An Organizational Orgy: The Workspace in Illustrator

1. Trailer: Hello and welcome to my third class on skill share. Once again, here's my likeness. My species name is logo saurus Rex. My description is graphic designer sore. That's right, I'm still not extinct. This time. We're going to look at a very boring and uncreative topic, but one that is absolutely essential and seriously overlooked. Namely, your workspace. I'll show you how to arrange all the tools, panels and tool bars for best legibility, minimum clutter and best efficiency, and then how to save your arrangement. There will also be a final lesson on some good working practices. Compare these two workspaces the crazy way and the good way. First, the crazy way it's called adobes defaults. But I would call it adobes fault. There are three glaring problems with it. One. All the icons on the controls are too small to the black. Background is cool, but it further decreases ledge ability. And three of the controls are put on opposite sides of the screen so that you have to constantly mouse all the way back and forth across the whole screen. And if you have a large screen that's along commute and now for the good way the three problems are fixed. Icons are made bigger by reducing the monitor resolution. A light background is used for the controls, and all the controls are moved to the left side of the screen. In addition, the Tools panel has been made more compact and easy to use by making a two columns instead of one, and some of the most used normally hidden tools and the tools panel are made permanently visible once again, the crazy way in the good way. Crazy way, a good way with better eligibility as well as increased efficiency. What results is a much more enjoyable illustrator experience. There will be four lessons, bigger and brighter, the tools panel, the other panels and good working practices. Your project will simply be one toe. Organize your workspace to to save it and three to love it. Deliverables are a screenshot of your old crazy workspace and one of your new good one. This class is well suited to beginners that may also be helpful for experienced users who have never given enough attention to the workspace. It's an organizational orgy. If you're one of those obsessively organized creatures like me who works in a very methodical way. You will love this class but probably won't need it. But if you're a normal person and work in a chaotic way, then you will probably hate this class. But you were the one who needs it the most. So hold your nose and go ahead and click and roll. 2. Lesson 1: Bigger & Brighter: lesson one bigger and brighter. Make sure you view this on full screen for best visibility. The full screen icons of the bottom right of the video window. To get out of full screen, press the escape key. I'm using version CS six. If you have a different version that may very slightly before you start, make a screenshot of your old crazy workspace. You'll need it later. For the class project, I will show a text outline of each group of things that we do so you can stop the video and use it as a reference to arrange your workspace. Bigger icons decrease your monitor or display resolution as follows on a Mac do this Apple menu system preferences displays display and then choose scaled instead of the default, which is the maximum and go down one step lower on windows. The pathway is control panel, an appearance and personalization. Then adjust screen resolution and then select one step lower. So by reducing your monitor resolution, you ah, make images larger on the screen. But you also lose a little bit in image sharpness, but it's well worth it Brighter in illustrators. Main menu Do this Illustrator preferences user interface. Then for the brightness field shoes light for the canvas color. Choose white and make sure these two boxes are unchecked and some other preliminary adjustments Keep the dock on the right side. If you always keep it visible and in the window menu, turn off the application frame. What is the application frame? Let's take a look at that as some unnecessary stuff go to bridge you don't need. Arrange documents. Multiple document arrangement. Very unlikely to You need that workspace button shortcut. You can easily get to the workspace from the window menu, window workspace and a search field, which you don't need. So we're gonna shut that. Also, What it does is it fills in the space under the tools panel here to make a frame around the whole thing. But that's good toe. Have actually shut that application frame. And I'll show you why. If you keep your finder or directory on the left and always open, then you can easily switch between your finder and illustrator Finder Illustrator, Finder illustrator. Okay, so we're gonna keep the application frame off also will keep off the application bar, which is really just a part of the application frame, but that off also and then, ah, the control bar. I suggest you don't use it. The control bar has some of the controls that are found in the