into Flash, or you can import native Illustrator files directly onto your stage. Flash allows you to choose which Illustrator layers and objects to import, and even lets you create movie clips on the fly. If you’ve struggled with bringing artwork from Illustrator into Flash in the past, this new functionality will save you a ton of time and frustration.
But What About FreeHand?
At the time of this review’s publication, Adobe hasn’t talked much about FreeHand’s future. But it’s clear from some of the features in Illustrator CS3 that Adobe is making it a lot easier to migrate from FreeHand to Illustrator.
Illustrator CS3 has a new import filter that opens native FreeHand MX files. File integrity is quite good, and almost all of your art is preserved and editable. Even multiple page documents are imported quite nicely.
In addition, it seems that Illustrator is starting to take on some of FreeHand’s features, especially in the area of path editing. It’s now easier to select anchor points (they can be set in Preferences to highlight when you mouse over them) and you can use the Direct Selection tool to select a single anchor point, even if the entire object is already selected. Previously, you had to deselect the entire object first. Illustrator CS3 also has an entire preferences panel dedicated to working with anchor points (Figure 12), including the ability to adjust the display size of anchor points and control handles.

Figure 12. The Selection & Anchor Display preferences panel makes it easier to tailor Illustrator’s behavior to your own needs.
Illustrator users often request the ability to crop placed images more easily. In other programs, such as InDesign, you can place an image and then adjust the frame. In Illustrator, you must create a mask, which is not only painful but also harder to edit afterwards. FreeHand users often wish that Illustrator would have a Paste Inside option, which would also make this process easier.
Illustrator CS3 now displays a Mask button in the Control panel when you select placed images. You can click on the button and immediately adjust the mask to your liking, thereby cropping the image with what feels very much like a frame. A toggle in the Control panel for all masks lets you quickly switch between modes that edit either the mask, or the contents of the mask. While not exactly Paste Inside, this is step in the right direction and certainly makes working with masks simpler (Figures 13, 14, and 15).

Figure 13. With any image selected, you can instantly create a mask for it via the Control panel. Click on the image for a larger version.

Figure 14. Once Illustrator creates a mask, you can resize it to effectively crop the photograph. Click on the image for a larger version.

Figure 15. Toggling between Edit Clipping Path and Edit Contents in the Control panel makes it easy to work without masks getting in the way. Click on the image for a larger version.
Removing What You Don’t Want
Illustrator CS3 includes a new vector eraser tool. It acts and feels much like the Paintbrush tool and is pressure-sensitive, which is good for Wacom users (Figure 16). The Eraser works on all vector objects across all layers if no art is selected. If something is selected, only the selected artwork is affected. It’s cool, but it won’t change my life much.

Figure 16. Double-clicking on the Eraser tool brings up the options dialog, which is quite similar to the Calligraphic Brush dialog.
What would change my life is a tool that could crop artwork or images inside Illustrator, much like the Crop tool found in Photoshop. Unfortunately, Illustrator CS3 has no such feature. Illustrator does have a new Crop Area tool, but it defines the areas or portions of a document that are visible when you export artwork for placement into other applications, such as Photoshop or After Effects. A document can contain multiple crop areas, though only one can be active at any time (Figure 17). Illustrator CS3 provides preset sizes for print, web, video, and mobile uses. If you do a lot of video work, the Crop Area tool is useful because it can be set to display pixel aspect ratios and safe areas.

Figure 17. While you can store multiple crop areas within a single document, only once can be active at any one time. Click on the image for a larger version.
It’s All in the Details
More often than not, it’s the little things that matter the most. So I was especially enthused to see that Illustrator CS3 features a laundry list of what can only be defined as cleanup items. These small enhancements are things that have made a difference in how I use Illustrator every day.
Live Trace was a fantastic feature that debuted in version CS2, but it was annoying that the white parts of a black and white trace weren’t transparent. In CS3, Live Trace has a new setting to ignore white.
Illustrator CS2 introduced the ability to double-click on groups to edit them in isolation. An odd gray box would appear to indicate this, and it was non-intuitive. Now, double-clicking a group grays out the rest of the screen, making it easier to edit groups (much like the way Flash behaves). Illustrator now also has a preference setting, should you want to turn off the ability to isolate groups.
The Align panel has received a much-needed upgrade: Its functions now work on individual anchor points. In addition, a new button lets you toggle the Align tools to align to your artboard or to your current crop area. Clipping masks are now correctly aligned, as well.
And finally, the Swatches, Brushes, Symbols, and Graphic Styles panels all now incorporate an easy way to access libraries (Figure 18), whether they come with Illustrator and you create your own. Folder hierarchy is maintained, and once a library is open, you can quickly step through each library using arrows at the bottom of the panel.

Figure 18. Accessing additional libraries (those that ship with Illustrator, as well as ones that you define on your own) are now easily accessible.
Lab Experiments in Illustrator CS3
Two experimental features in Illustrator CS3 are projects from Adobe’s Labs division. The first, called knowhow, defines a new way to access help within Illustrator; the second is called kuler and is a cousin to Adobe’s popular online community around color. Both of these experimental features seem like normal panels, but don’t be fooled by their appearance. They’re actually Flash-based panels with the ability to connect to the Internet and bring lots of interactive goodness directly into Illustrator.
The context-sensitive knowhow panel provides helpful feedback for the current Illustrator tool or function (Figure 19). It lists all keyboard shortcuts, provides links to articles, Web sites, and blogs that are relevant to the tool you’re using.

Figure 19. knowhow provides a complete list of keyboard shortcuts for the currently selected tool.
The kuler panel lets you view RSS feeds from Adobe’s kuler site within Illustrator (Figure 20). You can search kuler, and results from the Web, and then instantly convert a theme of colors into a new color group in the Swatches panel.

Figure 20. Browse color themes from around the world without ever leaving Illustrator.
The Final Word
Illustrator CS3 costs $599, and you can upgrade for $199. In addition, Illustrator CS3 is part of almost all of Adobe’s numerous Creative Suite editions. Refer to https://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite for the different configurations’ pricing.
Illustrator CS3 is a fast, solid release that delivers on all of its promises. While I find Live Color extremely powerful, it isn’t very intuitive. And some features I wanted to see in this version are missing, such as rollovers and hyperlinks for creating interactive PDF documents, and an updated graphing tool, to name a few. But the impressive list of smaller enhancements, the path editing functionality, and the Flash integration are reason enough to upgrade.
 

Pros: Useful new features that include variable-width strokes and a tool to build shapes more easily; innovative Bristle Brush feature; new antialiasing settings create pixel-perfect web graphics; numerous enhancements to artboards; seamless integration with Adobe Flash Catalyst.
Cons: Perspective drawing feature difficult to use; Bristle Brush feature can create artwork that could cause printing issues; some core drawing tools still absent.
Rating: 85 out of 100
For an application that’s more than 25 years old (and remember that computer years are like five times as many as dog years), it’s incredible to see Adobe Illustrator continue to grow with innovative features and useful enhancements. Illustrator is used now more than ever, as it offers a familiar and reliable design environment that can be used to create content for just about any need in just about any medium — be it print, Web, video, or mobile.
Installing Illustrator CS5 ($599 new/$199 upgrade, and in all configurations of Adobe Creative Suite 5) was noticeably improved over previous versions. Adobe has completely rewritten their installer technology; IT managers will now appreciate the ability to silently “push” installations across a network. You’ll be prompted for your Adobe ID during installation — used mainly to help access Adobe’s new CS Live online services — although you can skip that step and enter the information later. Aside from the funky new splash screen (each CS5 product features a different shape), you’ll find that Illustrator CS5 doesn’t look all that different at first glance. But don’t worry, that perception will change in a hurry. Read on.
Ask and Ye Shall Receive
Ask an experienced user for something they’d like to see addressed in a new version of Illustrator and you’ll rarely hear a request for something big. In fact, you’ll find that most users wish for seemingly small things — like adding an extra menu command here or there to help with the everyday tasks — ones that are constantly repeated over and over again. In CS5, Adobe finally addresses numerous “small” requests — with a few innovative twists along the way.
Create a new document in Illustrator CS5 and you’ll notice the ruler’s origin point is positioned at the top left of the document. And when you’re using multiple artboards, each artboard now maintains its own ruler and origin point. Speaking of artboards, you can now assign names to them. A new Artboards panel lets you easily navigate between artboards and rearrange their order. A new Auto-Rotate option in the Print dialog box changes the paper settings to portrait and landscape automatically so that you can print all the artboards in your document at once, even if the artboards have mixed orientations.
Figure 1: A new Artboards panel in Illustrator CS5 makes it much easier to manage documents that contain multiple artboards. Click the image below to open a larger version in a separate window.

