Quick Tips - Adobe Illustrator
Need more viewing space? (all versions)
Hit the F key and it will toggle your screen through several different states:
- F once - hides the navigation bars
- F again - hides the menu bar
- Use TAB to hide the palettes, command-R (Mac) or control-R (PC) to hide the rulers and hit the F key for Full Screen viewing
Ken Black - Prepress Technician
Customizing Illustrator Default Settings
Did you know that you can customize the way that Illustrator starts up and creates a new document? You can easily make certain that your favorite colors and other settings such as rulers, default page size, etc. are right there at your finger tips. Here's how you do it.
Illustrator 10, CS, & CS2
Illustrator uses either one of two startup files for new documents: Adobe Illustrator Startup_CMYK.ai or Adobe Illustrator Startup_RGB.ai. All you need to do is to open either or both of these files and set up the page size, colors, rulers, and any other default settings to exactly how you want them and then save that file. Presto-chango! The defaults are now customized especially for you. And, you may change them any time you like as your needs change.
These files are located in the Plug-Ins folder of the application's program folder (see below):
Macintosh OS X
Applications > Adobe Illustrator (v10, CS, or CS2) > Plug-Ins >
Windows PC
Program Files > Adobe > Adobe Illustrator (v10, CS, or CS2) > Plug-Ins >
Illustrator CS3
Adobe changed things a bit with CS3. Adobe has created a number of new Document Profiles which you can select when you create a new document. Document profiles are essentially the same as the startup files in earlier versions of Illustrator except that now there are more of them. You can either customize these or you can create and save your own profiles. Even better, just to make things more interesting, they have moved them out of the now familiar Plug-Ins folder and buried them even deeper in the operating systems (see below).
Macintosh OS X
Users > (User Name) > Library > Application Support > Adobe > Adobe Illustrator CS3 > New Document Profiles > *.ai
Windows PC
Documents and Settings > (User Name) > Application Data > Adobe > Adobe Illustrator CS3 Settings > New Document Profiles > *.ai
Clarke Blacker - Prepress Manager
