Illustrator has the ability to add raster effects to elements like outer glows, inner glows, and drop shadows. Vector art is great because you can scale them to any size. That is why I try not to use the raster effects in final output. One area this creates a problem, is drop shadows, but there are a couple of easy ways to add drop shadows using blends and gradients rather than raster effects.
I like to work efficiently, so I get a little annoyed when something slows me down in Illustrator. Have you ever been cruising right along and accidently added a color to the Stroke of an object when you meant to add it to the Fill? Now you have to go back and do it all over again, wasting time. Luckily, there are a few useful keyboard shortcuts to help with Fills and Strokes.
In celebration of St. Patricks Day, I wanted to do a four-leaf clover tutorial. Some of you might not celebrate St. Patricks Day or have no use for a four-leaf clover, but still take a look at this tutorial. This tutorial combines some good techniques. You will Divide, Transform, and add Warping Effects. These techniques will help you quickly and easily create with Illustrator!
It used to be a time consuming process to create a halftone. First, I would open a picture in Photoshop, convert it to grayscale, apply a halftone effect, open it up in illustrator, trace it, and if didn’t get messed up somewhere in the process, I would use the halftone in Illustrator. In Illustrator CS3 it is quite a bit easier to create halftones without leaving Illustrator.
