AboutKevin Stohlmeyer Expertise I am an Adobe Certified Expert. I can answer all your questions about Adobe Illustrator version 7 through the new Adobe CS3 version.
Experience I am an Adobe Certified Instructor for Adobe Illustrator and have been teaching this application to college students for the past 6 years. I now teach this as a corporate instructor.
Organizations Milwaukee Adobe Users Group
National Association of Photoshop Professionals
C2 Graphics Productivity Solutions
Education/Credentials BA - Graphic Design
Adobe Certified Instructor - Illustrator
Expert: Kevin Stohlmeyer Date: 4/23/2008 Subject: New to Adobe... Pencil tool crossed out
Question I am going to trace a picture using layers and the pen tool, but when I try and move my cursor to the artboard, there is a pencil with a bar through it. It won't let me click on any other tools and I don't know how to turn this off.
In trying to do the background the other day, I made a gradient swatch with lots of different colors of a sunset. These hues are more vertical so of course I rotated it to horizontal to duplicate the horizon. The effect of this is that the color comes out in lots of broken up squares instead of one big square. Help!
Answer Hi Marjorie,
The "do not" icon usually means you are either on a hidden layer or a locked layer that does not allow you to do that function. Try creating a blank layer and using the tools.
Gradients can be tricky. Usually the banding effect comes from two things - low resolution or too many colors transitioning in a small space. Try upping the resolution and recreate your gradient or reduce the number of colors in the gradient itself.
