Specify Document Setup options
At any point you can change your document’s default setup options for units of measure, transparency grid display, background color, and type settings such as language, quote style, superscript and subscript size, bleeds, and exportability. The Edit Artboards button closes this dialog box and activates the Artboard tool.
- If you want to edit artboards (for instance, to change
from portrait to landscape orientation), click Edit Artboards to
enter artboard editing mode.
The Simulate Colored Paper option is useful
if you plan to print the document on colored paper. For example,
if you draw a blue object on a yellow background, the object appears
green. The simulation is only performed when the transparency grid is
not shown.
About print tiling
By default, Illustrator prints each artboard on a single sheet of paper. However, if the artwork is larger than the page sizes available on your printer, you can print onto multiple sheets of paper.
Dividing an artboard to fit a printer’s available page sizes is called tiling. You can choose a tiling option in the General section of the Print dialog box. To view the print tiling boundaries on the artboard, choose View > Show Print Tiling.
When you divide the artboard into multiple tiles, the pages are numbered from left to right and from top to bottom, starting with page 1. These page numbers appear on‑screen for your reference only; they do not print. The numbers enable you to print all of the pages in the file or specify particular pages to print.
Zoom in or out
There are several ways to zoom in or out of artwork.
- Select the Zoom tool
. The
pointer becomes a magnifying glass with a plus sign in its center.
Click in the center of the area that you want to magnify, or hold
down Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) and click in the
center of the area that you want to reduce. Each click magnifies
or reduces the view to the previous preset percentage. - Select the Zoom tool and drag a dotted rectangle, called a marquee, around the area you want to magnify. To move the marquee around the artwork, hold down the spacebar, and continue dragging to move the marquee to a new location.
- Choose View > Zoom In or View >Zoom Out. Each click magnifies or reduces the view to the next preset percentage.
- Set the zoom level at the lower-left corner of the main window or in the Navigator panel.
- To display a file at 100%, choose View > Actual Size, or double-click the Zoom tool.
- To fill the window with the selected artboard, choose View > Fit Artboard In Window, or double-click the Hand tool.
- To view everything in the window, choose View > Fit All In Window.
Change the view area
You can bring a different area of the artboard into view by doing any of the following:
- Choose View > Actual Size to see all of your artboards in actual size.
- Choose View > Fit All In Window to zoom out so that all artboards are visible in on the screen.
- Choose View > Fit Artboard In Window to zoom in on the active artboard.
- In the Navigator panel, click the area of the thumbnail display that you want to view in the illustration window. Alternatively, drag the proxy view area (the colored box) to a different area of the thumbnail display.
- Select the Hand tool
, and
drag in the direction you want the artwork to move.
Navigator panel overview
You use the Navigator panel (Window > Navigator) to quickly change the view of your artwork using a thumbnail display. The colored box in the Navigator (called the proxy view area) corresponds to the currently viewable area in the illustration window.
- A.
- Thumbnail display of artwork
- B.
- Panel menu button
- C.
- Zoom box
- D.
- Zoom Outbutton
- E.
- Proxy preview area
- F.
- Zoom slider
- G.
- Zoom Inbutton
You can customize the Navigator panel in the following ways:
- To display artwork outside the boundaries of the artboard in the Navigator panel, click View Artboard Contents Only from the panel menu to deselect it.
- To change the color of the proxy view area, select panel Options from the panel menu. Select a preset color from the Color menu, or double-click the color box to choose a custom color.
- To display dashed lines in the document as solid lines in the Navigator panel, select panel Options from the panel menu and select Draw Dashed Lines As Solid Lines.
View artwork as outlines
By default, Adobe Illustrator sets the view so that all artwork is previewed in color. However, you can choose to display artwork so that only its outlines (or paths) are visible. Viewing artwork without paint attributes speeds up the time it takes to redraw the screen when working with complex artwork.
In Outline mode, linked files are displayed by default as outlined boxes with an X inside. To view the contents of linked files, choose File >Document Setup, and select Show Images In Outline Mode.
- To view all artwork in a layer as outlines, Ctrl‑click
(Windows) or Command-click (Mac OS) the eye icon for the
layer in the Layers panel. Ctrl‑click (Windows) or Command-click
(Mac OS) again to return to previewing artwork in color.
The eye icon has a hollow center
when
Outline view is enabled and a filled center 
when
Preview view is enabled. - To view all items in unselected layers as outlines, Alt+Ctrl‑click
(Windows) or Option+Command-click (Mac OS) the eye icon
for the selected layer. Alternatively, select Outline Others from
the Layers panel menu. You can return all items in the Layers
panel to Preview mode by choosing Preview All Layers from the Layers
panel menu.
Use multiple windows and views
You can open multiple windows of a single document at the same time. Each window can have different view settings. For example, you can set one window highly magnified for doing close‑up work on some objects and create another window less magnified for laying out those objects on the page.
(Windows)
You can arrange multiple open windows to suit your needs, using options
from the Window menu. Cascade displays windows stacked and descending from
the upper-left to the lower-right of the screen; Tile displays windows
edge to edge; Arrange Icons organizes minimized windows within the
program window.An alternative to creating multiple windows is creating multiple views. You can create and store up to 25 views for each document.
Multiple windows and multiple views differ in the following ways:
Multiple views are saved with the document, multiple windows are not.
Multiple windows can be viewed at the same time.
Multiple views can appear at the same time only if multiple windows are opened to display them in. Changing a view alters the current windows, it does not open a new one.
Choose Window > New Window.Previewing artwork in its final output medium
Illustrator provides the following ways to preview how aspects of artwork will look when printed or viewed on the web or a mobile device:
- Overprint Preview mode (View > Overprint Preview)
- Provides an “ink preview” that approximates how blending, transparency, and overprinting will appear in color-separated output.
- Separations Preview mode (Window > Separations Preview)
- Provides a preview of how the separations will look when printed.
- Pixel Preview mode (View > Pixel Preview)
- Approximates how your artwork will appear when it is rasterized and viewed in a web browser.
- Flattener Preview panel (Window > Flattener Preview)
- Highlights areas of the artwork that meet certain criteria for flattening when saved or printed.
- Soft-proofs
- Approximate how your document’s colors will appear on a particular type of monitor or output device.
- Anti-aliasing
- Gives vector objects a smoother on‑screen appearance and provides a better idea of how vector artwork will look when printed on a PostScript® printer. Anti-aliasing is helpful because screen resolution is relatively limited, but vector artwork is often printed at a high resolution. To turn on anti-aliasing, choose Edit > Preferences > General (Windows) or Illustrator > Preferences > General (Mac OS), select Anti-aliased Artwork, and click OK.
- Device Central (File > Device Central)
- Lets you preview how your document will appear on a particular mobile phone or device.
