TUTORIAL ARTICLE

Beginner

5 min

Get to know Illustrator on the iPad

A general overview of the workspace, features, and tools of Illustrator on the iPad.

What you learned: Get a feel for Illustrator on the iPad workspace, tools, and features

Welcome to Adobe Illustrator — a clean, modern app for creating your graphic design, business or brand identity including logos, icons, and more on the go.

The workspace is composed of the following:

  • The toolbar on the left contains tools you’ll use to create and edit content.

  • The Layers panel in the upper-right is where you can organize, show, hide, and lock content.

  • The Properties panel in the upper-right shows editable properties for selected content, like position, size, text formatting, and more.

  • In the Taskbar on the right, you can find functionality for arranging or ordering content, combining shapes — called pathfinders, path editing, and more.

Move around in the document

  • Two finger pinch zooms in. Spread two fingers apart to zoom out.

  • Two finger drag pans in the document window.

Drawing and editing

  • The Selection tool is for moving and transforming artwork and the Direct Selection tool is for selecting and editing the anchor points that control the shape of a path or shape.

  • There are a series of shape tools for creating different types of shapes.

  • The touch shortcut is used when drawing and editing to add more functionality to a tool.

  • Change the fill and stroke color for selected artwork in the toolbar on the left.

  • The Pencil tool and its smoothing setting are used to create more freeform paths. The Pen tool offers more precision when drawing.

Add and format text

  • Tap or drag with the Type tool to add placeholder text.

  • Control basic formatting of selected text in the common actions bar beneath the text.

  • For more formatting options, like changing the font family, open the Properties panel in the upper-right.

Export and share

  • Tap Publish and export in the upper-right to save the document in a variety of formats, including native Illustrator (.AI), PNG, and native Photoshop (.PSD)


Presenter

Brian Wood

October 20, 2020

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