Adobe Illustrator is the indispensable vector drawing tool used by digital artists around the world. As a key component of Adobe Creative Suite 6, Illustrator CS6 provides those artists with powerful drawing tools, unparalleled typographic controls, and much more. The award-winning Adobe Illustrator CS6 WOW! Book is updated for intermediate through professional artists and designers to inspire and teach. With its practical, yet beautiful examples, this book focuses on real-world tips, tricks, and techniques extracted from the artwork of many of the world's best Illustrator artists. Along the way, the book incorporates the newer Adobe Illustrators, such as powerful new ways to create complex repeating patterns, apply gradients to a path, edit and apply custom and preset stroke profiles, add custom and preset live arrows, use improved live trace, work with Bristle and Blob brushes, learn new ways to construct and edit objects, add transparency to mesh and gradients, create 3D with the perspective grid, manage multiple artboards, crop with clipping masks, control transitions with opacity masks, and more.

1) Your Creative Workspace

Isolation mode

Layers

Appearances

Targeting

Panels and workspaces

Basic multiple artboards

 

2) Creative Type & Layout

Advanced multiple artboards

Type and design stuff

Symbols and effects for artboards

 

3) Creative Construction

New Drawing Modes (normal, behind, inside)

Pathfinder

LivePaint

Shape Builder

Path Join enhancements

New Live Trace Options panel

 

4) Creative Strokes

Bristle Brush

Blob Brush

New Art Brush Scale Option

Variable Width Lines

Saving and Applying Line Profiles

Creating and Applying Live Arrows

Pattern Brush

Symbols

 

5) Creative Coloring

Blends

Gradients

Gradients on a path

Gradient Mesh

Live Color part 2

 

6) Creative Complexity

Pattern Making

Clipping Masks

Transparency

Opacity Masks

3D

Perspective Grid

Other Live Effects

 

7) Creative Associations

Working with other programs