Adobe Illustrator 2018 New Features

1. Adobe Illustrator 2018 New Features: Hi there, my name is Dan. In this video we're going to cover the new features for the Adobe Illustrator 2018 release. We'll look at the features, I'll give them my very subjective opinion. At the end as well, I'll recap on some of the 2017 features that came out during the year that they just slip in there and most of us don't catch. Now are these changes revolutionary? Probably not. But Illustrator is a great product and these changes are small, but just make this great product a little bit more joyful to use. If you are a daily grinder of Illustrator, it's your go to do it all the time program, then you'll think these upgrades are amazing. Let's get into it. First on the list is the puppet pen tool. Have your vector drawing selected and I'm going to go down here the thing that has a little push pin and I'm going to click once. Clicking once is not a good idea because if I click and drag this, nothing happens. I need at least two points. I'm going to do one in his hand one in his armpit, now go back to the hand and hey, hey. Very cool, mastery of the redraw or at least reshape my drawings. I can draw one standardized shape and I can adjust this guy in all different ways. What you might have noticed is that with only two points, pivot's around here. So add a few points at armpits, hands, legs, couple of knees form, maybe one in the middle, one in the heart. I find that rig-out seems to work, keeps him controlled. You can see now he wiggles now. If you are wanting complete control, can you see his glasses moving there, you can add another pin then another pin here. The more pins you have them rigid he is. As well as the pins, can you see this little dotted line around the outside? If I click hold and drag that, I can move it around. Don't add another pin. Click and drag this. I can rotate it. Maybe this idea would be a bit better. I can rotate my pins as well. This is super cool, I guess, but in fact, I don't use it very much. I'm more of a graphic web designer. If you are an animator or an illustrator, you might love this tool. Couple of things to watch out for at the moment is that, if I click and drag this, you'll notice that he ends up underneath. I can't figure out a way of doing the pin depth who's on top. The puppet pen tool has actually been around a little while in Photoshop and in After Effects. It's a little bit more mature in those options. There doesn't seem to be a way of doing the pin depth or layers for these different pins which is available in other software. Other thing to note is that when I put him behind there, say he is scratching his, looks like he is scratching his bum. But it's a scratch in his knee and I leave it behind there and then I click off, go do something else and I come back, go to select it, go back to the pen tool and you like, ''Awesome, there all still there,''. It's fused; the vector. If I go to outline mode, you can still see there in there. If I get off this, you can still see the vectors are in there and I can play with my direct selection tool and unpick it. But just know that get it right the first time or make a duplicate before you start drawing these things, or at least saving another version. If you had no idea how I got two outlines there, it's Command Y on a Mac or Control Y on a PC to show you the outlines of the vectors. If you are looking at this and go ''Man, wouldn't it be cool if it got animated?'' You could start making animated Gifs with your characters. I want to get onto the other features, but quickly in After Effects, if I bring in that same illustration, make a new copy, leave all these defaults, drag the Illustrator file in. There's the puppet tool up here. See in there, I can give him the same pins, pins, pins, pins, pins, pins, pins, pins, zoom in. I watch this of all then the command key. I'm going to click on this tool here. Click on the command key and drag, and you see the little timeline moving down the bottom. If I let go, come back here, you have a total dancing monster thing. Go back to Illustrator. Nick's new features, a double 1-1 is less exciting. If I pick a new document and let's say I pick an A4 document, click create. By default, the new essentials looks like this. It's very different. You got this properties panel. If you are an existing Illustrator user which you probably are, and you will load up probably with your old, whatever you had last time, but go up to essentials, click on it, have a look at this new format. I love it because it brings us into the next feature which is properties. This properties panel is brand new. It's like the attributes panel was. I love it, even though I've only just started using it. You can see here by default, it has all sorts of awesome data about your document, your units of measurement, you can change your rules on and off from here, and this one here handy. Everyone forgets where the pixel grid or the transparency grid is. You can turn all your guides, lock them, turn smart guides on and off. Or a snapping, so used to snapping the pixel stuff when I do a lot of web work and icons. Keyboard increments, that's for when I draw my shape and I want to use my selection tool and my arrow keys on my keyboard, and just tap it along. The moment, by default, if I click in the background here, it uses 0.3 millimeters. If you're in inches it would be different obviously. But you can turn that right down, if you want to really find support. So I do 0.01 and now when I click, it just moves and you can barely see it moving. It's moving in such small increments. If you hold shift while you're doing that exact same thing at times, whatever that number in here is, by 10, you can move them nice big chunks. This, the in here scale strokes and fix is probably my most exciting. Because as a trainer, let's add a stroke to this guy here. I pick one and if I scale it down, holding shift to scale it down. It doesn't scale a stroke around the outside by default. Which is a little weird sometimes, especially when I'm