Adobe Illustrator for Beginners

Overview

On this page we will go over the basic skills needed to start a small project in Adobe Illustrator. This page will be useful for beginners who have never used Adobe Illustrator before. It will include very basic information and demonstrations for the starting tools that you will need and help explain the layout of Adobe. Once you get accustomed to this page (or already are) and would like more information, you can go to Adobe Illustrator for more help on the rest of Adobe.

Getting Started

Signing In

Adobe Illustrator is a paid program that requires a valid log in to be able to use. Fortunately, UMD provides all students with access to many Adobe products. If you just enter your UMD email (ending in @umd.edu not @terpmail.umd.edu) then you will be redirected to the Central Authentication Service (CAS) screen like if you were logging onto Testudo. Just enter your credentials and Adobe will load up.

If you are using Adobe on your personal computer you will only need to login once before it remembers you but if you are using the computers at Sandbox, you will need to log in every time to computer logs off since the computer is reset upon login. Logging in to Adobe Illustrator here will also give you access to other Adobe products you have on your computer so you don't need to login multiple times.

Creating the Canvas

When you first open Adobe Illustrator, it might seem confusing about where to start, but for starting out all you need to know about the main screen is the "Create New", and "Open" buttons. The "Create New" button is for creating a new canvas with specified dimensions. "Open" can be used to open previously saved Adobe files by browsing your files for the saved file and opening it.

These are the only two buttons you really need to worry about.

Then you will be greeted by a screen asking for a choice of dimensions and presets to start your project. On the left, you will see squares representing the settings for projects you have used recently. On the right, you can see the details of that preset like height/width, units of measurement, orientation, etc. The four texts, top/bottom/left/right are the bleed settings that allow you to have a margin of error by printing a little more passed the work space if you accidentally go over the edge. This is mostly useful for doing printing of things done in Adobe. In the advanced options you can change the Color Mode. If you are using Adobe for the laser cutters, it is recommended that you change the mode to RGB because in order to make 255 BLUE or 255 RED for vector or cutting, you need to be in RGB mode. The artboard setting allows you to create new artboards (will later explain what artboards are in the next section).

If you find yourself constantly using the same preset, you should try renaming the preset so you always know which you want and make it easier to find.

Here are all the common settings you would need to change.

Once you are satisfied with your settings, you can hit create to start your project!

Adobe Illustration Basic Knowledge

Once loaded up you will see a screen with a blank white box and many tools and buttons on the left and right side. The blank white box in the middle of the screen is called your artboard. This is where you will do any of your work to be printed. Without bleeding margins, only things inside the artboard will be printed. You can create multiple artboards and work on multiple at once and choose which one to print as well. More information on this can be found on Using Artboards in the Adobe Illustrator article.

Toolbar: On the left you see the tools tab. The tab holds many preset tools that are commonly used but can be changed depending on what tools you want to use. You can edit the tools in the toolbar by clicking the three dots at the bottom of the toolbar.

Current Project Tab: On the top left, you can see the current project tab. This shows you the name of your current project as well as what color mode you are in. The color mode can be changed in File -> Document Color Mode. Changing this will change how the colors are created. If you are new, either will work unless you are using Adobe for the laser cutter in which case you will want to use RGB mode to set full red or blue for cuts.

Zoom Control: At the bottom on the left you can see the zoom percentage. This shows you how close you are to the artboard, the higher the percent, the larger everything will look. The most useful part of this is at the bottom of the drop down menu, there is a "Fit on Screen" that will zoom in just enough that the current artboard is as big as possible without going over the screen.

Artrboard Navigation: To the right of the zoom is the current artboard. Generally this will always say 1 unless you create more artboards. You can use the single arrows to navigate to the next and previous artboard and the other skip arrows to go to the last and first artboard.

Main Artboard: The main artboard is the base one created by using the settings set in the create screen. There will always be this base one created because most projects only need one artboard but this one is no different than any other artboard.

Current Tool Display: The last thing on the right of that is the current tool. This is also useful for when using hotkeys to change tools, like holding shift or alt will update the tool name at the bottom to tell you what it does.

Properties Tab: On the right side of the screen you will see the properties tab. This tab will show you the properties of whatever you have selected. Currently, nothing is selected so it is showing you the document properties. The properties tab holds a lot of useful information about editing objects...

Properties Basics

The properties are the settings you can change about objects to modify how they look. You can look at the object properties by using the selection tool (Hotkey - V) and clicking on a shape or object. This will change the tab on the right from the document properties to object properties.

In this tab you can see many options with your object. At the top you can see the name of what is selected to not mistakenly change the wrong object.

Transform:

Importing Images There are two ways you can import photos and images into your canvas in Illustrator. If your image has been copied to your clipboard, you can simply paste in onto the canvas using Command+V or Ctrl+V or go into the dropdown edit menu at the top of the screen and select Paste. In order to import images from a file, go to the dropdown File menu at the top of the screen and select open to browse your computer files.

Deleting Elements In order to delete elements on the canvas, simply select the item so it is highlighted with a border around it and click Command+X or Ctrl+X