Master the art of customizing your interface workspace in Adobe Illustrator by adding convenient features and optimizing its layout. This article provides step-by-step instructions on how to add control bars, color panels, and arrange layers for an efficient workflow.
Key Insights
- The control bar offers many additional options that can serve as a quick resource while working in Illustrator, making it a vital part of the workspace.
- Properly docking panels such as color or layers on the right side of the screen can help keep the workspace organized and easy to navigate.
- Users can create and save custom workspaces, like the 'vdci' one, in Adobe Illustrator which can be revisited at any time, enhancing productivity and convenience.
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In this video we'll be customizing our interface workspace. So let's begin by first adding an additional bar to our workspace.
To do this we can go to window and we'll be selecting control. The control bar gives us many additional options that can be used as a quick resource while we're working with an illustrator. So this is an important bar to be able to add to our workspace.
Next let's add one more panel. We'll go back to window and we'll be selecting color. Our color panel gives us different options for selecting colors.
Let's now take this color panel which is free floating which we can select and drag by clicking and holding the top bar and we're simply going to drag it to the right. Let's now dock our color panel by clicking the title and dragging it over to the right until we see it within the blue box that properties layers and libraries are held. We'll release and we've now docked the color panel with properties layers and libraries.
We'll then close out color guide by clicking the x on the top right hand side of the panel and next we're going to remove libraries from our right docked panels. To do this we'll click on the title we'll then right click and simply select close. We now have properties layers and color docked on the right hand side of the screen.
Let's next move our layers panel down to the bottom of this right panels bar. To do this we'll click on the title and drag until we see a blue line on the bottom right hand side of the screen. We'll then release and our layers panel is now docked beneath properties and color.
We'll go back to properties panel and we'll see that the layers panel is docked below. To give ourselves a little more room we'll click on the separator when we see the arrows and we can simply drag down until about there. Next to give ourselves a little more space on this right hand side we can move these docked panels to the left by clicking the separator when we see the arrows and clicking and dragging to the left.
We now have plenty of space for our file and artboard as well as we can see the layers properties and the color panel. As one final change we're next going to go to view and we're going to deselect snap to pixel to make sure that it's unchecked. We've now set up our workspace so let's save it.
To do this we'll go up to the top where essentials is selected and we'll select new workspace. Here we can create our custom workspace and let's title it vdci and hit ok. We've now created a new workspace or an arrangement of panels and bars so that we can come back to this workspace whenever we need.
If we'd like to rotate between workspaces all we need to do is click on our current workspace and switch to a different workspace. As we can see there are many different workspaces designed for different purposes. In this case and throughout this course we'll be using the vdci workspace.
Let's now save our work using CTRL S on the keyboard as a shortcut to save and in the next video we'll be going over tools. See you there!