Adobe Illustrator for Bloggers – Illustrator 101 and how to easily crop photos
Adobe Illustrator for Bloggers – Illustrator 101 and how to easily crop photos
Welcome to the first post in our blog series, Adobe Illustrator for bloggers! This series is geared towards you bloggers who may not have a lot of experience with graphic design. Our goal for this series is to get you guys comfortable using Adobe Illustrator, and to make your graphic-creating process easier! You can either watch the video, or follow the step by step instructions in the post.
Quick Illustrator 101
New doc + understanding the difference between print & web
Let’s get started with a new document. Press command+n on your keyboard, or go up to File > New. This will bring up the ‘New Document’ window. Let’s go through the options:
- Name. It’s essentially what it says. This will be the name of the file, use this to help keep track of what this file is for.
- Size and units. We’re working with a custom size here. 900x900px is great for getting started. You’ll want specific sizes for different graphics, like 600x1200px for pinterest, a square for Illustrator etc. Units goes hand in hand with size. For web use, we’ll be using pixels. Your blog template or design reads measurements in pixels, in fact all websites do, so we’re going to keep this consistent. If you were working on something that would be printed, you would use inches.
- Bleed. Bleed is extra space around the file for print designs. It’s essentially where the paper will be trimmed, and you need more space on the edges to compensate for that. We won’t be using bleed, since we’re working for the web.
- Advanced options- color mode. Color mode is an important practice in the design world. You can choose from RGB or CMYK, which is files for the web, or for print respectively. Screens (your computer, your iPhone, your TV etc.) view colors in an RGB colorspace. They use red, green, and blue squares to ‘mix’, or display, colors. CMYK is for printing. If you’ve ever changed a printer cartridge, you’ll see the Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black (K) ink. This is how your printer mixes & prints colors. We’ll choose RGB, since these graphics will be on the web.
- Raster Effects- This is another difference between print & web files. Screens rasterize images at 72ppi (ppi stands for points per inch), it’s pretty lo-res compared to print. If you save images for the web with any higher of a dpi, you’re just wasting server space on your blog. For print, higher res files will result in a higher quality print. You have to balance out file size, and higher resolution however. We’re working with web based graphics, so choose 72dpi.
- All of the other options look good, so we’re going to click on OK.
Tools
Let’s go over some of the tools we’ll be using.
- Moving around within the file. Press on your spacebar, and click and drag to move the screen around. This is helpful when you’re working on multiple graphics. The zoom tool should be in the bottom left corner of your screen. When the tool is selected & you click on your file, it zooms in. The keyboard shortcut is ‘z’. To zoom out, press on option on your keyboard and click anywhere on your artboard.
- Selection and direct selection. Other tools we’ll be using are the direction & direct selection tools. The selection tool is the black arrow, it should be at the very top of your tool bar. When the selection tool is in use, you can click on specific graphics, photos, or text to select them & manipulate them. You can also click and drag. The keyboard shortcut for the selection tool is V. The direct selection tool is the white arrow underneath the black arrow. This tool will let you select specific points on object, and will let you select specific objects within groups. We’ll be using these two tools quite a bit.
- Rectangle tool & elipse. The rectangle tool is found in the left sidebar, if you click & hold on the rectangle, it’ll fly out with more shape options. Let’s get some shapes on your artboard, click on the rectangle, or press ‘m’ on your keyboard. Click and drag on your artboard to create a rectangle. Once you release your mouse you’ve created a rectangle. To constrain the proportions to a square, press ‘shift’ on your keyboard while clicking and dragging. The same goes for the elipse. Press ‘shift’ while clicking and dragging to create a perfect circle.
Fill & stroke
This is another essential tool in Illustrator. With a shape selected (selection tool!), you can see in the lower left hand corner what fill it has, and what stroke. Another area to view this is the top left corner of Illustrator.
- Fill refers to the color of the shapes interior. Think of the paintbucket tool in Photoshop.
- Stroke is the outside line around the shape. You can change the colors by selecting the shape, clicking on either the fill or stroke swatch in the bottom/top left, and either using the swatch panel, or double clicking to edit the colors. To change the stroke width of a shape, click on the ‘stroke panel’ in the right panel, and use the arrows to change the width.
- If you don’t want a fill or a stroke on your shape, you can click on the top left stroke or fill swatch, & click on the thumbnail of the white box with a line through it. Easy!