panels, depending on what's selected an illustrator. But I find that it's actually easier to use the panels. So I suggest you don't use the control bar and let me maximize this window again. And one final thing turned on the rulers. Um, not normally on. We're just going to use those to help us align the panels. So we go to view rule. There's show rulers, and we want to make sure we don't cover the that space with the panels so that they don't cover the rulers when we are using them. 3. Lesson 2: The Tools Panel: listen to the tools panel. Okay, the tools panel. First of all, we want to dock the tools panel to the left side of the screen. So, uh, let's see how that's done. Docking is different from just aligning. You can. You can't just put it there. Because if you just put it there without docking it and then you go to maximize a window, that window will go all the way to the ah, left edge of the screen and, ah, rulers will be covered up and you'll also lose that nice open space underneath the tools panel. So what we're gonna do is we're actually gonna docket grab it by its title bar that black dark grey bar top and move it so that your pointer touches the left side of the screen and that the panels but the pointer And then you'll see a blue line light up like so then released. Now it's docked. Now, if I go and maximize a window, the window stops short of the left side of the screen. It just runs right up to the right edge of the tool panel. Second thing, make the tools panel two columns instead of one, that control is in the top. Left those two little arrows there tuggle back and forth. Between one column and two columns. Two columns is more compact. Easier to find stuff With one column. You never know. You have to travel this long distance to find what you want With two columns, everything is kind of more centralized and compact. Okay, the next thing is to make some of the normally hidden tools the ones that use the most permanently visible is floating panels, so that zero in on that a little bit on a zoom my screen. Let's go over to the pen tool. And if you have a ah little black triangle at the bottom right of a tool icon, that means they're hidden tools underneath it, of course. So you click on that and hold it, and then you, ah, go all the way to the right till this bar on the right lights up and release, and now it becomes a floating panel that you can keep open all the time. So now if you want a special pen tool related tool, you can just go up here and click it instead of having to do this number and go through a menu. Okay, so, uh, these are the groups that I suggest you use for the floating panels, the two secondary selection tools that are under the direct selection tool right here. That's these to the direct selection tool and the group selection tool. Those you want a lot. And it's more convenient to just click here than going through this menu. We'll talk more about the group selection to later. Then you want the way. Ah, the group under the pen tool right here. That's this group. And then the shape tool group that's under the rectangle tool. That's the rectangle around it. Rectangle the ellipse polygon, star, etcetera. Then the, ah, rotate and reflect, which are very common. That's under rotate than scale. Sheer and reshape their under scale a scale tool right here. And ah, the eyedropper and measure tool, which are under the eyedropper, my dropper and measure. And then, finally, a racer. Scissors and knife those air under the eraser tool right here. Racer, scissors and knife. And when your position these panels leave a little space between them has shown, don't put him racing right against each other. even though they snapped to each other. Ah, it's easier to see them that way. Eso get as close as you can without actually snapping to, and that's it for the tools panel. 4. Lesson 3: The Other Panels: Lesson three. The other panels The anatomy of a panel. Let's look at a couple of panels will pull him out here. Character panel swatches panel. The top bar, the Dark Grey Bar, is called the title bar that has a little X and left to close the panel. If you close it, you can get it back from the window menu. The big center section here has all the panels on the right side to the Larios collapsed toe icons, and you can have the name with the icon or just the icon, and then it's expand. Then there's a tab, our export down that has the tab with the name of the panel. And, ah, if you have panels grouped in a Tabb group, it'll have multiple tabs. Get into that in a minute. And on the right side of the tab bar is a panel menu, with various options different for each panel. Also in the tab are up and down arrows for seeing different views, showing more or less of the panel collapsing and completely. Even if it doesn't have the double arrows like this watches, for instance, you can double click it to collapse. It completely double click of the Show it again, and you can do that up here, too, to cycle through the different views and then sizing a panel. Some panels can