trying to become better acquainted with illustrator, got a few questions

[myront]

Too all, I will continue to use Corel as my "go to" but we also must have illustrator and since most jobs require some knowledge I just thought I'd at least try and learn a bit more. I've had illustrator for over 25 and many times tried to learn it but end up frustrated. I thought if only I could pick some brains and be showed some basic things I'd like it better or at least get along a little better.
Sure I'll point out some major differences between the two and probably upset many but I'm asking for constructive criticism without the negativity. Believe me, I am just as frustrated trying to teach corel to the adobe trained.

Some more points
illustrator files are typically twice the file size than corel. I rarely have a corel wrap file at full scale, another subject altogether, over 600MB. Same file built in illustrator would be 1.5GB

Am I missing something? In illy you must select a size before you even begin designing. Since 90% of our jobs are landscape "Broad Sheet", I have my corel set up to automatically start there. Actually I've gone beyond that and have a customized macro to start a new design that has a label with the current date & artist's name. Also has our standard disclaimer paragraph explaining the importance of proofing.

Customizing the workspace is much harder in illy. And keyboard shortcuts are limited to "F keys"? I have many customized keyboard shortcuts in corel assigned to various macros (only 1 uses the F1 key). hit F1 and outlook opens a mail template for proofing.

I would like to know some alternative ways to duplicate a shape. I only know the holding alt method. In corel I can think of 5 different ways. My go to is drag a shape and before letting go right click. Can use ctrl to constrain.

Can I flip a shape with the mouse or keyboard command?

 

[myront]

Is it possible to set the default alignment from "Align to Selection" to "Align to Key Object"?
p.s. no keyboard shortcuts for alignment?

 

[ColorCrest]

illustrator files are typically twice the file size than corel. I rarely have a corel wrap file at full scale, another subject altogether, over 600MB. Same file built in illustrator would be 1.5GB

This might take some detective work. You might imagine that most all the underlying technology must be the same, or very similar, to these apps across their platform; Mac, Windows, sometimes Linux. So, if you save a Corel file with an embedded raster image and an Illustrator with the same raster file but they are different is size, it should give a clue that some setting is very different between the two. Maybe a compression setting in this case? A difference in scale? Saved file type?

 

[ColorCrest]

About large Corel and Illustrator design files...

Many shops, especially agencies, their designers don't even have ready access to large raster files, mainly due to the interest of time, and especially because of remote work nowadays.

A "design art" department is somewhat separate from the "production artist" department. It's the production artists who are actually skilled and experience enough to build print-ready files. So, designers are working quickly with FPO proxy raster links resulting in very small Corel and Illustrator files as they sit on disk. Only later do they link to the hi-res files and are saved as PDF by the production department. The small design files eventually are in the "cloud" somewhere and the hi-res links live elsewhere with the production art department or even at the print shop. This flow has been in place since the days of WamNet!, the ultimate bandwidth of the day.

 

[Bobby H]

One reason Illustrator files tend to be larger is they embed a bunch of PDF data by default. Most Illustrator-generated AI files can be opened and viewed in Adobe Reader (unless defaults are changed). Depending on the document's raster effects resolution settings certain "live" effects like drop shadows and other Photoshoppy stuff can really balloon file sizes.

There are good number of tasks I very much prefer doing in Adobe Illustrator versus CorelDRAW. But aligning objects is not one of them. I do not like the extra clicks required in Illustrator to assign a "key object" to keep it locked into place. In CorelDRAW the last object added to a selection stays locked and other objects align to it. And then the R-L-C-T-B-E keyboard shortcuts for aligning objects will dramatically speed up a lot of tasks.

I don't mind Illustrator's behavior of applying the fill/stroke properties of the last selected object to a newly created object. I'll hit Shift+X to swap the fill and stroke values if needed. I can click "I" to bring up the eyedropper to copy another object's style and then click "V" to get back to my selection tool. I usually have the Essentials Classic workspace loaded, so a lot of important palettes are off to my right such as Color, Graphic Styles, Appearance, etc.

 

[myront]

Thanks, I'm slowly learning some things but really have to dig to find what I need to know. When the military dropped me in front of a pc with Corel I was able to pick it up and run with it without tutorials or anything. I absolutely knew nothing about computers or let alone digital design at the time.

