
You can now use transparency in gradients, so, for example, a sky gradient can fade from purple, to orange, to 100 percent transparent at the bottom to blend with a foreground. Gradients have received significant attention. And if you often work with gradient fills, to define the shading and contours of objects, for example, this feature is a huge time saver.Īdobe has done much tweaking to streamline Illustrator, making it faster and easier to use. While it may not be the most production-oriented new capability, it’s easily the most immediately satisfying, intuitive, and fun to work with. This is a huge improvement over other methods of painterly expression in Illustrator. I had great fun using the tool to add dripping puddles to some Halloween text, and then filling the whole thing with a bloody gradient, for example. Here, I painted additional shapes onto the text, without having to manage or combine paths manually. With the new Blob Brush Tool, multiple strokes automatically combine into one shape. The alternative has been to use pen-based drawing tools to arduously manipulate vector outlines, or to draw out a path that defines the boundaries of an object. This approach sometimes results in noisy, chaotic-looking painted areas, instead of smoothly filled forms. However, these paint effects have always been applied one path at a time, with a new path laid down for every stroke of the brush. For some time now, Illustrator users have been able to “paint” with brushes that resemble rough ink scrawls, watercolors, and other stylized strokes. One problem with older versions of illustrator has been its implementation of brush-based painting. Designers can place and manage multiple versions of a single illustration in one document–something that art directors and clients will truly appreciate–and they can easily work on closely related documents within the same workspace, sharing styles and symbols across multiple designs.Īdobe has updated the rest of the CS4 suite to be multi-artboard aware, so you can place multi-page documents into Photoshop ( ), InDesign, or Flash. Still, this is a good solution for illustrators, and it adds a ton of flexibility to the application. (In Artboard Edit mode, each artboard is numbered on the canvas, and if you delete an artboard, the numbering is adjusted accordingly). Though you can flow copy from one artboard to another, there are no document-wide style sheets, and there are no automatic page numbering features, indexing, or multi-page copy fitting tools. I also think the printing preferences could offer more flexibility, such as the ability to print thumbnails or storyboards with captions.Īrtboards do not make Illustrator a full-fledged replacement for a desktop publishing package, even for short documents. That means if you have artboards with different printing requirements you’ll need to manage multiple versions of the file for output. One issue I have with this capability is that there is no separate page setup for individual artboards, so if you do have different size boards in a single file, you can’t create the necessary page setup and printing preferences for each one individually. For example, you can now manipulate and store a poster, a brochure, and a business card in the same Illustrator file. For example, you have the option of aligning objects relative to one another or to an artboard.Īrtboards can be different sizes within a single document, so they can be used as containers for design elements of any size. Many features of the interface, such as alignment tools, and Illustrator’s newly upgraded Smart Guides, have been modified to work within the context of artboards. Illustrator CS4 now lets you create multi-page documents through the use of multiple artboards, which can be different sizes and orientations. Similarly, Flash ( ) files can be generated by exporting all or a range of artboards as individual SWF files.
#Adobe ilustrador cs4 pdf#
By default, each artboard will print on a separate page, and when exporting an Acrobat ( ) file from Illustrator, each artboard is placed on its own PDF page in its numbered order. There is no facility for managing artboards, so the effect is a lot like pages spread around on a desk, with both the convenience of easy access and the potential for disarray. These boards can be dragged around like sheets of paper on a work table, can have any orientation, and can be copied with or without their contents. In Illustrator, you draw or place numbered rectangular containers right on the workspace. However, Adobe’s implementation will be unfamiliar to anyone who is used to other multi-page publishing tools that manage pages for you. This feature allows artists to create documents of up to 100 pages in length. By far the biggest change in this version of Illustrator is the addition of multiple artboards.