be sized like the swatches panel has a little grabber down the bottom, up and down sizing. You can roll over the right edge. Get arrows for right to left sizing. When you move left as far as you can, it collapses to a minimum size. There's also a little diagonal grabber down here for this kind of sizing and then grouping when you want to group them together in a Tabb group. You ah, dragged by the title bar until your pointer is in the tab. More of the upper other panel and then released. You also get a blue line around it and the tab our lights up blue. Let's look at that one more time just to drag it out of a group. Just drag it by its tab. So you dragged by the title bar. But you're not watching the panel. You're watching your pointer. The point is the thing that counts, and when the pointer is in the other tab bar, it lights up and you get the blue line around release now it's a tab group. You can change the order of the tabs just by sliding him. Okay, that's for grouping and tab groups Now, stacking versus aligning. Let's pull this guy out again. And, ah, let's say we wanted to make a stack of these two panels. You could just put the swatches panel right below, and it kind of snaps in position. And you think that your doctor But you're actually not the difference between a lining and docking. Ah, these were just aligned. If I open the character panel to a higher view, it covers the lower panel. We don't want that. So what we do is docket and when when your doctor, you get a better situation there too dark, you move it by the title bar again, watching the pointer and not the panel edge to the bottom edge of the other panel to the lights up release. Now it's docked. Now, if I expand the character panel downward swatches panel moves down to accommodate it. That's what you want to dio. So that's docking, and if you want to undock, you just pull it out by its tab. Okay, so that's docking. Single panels. You can also doc tab groups, for instance. Let's make this a group. Let's go over and get a couple more panels here and make those a group. Okay? Now we're gonna doctor groups, and I noticed that when you make a tab group, you now have a common title bar. We had two title of ours before for separate panels. But when you're Doc, um, you get one common title bar. Okay, so now we're gonna dock this Tabb group with this Tabb group. We just move it by its common title bar until we get to the bottom line. Now, if there's a sizing handle here, you actually want to go to this line, Not the extreme bottom line. It's a little glitch, so we'll go to that line their release. Now we have to docked tam groups. Okay, so I'm going to Ah, I messed up my workspace. I'm going to reset it in window workspace and ah, reset my workspace. And let's take a look at this big tab. This biggest stack rather of of three. Tabb Group's right. It's a lot of stuff here in this stack of controls and a good way to find your way around. This is to let your I find the dark grey tab bars. Here's your common dark grey title bar, and you have a dark grey tab Are dark gray tab are dark gray tab are so when your eye goes over this but those dark grey bars be a kind of a visual divider and you can find your way more easily. OK, next topic arrangement of panels for a large screen like this one, um, often use panels are expanded and on the left like this, and I see just using ah three tab groups 123 with three tabs in each group. Usually you don't want them on more than three tabs to a group because it gets a little crowded in there, and I suggest using. Ah, these three tab groups align color Pathfinder swatches, character paragraph and stroke radiant info. So once you've got that set up, make the first tab active in each group, so that always comes up that way again. When you refresh your workspace and you got your three groups. Tabb Group's docked in a vertical stack. Then you have your seldom used panels. And those are these guys here and they are collapsed to the icons with the name and you have to show the whole name if you have a short on space. He was like the whole name. But you can keep it like this. Just so you see a little bit the name and accuse you when you get to know the, um ah, the icons. Then you could just collapse it completely. Two icons. Okay, So what I've done is I have ah, docked thes singly, not in tam groups. That's the best way to use them and position them down here with little space between. This is not docked to the other panels on the side. It's just separate. It's better that way because if you have a little space, it's easy to find it. And also, if you docket on the side here, it would have to be up top and we wanted to be down the bottom. So, um, I suggest these eight panels Ah, document info. Uh, Pantone. Solid coated transform layers, attributes, appearance links and transparency. Now, these can all be found up here in the window panel menu rather in the big center section except for Pantone, solid coated and ah, here's where that is again. The window menu down to, ah Swatch