Illustrator Reference Sheet

CMYK

CMYK or cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, are subtractive colors that are the standard ink colors for printing. This means that whenever we print and image we are using CMYK inks to produce the print. Many professional printers or publishers require that images for print must be converted to CMYK before being printed. This is because the RGB color spectrum (displays) is much wider than the CMYK spectrum (ink), and during conversion from RGB to CMYK, the appearance of certain colors may look different

.jpg, .jpeg

JPEG, which stands for Joint Photographic Experts Groups. Compression: Lossy - some file information is compressed or lost Best for web images, non-professional printing, e-mail, powerpoint

.ai

a file extension for files created in Adobe Illustrator. It's important to save in the format if you want to maintain your layers and reopen your project in Adobe Illustrator later

art boards (shift-o)

artboards are similar to pages in Adobe InDesign or Microsoft Word and represent the printable area. Artboards can be different sizes and orientations, be arranged how you like, and overlap

brush

b

delete

cmd + backspace

duplicate

cmd + d

save

cmd + s

zoom in

command +

zoom out

command -

control panel

displays options for the currently selected object

document window

document window displays the file you're working on. Document windows can be tabbed and, in certain cases, grouped and docked

spacebar

drag and pan

direct selection (a)

lets you select individual anchor points or path segments by clicking on them

selection (v)

lets you select objects and groups by clicking or dragging over them

magic wand tool (y)

lets you select objects of the same color, stroke weight, stroke color, opacity, or blending mode by clicking the object

lasso tool (l)

lets you select objects, anchor points, or path segments by dragging around all or part of the object

menu bar

located at the top of the desktop screen

rectangle

m

pencil

n

direct selection a

selects an anchor point on shape

selection v

selects whole shape

deselect

shift + command + a

cmd-tab

toggles between programs

cmd-opt-0

fit all artboards to window

cmd-0

fit current artboard to window

cmd-spacebar

"spotlight" searches computer for anything

properties panel

Context-specific panel. If you select an object, the Properties Panel will give you typical panels accessed with one object (fill, stroke, etc.) If you have multiple objects, it will give you different panels in the Properties Panel (pathfinder, align, etc.)

hand

H

vector images

Images that are made up of paths or line art that are infinitely scalable because they work based on algorithms rather than pixels; examples include ai, pdf, svg. Scale down to a smart watch or up to a billboard.

RGB

RGB or red, green, and blue, are additive colors and are what we see when we look at our computer monitors, phones, and other screens. The tiny dots that make up our displays are composed of RGB information. The RGB color space is very large and is ideal for images that would be used for web and presentation purposes

home screen

When you launch Illustrator, the Home screen appears, which includes the following contents: presets, recent docs, and tutorials

raster images

images that are pixel-based, they are resolution dependent; examples include .jpg, .psd