Illustrator CS5 even breathes new life into the most basic of functions, like selecting, pasting, and path editing. You can now press and hold the Command (Mac) or Control (Windows) key while making selections to choose objects that appear beneath other objects in the stacking order. And CS5 sports two new paste commands: Paste in Place, which lets you copy an object from one artboard and paste into the exact location on another artboard; and Paste In All Artboards, which does the same — but across all artboards at once. And after 14 versions of being forced to join anchor points two at a time, you can now use the Join command to fuse multiple paths and anchor points with one action.
Illustrator CS5 introduces the concept of drawing modes. In Draw Normal mode, each object that you draw is added above objects in the stacking order. Press Shift-D to toggle to Draw Behind mode and each object you draw will appear beneath other objects in the stacking order. Select any shape and press Shift-D again to enter Draw Inside mode, where anything you do happens inside of the selected object.Basically, Illustrator automatically creates the necessary masks for you. For example, when Draw Inside mode is active, you can use the regular Paste command to paste objects directly into other objects, without having to manually define a mask. This is similar to the Paste Inside feature that Freehand users have longed for.
Figure 2: A dashed border appears around the bounds of an object, indicating that the Draw Inside drawing mode is active.

With each release of Illustrator, the Symbols feature becomes more important and more powerful. Besides being able to work more efficiently, Symbols are also directly compatible with both Flash Professional and Flash Catalyst (Illustrator symbols become Flex optimized graphics when brought into Flash Catalyst). With CS5, symbols now have their own layer structure, like mini documents, and they support individual registration points and 9-slice scaling directly on the Illustrator artboard.
Several raster-based effects, including the oft-used Gaussian Blur, now maintain their appearance even when you change the resolution value in the Effect > Document Raster Effects Settings dialog box. This means you can design at lower resolutions for better performance, then crank up the resolution before you go to print, without negative consequences. It also makes it easier to share content between print and Web documents.
In Illustrator CS4, Adobe added the ability to assign opacity values to individual color stops within a gradient. In CS5, Illustrator can now do the same for individual mesh points in a gradient mesh object.
While all of these items are just small enhancements, they have a huge impact on the bulk of the work you do in Illustrator every day. I covered them here first in my review because in my opinion, they are the most important.
Strokes Get a Complete Overhaul
Looking at past releases of Illustrator, you can point to watershed features like gradients, the Appearance panel, and Pathfinder: things that have dramatically redefined the kinds of art you can create and changed the ways in which you get your work done. With Illustrator CS5, you can add yet another feature to this list: variable width strokes.
Illustrator users often take strokes, the attributes that control the appearance of paths, for granted. While there are settings like dashes, joins, and caps that can change the appearance of a stroke, the most common adjustment we make to strokes is the weight, or the thickness of a stroke. Strokes have always been limited to a single consistent weight that’s distributed along the entire length of a path, but many of us have dreamed of creating strokes with tapered edges or non-uniform weights. In the past, we struggled with tedious workarounds, such as outlining strokes and adjusting anchor points manually, or applying brush strokes with pressure-sensitive pens and tablets.
In Illustrator CS5, you can use the new Width tool to adjust a stroke’s weight along any part of a path, with absolute precision. Normally, Illustrator paints the stroke along the centerline of the path, but using the Width tool, you can easily add or remove thickness from both sides of the path individually. As you click and drag with the Width tool, Illustrator defines width points that define the overall appearance of the stroke. You can double-click on these width points to enter precise measurements, and you can also drag width points along a path to make adjustments. And then there’s the best part: all of the width points applied to a path make up something called a width profile, which you can save and easily apply to other paths.
Figure 3: When using the Width tool to adjust the thickness of a stroke along a path, Smart Guides give you precise values.

As an added benefit, you can also use the Width tool to add width profiles to Art and Pattern brushes. You can now also define “stretchable” areas in Art brushes, so that they scale intelligently.
In addition to the Width tool and width profiles, Adobe also enhanced the way that dashes are applied to strokes (corners now line up evenly). And instead of having to add and modify effects, you can now specify arrowheads as a stroke attribute directly from the Stroke panel (much like InDesign). You can instantly flip an arrowhead from one side of a path to another, and you can even define your own custom arrowheads.
Figure 4: An updated Stroke panel allows you to easily add a width profile and apply perfectly aligned dashes along any path.

Adobe likes to refer to all of these stroke settings and enhancements as “Beautiful Strokes” and it’s hard to disagree.
Bob Ross Lives on in Illustrator CS5
Illustrator has had a Paintbrush tool since version 8, but it resembles a real paintbrush tool about as much as the Pen tool resembles a real pen. In past versions, Illustrator supported four kinds of brushes: calligraphic, art, scatter, and pattern. CS5 adds a fifth type called Bristle Brush, which simulates the bristles of an artist’s brush.
The underlying engine for Bristle Brush is the same as the new Bristle Tips feature in Photoshop CS5, but with Illustrator, you paint with vectors instead of pixels. Still, it’s possible to achieve painterly effects with Bristle Brush even if you’ve never painted before, though you may want to watch a few Bob Ross DVDs. You can define shaped brushes that mimic traditional brushes (fan, round, angle, etc.), and you have absolute control over a brush’s characteristics including bristle length, density, thickness, and stiffness. With so many variables, there’s no limit to what you can create with Bristle Brush. I’ve enjoyed creating artwork ranging from Japanese calligraphy to watercolor paintings.
Figure 5: With Bristle Brush, you can create a variety of effects, such as the leaves on this cypress tree, as well as the painterly sky in the background. Click the image below to open a larger version in a separate window.

The only downside is that to achieve painterly effects with vector paths, Bristle Brush uses transparency settings on multiple overlapping paths. This can sometimes create incredibly complex files that could cause problems during the printing process. If a file contains a significant amount of Bristle Brush strokes, Adobe suggests rasterizing the artwork before printing.
To get the most out of Illustrator’s new Bristle Brush, you’ll want to use a pressure-sensitive tablet. Bristle Brush also offers additional support for Wacom’s 6D Art Pen, which is available for both Intuos3 and Intuos4 tablets.
Draw Artwork in Perspective
Artists who need to create artwork in perspective often spend time manually drawing complex grids with horizon lines and vanishing points to ensure correct angles and positioning. Then they spend even more time carefully drawing artwork to line up correctly with the grids. Once such artwork is created, it’s difficult to adjust or edit the artwork without adjusting the entire perspective, as well.
In Illustrator CS5, Adobe adds a complete Perspective Grid feature that lets you quickly define a 1-, 2-, or 3-point perspective grid with adjustable horizon lines, perspective planes, and vanishing points. Once you’ve defined a perspective grid, Illustrator’s basic drawing tools draw shapes that are constrained to the perspective grid. A new Perspective Selection tool allows you to move and scale objects while keeping the proper perspective, and you can also use the tool to take existing flat art and snap it into proper perspective. An innovative on-screen widget also appears when you’re editing artwork in perspective to help you choose which perspective plane you want artwork to snap to. You can even move artwork from one perspective plane to another, making it snap from one perspective angle to another.
Figure 6: With the Perspective Grid feature in Illustrator CS5, you can draw and edit artwork — even work with text — to create illustrations that automatically distort to vanishing points that you define. Click the image below to open a larger version in a separate window.

