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Chapter 1 ✦ What’s New in Illustrator CS2?
In most cases, you use both the Live Trace and Live Paint tools to process images,
but the Live Paint tool also works with objects you create completely within
Illustrator.
For a complete discussion of the Live Paint tool, see Chapter 14.
If you have used paint bucket tools in a bitmap-based graphics program, you can
certainly appreciate one powerful feature of the Illustrator CS2 Live Paint tool.
Unlike the paint buckets in bitmap graphics programs, the Live Paint tool can auto-
matically close small gaps to prevent the paint from flowing outside of the desired
object. The gap detection feature is fully controllable too, so you can set the size of
gaps that you want to ignore.
Using the Control Palette
Illustrator makes extensive use of palettes — objects similar to non-modal dialog
boxes that enable you to choose various settings for selected objects. Illustrator
CS2 adds a convenient new palette called the Control palette that provides quick
access to a number of the most common properties for an object. (If you have used
Adobe InDesign, the Illustrator CS2 Control palette will seem quite familiar because
it appeared first in InDesign.)
Figure 1-4 shows how the Control palette might appear when a drawn object such
as a rectangle is selected. Notice that the Control palette provides quick access to
settings such as the fill and stroke colors, the width of the stroke, the style of the
brush, and so on. The Control palette actually can take on many different appear-
ances because the controls in the palette reflect options suitable for the selected
object.
Figure 1-4: The new Control palette provides quick access to the properties of
the currently selected object.
Illustrator’s palettes are discussed throughout the chapters as appropriate. As you
work with the various palettes, remember that the Control palette often may pro-
vide the settings you need without the necessity of hunting down the specific
palette where that setting normally resides.
Cross-
Reference
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