I, like some of you, recently upgraded to the Adobe CS4 family. The new interface is very nice; I especially like the tabbing between open windows function.
There are some frustrating differences between CS3 (and older) and the new CS4 version.
I wanted to go over the two differences that caused me the most headaches; I’m hoping this article will help some of you get past a couple obstacles that are not so obvious to figure out otherwise.
Number 1:
One of the things I tend to do most (for some reason) is go into the File -> Document Settings to make adjustments to the file size in CS3 (like at work) this is easy enough: Navigate to the menu and make your changes (picas to inches, inches to pixels or whatever) in the Document Settings dialog box.
Illustrator CS4 has changed the way you make changes here; and it’s not exactly easy to get right away.
To make a change to the document, navigate to File -> Document Setup (like before), but in the dialog box that opens, you will need to click the button that reads “Edit Artboards”. This will take you back to the document but with a marque-style border around the document. At this point you can either click-drag the selection area, or use the input fields at the top of the screen for a precise width/height.
Once you have made your changes, click the Selection Tool (the black arrow) and the document will return to normal, with the new sizing.
Number 2:
Where oh where did the Crop function go?
I create a LOT of print-ready work (especially newspaper and magazine ads) that require a Press-Quality PDF as the final artwork. I always set up my document in the beginning to have a cropped area in the shape and size needed (like a 5″ x 4.917″ ad).
That was simple, create a standard document (8.5 x 11), create a rectangle exactly to the size (because the document can’t go to 3 decimal places but the rectangle can this is the ideal way to set up the document), select the rectangle, click Object -> Crop Image.
This was simple until I upgraded to Illustrator CS4 and wouldn’t you know it: Object -> Crop Image wasn’t there anymore! Another headache.
Thankfully, it’s not gone, it’s just been moved (why Adobe, why?).
Now to make your crops, you need to choose Effect -> Crop Marks – doh!
One thing to note here: In Illustrator CS3, you could create crop marks without having anything selected. This new method, however requires an object to be selected to work. I have yet to discover a way to set the crop marks to the document size like we could do so easily in CS3; If you know how, please tell us in the comments!
I hope this helps anyone trying to learn the differences. Please comment below.