Defining a perspective grid in Illustrator is easy enough, but as you start to draw and incorporate artwork, using the perspective features become increasingly difficult. A single document can contain a mixture of artwork — some attached to a perspective plane and some not — but there is no way to tell which is which, making it confusing to know when to use the Selection tool or the Perspective Selection tool. Some techniques, such as moving art between perspective planes, are only possible using keyboard shortcuts while simultaneously using the mouse.
For complex illustrations that need to be drawn in perspective, the Perspective Grid feature might be useful, but if you have to quickly add perspective to a few elements in your illustration, you’ll probably find it faster and easier to use features that Illustrator has had for quite some time, such as Envelope Distort, or the 3D or Distort effects.
Build Artwork Faster than Ever
Most experienced Illustrator users know that it can be a lot easier to create artwork by using Pathfinder functions to combine, subtract, or divide multiple objects. If you think about building artwork instead of drawing artwork, you can generate complex designs more efficiently.
However, even experienced Illustrator users often become frustrated with the Pathfinder panel. It takes up extra space on the screen, and it can be difficult to remember which button applies which effect. In CS2, Adobe added the Live Paint feature to help designers build artwork more efficiently, but Live Paint required the use of special groups, which confused many users.
In Illustrator CS5, Adobe adds a new Shape Builder tool that lets you apply the most-used Pathfinder commands (Add/Unite and Subtract/Minus Front) visually. Simply select several shapes and drag across them with the tool to unite them into a single shape, or perform the same action while holding the Option (Mac) or Alt (Windows) key to subtract or remove artwork. There are even options to make the Shape Builder tool behave similarly to the Live Paintbucket tool, allowing you to apply color to objects as you perform Add and Subtract functions.
Figure 7: When you start with basic shapes, you can use the new Shape Builder tool in Illustrator CS5 to combine the shapes to quickly create more complex artwork.

I’ll admit that when I first saw this tool, I didn’t think I’d find much use in it, as I’ve already come to rely heavily on Live Paint and even basic Pathfinder functions. However, I’m using the Shape Builder tool again and again. It’s really so much faster and more intuitive. I’ve dubbed the Shape Builder tool as the sleeper feature in Illustrator CS5.
Go to page 2 for Mordy’s take on Illustrator CS5’s new features for Web design and collaborative workflows, and for his overall buying advice.

Editor’s note: We are refreshing our oldest and most popular posts with updated information and screenshots. This post on the InDesign/Illustrator/Photoshop was originally published in 2013. For the most current comments, scroll to the bottom of the page.

When you move text between InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop, you typically have several goals:

1. First, you want the text to stay editable. If the text gets converted into paths, you won’t be able to edit it as text any more.
2. Next, you usually want the formatting to remain the same. If text was Minion Pro Bold in Illustrator, you probably want it to stay the same in InDesign.
3. Finally, it would be super-duper if paragraph and character styles remain applied to the text.

But accomplishing all these goals is easier said than done.

Moving text from Illustrator to InDesign

For some reason, this is the most commonly requested translation. Perhaps it’s because people start with an Illustrator file and then realize they need more of InDesign’s layout features like master pages, auto-numbering, etc.

I’ve tried many ways to get text from Illustrator into InDesign while still retaining the formatting. A simple copy/paste of the Illustrator frame holding the text results in an embedded—and unlinked and uneditable—EPS image of the text in InDesign. Selecting the text in Illustrator and pasting it into InDesign brings in plain text, as does exporting as a .txt file from Illustrator.

The CC Libraries method

Since this post was first published, InDesign introduced CC Libraries, designed to share digital assets from program to program. You would think CC Libraries would be the solution—and it is! Well, sort of.

What happens when you move your content from Illustrator into a CC Library and then drag it into InDesign? Well, if your layout has more than one text object, you will get the equivalent of a linked Illustrator document. But if you drag a single text object from Illustrator to the Library to your InDesign document, you will get the editable text you are seeking!

So with that in mind, you can replicate your layout with this method:

1. Drag every text block as a separate element into the CC Library, along with artwork that you want to replicate.
   
2. Select all the objects in your Illustrator layout and drag the whole enchilada into the CC Library.
3. Create your InDesign document.
4. Open your CC Library and place the full Illustrator layout on a temporary nonprinting layer, then lock it.
5. Create a working layer. (Make sure it’s above the nonprinting one.)
6. Drag each of the Illustrator text blocks from the CC Library into InDesign, using the locked layer as a guide for positioning them.
7. When you are finished, hide or delete the temporary layer.

Note that the text, when placed in InDesign, will not pick up the exact hyphenation and justification defaults from Illustrator—your line endings will vary.

Also note that while the text reflows in InDesign using this method, your text is still linked to Illustrator, unless and until you use the Unlink command in the Links panel menu. If you select Edit Original in the Links panel and open the file in Illustrator, you can edit the text, and the edits will be linked back to InDesign.

The Acrobat method

You may have some success with the following technique using Acrobat as a translator.

1. Save the Illustrator file as a PDF.
2. Open the PDF in Acrobat.
3. Choose Save As and then choose Rich Text Format.
4. In InDesign, choose Place and then select the RTF document.
5. Flow the text into InDesign.

This creates a reasonably good translation of the text. There may be some problems with local overrides changing some character and paragraph styles; but for the most part, the route is very good.

However, if you’re dealing with a lot of intensive point text, such as a road map, this technique will likely not work. The RTF text that comes out of Acrobat will likely be much too jumbled to be of any use.

Pay special attention to text you convert and export from PDFs. Acrobat silently scans and reads text in non-text-based documents like scans of old books so the documents can be searched. You could end up with live text in your project that was created silently in Acrobat by optical character recognition (OCR).

Intensive point text in Illustrator does not convert into RTF correctly. In fact, some text, such as the name Benton Harbor in the upper left corner, has been translated into “Bentan Harbor.”

Moving text from InDesign to Illustrator

Things are nearly just as problematic moving text from InDesign to Illustrator. If you select a text frame in InDesign; copy it; and then paste it into Illustrator, the formatting is maintained. In fact, things like underlines seem to be translated over.

Unfortunately this is an illusion. Select all the text with the Selection tool in Illustrator and look at the result. Instead of area text inside a frame, the text has been pasted as multiple point text objects. And underlines are actual lines drawn under the text, not real underlines. This makes it almost impossible to make significant edits to the text.

A text frame in InDesign

Text pasted from InDesign into Illustrator. Notice all the individual points.

The Acrobat method

Fortunately, the same Acrobat trick works for InDesign to Illustrator.

1. Export the file from InDesign as a PDF.
2. Open the PDF in Acrobat.
3. Choose Save As and then choose Rich Text Format.
4. In Illustrator, choose Place and then select the RTF document.
5. Flow the text into Illustrator.

Formatting that gets lost

InDesign offers character and paragraph formatting that Illustrator can’t match. Something as simple as rules above and below paragraphs have no equivalents over on the Illustrator side. Similarly, Illustrator’s Touch Type tool allows you to modify text in ways that InDesign can’t.

Moving Text From InDesign or Illustrator to Photoshop

Things are not quite as bleak when it comes to getting formatted text into Photoshop. You can copy and paste from Illustrator into a Photoshop text area and the text formatting—even underlines—comes along. And while it once was true that you couldn’t copy and paste text from InDesign into Photoshop while retaining the formatting, that is no longer the case.

And when you place content from CC Libraries into Photoshop from Illustrator or InDesign, it comes into the document as a Smart Object, linked to the original.

You could, I suppose, use the InDesign-Acrobat-Illustrator trick to then copy/paste into Photoshop, but the real question is: Why are you doing so much text work in Photoshop? You are almost certain to be better off working with the text in InDesign.

Moving text from Photoshop to InDesign or Illustrator

In a newspaper or magazine workflow, it’s not unheard of to find ads submitted by customers who, as time ticks toward deadline, need an urgent and extensive change—only to find that the ad was originally built by the client in Photoshop.

Usually the best thing in the world is to get that ad into InDesign. But that’s not going to happen directly! Not with cutting and pasting, not with dragging and dropping, not with CC Libraries. (You can get as far as placing individual objects from Photoshop as linked graphics in InDesign via CC Libraries, but unlike the workarounds with text going to and from Illustrator and InDesign, you’re not going to get any sort of editable text.)

