Viewer Mail | 2 Illustrator Tips | Contest Time

CATEGORIES: Living In Layers | RC | September 29, 2008

Happy Monday everyone. I figured - rather than starting to ramble about something off the top of my head (There really isn’t any pre-production here), I would just go to my producer and ask her if there was any reader mail that I could get to. We’ve been backlogged here for a while, but I think I can bust out a couple of them here:

Will McCreery writes:
I recently put together a multi-page pdf newsletter for a local non-profit organization using Illustrator and Acrobat Prof. Why would I need to purchase InDesign to do layouts when Illustrator is so versatile? Isn’t it a redundant program? This may be too general to answer on Layer’s TV, but I was just curious.

Hey Will, every question is a good question! Illustrator is wonderful when you are dealing with single page layouts, and in some cases some small multi-page layouts. Where you really start running into a problem is when you try to use text flow in boxes for multiple pages. That’s where something like InDesign really shines. You can put together a document with 30 pages, and the adding and removing of text will just reflow amazingly. Add to that, there’s the ability to use Stylesheets in your documents and now you’re talking productivity and efficiency heaven.

Matter of fact. You see the graphic up with with Multiple text boxes that flow and a clipping mask? If you don’t know how to do either of those things, and want to check it out. Make sure you hit the jump at the bottom. I have a video tutorial for you - 3 min!

TC Autry writes:
“Love the show. One question, and Im new at adobe so if its obvious please forgive me. Is there a keyboard shortcut that changes the opacity of brushes in Photoshop?”

There absolutely is, TC. When you are using a brush in Photoshop, simply type in the number that you want the opacity to be. For example, if you type in a 4 by itself, it will go to 40%. 1 is 10%, 9 is 90% - you get the picture. If you want the opacity to be 55%, just press 5, 5 a little faster than normal. If you want 4%, press 0,4 a little faster than normal. Hope it helps!

Ok.. a new contest and that video tutorial I promised, right after the jump. Click Read More to get there.

Video Tutorial of Illustrator Tricks
So Will does bring up a good point, in that Illustrator is an awesome tool to use for creating a publication - my only addition to that is that this is true - provided that the publication doesnt paginate. If you are creating a single page pub though, it does rock. Text flow makes it even better. If you combine that with spilling graphics outside of the artboard and hiding the excess with a clipping mask you’re talking instant cool. check out the video below to do just that.

Click To Play

Contest Time
OK. So it’s time for a contest. This week, I want to point out that the Contact page is at the very bottom of this window, so it’s a little hard to look for. It is there, though. This is what I want you to answer:

Who is the author of the Illustrator CS4 Artboards tutorial on The Layers Magazine CS4 Learning Center?

If you go to the Contact page, type in your name, email address and the answer, you will win a year subscription to Layers Magazine, a year Subscription to Photoshop User Magazine, and a signed copy of Scott Kelby’s 7 Point System Book! Contest ends this Thursday and the winner will be announced Friday AM.

That’s it for today everyone. We’ll see you guys back here tomorrow morning!

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