The Align Panel in Adobe Illustrator can be used to align and distribute objects. The axis or the reference points for the alignment can be specified. So you can either align using the objects anchor points, or edges or align to a selection, artboard or a key object. The key object can be a specific object selected from multiple objects to be aligned or distributed.

In this tutorial, we will align our objects on the basis of the key object. Let us see how.

1. Select all the objects to be aligned and distributed. I have created this example for this tutorial.

2. Open the Align Panel – Window > Align or click on the Align link on the Application bar.

3. Now select a key object just by clicking on it. It will then be highlighted with a blue line.

4. Now choose the type of alignment and distribution. For our example, we will have to align the objects vertically and distribute them horizontally. So first choose, Vertical Align Center from the ‘Align Objects section’ to align the objects vertically as per the center of the key object. You can also try the Vertical Align Top or Vertical Align Bottom options to align the objects as per the top or bottom of the key object. See the result;

5. Next we will distribute the spacing in between all the objects equally. Select the key object like we did earlier, and in the ‘Distribute Spacing section’ enter a specific value in pixels and then click on Horizontal Distribute Space.

Explore all the other alignment and distribution options and use as required.

Envelope Distort command can be used to warp text using its features such as Warp, Mesh and Top Object. We learnt how to use the Warp feature of the Envelope Distort in Warping Text using Envelope Distort (Warp) Command in Illustrator CS5. In this tutorial, we will explore how to use the mesh feature of the tool.

To reiterate what I mentioned in the earlier tutorial, the envelope distort command does not convert the text to outlines leaving it editable even after applying warp. With mesh feature, you can create a custom mesh and warp the text the way you want. Let us see how.

1. Open an existing document with the text, or create a new document and add text into a text box using the Type tool (T).

2. With the textbox selected, go to Object > Envelope Distort > Make with Mesh… This will launch the ‘Envelope Mesh’ dialog box as shown below:

NOTE: Switch on the preview to make the mesh visible while in the dialog box.

We will keep the default number of rows and columns and proceed. Click OK.

3. Now choose the Direct Selection (V) (white arrow tool) from the toolbox and click on the anchor points and drag them in the directions you would like the text to be warped. This way you will create you own new font. For example, see below:

You can build your mesh different with equal or unequal number of rows or columns and then use the direct selection tool to warp the text as you like.

Warp Tool is the simplest way to warp text. But to apply the warp tool, the text needs top be converted into outlines which makes it un-editable. What if you may have to modify the text later? You will have to retype the text and reapply the warp command. But a smarter option for this would be to use the ‘Envelope Distort’ command. This command enables you to warp text using three features – Warp, Mesh and Top Object. And most importantly text remains editable.

In this tutorial, we will focus on the Warp feature of the Envelope Distort Tool and we will cover the others in our future articles.

1. Create a new document in Illustrator CS5 and using the Type Tool (T) draw a text box. Type in the text you want to warp. Or if you are working on an existing document and created the text, simply select the textbox with the Selection Tool (V).

2. Go to Object > Envelope Distort > Make with Warp… This will launch the Warp Options dialog box.

Switch on the preview and experiment with these options;

Style: Lets you choose the various warping styles built in Illustrator.

Horizontal and Vertical: are the axes for warping.

Bend: will determine the percentage of bend/curve.

Distortion: The horizontal and vertical distortion let you distort the text horizontally or vertically. Adjust the handles or enter a percentage value in the box.

Saffron Stroke presents a free logo suitable for an Investment company/firm. The logo is a simple text logo and could be scaled to any size. It is a vector logo. You can download the ‘Illustrator file for logo’.

You can also use this logo for other businesses like Software firms, Research, Real Estate, Counseling and/or Entertainment industry to name a few.

We have collected 10 Free Vector Logo Elements from various design blogs and websites, that you can use to create professional vector logos. Please read the license document/conditions carefully before you use them.

1. Colorful

2. Blended Colors Logo Set

The Blended Colors Logo Set is divided in two parts; Part 1 and Part 2

3. Free Logo Elements Vector Pack – Cardeo

This vector pack can be used for logo design and/or icon design. This vector pack is a great resource to add to your library, for use on several types of design projects. The vector pack includes 26 icons for your personal and commercial use.

4. Vector Logo Elements – Lordofdesign

5. Sun Logos in Vector Format

This set consists of sunny skies, fluffy clouds, flaming suns and mountain tops. Combine or use them individually to create nice warm logos.

6. Logo Type

Logo Type is a collection of 52 amazing free logo types.

7. Free Vector Design Elements – Vector4free

Use these logo elements to create interesting logos or graphics.

