Adobe Illustrator: Basic Tutorial & Guide for Beginners 2021

Creative Cloud and Illustrator

Now everything is connected — and simpler than ever. With Creative Cloud, you can access all the tools you need in one place. These tools include Illustrator, which you can now use even if you don’t have a Creative Cloud subscription — even if you have purchased it separately. All your artwork is saved in one common cloud. Stay connected with all the other Adobe products like InDesign, After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Photoshop.

A common example is to create an image in Illustrator. For instance, designers will start with just designing a piece of the image in Illustrator. Then it is imported into Photoshop or After Effects. Furthermore, Illustrator users would easily create an image and export it to InDesign for including in magazines and books. Designers could also export the image from Illustrator to After Effects to create the animated image.

In the same way, art would be worked on in the same software. For example, designers create illustrations in Photoshop, but then add text and other images in Illustrator.

Adobe Illustrators’ Vector Based Graphic Creation.

One of Illustrator’s main features is the quality of the artwork it produces. Although the resolution may change, Illustrator has an option to maintain the quality of any image regardless of the display size.

Essentially, this is an attribute of the vector artwork, which uses mathematical relationships to describe various arcs, lines, and other parts. Photographs from Photoshop are simply resolution-dependent.

Even the quality of image decreases and it becomes blurry when you increase the size of image. Vector images contain a set of points, which are connected by vectors to form a shape. Each point is defined by its location on the x and y-axes (these are called control points).

The most important thing the node finds out is the vector’s path, which has many attributes like curve, color, shape, fill, and thickness. Additionally, the vector position can be related to each other using mathematical formulas. This can recalculate the location when the image gets resized.

In simple terms, the difference between vector and bitmap images is in the way they are drawn. In vector graphics, shapes are mathematically plotted. So when you scale up such images, the pixels do not enlarge. As a result, images in vector don’t suffer from pixelated distortions.

Also, the idea of scaling an image actually results in fewer details and a loss of image quality. This is why Illustrator is better for billboards or huge images.

What Is Adobe Illustrator CC?

In the Illustrator Creative Cloud, essentially the basic version of Illustrator is available. This is part of the cloud-based subscription service offered by Adobe.

Prior to the release of Illustrator CC 2020, there were five previous versions. The first version, Illustrator v17, was released in 2013. By this point, it was already v19. Then, each new version of the Illustrator CC is designated as Illustrator CC xxx, where ‘xxx’ is the year that it was released. The current version is the Illustrator CC 2020.

The noticeable change that you might see in the Illustrator CC contains the major ability for synchronizing and saving documents to the cloud. Also, the Illustrator CC would integrate along with the Behance. This is used by artists for showcasing their portfolios and work. 

In this era, Adobe Illustrator CC is making some fundamental changes. It is now able to save color setups across devices and even has capabilities for creating and managing brushes. Now that the newest versions of Illustrator CC contain touchscreen-friendly options, Adobe redesigned the toolbars to make them easier to use on touchscreens. Desktop publishing companies often need quick access to editing tools.

This allows advertisers to meet deadlines while saving time and money. Let’s introduce you to how to actually use the software for those of you who have never dabbled in Adobe Illustrator training.

Creating A Project With Adobe Illustrator

• Open the Adobe Illustrator. It will be present in the Windows Start menu. 

• Now just click “Create New”. If you aren’t able to view this option, then just press the CTRL+N for creating a new project. 

• Now choose the Print or Web tab. So, now if you are planning to print out what you have created, just click on the “Print” option present at the top of the New Document window. Also, if you want to use the graphics online, just select “Web”.

• Choose the document size. You might come across various document sizes to select from. Here you even have the option for creating a custom-sized canvas. This is by adjusting the values present in the right panel.
• All of the customization options related to the document’s resolution, size, orientation, and color mode would be present in the right column.
• For specifying a particular resolution especially for a printed document, just choose the resolution from the “Raster Effects” menu present in the right panel.

• Click Create to open the new document. Since you have just created a document, you can get to know the common tools present in Illustrator.

Drawing Shapes in Adobe Illustrator

• Click and hold the Shape tool. This is a rectangle present in the toolbar that runs right from the left side of the screen. Here you can find out the menus for many shapes that might appear. Just repeat this step each time when you want to switch among various shape tools. 

• Click the Rectangle Tool. This will select a tool that allows one to draw the squares and rectangles. 

• Click the mouse on the canvas and drag it in any direction. Here the rectangular shape will appear as long as you are dragging. If you want to draw the perfect square, just drag till you can see the pink line diagonally crossing the shape. This is a line that indicates the square is equal on all sides.

• Next, click and hold the Shape tool and choose the Polygon Tool. This is a tool that allows you to specify the number of sides your shape would need. 

• Make sure to click the canvas as soon as you enter the number of sides. Clicking the canvas will make the dialog box appear. Just enter the number of sides you want the particular shape to have.

• Then click and drag the canvas to draw the shape you want. Similar to the one that you did with the rectangle, just drag outward till you get the shape of the desired size. You can also create circles and stars using this menu, in the same manner you do with polygons and rectangles. 

Wrapping Up

The above tutorial is a basic one for all newbies, novices, and beginners of Adobe Illustrator. With simple steps, anyone can create beautiful shapes and diagrams using Illustrator. Check out other websites online with more information on the software if your interested in learning how to do even more!