Don't like that in order to constrain text when resizing you have to hold shift. Corel you just drag a corner.
No icon to flip/mirror. Could be I just don't know where to look. Corel has an icon readily available or just grab a side and hold ctrl and other keystrokes
No keyboard shortcut to set text to center align

Say I accidently "stretch or squish" text, can I revert back without an undo?

 

[Humble PM]

There is something to be said for just doing a course https://www.linkedin.com/learning/illustrator-one-on-one-fundamentals
I find 1.5X is about right speed. Yes, it costs money to join linkedin/learning, but Deke is a pretty good teacher. I often played this when I used to teach Photoshop or Lightroom, and people said had said their brains hurt.

I'm going through filemaker at the moment...

 

[ColorCrest]

I'm going through filemaker at the moment...

Since you're using LinkedIn learning, be sure to see if you can find some content by Simon Allardice regarding just a handful of database fundamentals.

 

[Humble PM]

Our FM solution was built by an ex-colleague about a decade ago, who was using Lynda.com at the time. Chris Ippolitte's course shows he was a good student - makes reverse engineering all the structure, a tough less daunting.

I'll check out Simon Allardice once my grip is better.

 

[ColorCrest]

I'll check out Simon Allardice once my grip is better.

Actually, Simon's content is not to be missed as a very first initiation. Originally his content was at Lynda. There, was maybe 3 or 4 videos of maybe less than 5 minutes each. I think there are only two of those left at YouTube due to Lynda becoming LinkedIn.

EDITED TO ADD: "Database Tutorial - What are databases?"

Here's one 5:30 minutes...

Good luck.

 

[ikarasu]

This might take some detective work. You might imagine that most all the underlying technology must be the same, or very similar, to these apps across their platform; Mac, Windows, sometimes Linux. So, if you save a Corel file with an embedded raster image and an Illustrator with the same raster file but they are different is size, it should give a clue that some setting is very different between the two. Maybe a compression setting in this case? A difference in scale? Saved file type?

I didn't read all the latest posts but the touch on this,

In illustrator if you uncheck preserve illustrator editing capabilities when saving as a PDF it typically drops the size in half... At least for everything we do, I don't really care about size though since space is pretty much infinite.. so we just leave it the way it is

 

[JBurton]

My go to is drag a shape and before letting go right click.

That's amateurish, at least that's what I thought when I found selecting an object and holding the mouse click while hitting space will drop a copy, leaving the original, and a third that you're holding still. It's how I drop mounting holes. So much better than click, drag, right click, repeat. But it all depends on what you are needing copies for...

 

[GAC05]

That's amateurish, at least that's what I thought when I found selecting an object and holding the mouse click while hitting space will drop a copy, leaving the original, and a third that you're holding still. It's how I drop mounting holes. So much better than click, drag, right click, repeat. But it all depends on what you are needing copies for...

I think I knew this at one time but had totally forgotten it. My memory seems to be reaching presidential levels these days. Thanks for the reminder.

 

[JBurton]

My memory seems to be reaching presidential levels these days.

Monumental levels is the colloquialism you're after... oh, right, LETS GO BRANDON!!!

 

[Bobby H]

Thanks, I'm slowly learning some things but really have to dig to find what I need to know. When the military dropped me in front of a pc with Corel I was able to pick it up and run with it without tutorials or anything. I absolutely knew nothing about computers or let alone digital design at the time.

I first learned graphics production the analog way back in the 1980's. That made it a bit easier diving into very early (and very primitive) versions of CorelDRAW and Adobe Illustrator over 30 years ago. Lots of terms in the applications were already familiar. So many years and version releases later I'm still hopping between the two applications because they both have their strengths and limitations. Neither have what I consider a complete overlap of features.

In Illustrator (as well as Photoshop and even Freehand) I got very spoiled to the Ctrl-Shift-Alt-Spacebar keyboard shortcut combinations for zooming in/out and hand-panning the artwork view while being able to edit anchor points on paths while I was drawing them with the Pen tool. The GPU-enabled animated zoom in more recent versions of Illustrator is even better. If I need to hand trace clean vectors over sketched artwork, images, etc I'm going to do that in Illustrator.

Say I accidently "stretch or squish" text, can I revert back without an undo?

Not really. Ctrl+Z or clicking states in the history palette are one alternative. Having "dummy" copies of text objects off to the side is another. Use the Eyedropper tool to copy text styles from the unaltered dummy text objects to reset the look of other text objects.