Illustrator CS6 Essential Training 2

Was assigned another set of videos to watch and write summaries about. Not very long, not very hard and some of it is just a recap of things that were answered in class:

• RBG vs. CMYK

CMYK is comprised of the colors cyan, magenta, yellow and black and are used in documents that require printing. RBG is comprised of the colors red, green and blue which are primarily used for documents being displayed on the web or varied screened devices.

• Understanding Fills and Strokes

Fills and strokes make your paths fancy lookin'. The fill is the solid color inside of the path that creates the shape/letter/etc., while the strokes are selected colors that essentially outline the shape/letter/etc. and work with or without the fill much like the fill can work with or without the stroke. Multiple fills and strokes can be used in combination to give shapes/letters/etc. more depth and feel.

• Working with Paths

A path is essentially the line between two anchor points. It can be straight or manipulated to curve in any way the user desires. They are the skeletal structure in which fills and strokes are placed over top of. The anchor points that the path attaches two are basically the joints of the path. They hold it together and control how the path looks through the use of handles.

In the case of broken paths, they can be joined or averaged together through the join and average command. The join command will take two end points close together and join them together creating one path. The average command does something similar, but is used for paths not in close distance to one another. Using it, the command will determine in what way to combine and close the shape based upon the axis you choose.

The scissors and knife tools are used for splitting apart paths. Using the scissors tool, you can click on one anchor point along the path, then another and cut it along those anchor points with the scissors command. The knife tool is just that, a knife. It freely cuts through paths in any manner you choose, giving you more freedom to manipulate what paths are created when it is used. However, it also does not give you the same level of control and restrain as the scissors tool.