Adobe Illstrator is a software to design the web UI or the architecture layout. The reason I use it is to master a way to draw beautiful picture in papers. So I find a tutorial in the Youtube and record and summarize the basic knowledge and shortcut about AI.
1. Ten Basic Thing
Start the new file from the template
There are several templates we can use when building a new file. If we want to design a web UI we can choose the web navbar or we can click “More Settings” buttom to set the specific detail about the new file.
We can set the profile as Custom and then set the artboard number and other things.
And another tip is that we can set the artboard name at the bottom of the right side as we can see in the picture3 just like Sketch.
Tools
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Rectangle tool(Shortcut M) is used to create a rectangle. - If we hold shift when we create the rectangle, it will be a square. And this tip is also suitable in creating ellipse and circle. - If we click when using the rectangle tool, we can input the specific number of the width and height. - We can use Object -> Arrange to move the graph backward or forward.
- Drwa a line:
- Pen tool: hold shift to draw a perfectly straight line. Clike to get a line and drag to get a curve.
- Line segment tool(): draw a line and hold shift to draw.
- Pencil tool: draw strokes.
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Blob brush tool and Painbrush tool: We can use some pattens in Brush Library to draw some specific lines.
![p4]()
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Gradient tool: set gradient color in shapes. We can choose several colors and rotate the gradient.
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Shape build tool: group or join in different shapes into one shape.
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Free transform tool: change or distort the shape to some special form
- Change pixel picture to vector.
