Join author and industry expert Deke McClelland as he teaches you how to take advantage of the next level of dynamic features in Adobe Illustrator CS6. This installment of his Illustrator CS6 One-on-One series starts by showing you how to effectively manage layers, clipping groups, and swatches, so that you can easily swap out colors and content. Deke then explains how to create customized strokes and patterns and build complex gradients with transparency and dynamic effects, and then apply these features to paths, groups, and editable text to create professional-quality artwork. He also highlights some of the most popular features in Illustrator: Live Paint and all ten of its Pathfinder operations. The final chapters show how to prepare your projects for print and save them for distribution on the web.

Topics include:
Creating layers, sublayers, and groups
Lifting a color and creating a swatch
Assigning colors to paths inside groups
Adjusting the stacking order
Using the Width tool to adjust line weight
Masking a pattern inside a background
Assigning and modifying a gradient fill
Creating a radial gradient
Drawing a linear spiral with the Polar Grid tool
Adding a credible 3D cast shadow
Contouring with the Blob Brush and Eraser
Creating and painting an overlapping path
Placing Photoshop images in Illustrator files
Previewing and printing documents
Optimizing documents for the web