7 tools illustrator beginners will be interested to use

I usually use illustrator for manual vector work (when I say 'manual', I am referencing the new image trace features in CS6) but I love to design colourful website backdrops, especially using these awesome tools. If you you are a beginner with Illustrator, I'm sure you will love this.

1. Bring up the sub menu of the icon that looks like an upside down moustache and select a tool. Here's a demo of those tools. (in order)

Warp Tool

 Twirl Tool (one of my favs)

 Pucker Tool

 Bloat Tool

 Scallop Tool

 Crystallise Tool (good for comic book stuff)

 Wrinkle Tool (makes for good sound-wave pictures)

 Enjoy!

Below is something I made using a few of these tools.

Fotor: A good enough replacement for Photoshop.

Fotor is free at the moment on the mac app store... grab it. I know a lot of people have written about it online but when I tested it out myself I had to share.

What Fotor is: A good and powerful way to edit photos WITHOUT adjusting any sliders or graphs, panels and colours. It's probably what you would imagine if you mixed Elements 10, with iPhoto and the Snapseed iPad app in a big mixing bowl...

It has an easy drag and drop interface:

A huge selection of well described menu items:

And another sidebar for selecting different sub menus, and export features:

It has gained its place next to Photoshop and Illustrator in my dock. On the whole: I think this is a great app for on-the-go photographers who don't have the time to open Photoshop and setup for an editing sesh.

How To Use The Pen Tool In Illustrator

Being able to use the pen tool in Illustrator is a very useful skill. You may hear it is a long way of using the Image Trace tool, but it produces a different effect. The Image trace feature does not always pick up the detail. You could combine the two using anchors.. but thats a different story...

Open up a photo, If this is your first time using the pen tool, then keep it simple. I am using a photo I took of some pencils at my desk.

I'm going to start with the green pencil. Click on the pen tool, (the one that looks like a calligraphy pen)
and click wherever you want to start outlining the object/subject. A small dot should appear. This is called an Anchor. Wherever you click again, will create a line between the two anchors.

So I start by making two anchors- creating a line, down the side of the green pencil.

The pink line is the new outline. Now, as I am outlining only the Green section, I will have to curve the line. This is done by clicking the other end of where the curve will be, but instead of letting go of the click, hold it down and drag it in the opposite direction of the curve. When dragging, a second 'dragging' line will appear. Do not worry, this is only to help you move the curve, it disappears after plotting a new anchor.

Before plotting a new anchor, and just after you have finished the curve, click on the same anchor, otherwise, this creates a new curve in the direction of that blue line... and you most probably don't want that. Here I have done the curve and now I need a straight line, so I click for a new anchor. And its simple as that.

Remember, to finish the outline, you must join the first anchor to the last. Like so:

-Heres one I made earlier-

So now I have made an outline of the pencil, I'm going to change the stroke and the fill to the same colour as what the pencil was. If you want to do this , make the fill transparent so you can see just the outline, then click on the eye drop tool (looks like a pipet) and click on the colour.

Once you have this, make the stroke transparent and you have a cool cartoon version of the pencil. This  is just a segment of the picture. The more shapes you go over, like shadows and different lines, the better it will look.

Using the Healing Brush Tool (Photoshop)

Looking to erase some clouds from your photo? I for one get annoying plane streams in sunset photos, and I think they divert your attention from the purpose of the photo.

Open up your image in Photoshop, and click and hold on the 'Spot Healing Brush Tool' until you get a menu of more healing tools. Choose 'Healing brush tool, or alternatively press J.

Once you have this, hold down the alt key so that you have a little circle with a cross when hovering over your photo. Click a part of the image where it is plain and will match the surroundings of where the replacement is going to go. Think of it as a paint pallet, and the part you are clicking on is the colour you will have on your paintbrush.

Let go of the alt key so that you have a plain circle again, and paint over the part you want gone. Photoshop does the rest.

As you can see, the tool has gotten rid of part of the aeroplane stream. Every so often, hold down alt again and select a new part of the photo. This means your photo wont have any repetitive markings.

Final Result

Cool Cartoon Eye In Illustrator

Want to make this cool eye in illustrator?

Level: Begginer/Moderate

Skills needed: Pen Tool, Pathfinder Tool

Heres how:

Make a circle:

Then, using the centre of the circle as an anchor, make a triangle in the top left hand of the circle, at a 45° angle.

Use the pathfinder tool to cut a hole into the circle.

Draw another circle.

Change the circle you have just drawn to whatever colour you want the eye to be, and the 'pac-man' shape to black. 

The blue circle is on top of the black circle so if you right click > Arrange > Send to back

Alternatively, you can move the circle onto a new layer and drag that new layer to the bottom.

then move the black shape onto the blue circle.

Open a new document and make a circle, then copy and paste it so you have two identical circles.

Move them on top one another so they look like a venn diagram.

Their edges should touch the centre anchor of each other.

Then use the pathfinder tool > intersect. this makes a shape that is made from the overlap.

Take this new shape and turn it exactly 90°. You can do this by holding shift and rotating it with corner 

'rotate' icon. this appears when you put your mouse on the corner of the shape object box.

Now make it white and use the selection outline to see where you are putting it, (you wont be able to see the actual shape)

Then once you have positioned it, Add a cartoon skin tone, I opted for pink but you can match it to your comic book character.

The pink box will be in front of the eye, so again, right click > Arrange > Send to back.

with the pen tool, Draw a curved, skinny triangle in the left top corner. Make it the same colour as your eye, but a tiny bit lighter.

Add a small white circle on top of the black shape.

Go to the toolbar at the top and find Effect > Stylize > Feather. this will bring up a small box. Set the radius to 7px. Press Ok then draw a similar shape to the light blue one, or you can copy and paste this, then mirror it, but that is more difficult. Make it black.

Huzzah.

Using The Pathfinder Tool (Illustrator)

One thing I have learned to love in illustrator is the 'Pathfinder' tool. I use it all the time and it can become extremely useful.

In this demo, I am going to make a simple example logo, using just basic shapes in Illustrator.

First, I started with a circle.

 Then I made another circle, In another colour. (this helps to see the placement)

 Then I selected both shapes by pressing cmd + A or ctrl + A (for windows users). Opening the pathfinder tool by pressing shift + cmd/ctrl + F9. Alternatively you can go to window > pathfinder.

 After getting this toolbox up, I clicked on 'Minus Front'.

 Now, I got a nice 'moon' shape, then I copied and pasted it, reversed it and made it intersect with its mirror shape. Take a look:

 Then I used the pen tool to make a simple triangle, using the two bottom points as anchors... An easier way is to select the polygon tool from the shape menu and click, bringing up a menu, asking you to specify how many points you want the polygon to have. Type three and a triangle will appear, then stretch this to fit over the two bottom points. Like this:

Then I merge the three shapes together, again with the pathfinder toolbox, this time using the 'merge' tool.

It will become one shape. This makes it easy to change the colour all at once and move as one shape.

In a new document, I made this arrangement:

I did this because I wanted to make a cartoon representation of some waves. I did this by using the 'minus front' pathfinder tool again.

Then I cut this into the other document I was working on, added some colour, made the stroke transparent and added some text. The font is 'Source Sans Pro Light', a personal favourite.

Huzzah.