8. Free Vector Resources Part 2

This vector set by SpoonGraphics is a selection of random objects and is free for personal and commercial use. There are parts 1 to 9 which feature different vector sets, but I liked this one.

9. Free Logo Elements 2 – Vecteezy

10. Free Logo Templates – Graphicmania

Free Logo Templates section of Graphicmania features different sets of beautiful logo elements. Categorized as Elements, Simple, Mixed, Wavy and Circular.

An action in Photoshop and Illustrator is a sequence of commands or actions you do in using the program, that are recorded and played on a single or batch of files. This way designers can save a lot of time and efforts in doing repetitive tasks. Photoshop and Illustrator come with a set of predefined actions which you can use or modify to suit your needs. You can also find plenty of actions freely available on various design websites.

NOTE: The process of recording and playing an action is same in Photoshop and Illustrator. However in this tutorial, my screenshots are taken from Photoshop.

To record an action follow these steps;

1. Open out the Actions palette, either from Window > Actions or key in the shortcut Ctrl + F9.

What we see in the picture are the Default actions that come with Photoshop. You can collapse these by clicking on the down arrow next to Default Actions title.

2. Click on the Create New Set button (Folder icon) in the bottom of the Actions Palette. In the ‘New Set’ dialog box, enter a name for the set of actions you are about to record. For example I am going to record actions for resizing images. So I entered ‘Resize images’ in the box.

The Resize images action set can contain multiple actions.

3. Next click on the Create new action icon (next to the New Folder icon) in the palette to create a new action. In the New Action dialog box, enter a name for the action. I am recording an action for creating thumbnails, so I enter ‘Thumbnail’. Set is Resize images, that we created in step 2. You create a Function Key for the action using the Function Key box. Click on ‘Record’ to begin recording.

4. Once you click this button, every action you perform will be recorded. There is no need to hurry while recording since it only remembers the actions and not how much time you took to complete them. After performing all the actions, click on the Stop button.

NOTE: Alternatively to record an action, click on the ‘Begin recording’ (green circle icon). The icon becomes red indicating the action is being recorded.

5. To play the action, select the action in the palette, click on ‘Play Selection’ button (Play icon).

For demo, I will record the action of creating thumbnail. Here are the steps.

a. Open an image and begin recording with the ‘Begin recording’ (green circle icon).

b. Image > Image Size… > enter thumbnail values as Width: 300 px and Height: 225 px.

c. Stop recording using the ‘Stop Playing/Recording’ button (square icon). The action has been recorded and listed as shown below. Photoshop/Illustrator give a name to the action.

d. To apply the action on another image, open the new image, choose the action ‘Thumbnail’ in the Actions palette and click Play. The new image will be converted into a thumbnail within no time.

Wasn’t that simple? So go ahead and use actions to make your life easy. I hope you had fun reading this tutorial as much as I enjoyed writing it.

The Blend tool in Illustrator is a magical tool with which you can create interesting blend of shapes and colors. After seeing some amazing blend effects on many websites, I decided to play around with the tool. Though Blend tool has more than just these options, in this tutorial, my focus would be on Blend Options. We will learn more about the Blend tool in one of our future articles.

1. Launch Illustrator CS5, create a new document (File > New or Ctrl +N).

2. Draw two ellipses with a fill of none and different stoke colors like this;

3. Go to Object > Blend > Blend Options… or double-click the Blend Tool in the Toolbox.

Click on the Spacing drop down box to see all the blending options. Let us take a look at each one of them.

a. Smooth Color: auto-calculates the steps for the blends for a smooth color transition. To apply Smooth color to the ellipses created above, choose Smooth Color in the Spacing box of Blend Options dialog box. Then Object > Blend > Make or Alt +  Ctrl + B.

You can experiment with the fills to create cool effects from Smooth Color blend.

b. Specified Steps: controls the number of steps between the start and end of the blend to the value specified in the Blend Options. For our example, I will choose 8 steps.

Then Object > Blend > Make.

c. Specified Distance: blends the object by controlling the distance between the steps in the blend. The distance is measured from one edge of and object to the corresponding edge of the other object.

After making, the blend looks like this;

f. Orientation: decides the orientation of blended objects.

‘Align to Page’ orients the blend perpendicular to the x axis of the page and ‘Align to Path’ orients the blend perpendicular to the path.

I am sure now you too would be able to create interesting blend effects in your artwork. I hope you liked the tutorial and I thank you for reading it.

In this tutorial, I will explain you a simple technique to add shading to an object using the Mesh Tool.

