Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One

Starting back with CS4, you can snap objects to guides using smart

guides, even if the guides are hidden or locked at the layer level; this

wasn’t the case for previous versions of Illustrator.

If you’d like to save your work, press Ctrl+Shift+S (or -Shift-S on

the Mac) to bring up the Save As dialog box. Name your fi le “Horus

with guides.ai,” and click Save. Otherwise, discard the fi le, and

move along with me to the next exercise, which also deals with

organization—this time, of your workspace.

Creating Custom Workspaces

Like most Adobe software, Illustrator’s interface can be described

as panel intensive. Lurking under the Window menu are 34 panels

(not counting the toolbox and control panel, and certainly not in-

cluding the vast number of libraries, which are also housed in pan-

els), though mercifully the various workspaces narrow them down.

A workspace is a predefi ned collection and placement of panels. Il-

lustrator CS5 has nine (that’s right, nine) default workspaces, each

geared toward different uses. Some are designed to mimic applica-

tions you may be familiar with, such as Freehand, Photoshop, or

InDesign. In each workspace, a panel can either stand on its own

or be nested with other panels inside a docking pane. Illustrator’s

Essentials workspace places just eleven panels (in fi ve clusters) on

the right side of the screen in a single docking pane. As you ...