But here’s what you can do: Open the Photoshop file in Illustrator. Then use some of the techniques we’ve covered earlier.

Plan ahead when working with text

Since there are stumbling blocks in moving text around the three segments of InDe-Illu-Shop, you really need to plan ahead as to which application you want to use for working with text. Pick the one that has the right features for your work.

• InDesign has the most extensive options for working with automatic formatting using nested styles and GREP styles. It also has extensive table features for arranging and formatting information in rows and columns. So you’re going to want to use InDesign for most long-text print work.
• Illustrator offers the most features for specialty text such as type on a path, vertical area text, and the Touch Type tool, which lets you push, pull, raise, lower, and rotate individual glyphs without converting them to anchored objects. This makes it excellent for working with small print projects such as CD covers and package labels.

  

  Illustrator’s Touch Type tool lets you modify specialty text while it is still in the story.

• Photoshop offers specialty anti-aliasing such as crisp and sharp for text that will be viewed on the web. It is possible to create small projects like advertisements or flyers, but it is not built for print production.

So when it comes to working with text, the best advice is try to plan ahead and start with the right application so you don’t find yourself needing to move the text in the first place.

As users of Adobe software, we have access to a virtual smorgasbord of apps and services in Creative Cloud. But in practice many of us spend the bulk of our time and effort in one program, dipping into the others only when necessary. If you use InDesign almost exclusively, you might feel uncomfortable when you’re asked to do something in Illustrator, where a simple double-click in the wrong spot can be disorienting. But I’m here to tell you that even if you’re a total Illustrator newbie, you can create artwork with the InDesign skills you already have. So, let’s step outside of InDesign into Illustrator to discover all it has to offer page layout professionals.

Familiar Tools and Panels

Illustrator, InDesign, and other applications in Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite have numerous common tools. As a first step, launch Illustrator and create a new document of any size.

Click on the three dots at the bottom of the Illustrator Toolbar, which by default is along the left side of the application window (just like in InDesign). Next, from the upper-right-corner flyout menu choose Advanced. You should now have a two-column Toolbar (Figure 1). 

Several of the tools should be familiar to you from InDesign:

• The Selection and Direct Selection arrows
• The Pen tool and its group are the same as in InDesign, including Add Point, Delete Point, and Convert Direction which is called the Anchor Point tool here
• The Type tool group
• The Line Segment tool, known as the Line tool in InDesign, grouped with tools for making grids, arcs, and spirals
• The Rectangle tool and its group of other Shape tools
• The Rotate, Scale and Free Transform tools are separate, unlike in InDesign where they are all grouped under Free Transform
• The Gradient Tool (somewhat different from InDesign’s Gradient Swatch tool)
• The Hand and Zoom tools

Other InDesign tool counterparts are here too, but are grouped with other tools, so click-and-hold to find them:

• The Pencil is under the Shaper Tool (the one right under the Rectangle Tool), as are the Smooth and Erase Path tools
• The Scissors is under the Eraser tool
• The Shear tool is under the Scale tool

Saving Illustrator files for Use in InDesign

Before you begin exploring the tools and creating artwork, here’s how to save an Illustrator file for placement in InDesign.

Once there is artwork on your artboard (anything at all—a filled shape or stroked line will do), choose File > Save. You may be prompted to save to Creative Cloud. For now, opt to save locally, and you’ll see a standard Save dialog box. The default Illustrator file format (AI) works in InDesign, provided you turn on the necessary option. After you click Save, you’re prompted to specify options for the file: Be sure to leave Create PDF Compatible file checked! Otherwise, you won’t see the artwork preview in your InDesign file.

Now let’s create some Illustrator artwork!

Illustrator Tools to Help You Create Things

Illustrator has many tools in common with InDesign. The Illustrator versions of the tools have added capabilities, and some function differently than they do in our favorite page layout application. In all cases, I encourage you to experiment; you will be pleasantly surprised by how much you can do with artwork using Illustrator’s tools.

Type tools

Illustrator has a several extra Type tools that are not available in InDesign (Figure 2). The default Type tool creates floating text, known as Point Type, anywhere you click with it on the artboard. Click and drag instead, and you get a frame filled with Lorem Ipsum text. Don’t you wish InDesign had that option?

The Type on a Path tool is like InDesign’s; Click on a path and start typing. Hold down Ctrl/Command and click the text: An extra control appears in the middle of it, the Center Control Bracket. You can drag this to reposition the text along the path, and to flip the text. Additional controls for text on a path are under Type > Type on a Path.

Next is the Area Type tool: It’s for adding text inside a shape, as shapes are not recognized automatically as frames the way they are in InDesign. Select the Rectangle tool and draw one, then click it with the Area Type tool. Now you can start typing within the rectangle.

Use the Vertical Type tools to stack the letters of your text on top of one another, as you might see on a sign. Click for floating text or click and drag to create a text frame. You can also click on any existing shape with the Area Vertical Type tool to start filling it with stacked text (Figure 3).

With the Touch Type tool you can select individual glyphs in any live text and move them around—nudge them up or down and rotate them—all while keeping the text editable. It’s a great way to add character to headlines and short runs of text (Figure 4). Check out this video to see the Touch Type tool in action, and this video to see some awesome shortcuts for switching between Illustrator’s many type tools.

Line tools

Next, view the tools in the Line (Segment) tool group. In InDesign this is a solo tool, but here in Illustrator you have four more, and they are all easy to use (Figure 5). Try the Arc tool to create smooth curves. Hold down Shift while drawing with this tool to create perfect circle-quarters and drag in different directions to alter how the arcs are rendered. Tap the Up and Down Arrow keys while drawing arcs to flatten or round their curvature.

The Grid and Polar Grid tools can save you a lot of time as compared to InDesign, where you’d have to build them piece-by-piece. Tap the Up, Down, Left or Right keys as you drag out a grid. The number of grid lines will change as the mouse button is held down while tapping these keys.  

The Spiral tool is another fun one. You can quickly create multiple spirals with different stroke weights and colors to make a decoration. Tap the Up or Down Arrow keys to add or reduce spiral segments while drawing. Find Color and Stroke Weight controls in the Properties panel or choose Window > Stroke and Window > Color to bring up separate panels for these attributes.

To create some trippy art, start dragging out a spiral, hold down the Tilde (~) key, and keep dragging. Whoa!

All the Line group tools and most others in Illustrator have options: Double-click a tool in the Toolbar or press Enter/Return while a tool is active to bring up its Options dialog box. Notice how much control Illustrator gives you—unmatched in InDesign!

Shape tools

The Rectangle tool group includes Ellipse and Polygon tools, just like InDesign. The additional tools are Rounded Rectangle, Star, and Flare. Try them out to create a variety of shapes.

When creating rectangles and polygons, you will notice little circles appearing in the shape’s corners: These are Corner Widgets. Click one and drag to alter all the corners. Click twice to select a single corner for editing. Choose View > Hide Corner Widget if they’re distracting or you find yourself editing corners by accident (Figure 6).

Just as with the Spiral tool, the arrow keys work with the Shape tools. In InDesign, the arrow keys let you create rows and columns of multiple shapes. In Illustrator, tapping arrows while drawing shapes will increase or decrease the number of sides on a polygon and the number of points on a star.

With the Star tool You can also hold down the Alt/Option and Ctrl/Command keys while dragging. Alt/Option constrains the angles, while Ctrl/Command enables you to lengthen or shorten the points, all while you’re still holding down the mouse button. And remember that you can double-click any of the shape tools or press Enter/Return while they’re active for options.

That Tilde (~) key trick with the Spiral tool works with Illustrator’s other shape tools, too! Have fun creating instant, elaborate shape compositions.

The Flare tool is really not that useful, so you can safely ignore it. But if you’re curious, feel free to experiment with it, and for best results create your flares over a filled shape.