teaching new people. So I click in the background now and I say, scale strokes and fix. Now if I scale it down, can you see the stroke on the outside got smaller, proportionately. Super-helpful stuff. This is all been there before. It's just been hidden away in preference menus and this one here, weirdly in the transform menu. So happy to see it here, super helpful, super easy, same with document set up. You can jump in here and adjust your units, bleed, all sorts of awesome stuff. That's with nothing selected, but if I have an object selected, fill and stroke are here. You can obviously still use your old options, but it's nice and easy enhancing with opacity. Your transform panel is here and always open, flip horizontal, flip vertical, all this sort of stuff, that if you are experienced, you know where it is. It's handy to have it here in a contextual menu. Select on stuff and it gives you adjustments for this particular thing. Keep an eye on quick actions. These would depend on what you have selected, these give you specific stuff for your object. You can see in here align to pixel grid, which we'll look at later on. My arrangement panel, bring front backwards, all sorts of really nice stuff, really good idea, same with type. You can see in here, I've got my character panel, my paragraph panel, create outlines. Ah, you guys are awesome. Nice work Illustrator. Puppet pen tool, I'm probably not going to use, but this properties panel here could change my Illustrator life. If you don't like it, don't worry. You can go back to the essentials classic, can go back to this view here. Onto the next feature. The next new things about Illustrator is to do with artboards. I'm going to create a new artboard. Let's say I do a lot of UI design for mobile apps. I'm going to pick an iPhone 6s. So we've got an artboard. This isn't new, but they bring same things with the artboard. If I grab my artboard tool which is this guy down the bottom here, and I have him selected. You can see how I can make a new artboard and pops it next to it. That's fine and always add a bit more space. The upgrade is I can select them both at the same time now whereas before I had to select them separately and adjust them. That was a big pain. It's just a little change for artboards. The other little change is that you can now have a maximum of 1,000 artboards. I have no idea who needed that change it's definitely not me. If you've got 1,000 artboards in one Illustrator file, you've got a hard job. Let me make one more. I'm just holding all while I'm dragging to add another one. I'll make another one. I've got four of them now. To select them all, hold shift and click them. Or if you click off into one, you can hold your shift key down and drag a box around them all. Bet it might be a nice easier way to do it. What else has got upgraded? You can now align and distribute artboards, which is super useful. This is my align panel here. I can, let say that got a little bit off. I can line them up. I can hit this little more button here and I can distribute centers as just to get everything aglined up nicely. One of the other new upgrades is that say I've done my iPhone styles, I'm going to hold down alt on my PC or option key on my Mac and drag out another set. But let's say I wanted to do some. You can select all of these now and I can say actually all of this group is iPad. The good thing about that as if it had artwork on it, it would get duplicated as well. Again, here shows me how good my ranging distributors. Holding shift, grabbing all of these guys and say in here, align to distribute please. Still not quite enough for it. That's okay. Let's say I've got it and I'm working on different sizes and weird but my ball and it's all getting a little bit out of control. What I can do a slick them all. I just did command am on my Mac or control am my PC, we get all my Apple, and I can use this one. This is re-arrange all this is handy. I can say I want them all going from left to right and I want a space between them. Big space of like a 1000 pixels and hold to stack nicely, can be nice way to tidy up your uploads. Likewise in there is an option to go columns. I can say I want, say two columns and I'm going to run it left to right on a pixels grant, so just stick them all nicely and rearranges them, those the upgrades to the artboards. Let's move on to my favorite now, type upgrades. First of the new font additions, for illustrated 2018, a something called a variable fonts. Let's say this font here, Museo, I like it as a family there, san-serif there is the slab version and in this Museo slab, you can see here I've got a beautiful weights. I've got Italics, so it's great. It's a nice, useable fun. But imagine I want to condense version. There is none [inaudible] that, I want a white that doesn't exist here. A little bit heavier, or somewhere in between one of these. That's where a variable fonts going to come in. What it means is if I dropped down my character panel here, you looking for these ones that are open type fonts, but have this VAR next to them. They're variable fonts. I'm going to pick this one here. What will happen is it's not pumping up in this menu, but if I click these little dots here and it's this option here and your character panel. Let's open it up so you can see window type, character panels, and it's this option here. Whenever you pick a variable font, it get this option. Hey, look at this. I can't just pick our weights. I can pick any weights. I call does that, get it down to the, if you are watching this and you don't really mind about fonts, it's not a big deal, but if you are typographer, it's amazing that you can pick any weight you want. Same with width, condensed font. It's not just making it narrower. You'll notice that the actual fonts change, they're being designed at all these different levels. The poor typographer who had to work out that K slant, K is my telex. Again, it's not just sliding it over. The typography has gone through and made adjustments. The drawbacks of this is that there