Illustrator knowhow
June 7th, 2007 Filed in: Reviews Jump to commentsLast week I received an email from Adobe Illustrator’s product manager, Phil Guindi, who introduced me a new CS3 feature called knowhow. It is “a technology preview that delivers single-click, contextual access to relevant help information from a panel in Adobe CS3.” You can find the knowhow panel by going to menu Window > Adobe Labs > knowhow (yes, it is very hidden). When you select a tool, knowhow panel will instantly display the information about the tool and tell you how to use it. In other word, knowhow is a live help panel. Here I will show you how to use knowhow and please share your thoughts.
Introduction
With the rising demand of illustration (vector illustration is BIG trend now from advertisement, fashion, web to motion graphics) and Flash, I think Illustrator is a must-know and must-have software. Adobe did a very good in CS3 on Flash integration – Flash CS3 now literally allows you to import anything (even very large complex objects) from Illustrator. You can even preserve layers, groups, and object names. However, learning Illustrator is a bit challenging for a lot of digital artists due to the limited resources available on the internet. To help your learning easier, CS3 introduced a new feature called knowhow, it instantly displays information about the selected tool. Note: knowhow is still an experimental project and only available in Illustrator CS3. Since most people still don’t know about knowhow (I didn’t know until Phil told me), please help to spread out the words by blogging about knowhow or digg this article.
How to use knowhow
If you don’t have Illustrator CS3 or haven’t upgraded yet, you can download a free trial Illustrator from Adobe website. Go to menu Window > Adobe Labs > knowhow to open up knowhow panel. Click on any tool, notice knowhow panel instantly tells you everything about the tools. Now press Cmd, Option, or Shift key, knowhow will highlight the key feature.
You can also use knowhow to search Illustrator’s help topics. Click on the search icon, knowhow will display the help results and also pull in related links from a community-generated del.icio.us account (very web 2.0, right?). Users can also submit tutorials and links to knowhow del.icio.us to share with the community.
Comments and Feedbacks
Phil and I have been discussing about knowhow and would like to hear your thoughts on knowhow. Please post your comments or discussions here. If you would like to discuss privately, you may contact me directly.
- What do you think of knowhow? Any ideas or suggestions to make it better?
- Will you be interested in participating in the content contribution (submit links and tutorials)?
- Do you think knowhow is a cool tool to be included in other Adobe software such as Photoshop, Flash, and Dreamweaver?
P.S. I will post some new Illustrator CS3 tutorials soon (still playing around and experimenting).
June 7th, 2007 at 2:58 am
Wow, I been playing with Illustrator CS3 for weeks and I didn’t know anything about Knowhow. Will definitely blog this.
I think knowhow is a very cool idea and a new way of learning.
Thanks for your tips.
June 7th, 2007 at 3:27 am
Cool way to get tips about the current tool instead of browsing throught the help app.
Didn’t know about it either!
June 7th, 2007 at 5:44 am
very nice..
didnt know about it, hope they have same knowhow for other cs3 products.
June 7th, 2007 at 11:45 am
no doubt a very useful tool, I’m familiar with Illustrator but there are still those hidden, and unknown tools that I always wanted to know what they do… thanks!
June 8th, 2007 at 3:16 am
thanks for that info!
June 8th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
very helpful information, thanks…..
is there something similar in photoshop?
June 8th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
Ded - not at the moment. knowhow is still an experimental project and only available in Illustrator CS3 for now.
June 9th, 2007 at 8:33 am
I really love ILU , but i don’t good about it ^^! .
June 9th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
thanks nick for the tip
June 9th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Thanks for the tip there Nick! Have blogged about it just now! This is very sweet!
June 9th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
I have contacted you and ask if you want to help me with my personal site :)
June 11th, 2007 at 1:21 am
i think it’d be nice if some user submitted tips, etc. could be previewed in ill
June 11th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
Sounds cool. It’s awesome that Adobe’s product manager contacts you nick! :)
God Bless on your endeavors. I will wait for more of your tips. :)
June 12th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
I havent got illustrator cs3 yet, but it looks really good. Nice tip!
June 13th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
I wish you would post more often, you have such an interesting blog !!!
Btw i used your iTheme for my blog ! And i love it (but i think you’ll hate it lol).
June 18th, 2007 at 11:19 am
Sweet..! What a sleek feature.. - thanks for sharing :)
June 19th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
I think it’s a great feature, and I’ve already raved about it.
It would definitively be good to see it in other programs, such as Photoshop.
My only complain is that the window height is fixed and it sometimes isn’t tall enough to see everything. It would be *really* better if it was resizable.
June 24th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
I’d love illustrator cs3 but not yet… will check that out if/when I get it!
Well done on being included, a great achievement!
I love your work, particularly Margot Blanch’s portfolio website.
July 12th, 2007 at 11:55 am
That feature is awesome! It gives you little hints/tips on the tool that you click on, which definitely proves to be useful and helpful…THANKS!
July 13th, 2007 at 2:09 am
I am learn Illustrator
July 14th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
i want to know , are there any website which edit potho online with adobe illustrator? So we don’t have to installing the program?
July 15th, 2007 at 3:35 am
nice to hear that
July 18th, 2007 at 1:04 am
Hey dude, thanks for all those tutorial that you prepared here. They hasn’t thought me all those in Uni! we’d been ripped off tho…..LOL.
LOL, I shall update my web sometime soon….:) love the glass like button :)
Keep up the good work!
July 31st, 2007 at 3:53 am
There is some problem in illustrator cs3. The problem is align to artboard.
Kindly help how I align an object to artboard?
August 1st, 2007 at 10:50 am
i think it works in the english version only, isn’t it?
August 28th, 2007 at 10:07 am
this tutorials are old, where I can find more and free tutorials for illustrator to downloads for free? thank you
August 28th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Can I send my works and where?
September 13th, 2007 at 9:09 pm
some ppl say CS2 is more better than CS3 from reviews in CNET because its more lighter n easier to use
February 14th, 2008 at 6:14 am
Hey dude, thanks for all those tutorial that you prepared here.
February 14th, 2008 at 6:16 am
Keep up the good work! But i want to know , are there any website which edit potho online with adobe illustrator?
May 18th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
hmm…great feature..maybe I need to upgrade to Ai CS3 soon..hehe
December 17th, 2008 at 9:59 am
This is definitely useful. You might use Illustrator for 100 years and you won’t know all of this
December 18th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
What a incredible place to come for information…David
March 5th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
well Illustrator CS3 is great but not like CS4 it’s the best version ever …