Gradients

The Gradient tool is reminiscent of its counterpart in InDesign. However, there are more gradient options in Illustrator that are controlled mainly by the Gradient panel. 

Start with a shape, and keep it selected. Bring up the Gradient panel by choosing Window > Gradient. Click the Gradient swatch in the panel to activate it and apply it to your shape with Fill targeted. Just like in InDesign, the default is a linear gradient. The Gradient panel works while any tool is selected. Click the Gradient tool in the Toolbar (or press G) to reveal the helpful Gradient Annotator. You drag across a shape to re-orient linear and radial gradients, and the Annotator lets you directly edit color stops. 

At the top of the Gradient panel, you’ll see the Linear and Radial gradient Types, and a third that’s only available in Illustrator: Freeform. Click a Type icon to change the gradient, then you can add or remove gradient stops and apply colors to them.

Try a freeform gradient to make an interesting fill that’s not possible with InDesign’s gradient tool. With the Gradient tool active you can edit freeform gradient stops directly in the filled shape; Expand or shrink the stops to control color spread. Reposition stops by dragging them. Click to add new ones or press Delete on your keyboard to delete an active stop. Back in the Gradients panel switch the Freeform Gradient Draw mode from Points to Lines and the stops will adhere to a path. This can be helpful for more easily following the contours of a shape (Figure 7). For a deep dive into designing with gradients, check out Issue #145 of InDesign Magazine.

Illustrator Panels with Artwork You Can Use

We’ve discussed the creative possibilities of the tools that Illustrator has in common with InDesign. Illustrator also has features that can create and modify artwork for you, with the ease of clicking in a panel—no drawing skills necessary. The following four panels all have a Library button in the lower-left corner (Figure 8). 

Use this button to access collections of pre-made artwork. Alternatively, you can Choose Window > Brush Libraries/Graphic Style Libraries/Swatch Libraries/Symbol Libraries to access these collections. Let’s look at each panel and what it offers.

Patterns in the Swatches panel

Open the Swatches panel by choosing Window > Swatches. In addition to colors and gradients, Illustrator has a swatch type not found in InDesign: Patterns.

Patterns are perfect for filling shapes and decorating areas of your InDesign pages with pleasing repeating motifs. I recently wrote an entire article about patterns for beginners, and Carlos Garro has an article on more advanced pattern techniques later in this issue.

Creating a repeating pattern is as easy as dragging shapes from the artboard into the Swatches panel. However, there’s a collection of pre-made patterns included with the application. 

Click the Library button in the lower-left corner of the panel and choose Patterns to explore the three categories of libraries included with Illustrator. Opening a pattern library displays it in its own panel. Select one or more swatches and choose Add to Swatches from the library’s panel menu to place them into your active document. Pattern swatches are added to your document from any library as you apply them to artwork, even if you later change your mind and use a different pattern.

Brushes

Brushes let you apply a pen-stroke, painted look, or a pattern to an Illustrator path. Brushstrokes work on lines or shapes, whether open or closed. You can also draw free-form paths with the Brush tool. Creating your own brushes can be a lot of work. To learn how, see this article on CreativePro.

An easy way to use brushes is by simply applying them to existing artwork. Open the Brushes panel by choosing Window > Brushes, then open a Brushes Library from the Library button. There are many brush types to choose from! Among these is a Borders collection with many pattern brushes you can use to create decorative frames for InDesign projects (Figure 9).

With selected artwork on your artboard, just click a brush in the panel and watch how the path transforms. Like pattern swatches, brush types that are applied to your artwork will get added to the document’s Brushes panel. 

Experiment further with stroke and fill attributes of your brushed objects. Some brushes let you change the path color, others are unaffected. You can edit stroke weight to make the brush effect larger or smaller along the path.

Symbols

Symbols are pre-made graphics you can place individually, or in multiples to create artwork such as foliage and raindrops. As with brushes and patterns, there are multiple symbol libraries included with Illustrator. Arrows, map symbols, and chart shapes are just three of the over two dozen symbol libraries that ship with Illustrator.

Open the Symbols panel by choosing Window > Symbols. Click the Library button in the lower-left corner to find the many available symbol collections. Open one or several.

Drag a symbol from the panel onto your artboard for instant artwork. To apply multiple symbols you can use the Symbol Sprayer tool (not mentioned above): It’s the one under the Eyedropper (Figure 10).

 

Try out the Symbol Sprayer and the other Symbol tools in its group. Multiple symbols placed with the Sprayer remain in a special symbol group; You can move them together with either the Selection or Direct Selection tool.

Whether you dragged a symbol directly onto the artboard or applied many with the Symbol Sprayer, you will see exactly what you rendered when placing the Illustrator file in InDesign.

Learn how to create and use symbols in my October 2021 tutorial on CreativePro.

Graphic styles

Illustrator’s graphic styles are not unlike object styles in InDesign: They let you apply multiple transformations, fills, and strokes with a single click to objects or to live text. 

Type some text on your Illustrator artboard. Open the Graphic Style panel by choosing Window > Graphic Styles. Now click a graphic style thumbnail in the panel, and voila! More instant artwork. And here’s a tip: Alt/Option-click a thumbnail to add to the style without replacing what’s already applied. You can create elaborate looking artwork by applying multiple graphic styles this way.

Once again—as with brushes, symbols, and patterns—there’s a trove of graphic styles available in Illustrator’s included libraries. Use the Library button in the panel or choose Window > Graphic Style Libraries to open new panels with a variety of ready-to-use graphic styles.

Learn even more about creating and using graphic styles on CreativePro.

Back to InDesign

I hope you enjoyed discovering all the artwork Illustrator includes, and the additional capabilities it offers via otherwise familiar tools. As you can see, it’s not necessary to know how to draw or illustrate to use these features. Now you can jump into Illustrator, create artwork quickly, save it, and place it back in your InDesign file. Your documents will look better than ever!

For a whole lot more on Illustrator from the perspective of an InDesign user, check out Issues #110 and #147 of InDesign Magazine!

Pros: 64-bit support, fun-to-use pattern feature, significantly better performance with certain files, gradients on stroke, and better results with image tracing.

Cons: Updated user interface uses more space, making for limited real estate on lower resolution displays. Image tracing still relies on confusing settings.

Score: 99 out of 100

It’s hard to believe that 25 years ago, Adobe Illustrator came on the scene, playing a significant part in redefining the design and publishing industry. Today, Illustrator continues to be an integral part of a designer’s modern toolkit. In previous versions though, Illustrator’s underlying technology wasn’t nearly as modern, and those who rely heavily on this powerhouse vector application are familiar with trying performance and untimely crashes. With a new 64-bit architecture in version CS6, the promise of a faster and more stable version of Illustrator has summoned the interest of many. Does it live up to the hype? Let’s take a closer look.

First impressions

If you purchase Illustrator CS6 either as a part of one of Adobe’s Creative Suite packages or as a standalone application, you’ll be taken through the usual installation process. I decided to upgrade my Adobe applications via an Adobe Creative Cloud membership, so the installation process of Illustrator CS6 was virtually transparent. A single click on the install button in the Adobe Application Manager and Adobe Illustrator CS6 was being installed in the background (the application is downloaded from the Internet and then installed on your computer). A few minutes later, I was able to launch the new version of Illustrator on my desktop.

When you launch Illustrator CS6, you’re greeted with the new “dark user interface.” While it has a modern feel to it, you’re free to adjust the brightness of the interface to your liking, via a setting in Preferences. I find that when I’m working in darker environments, the dark UI blends into my environment letting me focus on my artwork. In brighter environments (like well-lit studios), using a brighter setting will probably feel more comfortable.

IMAGE 1. Illustrator CS6 features the “dark” user interface, similar to what’s in Photoshop CS6, After Effects, and Premiere Pro. Click the image for a larger version.

