Simple control instructions

[Jim_Palik]

I am a professional photographer and adobe cloud subscriber. I am an epert user of both Lightroom and Photoshop but I am new to Illustrator. I have a customer that needs multiple if simple rectangle layouts placed on an A1 size 84.1 x 59.4 page. I need this by the end of the day.

After wrestling with Illustrator for the past two hours, 90% of the tutorials provide information I don't need and none of the basic information I do need. for example:

• How do I create a rectangle based on an aspect ratio and resize it keeping the aspect ration constant. I want to do this by either dragging a corner or resizing one side.
• Where can I find a fundamental tutorial for laying out multiple greeting cards or postcards of differnet sizes on an A1 size artboard that is close enough to the current version that all the controls are the same as the current version.
• How I place images in each rectangle on a different layer of the artboard.

I do not need any of the graphics or drawing. My need is very simple bit I cannot find any tutorials that cover such a simple project. With this information, I think I can do this by my deadline today.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Jim

[Doug A Roberts]

1. Draw a rectangle at whatever size you like and hold shift to keep its aspect ratio constant.

2. Most relevant controls have not changed significantly

3. Rectangles in Illustrator do not act as frames as they might in InDesign or other layout software.

This sounds a lot like a contact sheet. Would you perhaps be better off with InDesign where there is a readymade script for this, or are your needs more specific?

[Jim_Palik]

Thank you Robert. The problem is my customer needs Illustrator. Do you know of a tutorial for creating a sheet of postcards or greeting cards in Illustrator. I Think your simple shift instruction helps. That is similar to other Adobe applications. My needs are so simple, yet most are hidden under the plethora of controls. It s sad that tutorials are not kept current with releases.

I knew my issues were simple. The easiest solution to solve but most difficult to find was how to resize a page because the insturction all say to select File > Document Setup. This information is now in Properties under transform. That took forever for me to grasp. Don't get old. its not fun.

Jim

[Doug A Roberts]

You would normally resize a page in an open document using the artboard tool (Shift + O).

Can you show an example of what you want to achieve, or a screenshot of what you have done so far? It might be easier to offer specific advice if so.