are very little fonts that are available that will change and some of the funds that are built-in to illustrater, let's say I was looking at this one, Source Sans. Source Sans a bit for web stuff and you'll notice it just says, weight. This one here has been only adjusted full weight. Keep an eye on Typekit.com as well as they release new fonts. Adobe releasing them. Google, windows or few of the big players are releasing variable fonts. I'm pretty excited. Another little upgrade is this panel here, my character panel wish that's live updates. If I roll across these, can you see the plates in the background rather than going. We'll want a big font and you just it's just going to guess and then have to drop down again. Is that useful? You can notice here as well, instead of going to the verbal funded some preset versions or default versions as well as your adjustments. Wheatley is not wicking over here for me at the moment. That live adjustments, they lie, they are wicking now, when is it going to go? Anyway, works for living and adjustment as well. I need to have a bit of type that has leading. You just really handy to small upgrade, super handy. The next type upgrade in Illustrator is something called stylistic sets and refers back to the glyphs panel really so. When you in the past, if I typed in something and I typed in Queen, I picked to fonts. I'll pick lust. The good thing about it is that I felt like this has a lot of glyphs. If I highlight this one here, you'll notice in the new version, at least the 2017 version of the glyphs pop out automatically, which is go. I can go through and say, I like this one and I like this one. You can spend a bit of time fiddling with this. That's great for when you're working with type you got rid of time to spend. But stylistic sets. The difference between that and think of it is what we just did there was a menu way of picking glyphs. What we can do though, is use a stylistic sit. That set is defined by the actual type designer or the topography. If we get a window and open up type and we'll go to opentype. What we're looking for first of all is this icon here and the old fonts have stylistic sets. This might be greater if he doesn't have it, but if it does look at this guy here, if I drop him out. Let's look at doing this one, but I'm going to zoom in a little bit, because we were looking at this element joins the baseline, you might hate that better the font and you need a straight up and down. You can see that it's gone through and done that for all the else. That's one of the things that the topography is done. Let's look at alternate a, we've got this traditional typographer's a, but not the way we draw it, which says 'a' will be a switch out because they've got going and finding and replacing all the a's with this one here, buddy copy super easy using stylistics sets. I'll let that went on at G1 and zeros. Let's turn that on. Let's go to step into G1 and a zero. Selected olds have a look at those ones. These are actually not universal. This is whoever sat down to do this phone decided that we're going to do these particular features and they go to name them as well. You Can see serifed, it's not a 1, is an I, so capital I. This font by default is just a stick which looks like an L or a 1. If you have a font, you need to be really care about that one. You could use the stylistic set. This is serifed I. You can see it puts an eye on them and slashed zero. An alternative g, how cool is that? I love it. Let's have a look at this font here. Look at these stylistic sets. It's just going to go through and have a look at different ones. You can turn them on and off. This is on a top swish. This one's got a bottom swish. There's no bottom swish and this one, there is to and off that one there seems to be connected. You have that one would that went on to have a play around with the different sets. These haven't been named very well in lust. They should probably use my bottom swish terminology but some of them have and some of them just called sets that I am excited about. The last of the type upgrades is when I have this selected and I switched to libraries in the POS, when I want to add this, I could earn any added as a graphic and I edited and that was cool, but what I wanted to use it later on it was collect this graphic, no editable text. There was a way of going into it and figuring it all out. But, and what you can do now is with it selected, you'll notice that this is a brand new option text. The cool thing about that is if I edit click on the add button. It's in there as actually takes them when I drag it out, It is actual editable text. What's also cool is that if you dump it in there with our paragraph style or a character style that will come along for the ride. Also that the text can actually be used in InDesign as well, will bring through paragraph styles. Next feature. The next feature is exporting using the S8 panel, so window and go down to export. This thing here was an early aversion, I love it. One of the problems was is that if I tried to drag in multiple objects in one big group, it turned it into one big asset, but I want to drag it out which this they're all separate now. There will grouped separately and that's how it defines which are the different objects, which is Co. If you still do want one big asset. I can select them all again and while I'm dragging it and then hold down the alt key on a PC or option key on the Mac. You can see that well joined again. I just make sure that grouped and then they can be exploited. If you've uses before, I can click on these guys and say actually I want you to be a PNG or JPEG or an SVG, which is vector, same with the PDF. Then I can click export. They'll all a export separately. Another cool little export feature is say you're a person who likes to use layers to separate them everything out. The moment this guy here has all on one layer, let's just say I select all of these guys is an option in here. This is release to layers. I've separated them all on their own layers or get them