Illustrator CS6 has more than just a fresh coat of paint. Due to the 64-bit work that was done in Illustrator (more on that in a moment), Adobe had to move to a completely new user interface infrastructure, meaning that every single panel and dialog box had to be rewritten. In the process, Adobe made some improvements, such as an easier-to-navigate Preferences dialog box, a more consistent Control panel, a redesigned Color panel featuring a larger color ramp and a hexadecimal field for working with web colors, and more. While these design changes are welcome, the new user interface elements (check boxes, buttons, etc.) are a few pixels larger than in previous version, resulting in a user interface that takes up more screen real estate. Those working on lower resolution monitors may feel the crunch.

The new user interface infrastructure also supports more functionality. So you can now double-click on and edit text directly in any panel, allowing you to name things like brushes or swatches with ease. The same applies for layers, so you’re running out of excuses to name the layers in your documents. And if you select a text object on the artboard and then highlight the Font field in the Control or Character panel, you can simply tap the up and down arrow keys to cycle through your fonts while watching the text update—great for choosing that perfect typeface for the logo you’re working on.

IMAGE 2. Double-clicking on text inside of panels — such as the name of a Layer — lets you edit in context.

Perhaps more noticeable than the user interface itself, Illustrator CS6 just seems… snappy. The application responds and performs like a well-oiled machine—likely a result of all the code that was rewritten in order to make Illustrator a 64-bit application.

64-bit

Illustrator CS6 is a 64-bit application, which ultimately means that it has the ability to access and use as much RAM as you can throw at it. That’s good news for anyone who has faced those “not enough memory to complete operation” or “PDF is having difficulties” errors that have plagued Illustrator in the past. 64-bit doesn’t mean Illustrator is faster (although we’ll talk more about that shortly), but ultimately, the result is a far more stable application. If you want more information on exactly what a 64-bit version of Illustrator means for you, I wrote up some detailed information here.

Gaussian Blur

If you thought getting into an argument about how to pronounce GIF was fun, wait until you’ve observed a passionate discussion about the proper pronunciation of Gaussian Blur. It’s why my friends often refer to it simply as G-blur. Call it what you may, the Gaussian Blur effect is all-new in Illustrator CS6.

It’s used often enough, especially by those who like to create “shading layers” by applying Gaussian Blur effects to objects with different blend modes and opacity levels. The Gaussian Blur dialog box has also been updated to include a Preview option so that you can experiment with different values without having to reapply the effect ad nauseum.

A brand new Gaussian Blur effect in Illustrator offers a tremendous performance boost overall — because the effect is used within other effects. Drop Shadow, Outer Glow, and Inner Glow all use the Gaussian Blur effect to process their soft appearances. So documents that use any of these effects will see huge improvements in speed.

For example, I opened a rather complex document that used a lot of objects with various Gaussian Blurs to simulate shading. I then converted all of the Gaussian Blur effects to the new Gaussian Blur effect in CS6. Then, I compared the performance of the same file in Illustrator CS5 and Illustrator CS6. After selecting all the artwork, I scaled the artwork up in size 500% and measured the results: 21 seconds in Illustrator CS5, compared to 7 seconds in CS6. That’s a significant difference, especially if you can imagine doing that several times a day, day after day.

Patterns

Creating seamless pattern tiles in Illustrator can be fun—as fun as using the Pen tool that is. I think at some point, anyone who has spent some amount of time using Illustrator has tried to create seamless pattern fills. But the process was plagued with two main issues. First, you had no easy way to preview how your pattern tile was going to repeat—forcing you to constantly define, apply, edit, and then reapply constantly until you got it right. Secondly, the process of editing a pattern was anything but intuitive. Even if you were able to finally create your pattern, you certainly lost your creative drive to then iterate on your pattern, experimenting and ultimately improving upon it.

In stark contrast, creating seamless patterns with Illustrator CS6 is fun and easy. I found myself spending time not only creating new seamless patterns, but even taking the time to experiment with different repeating options and creative variations.

IMAGE 3. When in Pattern Definition Mode, you can adjust your artwork and various settings in the Pattern Options panel to experiment with, and perfect your seamless pattern. In this example, the artwork in the center is the original art that I created, and the dimmed copies around it are automatically generated by Illustrator to help visualize how the pattern will repeat. Click the image for a larger version.

Simply select artwork and choose Object > Pattern > Make to enter the new Pattern Definition Mode. Patterns that you create are automatically added to the Swatches panel. The best part of all? To edit an existing pattern, simply double-click the pattern swatch in the Swatches panel.

Gradient on Stroke

Every release of Illustrator has a “finally” feature. You know what I’m talking about—a feature that makes you exclaim “finally!” when you hear about it. Gradients, added back in version 5 (that’s 5, not CS5), have always been available only as a fill attribute. Designers have long expressed their desire to apply gradients as a stroke attribute as well. Over the years, gradients have seen numerous improvements, including Gradient Mesh and the ability to specify Opacity values for gradient color stops.

In Illustrator CS6, you can now apply a gradient (linear or radial) as a stroke attribute. Admittedly, at first blush, the feature seems pretty simple. Once you assign a gradient to a stroke, you can use settings in the Gradient panel to specify whether the gradient is applied within the stroke, along the stroke, or across the stroke. Then it occurs to you that in CS5, Adobe added variable widths to strokes, and your mind starts to wonder… variable widths, the appearance panel’s ability to add multiple strokes to a single object, transparency stops in gradients… oh MY —the things you can do with gradients on a stroke! Perhaps the coolest things I’ve noticed is that if you apply a gradient to a stroke and you then expand the appearance of that stroke, Illustrator generates a gradient mesh object.

Image Trace…. Third time’s a charm?

Creating vector artwork is a tedious and time-consuming task. Which is why since the advent of computer graphics, man has been on a quest for a one-click solution to convert pixel-based artwork into ready-to-use vector artwork. In the beginning, there was Adobe Streamline — a separate utility that generated artwork with so many anchor points that it was often faster to use the Pen tool to draw the art from scratch than to try manually cleaning it up (I actually credit Streamline as being the reason for why I became adept at using the Pen tool).

In Illustrator CS2, Adobe tossed Streamline to the wayside and wrote an entire new tracing engine, dubbed Live Trace. While Live Trace offered some interesting capabilities, it still was far from perfect, and getting usable results was hit or miss. Attempting to tweak the results of a Live Trace by adjusting its cryptic settings more often than not was an exercise in frustration. Image tracing is always a highly requested feature, and the fact that requests were still coming in even with Live Trace out there was indication that something else had to be done.

So for Illustrator CS6, Adobe’s engineers revisited image tracing, tossing Live Trace aside (that feature has been removed from Illustrator). Starting all over again, they developed a new feature called Image Trace, with a goal to deliver better tracing results and an improved user interface. Were they successful? Let’s take a closer look.

There’s no question that with the new underlying architecture and the new tracing algorithms, Image Trace is both faster in raw tracing time and produces better results than the older Live Trace feature.

I used three different images, simulating three different workflows, to compare the new Image Trace in CS6 with the older Live Trace feature in CS5. Let’s take a look at my findings:

IMAGE 4: The most simple of tests, I took a Photoshop image (center) that would simulate perhaps scanning and tracing a logo, using just black and white.
Using the Default preset in CS5, I got 4 paths, and 122 anchors (left). Using the Default preset in CS6, I got 4 paths, and 184 anchors (right). Click the image for a larger version.

IMAGE 5: Here I used a photo (center) to generate a stylized illustration. Using the Color 16 preset in CS5, I got 1,702 paths, 15,906 anchors, and it took 4 seconds to complete the trace (left). Using the 16 Colors preset in Illustrator CS6, I got 958 paths, 12,155 anchors, and it took 21 seconds to complete the trace (right). I was surprised to see how much longer Illustrator CS6 needed to complete the trace, although it did result in much fewer paths and anchor points. Click the image for a larger version.

IMAGE 6: Here I traced an image (center) with the hopes of achieving a photorealistic result. Using the Photo High Fidelity preset in CS5, I got 4,704 paths, 31,838 anchors, and it took 4 seconds to complete the trace (left). Using the High Fidelity Photo setting in CS6, I got 3,281 paths, 26,139 anchors, and it took 8 seconds to complete the trace (right). Click the image for a larger version.

