Just started using Illustrator, having some problems

[DomnickLolas]

I've been using photoshop for more than a decade. Recently started to use illustrator CS6. However, I cannot feel comfortable here in illustrator. Either there is something wrong with my settings or this the way it is. So, I have bunch of questions;

1. On photoshop when you change the color of a layer, you simply preview it. You choose a color and color of the object immediately changes accordingly. This is not happening in illustrator. Totally non-sense, this option should be there.

2. Likewise, when you are choosing a color, if you move your cursor anywhere, color picker automatically activates and you pick the color. This is also not happening in illustrator.

3. When I am trying to apply gradient, there is only numerical values for the angle of the linear gradient. I can enter a desired value. However, what I am looking for is a radial dial to adjust the degree and see the preview. How can I get that ?

4. I applied the gradient didn't like the result and now I cannot get rid off it and get a plain color instead.

5. When a stroke effect is applied to a text, it overlaps with the original text and covers it as the strength of stroke effect is increased.

So, those are pretty much my initial problems. Appreciate if someone can help.

[Monika Gause]

You can't compare Photoshop to Illustrator. They work differently.

What you're dealing with in Illustrator is mostly objects, not layers.

How to apply colors and gradients: https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/how-to/color-basics.html

[edgrimley]

Illustrator works differently than Photoshop

#3 Use the gradient tool

#4 Select the object, make sure fill is selected, then click the solid color that you want

#5 In the stroke panel you can select where the stroke is aligned,either center, inside or outside.

[JETalmage]

In an object-based vector drawing program (or, for that matter, also a page-layout program), you work with a different conceptual model regarding layers.

Basically, a Layer in a raster imaging program is like a clear overlay the size of the whole document, which contains another raster image, the same size, even if portions of it are "transparent." So a raster-image program's document is a stack of one or more same-size, same resolution, same position raster images, which will eventually be "flattened" into a single raster image.

An object-based application is and stays a stack of independent objects. Objects are…:

• Vector-based paths
• Raster-based images
• Text objects
• …and various types of collections or constructs comprised of those basic objects (Groups, Symbols, Compound Paths, Blends, etc.)

Much confusion is due to the fact that the so-called Layers Panel in Illustrator is not just a list of Layers, but of all the objects in the document. It should be called the Objects Panel, but it isn't.

It has not always been that way. In earlier versions of vector-based drawing programs, the layers panel only listed layers, which are merely user-defined labels for  ranges of contiguous objects within the objects stack. (Think of them as "brackets" put around a portion of objects in a list.) That was also nothing like a "Layer" in a raster-imaging program like Photoshop, but the confusion got worse when somewhere along the way, Illustrator got the bright-eyed idea to list all objects individually in the so-called Layers palette, but failed to re-name it to something more appropriate. Most other vector-based drawing programs followed suite in "me, too" manner.

So in Photoshop, each Layer is just (or eventually) another same-size, same-resolution, same position raster image superimposed on the base image. In Illustrator each Layer can be a collection of any number of individual independent objects in any combination (vector, raster, text, or other constructs omprised of those), just so long as they are contiguous ("next to" each other) in the overall stack of objects making up the whole document. Therefore, a document can (and often does), for example, contain just one Layer with a kazillion objects of various types "on" it. All those objects are still independent, separate objects. But the ill-named "Layers Panel" lists all of those objects, even if they are all contained in the same Layer.

JET