Combining Disconnected Text in Illustrator

Opening PDFs in Illustrator may cause some elements to behave strangely. Text boxes in particular are often affected. Type will many times break into smaller text boxes, with words or individual letters in their own box. This can be very impractical and annoying if you're trying to make edits to the document.

Below is an example of a PDF that I opened in Illustrator. On the baseline, the tiny blue squares indicate the start of a new text box. In this example the text is broken at at least once per word.



Notice how you can select an individual character or sets of characters and drag them around. Not cool.



If you want to edit the type, you must first combine all of the characters or retype them all. Here's an easy solution for getting all of those individual letters grouped together.

1. With your selection tool, select all of the characters that you want to combine. Clicking and dragging your cursor over all of the text boxes is an effective way to select all of the characters and words.




Copy them all (Command + C) or Control + C if you're on a PC.

     

2. With your type tool, draw a text box




3. With the text box still selected with the type tool, press Apple + V (Control + V)

     
4. The type will flow itself into this new text box, without all of the awkward breaks.



Helpful Hint: If you're flowing a LOT of copy, it may not always copy in the correct order. If there are paragraph breaks, try to select one paragraph at a time to copy and paste.

Another Helpful Hint: For illustration purposes only, I have the bounding boxes showing in steps 2 and 3 and hidden in all other examples. If your screen doesn't look exactly like mine, it may be due to the display of the bounding boxes. To toggle this view go to: View > Show Bounding Box or View > Hide Bounding Box

Placing a multiple page PDF, or multiple artboard Illustrator file into InDesign

You can place many types of objects into InDesign including Adobe Illustrator files and pdfs. I've always struggled with placing pdfs with multiple pages, or Illustrator files with multiple artboards. In the past if I wanted to import other than the first page of a pdf, I'd save just that page by itself, then place that file in InDesign. This is a very inefficient way to manage files. I recently discovered a way to import other pages or artboards into InDesign.

1) In InDesign go to File > Place

2) In the pop-up dialogue box you will see three options at the bottom. (In CS4 there are only two check boxes)
CS5

CS4

Check the box that says "Show Import Options"

3) In the window, find and select your PDF or Ai file you want to import. Click "Open"

4) In this second pop-up window you will see import options for the file. Select a single page/ artboard or a range. Then click "OK"

Note: InDesign will remember that you checked the "Show Import Options" the next time you go to place a file. You will see this screen each time until you uncheck the box.

Ilustrator Live Trace Tutorial

Live Trace is a great tool for converting rastered images to vector in Illustrator. I personally do not use this tool very often. I find that to create a true Illustration, the artwork should be done by hand and then traced in Illustrator using the pen or pencil tool.
However, I will run through this tutorial, because it is a nice shortcut to create stylized photographs.

1) With Illustrator open, place a rastered object into Illustrator. A raster file will be most commonly a jpg, png, gif, bmp. As you can see in the screenshot, I've set mine to have a shortcut of Apple+D. Refer to This Article for how to set your own keyboard shortcuts.

2) Now you have an image in your Illustrator document. With your image selected, go to Object>Live Trace>Tracing Options.

A shortcut for Live Trace can also be found on the Control Bar along the top of your screen. Click on the down arrow and then on "Tracing Options"



3) The pop-up box will give you many different options to choose from.
I like to arrange my screen so that I can see the image that I'm working on, as well as the entire pop-up box.



4) By adjusting the Tracing Options, you can achieve many different looks.
You can see what your final product will look like by clicking the Preview Button on the right side of the box. Be careful when you check this. If you have a complex image, or a slow(older) computer, it will take a while to render.


5) For this example, lets say I want a color image. I changed the "Mode:" to "Color" Then, I adjusted the "Max Colors". By adjusting this number, I found the correct value that gave me the result that I was looking for. Too many colors and it will look no different that the photograph. Too few colors and it will look like a bunch of blobs on the canvas. The value that I found to work best was "8". Then click the "Trace" button on the right-hand side.

6) Now I have an image that is vectorized. But what can I do with it now? When the image is clicked, it remains as a group, and the individual segments and pieces are not selectable. If this is fine with you, then you're finished. If you want to break the new image into alterable segments, read on.


7) With the image selected, go to Object>Expand. In the pop-up box make sure the "Object" box is checked.



8) You can see all of the paths for each individual shape. It looks like a nightmare to make any adjustments. This isn't the cleanest way to make illustrations, but it will get you by in a pinch.

Setting Adobe shortcuts

Shortcuts are a lifesaver.
However, the keystroke presets vary among all of the Adobe programs.
For example cmd+F is "Find" in InDesign. It is "Paste in Front" in Illustrator. This becomes very confusing if you frequently use both programs. I find myself with the "Find Text" dialogue box when I really want to paste an object on top.
If you use many Adobe programs, it is useful to have all of your commands be universal.

Use a bit of discretion when reassigning all of your shortcuts; there are several functions that are more important than others, depending on the program. So if you choose an operation to be universal, make sure that it is truly saving you time in all the programs.

Here's how to set your own shortcuts:
1) In ANY Adobe program go to Edit>Keyboard Shortcuts




2) You will see a new window with an overwhelming number of options.
To simply define a single action, click on the "Product Area" drop-down box.




3) In this example I will be changing the "Save As" function.
This is particular function is located under "File Menu".



4) Highlight the "Save As" command.


5) You will see the current preset shortcut(if one is not defined, this will be blank).
You can click the "Remove" button to remove it, or proceed to Step 6 to find out how to redefine the shortcut.




6) With the "New Shortcut" box selected, press the new keystrokes that you would like to use.
If you would like to assign them to a particular keystroke set, click on the "Context" dropdown box. Otherwise, the simpler way is to click the "Assign" button.
You have now successfully assigned a new keyboard shortcut!


Some key ones that I use often, on all of my Adobe programs are:
Save: cmd S
Export: cmd E
Place: cmd D
Zoom in: cmd +
Zoom out: cmd -
Zoom 100%: cmd 0


For the full list of shortcuts:
Adobe Indesign CS4
Adobe Photoshop CS4
Adobe Illustrator CS4