out of this initial one, [inaudible] you get rid of the original one. They're all on their own layers. That's not the new trick that's been there for a while. We separated all the groups into to layers. Let's say that's the way you'd like to work. You like to have all different designs on different layers. But now I can select them all or just one of them or all of them but one of them. See this option down here. This is brand new collect for export. It does the exact same thing, dumped them all into the export panel as separate little objects from those layers. Then we can decide what format we want and then hit export. The export panel was awesome. It's got even bid at in this vision. Thank you. Dolby. Next feature, please. This upgrade is like an anti upgrade, just a small little option, but a lot of people complain about it to me is that in 2017 that made the default is when I have something selected and I'm up here and I try and zoom in using my command plus for a Mac or control plus for a PC to zoom in, it's sent it's wave, you have your selection. Doesn't matter where you move if you hit zoom in, it seemed as it again, I love that. A lot of people don't, and it was no way of turning it off. But you can, in this option, if that's being driving you mad, go up to illustrate a CC preferences and go to selection. If you're on a PC, go to edit down the bottom. There'll be Preferences and go to selection. In here there's an option that's is zoomed to selection. Turn that off. Now if I have that selected, it goes back to old default, would just zooms into the middle of the document. Under to my back on because I love it, but I think I'm in the minority. Next feature. This next little upgrade is when I'm making a new document. It means that I can do maths in these little boxes now we haven't been able to do that before. It's really handy if you need, say, print document and it needs to be A4 the pixels and this A3, but this no way to. As pixel, I'm not sure why it's not there, but I'm doing a post to as this many senior made it. But I know a pixel double and A3. In here times, which is the little asterisk key two. I grab you and I times you by two, and now I have double A3, which is A2. Or it might be that you need to document and you just need to add, say three millimeters or say three meters either side for bleed. Edits there easy. I didn't add millimeters, I added centimeters. But you get the idea. All math can be done in these options now. In the 2017 version, it couldn't be done. This feature also works in InDesign and Photoshop as well. Just so you know, you can divide by, plus, minus and times, which is asterisk. Awesome, next feature. Then next change to adobe Illustrator 2018 is, now if you make swatches, they become global swatches by default. This might make a difference to you. Global swatches have been around a little while. I'm going to open up my swatches panel. All they mean is, let's say I've got this like that. I want this to be a swatch. So I'm going to say new swatch and I click "Okay." By default it's this thing called a global swatch. You can tell the difference is, can you see over here? It's got a little triangle in the corner. Means it's a global swatch. What is a global swatch? Say if I pick another non-global swatch, any of these. Two colors, one of them is global, one of them is not. You can see here if I click off, I have nothing selected and I go and change this pink here and I go and make it a bit darker. It changes in the swatch, but didn't change this color here. But if I change this global color, make it a bit darker, look what happens, it changes this. It's just something to be aware of that that's going to happen to you. If you've never used global swatches before, you might find that quite useful just knowing that there's such a thing as a global swatch. You can make any swatch global, double-click it and go up to global. Click "Okay" and that's now global and you need to apply it. Now, when you apply that to different shapes they're connected. Next feature. That's actually the end of the 2018 upgrades. But what I'll show you is a few of the ones that slipped through during 2017. What Adobe doesn't do now is wait for big launches to release all the products. What they do is during the year, you'll get an upgrade and some things will upgrade. If you are like most people in the world, you won't even go and check what's new. Let's have a quick look at what actually has been released in the past 12 months that I bet you you probably didn't even know got released. Just the useful stuff. The first one is cropping. If you're like me, everyone does it this way. You grab the rectangle tool, you draw it across that thing there. You grab these two guys, and then you go command seven to crop. Or you go the long way up to object, clipping mask, make. The only trouble with this is that, that object is still there. It's still hiding in the background. You can see it there. You can move it around and it's cool that way, but there is lots of problems. If I get a window and I use my export, if I drag this whole thing you will notice that it actually puts the whole thing around the outside. Can you see? Not just the inside, actual bounding box of that asset is the whole thing around. Plus it makes file sizes really big. You just use a little small part of this and you export the PDF, the whole image is in there. The thing you didn't notice is with it selected, there's this option now called crop image. It says, "Don't worry. " It's not going to affect the original because I've linked this image actually when I imported it. It says, "Don't worry, the original is going to stay the same." But what I can do now is do a crop like a Photoshop crop. Hit return and double-click. All those pixels are actually gone forever. I don't know why we have two visions of this. That's the cropping tool that you probably missed. Next feature that got released lately is, if I got a type and I've got some specific fonts I always use, people forget that this option here now exists. The