Written by T. Michael Testi
Alright, you know Illustrator pretty well, but they just came out with a new version called Illustrator CS4. The question is, how exactly do you get up to speed with all of the new features without having to hash through the old just to find the differences? Well, just ask Mordy! Get online at Lynda.com and in Illustrator CS4 New Features, he will show it to you.
Mordy Golding has put together a short course that focuses just on the new features of Illustrator CS4. As a leading expert in Illustrator, he covers the latest developments in Adobe's vector image editor, and he leaves no stone unturned. This course lasts 1.25 hours.
The first thing that the instructor covers is the changes in the interface. Adobe has been working hard at trying to get all of their products as unified as possible, and here he covers the changes. He then moves on to the use of new multiple artboards. This is a feature that a lot of people have been wanting for quite a while. Here you are shown why you would want to use them, and how to create a set and interact with them.
The appearance panel has had a major overhaul in Illustrator CS4, as well as some of the other Adobe products, and here you are shown why it now becomes a focal point in your workflow. It will help you eliminate the need to trudge through menus. Next he looks at the new capabilities of graphic styles like the ability to add-on graphic styles to existing 
styles in a compounding manner.
Clipping masks have made it so much easier to select and mask objects in Illustrator and here you are shown techniques in which you no longer have to lock and unlock layers to get the right object. The instructor then explains the new Blob brush. He first reminds you about the problems with the painting methods in past versions. Then you are exposed to what you are now able to do with the new Blob brush, and how it can make many things you do much easier.
Other topics covered include:
- Transparent Gradients and how they are much more flexible in CS4.
- The Smart Guides, which give you information as you work and are turned on by default in CS4.
- The Separations Preview examines the printing and proofing abilities in this version.
- The Isolation mode, which will let you isolate a specific path from the rest of the document.
- The Connect Now ability in CS4 that allows you share your screen with someone else on the Internet.
- And finally the Kuler which finds sets of colors based on themes that can be added to your swatches panel.
Illustrator CS4 New Features is another high quality training video from Lynda.com that gives you the ability to get up to speed on the new features of Adobe Illustrator. Now if you are new to Illustrator and really need to know all about it, there is also a full eight-hour package called Illustrator CS4 Essential Training from Lynda.com as well by the same instructor.
The online training Illustrator CS4 New Features comes in three flavors. At $25/month you get all of the videos that are available online (approximately 21,811 videos on 318 topics at this time). Annually, $250 for Standard gets you all the videos. For $375, the Premium subscription gets you all the videos as well as all of the exercise files. Take note that the exercise files are only included in the Premium annual subscriptions.
You can use Illustrator CS4 New Features as a training program for the individual student, as well as the college or vocational teacher looking to supplement their educational materials. It is of benefit to anyone who needs help understanding Illustrator CS4. You can also try out a couple of the videos for free at Lynda.com.
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