Hi Kevin, I am a researcher in neuroscience field and found your videos extremely helpful. Thank you so much for these guidelines. All of your videos on illustrator are indeed helpful.
Your videos are really great and extremely useful... made in a very thoughtful sequence...I think you should make some more videos on this line. I really need to know how do they make scientific illustrations (along with the colorful shades they give to the real data figures) in nature reviews
One question Kevin. Why adobe illustrator and why not powerpoint? My supervisor has been insisting me to use Ai for my manuscript figures. Really appreciate your suggestions.
1) powerpoint doesn't do vector graphics (this is the main reason) 2) powerpoint's tools for working with layers, doing alignments, etc are nowhere near as sophisticated 3) it's way harder to draw and make complex illustrations like model figures in powerpoint 4) You can be way more productive with illustrator (everything is just faster/easier), once you get over the learning curve. Plenty of people use PP for their whole careers. But illustrator (or other vector-editing software like Inkscape or gravit designer) are better choices
This is a very useful tutorial. It saved a lot of my time. I have few simple questions because I am new in AI. How do you import data from OriginPro software? What is the best way to import a TIFF picture (cell) that I make in ImageJ?
I don't know about OriginPro - See if you can export as svg, eps, or pdf. Failing that, any image file (like a tiff) can just be dragged into an existing artboard, or opened directly in illustrator.
Hi Dibyendu Kumar Sasmal. Here is a tutorial on how to do that with QtiPlot, a clone of Origin. It is similar with Origin. ua-cam.com/video/PFw4XwmH8Xo/v-deo.html. You need to export to a vector format as (pdf, eps, emf etc) as Kevin Bonham said in the beginning of his video.
Thanks! When importing .eps figures from matlab, removing the white background (and control on the ticklabels in general) does not work so easy, but in this case the export_fig package can be very helpful in making the figures illustrator-ready
Neat - I've never used matlab, so don't know what the outputs look like. If it's anything like the plotting software I've used, there may be some masks or crops or other weird things binding the background. Good to know that export_fig helps out - are there any particular settings you use?
@@KevinBonham It depends, in the simplest case I would do all the axis handling within matlab (this allows for LaTeX equations, which is bit of a pain in Illustrator). Or if multiple aligned figures share the same axis, I'd turn off the axis labels and tick labels of the second one also withing matlab. After setting a proper window size, I do "export_fig figure.eps -transparent", where the flag avoids whitespace around the figure. Then in Illustrator, it is mostly a matter of aligning the figures and give them labels (a),(b) etc...
Dear Kevin, Thank you for a great tutorial! I would like you to recommend me a way to export a high resolution file. I would like to arrange my figures in Adobe Illustrator and insert them in a word document. I tried a lot of ways of saving/exporting, but when I insert a saved file in a word document, the picture becomes blurry (and even more blurry when I save that word document in a PDF format).
I'm not sure - I've noticed similar things with Word in the past. I think your best bet might be to export as a really high-resolution (300dpi or more) tiff or jpeg. Those exports will no longer be vector images, but if you're only doing that in the final step, it shouldn't matter. An alternative is to have figures on separate pages, then you'd export your word doc as a PDF, you illustrator images as a PDF, and then combine them with acrobat
Depending on the software you use to make the graphs, you can export as .svg (usually best) .pdf or .eps. With Prism, I typically just use copy within Prism and then paste to my .ai file.
@@KevinBonham Hi Kevin, I really benefit a lot from your videos about illustrator already, thanks! I encounter one problem when copying and pasting graphs from Prism. A lot of the single elements show up as path but additionally have a cutting path (sorry for the expression, I am using german software and don't know the english term) around them. I think I see the same in your video here. How do you deal with that? It makes it very difficult to move things relative to each other (e.g. moving the label and the coloured box of a figure key closer together). I would greatly appreciate your ideas on that! Best, Magdalena :)
Do you mean including the plotting part, or loading the file in? If the former, unfortunately, I think that's outside the scope of these tutorials. If the latter, I mention at the beginning that illustrator can open and manipulate things in PDF or SVG format, so (I didn't say this explicitly) you can just do "File > Open" on files of that sort and you'll end up where the video starts. Or have I misunderstood what you mean?
Hi Kevin,
I am a researcher in neuroscience field and found your videos extremely helpful. Thank you so much for these guidelines. All of your videos on illustrator are indeed helpful.
Wow. This video is really helpful. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks a Ton for these guidelines....awesome..Love the way you explain
+Sunil Pandey You're welcome!
Very glad that you are making this video.Please continue in making this kind of video..
you can double click on the rulers to get a smart guide at the current position - no need to drag
Thank you so much for making these videos, I could not stop watching them!
Your videos are really great and extremely useful... made in a very thoughtful sequence...I think you should make some more videos on this line. I really need to know how do they make scientific illustrations (along with the colorful shades they give to the real data figures) in nature reviews
+Rahul Gupta Thanks! I'm glad you find them useful. Did you see ua-cam.com/video/9ka-LkhYF60/v-deo.html ? Is there more you wanted to know there?
