Starting up

About Illustrator Digital Classroom

The Adobe® Illustrator® CC Digital Classroom lets you create artwork for a variety of uses. Illustrator’s drawing tools let you take advantage of many ways to control color, text, and artwork in your designs. Illlustrator provides you with ways to express your creative ideas and experiment with the presentation.

The Adobe Illustrator CC Digital Classroom helps you get up-and-running right away. You can work through all the lessons in this book, or complete only specific lessons. Each lesson includes detailed, step-by-step instructions, along with lesson files, useful background information, and video tutorials on the Digital Classroom website: www.digitalclassroombooks.com/epub/illustratorcc—it is like having your own expert instructor guiding you through each lesson while you work at your own pace. This book includes 14 self-paced lessons that let you discover essential skills, explore new features, and understand capabilities that will save you time. You’ll be productive right away with real-world exercises and simple explanations. The Adobe Illustrator CC Digital Classroom lessons are developed by the same team of Illustrator experts who have created many official training titles for Adobe Systems.

Prerequisites

Before you start the Adobe Illustrator CC Digital Classroom lessons, you should have a working knowledge of your computer and its operating system. You should know how to use the directory system of your computer so that you can navigate through folders. You also need to understand how to locate, save, and open files, and you should also know how to use your mouse to access menus and commands.

Before starting the lessons files in the Adobe Illustrator CC Digital Classroom, make sure that you have installed Adobe Illustrator CC. The software is sold as part of the Creative Cloud, and is not included with this book. Find more information about the Creative Cloud at www.adobe.com/CreativeCloud. You can use the free 30-day trial version of Adobe Illustrator CC available at the adobe.com website, subject to the terms of its license agreement.

System requirements

Before starting the lessons in the Adobe Illustrator CC Digital Classroom, make sure that your computer is equipped for running Adobe Illustrator CC. The minimum system requirements for your computer to effectively use the software are listed below and you can find the most current system requirements at http://www.adobe.com/products/Illustrator/tech-specs.html.

Windows

• • Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD Athlon® 64 processor
• • Microsoft® Windows® 7 with Service Pack 1 or Windows 8
• • 1 GB of RAM (3 GB recommended) for 32 bit; 2 GB of RAM (8 GB recommended) for 64 bit
• • 2 GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation (cannot install on removable flash storage devices)
• • 1024 × 768 display (1280 × 800 recommended)
• • Internet connection and registration are necessary for required software activation, membership validation, and access to online services.

Mac OS

• • Multicore Intel processor with 64-bit support
• • Mac OS X v10.6.8, v10.7, or v10.8
• • 2 GB of RAM (8 GB recommended)
• • 2 GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation (cannot install on a volume that uses a case-sensitive file system or on removable flash storage devices)
• • 1024 × 768 display (1280 × 800 recommended)
• • Internet connection and registration are necessary for required software activation, membership validation, and access to online services.

Starting Adobe Illustrator CC

As with most software, Adobe Illustrator CC is launched by locating the application in your Programs folder (Windows) or Applications folder (Mac OS). If you are not familiar with starting the program, follow these steps to start the Adobe Illustrator CC application:

Windows

1 Choose Start > All Programs > Adobe Illustrator CC.

2 If a Welcome Screen appears, you can close it.

Mac OS

1 Open the Applications folder, and then open the Adobe Illustrator CC folder.

2 Double-click the Adobe Illustrator CC application icon.

3 If a Welcome Screen appears, you can close it.

Menus and commands are identified throughout the book by using the greater-than symbol (>). For example, the command to print a document appears as File > Print.

Access lesson files and videos any time

Register your book at www.digitalclassroombooks.com/epub/illustratorcc to gain access to your lesson files on any computer you own, or to watch the videos on any Internet-connected computer, tablet, or smart phone. You’ll be able to continue your learning anywhere you have an Internet connection.

Resetting Adobe Illustrator CC preferences

When you start Adobe Illustrator, it remembers certain settings along with the configuration of the workspace from the last time you used the application. It is useful for you to start each of the Adobe Illustrator lessons in this book using the default settings so that you do not see unexpected results. You can use the following steps to reset the Adobe Illustrator CC preferences.

In order to reset your preferences you will need to quit Illustrator and locate the preferences. In Windows and the Mac OS these are in two separate locations. If you are working on a Windows system you might need to change the folder’s view settings in order to find the preferences. Keep in mind that when you reset your preferences you lose saved colors, styles and other preferences that might be important to you. If you wish to save your preferences, rename them instead of deleting them; Illustrator will create all new preferences if it cannot locate the appropriately named folder.