Whereas the Live Trace feature settings in CS5 were located in a modal dialog box, the Image Trace settings are now found in a convenient panel, making it possible to easily make changes to your trace as you work. The panel can be docked and collapsed to an icon, just like others in the user interface.

There are some really nice amenities in this new panel, like a button that you can click and hold to see the original source image. When you release it, the trace result returns. This makes it really easy to compare the original pixel version to the traced vector version.

You can now also choose to trace your artwork using a method where paths slightly overlap each other — similar to how trapping works. This results in smooth transitions of color between traced objects, and no white gaps that may appear due to antialiasing. It’s also especially helpful when you need to make small tweaks to the artwork after expanding.

And yet despite all these gains, the panel is filled with many settings that are difficult to use or understand.

For example, there are six presets across the top of the panel that are depicted as buttons. Yet directly beneath these six icons is a popup menu that contains additional presets. The presets represented by the icons aren’t present in the popup menu, which seems inconsistent (unless the User Experience designers at Adobe think that making me figure out what six different icons represent is “simpler” than listing an easy-to-understand name in a popup menu). You’d think they’d have learned from the Pathfinder panel where most people just click on each button and press undo until they see the result they are looking for. Photoshop’s Adjustment panel suffers from the same iconic issues. Adobe’s user interface designers must be paid by the icon.

Not to keep harping on the User Experience team at Adobe (ok, I guess I am) — but they seem to think that if a feature has too many settings, they can make it “easier to use” by simply hiding half the settings in an “Advanced” tab. In my humble opinion, there’s nothing “Advanced” about getting the perfect tracing result. Unless of course Adobe means “Advanced” refers to the level of intelligence you need to have in order to understand the settings, in which case, they are dead on. The controls for specifying the number of paths or corners used in the trace are measured in percentages, making it nearly impossible to control precisely.

IMAGE 7. A comparison of the old Live Trace feature (left), the “simplified” version of the new Image Trace panel in CS6 (center), and the expanded version of the same panel with the Advanced features visible (right). Click the image for a larger version.

Ultimately from an ease-of-use perspective, the new Image Trace is just as bewildering to use than the old Live Trace was. In a vector application where precision is expected, the experience of tracing artwork is more like trying to predict the weather. At the same time, the results speak for themselves—tracing is faster and offers better results.

Pantone Libraries

Illustrator CS6 features a new collection of Pantone libraries, what Pantone refers to as their Plus collection (visit www.pantone.com for more information). The CS6 versions of Photoshop and InDesign also contain these updated libraries. It’s important to realize that Pantone changed some of the CMYK and RGB color definitions, so you may want to take a closer look at the colors that you use often.

Adobe also changed the default setting for how spot colors are displayed in Illustrator — they now use their LAB color definitions instead of their CMYK definitions, resulting in spot colors that appear more accurately on screen and in proofs. However, if you’re in the habit of specifying Pantone colors that will ultimately be converted to process colors for printing (CMYK), you’ll want to make sure that you choose colors from the Pantone+ CMYK libraries, and not the Pantone+ Solid libraries. Only use Solid if you will indeed be printing those colors as spot colors.

The verdict

Adobe had an opportunity to “reimagine” the user interface in Illustrator. Don’t get me wrong — its better than what we’ve had until now for sure — but it would have been really nice to see more done in consolidating and simplifying the user interface, making Illustrator more approachable. Crash-protection a la Adobe InDesign would also be nice, but maybe the new underlying architecture makes it possible for Adobe to accomplish that in the future. On that note, it’s impressive that Adobe spent the majority of resources on rebuilding the application instead of cramming in a laundry list of features that only some users would need. Illustrator CS6 answers what all users have always been asking for — a modernization and reliability.

Everything considered, the question you need to ask isn’t whether you should upgrade to Illustrator CS6 (you should), but rather, how you should upgrade to this newest version. You can either get Illustrator as a standalone license, as a part of any Adobe Creative Suite license, or with a membership to Adobe’s latest offering, Creative Cloud (how you use Illustrator in your day-to-day work will help determine which path to choose, but an in-depth analysis of each of these options is beyond the scope of this review). If you’re surprised by the 99 out of 100 score I gave in this review, try using Illustrator CS6 WITHOUT using any of the “new” features. The under-the-hood stuff is worth the price of admission alone.

 

We’ve all done it. We’ve all been so involved in the creative process that we don’t realize what a disorganized mess we’re making of our layers, our studio, our dining room table. When we come up for air, the task of organizing seems almost monumental. We try to talk ourselves into skipping it. We’ll do it later or, if think we can get away with it, not at all. But nothing puts the brakes on a creative journey faster than not being able to find quickly what you need to work with. And if you’re someone like Lee Daniels, an artist whose animations pass through several programs before completion, being able to quickly and easily organize hundreds of paths into logical layers will not only preserve your sanity during the back-and-forth editing process. It will also provide you a reliable way to maintain the organization of your Illustrator files as they move from one program to another for further editing.

This article focuses on how Lee Daniels has developed a custom-tailored workflow to quickly impose order in his Layers panel when one of his complex character creations is near completion. By following along with his process, you’ll hopefully be inspired to take a few extra steps before passing your files off to another person, another application, or filing them away for future use.

Starting a new character for an animation

Illustrator and animator Lee Daniels is a very talented one-man band; Lee is the featured artist for the January #DigitalArtistSpotlight by Sharon Steuer on the Astute Graphics Blog. You can check out his work in video below from the animated webseries “Jungle Brawl.”

Jungle Brawl – Episode 2 from Lee Daniels on Vimeo.

When it comes to creating his animated videos, Lee Daniels moves fluidly between Illustrator, Photoshop, and After Effects. Illustrator is an anchor program in his workflow, as Lee counts on Illustrator not only for creating the actual artwork he later animates, but also to help him organize and keep track of every element that goes into his animation.

Lee begins his process by sketching in Photoshop. He then uses these character sketches as references in Illustrator for his signature vector artwork. If you’re creating initial sketches to use as Illustrator templates, feel free to scan pencil or pen sketches and save in PSD, TIFF, or JPEG. You can also draw directly into Illustrator using the Blob Brush, or use drawing assistant plug-ins for Illustrator, such as Astute Graphic’s Dynamic Sketch.

In Illustrator, instead of placing his sketch into a locked Template layer below the Illustrator objects he’ll be drawing, Lee imports and places his sketch on a layer above his main layer, sets it to Multiply mode, and locks it to use as a guide for his vector art. Lee then uses a couple of his custom Art Brushes to start drawing the character in detail.

As he re-creates his sketches with Illustrator objects he makes certain that he creates each view of the character far enough away from the others that he can easily pull his illustration apart when he later creates groupings for the animation. While in this initial stage of his creative workflow, he doesn’t worry about organizing layers, or even naming his objects and groups, but simply concentrates on getting the drawings just right. As a result, when each character is complete, the Layers panel of the Illustrator file is filled with the generic labels. The screenshots below show the initial state of his Layers panel as he develops a character sketch.

Sorting sets of objects into top-level layers

Once Lee has completed his vector illustration, he starts to organize the image in the Layers panel. Rather than try to organize elements by dragging them within the Layers panel, Lee Daniels found the quickest way to collect a bunch of objects together in the Layers panel is simply to select the objects on the artboard and group them (Command-G/Ctrl-G). So Lee next moves through his artwork on the artboard, selecting and grouping objects together that he wishes to be organized as a unit. This serves a dual purpose—in addition to clustering these elements together in the Layers panel, it also helps Lee to select the groups for later editing.

With his groups now formed, Lee goes through the Layers panel to identify each set of objects that he wishes to animate separately, and makes certain that it’s directly within the top-level layer. If any object that he wants to be able to animate independently has become nested within another group or sublayer, he drags it out so that it’s in a top-level layer.