libraries and then color books. And then Pantone, solid coated. So I've noted that here and using the collapse panels if you should want to move a collapse panel out of its group, it doesn't have a tab. So you can't grab that like here. Better has a little handle. This is that's this guy here and there it is. Normally you leave him in where they are. And if you want to Ah, open one. You just click it, it opens and then click it again. Click its title again. When you're done with it, it's Steptoe title in a closes open one. And if you want to open another one, the 1st 1 closes like so Okay, and once again, I'm gonna Oh, well so that we can put this guy back in here and if you want toe, put it in back. Ah, Kyul. Moving over a line and it will go back to its normal position. Don't move it where you see a fat blue line on the top because then it become a tabbed. Ah, it'll become a ah, a tab group like so I don't want that with the collapsed ones. Okay, so I'm going to go up into window and ah, reset my workspace again and we go, Yeah, let's move on to the next topic arrangement for small screens. If you've got a laptop or a small desktop Ah, you probably wanna have the, um, often used panels collapsed like so. And when you're using them, if you don't, if the bottom panel runs off the bottom of the screen, you could just collapse vertically panels above it, like so just double click on the first tab, and then you'll be able to see the whole extent of the bottom panel, Okay? And, um, you can also move your seldom use panels to the right side of the screen if you're really short on space. And so this is your situation for a small screen, and also you can hide the panels. Sometimes that's handy. Just hit Tab hides all the panels that brings him back, and shift tab hides all the panels except the tool panel. Okay, so let's go back to our ah normal workspace for big screen reset. Okay, Next topic of the swatches panel. Ah, the swatches panel. A couple of things you should do there on the, uh, panel menu. Or rather, I'm sorry down here on the bottom. First to this icon, which is Ah, it's not getting a tool tip for some reason. There it is. Show swatch kinds menu. All right. You can show your swatches three different ways. You can show all of them, which is bad because it's too much. You can show just the color solid color swatches, just the Grady in swatches, just the patterns, watches and so on. I would just put her on show color swatches. That's normally what you want if you want to get into the great radiance sometime. Just switched to that, but normally show color swatches and then in the panel menu, you want medium thumbnail view. I think small thumbnail view is the default, and that's too small. Okay, then the Pantone panel has some peculiarities. Here's the Pantone panel. Let's move that type over. First of all, size it tall, as tall as it will go on the screen, using the handle on the bottom and then in the panel menu. You want large thumbnail view, I suggest for nice, visible swatches, and you also want persistent. This is important. If you don't click persistent, it won't come up every time you open a new open illustrator for the first time that keeps it coming up. Keeps it in the workspace That's important. Show. Find feel. There's a default that's OK to leave. Okay, close that by just clicking it's tab again and then finishing touches. Um, okay, the rulers we had showing from a previous lesson. Um, we don't need them anymore. If you still have him showing high The rulers, that's, Ah view rulers, um, hide, rulers. And finally save your workspace and name it my workspace. One just goto window or experience. And then, ah, new workspace and that's it. Name. It works my workspace one and updated as needed in the future. And that's basically it. Ah, one little footnote. Here you may notice that in some of my other classes I have the panels on the right side of the screen. The reason for that is that I have my display resolution lowered a lot so that all the controls are abnormally large. So you can see them well on the video when the panels were that big. They don't fit under the open tools on the left, but normally I do work with the panels on the left, and that's the end of Lesson three. 5. Lesson 4: Good Working Practices: lesson four. Good working practices always leave all the panels in the same place was one of the big things, and Illustrator is finding stuff work with all illustrator windows maximized. So when you open a new window, it'll cascade down a little bit. Just maximize it. Just hit the green button or the ah, you're on Windows, the maximize button. And, um, if you have a bunch of windows, a bunch of files open. Ah, the best way to switch back and forth between different ones is with the window panel. Ah, menu rather down here. Window menu. Don't use tabs, for instance. Let's look at what tabs? Oh, are, um, arrange. Consolidate all windows. Here's a look of tabs. Very hard to read black type on a dark grey background, and you have to scan across. It's it's tough