Last September Peter Vukovic wrote an article containing tips for a productive Photoshop workflow. This post is essentially the Illustrator version of Peter’s article, highlighting some Illustrator specific tips as well as some other tips that span several Adobe programs. Global color swatches Many designers have faced a design project requiring three or more colors and a combination of both strokes and fills. Normally, to try out color schemes within the design you would have to select the strokes and change the color, then select the fill and change the special database color separately. Thankfully, global color swatches lets you do that all at once, without even having to select the objects!
This technique allows designers to play with colors quickly and efficiently. Global 1 When adding a new color to the swatch panel, simply check the “Global” check box. Global 2 Global swatches have a small white triangular corner in the swatch panel to indicate they are global. These two objects, one fill object and one stroke object, have been special database assigned the global color swatch. Global 3 This is where the magic happens. Notice that while editing the global swatch with “Preview” enabled, the color of the globally assigned fill and stroke object changed automatically.
No tedious selection necessary! Custom keyboard shortcuts Keyboard Shortcuts That’s right, every single keyboard shortcut in Illustrator can be customized. Taking the time to experiment with quick and easy shortcut combinations can save hours down the line. Additionally, a lot of the extremely forgettable shortcuts, particularly the function + shift + F10 style shortcuts (for workspace panels) can be trimmed down and actually made useful. Hide the control and application bar Control Bar By default Illustrator has the control and application bars special database enabled. At first these bars seem convenient, offering quick access to various parameters. The truth is however, these bars are really unnecessary in an optimized workflow and all of these parameters are also available through panels.