1. Draw an ellipse using the Ellipse Tool (L) or any other shape. Fill it with any dark color.

2. Choose the mesh tool from the toolbox and click anywhere on the ellipse where you want the shading.

3. Choose a lighter shade for the shading.

4. Now using the Direct Selection Tool (A) move the anchor points to change their position.

5. Similarly you can create multiple and complex meshes to add shadows and depth to the objects.

Which one should I use Photoshop or Illustrator? Which of the two is better Illustrator or Photoshop? I am looking for a cheaper version of Photoshop, can I use Illustrator? I have both Photoshop and Illustrator and do not yet know anything about either of them. Which one should I learn first?

I have come across these and similar questions on various forums and websites. The answers to these questions are simple only if you understand the purpose of each program. Though there are some common features, each is designed for a specific purpose and hence there is not question of one being better than the other. It is like asking which one is better, a pizza or a burger.

In this tutorial, we will understand the purpose of each program and help you choose the right one for your use.

Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop is a ‘Bitmap’ (raster) image processing and manipulation program. It is a pixel based program primarily suitable for enhancing, retouching and manipulating digital photographs and paintings. Raster graphics are made up of pixels.

Photoshop can be used for following projects:

a. Photo retouch and manipulation (Modify images too)

b. Digital paintings

c. Web and Poster Design

d. Special effects and Photo realistic illustrations

e. UI Design and Web graphic design

f. Projects that do not required size manipulations in future.

Adobe Illustrator

Illustrator is a vector-based drawing program. It is suitable for creating high quality vector graphics that are scalable to the infinite power without any loss of the quality.Vector graphics are made up of Bezier lines and curves.

Illustrator can be used for the following projects:

a. Logo / Logotype / Monogram design

b. High quality Print Media / Stationary

c. Web / Motion Graphics

d. Vector Illustrations and Drawings

e.  Ads, Brochures and Menus (Though ideal program for creating Brochures is Adobe Indesign, Illustrator too does a commendable job)

Bottom Line

Use Photoshop for digital media and web graphics. Do not use it for creating logos or stationary like Business cards. For logo design and stationary or any print media always use Illustrator. You can always work with both Photoshop and Illustrator, by importing and modifying artwork in either of the programs. For instance, export images from Photoshop to Illustrator as vectors (paths and anchor points) and modify them using Illustrator. Similarly vector graphics can be exported to Photoshop as layers.

Both Photoshop and Illustrator are the best programs in what they do. So I suggest you to choose the program based on your project. Ideally as a designer you should have and use both the programs to create best and stunning art work.

NOTE: If you are looking for a cheaper option for Photoshop, try Photoshop Elements. Since I have not used it, I cannot provide you any more details about Photoshop Elements.

At times you may need to combine your artwork from Photoshop with Illustrator. I received queries from readers asking how to export custom shapes created in Photoshop to Illustrator. So I thought of writing a tutorial explaining how to Export Photoshop Paths to Illustrator. I know two methods of doing this. One way is drag and drop, it is simple but not how you think it is. Hold your curiosity for few seconds. The other way is using the ‘Paths To Illustrator’ command of the ‘Export’ feature.

NOTE: I am using CS5 versions of both Photoshop and Illustrator. But this method should work in any version lower than CS5.

Drag and Drop method:

Well there is a little twist to the drag and drop method as you cannot use the Move tool (V) to drag and drop but the Path Selection tool lets you do that. Let us see how.

1. Launch Photoshop and create a new document (Ctrl + N or File > New) of a desired size.

2. Create a custom shape. Custom shape can be created using the custom shapes tool in Photoshop, or create one on your own. The color of the shape does not matter since we will be exporting only the paths in Illustrator. For this tutorial, I am using the ‘Eighth Note’ from the ‘Music collection’ of custom shapes.

3. Make sure your custom shape layer is selected in the Layers Palette.

4. Choose the Path Selection tool from the Toolbox.

5. Now simply select the shape and drag and drop onto your Illustrator document. The vector paths would look like this;

These vector paths are fully editable in Illustrator.

Export Paths to Illustrator method:

1. Follow steps 1-3 given above.

2. Go to File > Export > Paths to Illustrator…

In the Export Paths to File dialog box, choose Shape 1 Vector Mask and click OK.

Choose a location for the exported path and enter a file name.

3. Now launch Illustrator and open the file you saved earlier (Ctrl + O or File > Open and then browse to the folder).

4. The document may look blank when it opens, but use the Selection tool to drag a selection and that would select the object.

Now you can edit these paths (using the anchor point tools) as any other vector paths in Illustrator.