Working Smarter with Photoshop CS4 and Illustrator CS4 Video Tutorial

• Design at a hundred percent.
• Typically, but not always, you should design in the largest size you will use the artwork. It is much easier to go smaller than it is to increase size.
• If you can conquer the pen tool everything else will be easier.
• The pen tool is ESSENTIAL to illustrator and learning its ins and outs will help you with everything from selection to creating new vector objects.
• Just like you can in photoshop, illustrator allows you to blend from a solid color to transparent with gradients.
• This makes adding details easier to create because now you don’t have to fade from one color to another color.
• Using a no fill, no stroke bounding box on items created in illustrator makes them easier to place into photoshop.
• If you working between the two programs and will need to bring an illustrator file into a specific spot in photoshop you need to work in the same size document in both programs. Set a no fill, no stroke bounding box on the illustrator item’s desired location and it will automatically copy into that spot in photoshop.
• You create actions by going to the actions panel, selecting new action and everything from there will be recorded. Then you select the square at the bottom of the panel and the action stops recording.
• This is particularly useful for me because I am starting a small photography business and this would allow me to create cool effects on photos in a fraction of the time. Using actions will also help give a cohesive look to your photos.