You are a saviour.....i would really appreciate if you can kindly make some more videos on data and figures for journal publications
This is a very useful tutorial. It saved a lot of my time.
Great examples of aligning scientific figures!
fabulous series, thank you!
best AI I have ever seen. I am also in biology which is really useful.!!!
Very helpful tutorial! Thanks!
One question Kevin. Why adobe illustrator and why not powerpoint? My supervisor has been insisting me to use Ai for my manuscript figures. Really appreciate your suggestions.
1) powerpoint doesn't do vector graphics (this is the main reason)
2) powerpoint's tools for working with layers, doing alignments, etc are nowhere near as sophisticated
3) it's way harder to draw and make complex illustrations like model figures in powerpoint
4) You can be way more productive with illustrator (everything is just faster/easier), once you get over the learning curve.
Plenty of people use PP for their whole careers. But illustrator (or other vector-editing software like Inkscape or gravit designer) are better choices
@@KevinBonham Thank you! I appreciate your suggestions.
This is a very useful tutorial. It saved a lot of my time. I have few simple questions because I am new in AI. How do you import data from OriginPro software? What is the best way to import a TIFF picture (cell) that I make in ImageJ?
I don't know about OriginPro - See if you can export as svg, eps, or pdf. Failing that, any image file (like a tiff) can just be dragged into an existing artboard, or opened directly in illustrator.
Hi Dibyendu Kumar Sasmal. Here is a tutorial on how to do that with QtiPlot, a clone of Origin. It is similar with Origin. ua-cam.com/video/PFw4XwmH8Xo/v-deo.html. You need to export to a vector format as (pdf, eps, emf etc) as Kevin Bonham said in the beginning of his video.
Thanks! When importing .eps figures from matlab, removing the white background (and control on the ticklabels in general) does not work so easy, but in this case the export_fig package can be very helpful in making the figures illustrator-ready
Neat - I've never used matlab, so don't know what the outputs look like. If it's anything like the plotting software I've used, there may be some masks or crops or other weird things binding the background. Good to know that export_fig helps out - are there any particular settings you use?
@@KevinBonham It depends, in the simplest case I would do all the axis handling within matlab (this allows for LaTeX equations, which is bit of a pain in Illustrator). Or if multiple aligned figures share the same axis, I'd turn off the axis labels and tick labels of the second one also withing matlab. After setting a proper window size, I do "export_fig figure.eps -transparent", where the flag avoids whitespace around the figure. Then in Illustrator, it is mostly a matter of aligning the figures and give them labels (a),(b) etc...
Dear Kevin,
Thank you for a great tutorial! I would like you to recommend me a way to export a high resolution file. I would like to arrange my figures in Adobe Illustrator and insert them in a word document. I tried a lot of ways of saving/exporting, but when I insert a saved file in a word document, the picture becomes blurry (and even more blurry when I save that word document in a PDF format).
I'm not sure - I've noticed similar things with Word in the past. I think your best bet might be to export as a really high-resolution (300dpi or more) tiff or jpeg. Those exports will no longer be vector images, but if you're only doing that in the final step, it shouldn't matter. An alternative is to have figures on separate pages, then you'd export your word doc as a PDF, you illustrator images as a PDF, and then combine them with acrobat
Thank you for this video!
Thank you this is great!!
Hi Kevin,
In what format do you export your graphs after editting them with Illustrator?
Thank you for your videos!
Oscar Mejias usually PDF, though it depends on the use case. if I'm putting them on my website for example, I'd do png
That's what I thought! :) Thank you for your videos, really helpful. My master's thesis is gonna rock now! :D
Which format did you save your graphs in before illustrator editing?
Depending on the software you use to make the graphs, you can export as .svg (usually best) .pdf or .eps. With Prism, I typically just use copy within Prism and then paste to my .ai file.
@@KevinBonham Hi Kevin, I really benefit a lot from your videos about illustrator already, thanks! I encounter one problem when copying and pasting graphs from Prism. A lot of the single elements show up as path but additionally have a cutting path (sorry for the expression, I am using german software and don't know the english term) around them. I think I see the same in your video here. How do you deal with that? It makes it very difficult to move things relative to each other (e.g. moving the label and the coloured box of a figure key closer together). I would greatly appreciate your ideas on that! Best, Magdalena :)
helpful but would be even more helpful if you started from scratch..importing etc. for those of us who are truly starting from scratch.
Do you mean including the plotting part, or loading the file in? If the former, unfortunately, I think that's outside the scope of these tutorials.
If the latter, I mention at the beginning that illustrator can open and manipulate things in PDF or SVG format, so (I didn't say this explicitly) you can just do "File > Open" on files of that sort and you'll end up where the video starts. Or have I misunderstood what you mean?