{"id":15665,"date":"2009-01-01T14:21:56","date_gmt":"2009-01-01T14:21:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.adobe.com\/jnackdev\/2009\/01\/pen-zen-for-2009.html"},"modified":"2009-01-01T14:21:56","modified_gmt":"2009-01-01T14:21:56","slug":"pen_zen_for_2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/01\/pen_zen_for_2009\/","title":{"rendered":"Pen Zen for 2009"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">Mordy Golding offers <a href=\"http:\/\/rwillustrator.blogspot.com\/2008\/12\/10-illustrator-resolutions-for-2009.html\">10 Illustrator Resolutions for 2009<\/a>&#8211;ten great suggestions for getting more out of this amazingly powerful app.&#160; My notes: <\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&#160;<\/p>\n<ul style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<li>If you do nothing else, try double clicking your artwork to enter &#8220;isolation mode.&#8221;&#160; <strong>It&#8217;s just like editing a symbol in place in Flash<\/strong>.&#160; <em>Stop<\/em> doing the whole lock\/unlock, group\/ungroup dance.&#160; Isolation mode is your friend, particularly in CS4.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&#160;<\/p>\n<ul style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<li>Mordy is right on about the power of the <strong>Appearance panel<\/strong>.&#160; In CS4 the panel is at last just what I&#8217;d hoped it could be&#8211;namely, a killer one-stop shop for adding and editing object effects and parameters.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&#160;<\/p>\n<ul style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<li>My personal addition to the list?&#160; <strong>Envelope distortions<\/strong>.&#160; Create some artwork, then choose Object-&gt;Envelope Distort, then either Make With Warp or Make With Mesh.&#160; I like choosing the latter, then selecting the Free Transform Tool (E), clicking and dragging on one corner, and then <em>while still moused down<\/em> holding Cmd\/Ctrl to do a perspective transform.&#160; Bam, instant re-editable <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.adobe.com\/jnack\/2008\/12\/star_wars_text.html\">Star Wars text<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&#160;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&#160;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">If you really want to brush up on your fundamentals &amp; really wrap your head around the Pen tool, I recommend a couple of great resources:<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&#160;<\/p>\n<ul style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<li>Sharon Steuer&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.adobepress.com\/content\/images\/9780321320469\/errata\/zen_of_the_pen.pdf\">Zen of the Pen<\/a> PDF goes back  a few releases, but it remains clear and relevant today.<\/li>\n<li>To learn more about the pen in PS, check out Ian Yates&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/psdtuts.com\/tutorials\/tools-tips\/photoshops-pen-tool-the-comprehensive-guide\/\">Photoshop\u2019s Pen Tool: The Comprehensive Guide<\/a> from PSDTUTS. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&#160;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&#160;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\"><em>And oh yeah, Happy New Year!&#160; We&#8217;ll see whether my blogging can hold up under not one but <\/em>two<em> bambinos.&#160; Bring him\/her on! \ud83d\ude09 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mordy Golding offers 10 Illustrator Resolutions for 2009&#8211;ten great suggestions for getting more out of this amazingly powerful app.&#160; My notes: &#160; If you do nothing else, try double clicking your artwork to enter &#8220;isolation mode.&#8221;&#160; It&#8217;s just like editing a symbol in place in Flash.&#160; Stop doing the whole lock\/unlock, group\/ungroup dance.&#160; Isolation mode [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15665"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15665\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}