favorites part. If you are a person who keeps using ones, and you have to keep going through this list and like working for your corporate funds, as you can actually just star a few of them. The ones that you use all the time, just turn that on and you got a nice cut down favorited list especially good if you're working in an agency or a company that uses the same fonts over and over again. Stops you having to look through it all. Turn it off by clicking it again. Next feature. Another thing that Adobe have introduced is templates, especially for Illustrators. If I go to "File", "New", now. In here, if I got a print, you'll see down the bottom here there's some template options. There's 23 of them. They're free to use and the cool thing about them is that say, just to get you started for a new design, especially if you're new designer or don't use Illustrator that often, or don't do a lot of type design that often, click on this one. There's an option, say this one here. It says download. Already downloaded this one. I'm going to open it and you can see it's all ready to go using Typekit fonts. There's actually two color options in this case. If there's any stock imagery, often that'll be replaced by gray boxes and you'll have to put in your own images, but templates, this would be easy to get started with some nicely designed documents all ready to go. Next feature has to do with the libraries. You might already be using libraries which are awesome. If you're not get started. I'm going to create a new library here for this project. This is going to be my 3D characters created and all you do is drag stuff into it. You probably already know how to do that. Couple of things, is that up here in this little flat menu you've got things like collaborate. Collaborate is awesome. It means I can send it to a colleague and they have the ability to see this 3D characters library as well. When they add stuff to it, I see it, and vice versa. I find this is really good when I'm working with logos and fonts and stuff on a shade client or say it's our company. We'll have our company logos, fonts, colors in there and it's a shade one across the whole agency. But one of the newer features is that in here there's one that says just shared link. That's really good if you want to share out with an external source, so they can view this library, but they can't edit, add, and update. They just get to see, they get to click, hold, and drag stuff out. But they can't edit it, they can't adjust it, it's locked down. Those are the two options, collaborate or share link. Both have their purposes. One last thing before we leave libraries is, if I add something in here and then I go and try and drag it out later on it's linked. That's fine. I like that. It means if I update this option, this guy comes along for the ride. But this oftentimes, I just want this to come out and be a raw vector shape. All you need to do is hold down option on a Mac or alt on a PC. Hold it down while you're dragging it out. You'll see now here is vector shape ready to go and ready to be edited rather than linked to our library. This works for Photoshop, InDesign, after a fixed premiere as well if you want to bring it in and leave it and make it editable, hold down alt or option. Next feature please. This is going to be our last feature. Why? Because I could probably go on forever. Let's call it here and look at this last one and it is CC markets. This has been around for a little while, but it's amazing and people don't know about it if you go to your Creative Cloud app. If you're on a Mac it's up here. If you're on a PC, it's portrayed in the bottom right. You're looking for this little wave here, this CC wave. Find assets and then find market. You also look like this, to go on this little search button. Let's say we're building this website here and we need like some social icons. Am I going to go and design social icons or find them from each of the sites? No. I'm going to go and find some other ones that have been designed by people. You can see these ones have been made, like a hand-drawn version. There is another ones here. There's just lots here and I can keep scrolling. I keep going to the bottom here and it keeps loading more in here. Social icons after social icon. What I do is I go through, let's say I like this one here, I click on it. I'm looking for an SVG or an AI file because I want it to be an Illustrator. I click download. Where to? I put it there, 3D characters library I made. What's really cool is that they are commercial use. I could use them for free and watch this. I can just drag these guys out. Lovely. I got a bunch of icons. I'm going to ungroup them even and now I've got all my icons to start using in my design. It's just really super easy to use adobe market to find this more generic stuff. You'll find lots a UI items like buttons, and designs for websites, you'll find lots of vector icon type things. You're not going to find any stock images, but you will find, let's have a little look here. In here type in UI design. If you are new to it and you're looking for some ideas, you can see here lots of awesome ideas to get started and you're allowed to use them commercially, which is nice. I think I need a home button for my website, and I'm going to use an icon. Here we go. Now, I'm using it for this web thing here. Obviously you can use it for anything; print, web, or app design. Just a really super little useful feature that not many people know about. That is going to be it. I could keep talking about new features and things that I enjoy in Illustrator for ages, so we'll leave it there. Those are the features for 2018 and also some of the ones with 2017 that got slipped in there. If I don't already, there will be a full course for Illustrator essentials and an Illustrator advanced course on bringyourownlaptop.com. Make sure you check out the other videos that I've made around the other 2018 releases. Check those out. All right good members, that is going to be it. [inaudible] and I will see you in another video.