to see what's what they're, um, whereas if in the window, then you you've got a nice list of ah, black type on a very light background, like great background, my cheese. You to use that way. So don't use tabs. Get rid of those tabs. I'll do that by just maximizing one window. There we go. Okay. Work in C M c M y que and use Pantone colors. Ah, see em like a versus rgb. Um, those are the two color modes and, um, seeing like a if courses for print, their printing inks based colors. RGB is light based colors for screen use for the Web. Reason you Sam will seem like a is because it's a smaller color gamut. There are far fewer colors possible with thinks than with light. So if you worked in RGB and then you try to convert to see him like a you have a big problem was a lot of those very brilliant RGB colors can't be rendered and see him like a. However the other way around works fine team Wake seem like a will always convert nicely toe RGB the only exception being black, which needs some adjustment for to be a perfect rgb black and also use Pantone colors. I'll show you why Ah, that's ah make a little rectangle here with a Pantone color Ah, you can easily use make him into tense with this tent ramp. I can't do that with CIA Mykhailo K colors or RGB colors. And also, if you wanna had shade shading. You can convert them to a C m y que color right here. And they had black for shading. Okay, And then let's see to get that out of their keyboard shortcuts, uh, use them. They are very, very useful. And, um, I suggest some customized keyboard shortcuts for the three selection arrows. Simple method will be just to give the group selection tool. Ah, a keyboard shortcut because it doesn't have one, Believe it or not in the default. And you would just do that, I would give it a G for group. OK, do that from the edit menu at it. Keyboard shortcuts and then, ah, tools. And then here are your selection tools. So your group selection tool, you do choose that one and then just put a G in here. I have it as a D. I'll show you why in a minute and then just save the set. Now. The advanced method for the truly over organized person is this, uh use three different customized keys for the three selection tools F for the main selection tool of Black Arrow D for the group selection tool. That's the white our with the plus you know that and s for the direct selection tool. That's the white arrow. So now you've got them all three together on the keyboard F d and s and ah, color. Code them with vinyl tape and you'll have an easy way to get to your three selection arrows from the keyboard. Okay, note that there are two kinds of keyboard shortcuts. There are letters, alone and modifier. Kiir's modifier keys alone without a letter. Those air tools like ah V, for instance, is default for the black arrow. And then there are, ah, command or control, plus the letter. And that's a command like a command V is ah, paste. Okay, some keyboard shortcuts. You should know he has a whole list that you can refer to. Ah, I just want to say a little bit about a few of these. Ah, the tool keyboard shortcuts versus command keys. Keyboard shortcuts. First, the tool ones. Um, space bar is a hand tool. Right now. I've got the black arrow selected. If I do space bar, then I have a hand tool and I can navigate around. And normally you want to only do that momentarily. So then you just release space. Born your back to the Black Arrow, then space bar and commander Control, Space bar command or control gives you the zoom tool in click click and then the ad option or Ault Zoom tool out. Click, Click. Ah, that's very nice on a Mac, because those three keys or to a ragged right together space board space, a space bar, rather interest to the left event. Ah, in command just to the left of that option. So you've got can tool for navigate. Zoom in, zoom out. Right Navigate. Zoom in. Zoom out. Those three. Yeah, Here's another good one. Ah, come. A command will give you the selection tool when any other tool is selected. So, for instance, say I have the scissor tool selected and I Well, let's say this when I say of the rectangle tool, I draw a rectangle and then I want to move. It s so I want the black arrow momentarily just hit Ah Command and is your black arrow. When you can move it, release it and you're back to the rectangle tool. Uh, command, I didn't do what you want to dio release it back to the rectangle tool. Okay. Ah, these others are self explanatory. Among the command keyboard shortcuts. I just wanted to say one thing about this one command or control plus X is cut. But this is also good for delete because you can do it without looking at the keyboard. Ah, ultimately, whereas with delete its way up in the upper right hand corner of the keyboard. Normally you have to look at the keyboard and you do a lot of deleting. So it's good to use cut for delete and that's about it for the lesson for. 6. Still Not Extinct: And that does it for class number three. Happy working. An illustrator with your new workspace. See you next time.