If Lee knew that he was only going to use his image within Illustrator or Photoshop, then he could simply name the sets within his top-level layer (the sublayers, groups, and paths) and be done with his organization. However, since Lee knows that occasionally he needs to take a set of objects directly from Illustrator to After Effects, he takes a few extra steps to organize his Illustrator files into a structure that other applications can better interpret. Because neither groups nor paths can become top-level layers (and only top level layers can be distinguished in After Effects) Lee’s next step cleverly moves each set of objects in the top-level layer into its own generically-named sublayer. By doing this, every set of objects in a top-level layer will be ready for his custom naming convention, and can then be quickly prepared for exporting whenever needed.

The next task is to move each set of objects into its own sublayer. In the Layers panel Lee makes certain that he has highlighted only one top level layer (it will be blue and no other layer will be highlighted). Now he chooses “Release to Layers (Sequence)” from the Layers panel menu. The “Release to Layers (Sequence)” command won’t be available in the Layers panel menu if you’ve targeted objects instead of the layer. If you have more than one layer selected in the Layers panel, Release to Layers (Sequence) will only operate on the last highlighted layer. Once you apply this command correctly you’ll notice that each new sub-layer will be assigned a generic “Layer” name, and doesn’t inherit any custom naming that you might have applied before you ran Release to Layers (Sequence).

Working in the layers panel, Lee now begins the process of double-clicking each generically named sub-layer name to rename it. Lee’s naming convention helps him quickly locate the element he needs, such as using “H-front-hand-r” to designate H’s right hand in front view. Developing a flexible, yet short, naming conve
ntion helps him create a unique name for each of many layers. This also helps him when he later combines multiple characters so he’ll know whose head, hand, or tongue belongs to whom. Lee’s layer names need to be sufficiently descriptive to be instantly recognizable, but more importantly, they need to be memorable so that he can use the search functions in Photoshop and After Effects. On naming this way Lee says, “This part is very important when it comes to After Effect’s import and animation. Although a tedious job, it’s time very well spent.”

Exporting to Photoshop with layers intact

Although he maintains all the parts for his character organized in a single Illustrator file, Lee exports each character view as a separate PSD file. Illustrator exports only the visible layers in a file, so for each state of a character view that he wants to export, Lee hides all the sublayers that aren’t part of that particular view. For instance, if he has created several views of his character, and wants only the front view, he only has to hide those sublayers associated with the other views. Again because he’s named the sublayers with the view in the name, this is now an easy task.

In order to export the artwork with minimal boundaries, Lee resizes the artboard to the currently selected objects. The quickest way to do this is to select the Artboard tool and then choose Fit Artboard to Selection Bounds option from the Artboards pop-up menu in the Control panel (you can do this even more quickly if you assign a keyboard shortcut to the command). He then chooses File > Export, selects the PSD format, and enables Use Artboard in the first dialog. Then in the Photoshop Export Options dialog, he makes sure that Write Layers and Maximum Editability is enabled.

Tip: It might seem logical to use separate artboards within a document to organize different views of a character, its props, or even for each character. But the problem here is that layers are document-wide, so one layer might contain objects on every artboard if you’re not careful. Therefore, if you decide to use different artboards in a document to help with your organization, make sure you create a top-level layer for each artboard and switch to that layer whenever you’re working with that artboard.

In Photoshop, when Lee opens his document, it’s intact with custom-named sublayers within a single top-level Group layer. Lee uses Photoshop to add shading with the Dodge and Burn tools, and to make other minor adjustments to his character here. The detour to Photoshop works well for Lee (and other animators) not only because he can easily modify the appearance of all his elements there, but also because After Effects is optimized for working with rasterized elements. With so many vector elements in one file, taking native Illustrator files into After Effects tends to slow him down during the animation process, so Lee prefers to use Photoshop for his final prep work before exporting to After Effects.

Exporting from Photoshop to After Effects with layers

While Photoshop can understand Illustrator’s layer structure, After Effects cannot. After Effects recognizes top-level layers but can’t distinguish either sublayers, or groups. Fortunately, just as Illustrator’s “Release to Layers (Sequence)” command provides an easy path to convert groups to sublayers, Photoshop”s “Ungroup Layers” command will promote all groups one level down into top-level layers. When imported into After Effects, named layer groups that were promoted to top-level layers get rasterized into separate objects that can be animated individually. So by following a few rules when organizing his layers in Illustrator, Lee is able to take advantage of each program’s strengths as he moves his artwork from one application to another.

Final Tips

How other Adobe applications interpret Illustrator layers

If you plan to pass your Illustrator file directly to another application, be sure you know how the receiving application will interpret your Illustrator artwork. Described briefly below are a few things to keep in mind regarding how different Adobe applications interpret Illustrator layers.

Illustrator to Photoshop

When you export a file to the PSD format with Write Layers enabled in the Photoshop Export Options dialog, you may see a warning that Illustrator had to flatten some containers (Adobe’s way of referring to all the different types of Illustrator layers), so you’ll want to check your PSD file to make sure nothing was lost in the conversion.

Photoshop tries to convert every object that has both a fill and a stroke into two layers grouped inside another group, but Photoshop will keep intact Illustrator’s nested layers or groups. Photoshop can also search for layer names using the Find Layers feature in the Layers Panel that was introduced in CS6. If you don’t organize and name your layers in Illustrator the way Lee does, you’ll be forced to open groups, often several levels deep, before you can see what each group contains, and obviously, there won’t be any layer names to help you locate a character’s hand or mustache when you need it.

InDesign

InDesign is capable of hiding and showing top-level Illustrator layers. If you enable Show Import Options in the Place dialog, you can choose which layers you want to be visible. After placing the file, you can choose Object > Object Layer Options to change layer visibility. Thus you can create variations for an image inside Illustrator, then use a single file multiple times in InDesign, showing and hiding different top level layers in each instance. You won’t have many visual clues to work with (see the image below), so the meaningful labeling and organization of layers becomes all the more important.

After Effects

After Effects can preserve any elements on top-level layers (but no sublayers or nested groups) from either your Photoshop or Illustrator file. To directly export to After Effects, you only have to highlight any sublayers and drag them above the layers they’re on to convert them to top-level layers. Upon import, enable one of the Import Kind: Composition options, or the file will be flattened as Footage. If you have named your layers, you’ll not only have an easy time identifying the animation elements, but you’ll also be able to locate a layer in the After Effects Timeline by typing its name in a Search box—a feature similar to Photoshop’s Find Layers feature.

Lee doesn’t often import directly from Illustrator to After Effects because he finds it slows him down too much. However, if you bring a vector object directly into After Effects, you’ll be able to scale your image to any size and have details always remain crisp. So if your work doesn’t contain many vector objects (and if you want to be able to zoom in and out without having to pre-rasterize a variety of potential zoom levels) you may prefer to bring your Illustrator file directly into After Effects.

If you used the preset Video & Film f
or your Illustrator document, in addition to getting your title and action safe non-printing guides, you’ll see two special artboards. The inner one is the size of your video with the video safe guides, but the outer one is a very large artboard that surrounds the video artboard. Think of the larger artboard as the “wings” in a theater where actors, props, and scenery can be brought onto the main stage (the small artboard) when needed. You can animate these objects when they’re “offstage,” bringing them on the stage and taking them off again at will, so with Illustrator and After Effects, you’re not limited to what you can import by the size of the video you’re creating.

Flash

Flash can also read native Illustrator files and interprets only those objects that reside on top-level layers. As long as you’ve placed all the elements you want to animate on their own layers, you can import the Illustrator file to Flash’s stage and Flash will give you the option to create Flash layers in its Timeline. Upon import, you can designate a layer as a Movie Clip, and set a registration point for animating the object at the same time. Here is yet another dialog you may encounter where the time spent in Illustrator grouping and naming your layers will spare you time and frustration.

Managing your layers for any need

Whether you create posters, maps, advertising, or fine art, you should take the time to organize at least the basic file structure in your project. Organized files will be much easier to work with tomorrow, the next day, or the next year. It doesn’t matter if you create and name logical layers, sub-layers, and groups before you begin a project, while you’re creating, or not until you’ve finished. But you shouldn’t consider a project completed until you’ve imposed order on the chaos in the Layers panel that frequently accompanies any Illustrator artwork.

Please find Lee and his work at https://www.LeeDanielsART.com