Artboards
The white box on your screen is what’s called an ‘Artboard’. This is a huge advantage that Illustrator has over photoshop, becuase artboards are essentially files within a file. You can be working on a whole posts worth of graphics right in the same file, so you can easily use photos & assets within the same file. No tabbing back between files! Click on shift+O to open up the ‘Artboard mode’. You’ll see our 900×900 artboard is selected. Here you can change the name of the artboard, the size, and where it’s positioned in your file. The ‘name’ of the artboard will be tacked on to the end of the file name when you export what’s on the artboard. This can be importrant with keeping track of your files, and with SEO on your blog’s end. You can utilize the name & put in keywords for your post, it’s one less step you’ll have to do in WordPress or your blog host. To duplicate an artboard, press option on your keyboard, and click and drag. You’ll notice that anything on your first artboard will be duplicated onto the second one. This has pros and cons, if you don’t want the objects that were duplicated, use your selection tool (v) to click & drag to select them, and press ‘delete’ on your keyboard.
Cool! We’ve now got a basic understanding of the tools we’re going to use. Let’s jump right in & see what we can do!
How to crop photos into custom shapes
- Go ahead and dupliacte your artboard if you haven’t already. (Shift+o for arboard mode, option+click and drag to duplicate).
- Let’s create a square (m for rectangle + shift & click) on the left, and a circle (e for elipse + shift & click) on the right.
- Select the square by pressing v on your keyboard, and let’s give it a black fill & no stroke. Up in the top left of your screen, click on the fill color. Click on the black swatch. Now click on the stroke thumbnail, click on the white box with a red line through it. Great! We’ve got our black square.
- Let’s bring in a photo. Find your photo on your computer, and drag it into illustrator. You’ll see an x through the image. This means that the image isn’t embedded into the file, it’s linked. This creates problems when images are moved around your computer. Photos can become ‘unlinked’, and lost. Illustrator won’t know where to find the photo.
- We’ll need to embed it. Select your photo, and click on ’embed’ in the top bar. This brings the photo right into the file, it does make the file larger, but it’s worth it to me.
- Select your photo and drag it over to the square. With the photo selected, you can click on the corners to resize the photo. Make sure to press ‘shift’ on your keyboard to constrain the proportions.
- Position the photo to approximately where you’d like it to be cropped.
- Right click on the image, and hover over ‘arrange’, then select ‘send to back’. This will arrange the photo behind our black box.
- Using the selection tool, now click and drag to select both the box and the photo.
- Right click, and click on ‘make clipping mask’. This will crop your photo to the square that was on top of it! It’s looking good!
- Let’s do the same steps for the circle. Drag your photo into Illustrator & embed it. Using the selection tool, position the photo approximately where you’ll want it.
- Select the photo, right click, hover over ‘arrange’, and click on ‘send to back’.
- Now select both the photo & the circle by clicking & dragging with the selection tool.
- Right click and click on ‘make clipping mask’. Looking good!
Let’s try resizing a photo once it’s inside of a clipping mask. Double click on the circle to open up the group. You can use the selection tool there to size & position the photo. Another way to do this is to just use the ‘direct selection tool’, remember the white arrow? With the direct selection tool selected, click on the the photo within the circle. You can now position & size the photo.
Exporting
Now let’s export these photos. Click on file > export. This brings up the export window. Locate the folder where you’d like these graphics to be saved. Let’s go over some of the options here.
- Format. There are tons of different file types you can select from. File types that you’ll use for your blog graphics are JPG, PNG, and GIF. Let’s select PNG here.
- Artboards. Check the ‘Use Artboards’ box. This will acknowledge the separate artboards on your file. We’ll be checking the ‘All’ box, but if you wanted to use a range of artboards, you can do that too. Click on Export.
- Additional options. This pops up a PNG options box. This is going to be similar to setting up the new document. Resolution should be 72ppi since we’re using this for screens. Change the anti-aliasing to Art Optimized, since we don’t have text on these graphics. Click on OK.
Your cropped photos should now be saved into the folder that you located. These are now good to be uploaded to your blog & used in a post or in the design!
Keep an eye out for another ‘Adobe Illustrator for Bloggers’ post tomorrow. We’ll be learning how to set up Templates to make creating your blog graphics completely steam lined & easy!
Katie @ Katie Jarman
I’m Katie! An illustrator, photographer, and creator. I spend my days illustrating custom portraits, and designing cutting files for paper crafting. When I’m not working, you can find me grubbing around in the garden, or off on an adventure with my husband & our dog. I enjoy fresh cooking, art, live music, and enjoying nature.
