The Perspective Grid Feature is a nice addition to Illustrator CS5. With any new feature, it’s a good idea to get familiar with keyboard shortcuts so you can use the new feature more efficiently and cut down the learning curve. One tip that is helpful when using a perspective grid is to quickly toggle a perspective grid’s visibility.

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I came across this trick randomly and decided to post about to get your opinion. It seems like a pretty cool little trick, but honestly, I haven’t found a great use for it. It is fun to play around with and great for experimenting, but can you see yourself using this trick for anything in particular?

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I’m sure some of you already know about this, but if you don’t, you can save some time while working tabbed documents in Illustrator CS4 and CS5. Press Command (Control on Windows) and the ~ (the tilde key) to switch between open tabbed Illustrator documents. Pretty nifty!

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Illustrator is great for creating logos, illustrations, identity packages and much more. After you have created your project in Illustrator it is super simple to save it in PDF format, making it easy for proofing with clients. When proofing projects with clients, you usually don’t want the client to have access to editing or copying the files until you have received payment for the project.

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When ever I would install a new version of Illustrator, I would quickly turn off the Smart Guides. They always seemed confusing to me, but after working with Illustrator for a while, I have become reliant on Illustrator’s Smart Guides. If you don’t use Smart Guides, you should! It will help you create cleaner files, speed up productivity, and be more precise when creating artwork in Illustrator.

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When creating vectors, I sometimes need to delete large areas of artwork. Sometimes I just mask the artwork, but other times I want to get rid of it all together. This is were the Eraser tool comes in handy. Holding down the Option / Alt key with the Eraser tool creates a marquee area and anything within this area will be deleted.

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I’m not that great at math, but luckily, Illustrator is. Illustrator uses points, lines, curves, and shapes all based on mathematical equations to create artwork. Even with its complicated computations on the back-end, Illustrator also has some basic mathematical functionality to adjust objects within panels and dialogs.

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