Using the Image Trace tool in Illustrator

CS6 has a new tool in town, and I am going to show you how to use it.

Grab a photo that you want to trace, and open it up in illustrator. 

Tip: the higher the photo quality, the better the results.

Heres a picture of my new macbook pro box. cool.

Click the 'Image Trace' button, found in the top toolbar. 

(Circled below)

This should produce something similar to this. If not, your image is either not eligible- this could mean its too low quality, or too many similar colours in the image.

In the same location where the 'Image Trace' button was, there should be a button that says 'Expand'. Click this so that you see all the main shapes surrounded with coloured selection lines.

Once you have done this, right click or (ctrl + click for mac users). You will see a drop down menu. Press 'Ungroup'. This is also found in the 'Edit' toolbar. Do this once, and try clicking on individual objects. If you cannot, try 'Ungroup' again.

Huzzah.

Adding a Glossy Look to Your Logo (Illustrator)

Making your logo look that tiny bit more classy. 

Level: Beginner

Making a program or an app icon in Illustrator? Want to know how apps have that 'sheen' look? look no further.
first things first, open up your vector logo in Illustrator. Here I have a basic shape, commonly used for mac icons. I have added a gradient, and made the lines invisible, of course this is just an example...

Next, press cmd + A (Mac) or ctrl + A (Windows) to select all and every object in your logo. I only have one, so I can just click on it. A coloured line should surround the image with a box. (the box did not show up in the screenshot).
.

Once you have done this, click shape tool and select the tool which matches the shape of the outer line of your logo. In this case, I would select the circle tool.
Tip: Click and hold the mouse for the shape tool menu.

Create and equal sided shape by holding shift before you make the shape. I have made the circle roughly 30% smaller than the logo shape.

Now I have the circle, I am going to add a gradient. Open the gradient tool box by clicking the 'gradient' tab. Once you have done this, click the small box in the left top hand corner to make the shape have a gradient. These two buttons are circled in pink.
(If you don't have this toolbar, go to the help section and type in 'Gradients')

Once again you have to have the logo selected (cmd/ctrl + A). Once you have done this, click on the gradient bar so that two little 'house' shaped arrows come up on the left and right.

Set the angle above this to 90°.

Click the left 'house' arrow and set the opacity to 0%, then click the right one and set the opacity to 50%. 
(50% is my preference, but you can try out some different opacity levels).

Huzzah.