Steps to resetting Windows preferences

1 Quit Adobe Illustrator CC.

2 In Windows, verify that you can find the hidden AppData folder by opening your Control Panel and typing Folder Options into the search text field in the upper-right of the Control panel dialog box.

3 When Folder Options appears, click Show hidden files and folders.

4 In the View tab of Folder Options click the radio box to select Show hidden files, folders and drives. Click OK.

 

In Windows, you might have to change your folders to show Hidden folders.

5 Select C:Usersuser nameAppDataRoamingAdobeAdobe Illustrator.

6 Select the folder named Adobe Illustrator CC Settings. If you want to save custom settings to restore at a later time, rename this file Adobe Illustrator CC Settings folder_old.

7 If you want to delete the preferences and start with new clean preferences, delete the entire Adobe Illustrator CC Settings folder.

8 Relaunch Adobe Illustrator CC. Your preferences are back to the original settings.

Steps to resetting Mac OS preferences

1 Quit Adobe Illustrator CC.

2 Choose User > Library > Preference and select the Adobe Illustrator CC Settings folder.

3 Select the folder named Adobe Illustrator CC Settings. If you want to save custom settings to restore at a later time, rename this file Adobe Illustrator CC Settings folder_old.

4 If you want to delete the preferences and start with new clean preferences, delete the entire Adobe Illustrator CC Settings folder.

5 Relaunch Adobe Illustrator CC. Your preferences are back to the original settings.

To restore custom settings, Quit Adobe Illustrator, and then delete the new AIPrefs file and restore the original name of the previous AIPrefs file.

Loading lesson files

The Adobe Illustrator CC Digital Classroom book includes files that accompany the exercises for each of the lessons. These files are available for download at www.digitalclassroombooks.com/epub/illustratorcc. You can download all the lessons at one time or you may choose to download and work with specific lessons.

For each lesson in the book, the files are referenced by file name. The exact location of each file on your computer is not used, as you might have placed the files in a unique location on your hard drive. We suggest placing the lesson files in the My Documents folder (Windows), at the top level of your hard drive (Mac OS), or on your desktop for easy access.

Copying the lesson files to your hard drive

1 Use your web browser, navigate to www.digitalclassroombooks.com/epub/illustratorcc. Follow the instructions on the web page to download the lesson files to your computer.

2 On your computer, navigate to the location where you downloaded the files and right-click (Windows) the .zip file you downloaded, then choose Extract All or double-click on the .zip file (Mac OS).

Working with the video tutorials

The www.digitalclassroombooks.com/epub/illustratorcc site provides Adobe Illustrator CC Digital Classroom book readers with video tutorials that enhance the content of this book. The videos use the popular Silverlight player for viewing on your desktop or notebook computer, or use iPad-compatible video if you are using an iPad to read an electronic version of this book. Most other ePub devices are not optimized for playing video, and you should use a notebook, desktop, or tablet computer for viewing the video tutorials if you are using a dedicated e-reader such as a nook, Kindle, kobo, or Sony e-reader. An internet connection is necessary for viewing the supplemental video files.

The videos enhance your learning as key concepts and instructions are discussed by the book’s authors. The video tutorials supplement the book’s contents, and do not replace the book. They are not intended to cover every item discussed in the book, but will help you gain a better or more clear understanding of topics discussed in many lessons of the book.

Additional resources

The Digital Classroom series goes beyond the training books. You can continue your learning online, with training videos, at seminars and conferences, and in-person training events.

On-demand video training from the authors

Comprehensive video training from the authors are available at DigitalClassroom.com. Find complete video training along with thousands of video tutorials covering Illustrator and related Creative Cloud apps along with digital versions of the Digital Classroom book series. Learn more at DigitalClassroom.com.

Training from the Authors

The authors are available for professional development training workshops for schools and companies. They also teach classes at American Graphics Institute, including training classes and online workshops. Visit agitraining.com for more information about Digital Classroom author-led training classes or workshops.

Additional Adobe Creative Cloud Books

Expand your knowledge of creative software applications with the Digital Classroom book series. Books are available for most creative software applications as well as web design and development tools and technologies. Learn more at DigitalClassroomBooks.com.

Seminars and conferences

The authors of the Digital Classroom seminar series frequently conduct in-person seminars and speak at conferences, including the annual CRE8 Conference. Learn more at agitraining.com and CRE8summit.com.

Resources for educators

Visit digitalclassroombooks.com to access resources for educators, including instructors’ guides for incorporating Digital Classroom into your curriculum.