- Adjustment—an effect which can be applied to your design as a new layer for creative or corrective purposes.
- Alignment—positioning objects to the left, right, centre, top or bottom.
- Artboard—a portion of your work area within your document, of any shape or size, on which you can place design elements.
- Asset—a stored design element which can be accessed from any document you have open.
- Bézier curve—a vector curve that is defined mathematically, appearing smooth even when resized or transformed.
- Bitmap—a raster image made up of a grid of pixels, where each point on the grid corresponds to an individual pixel.
- Bleed—the area of the page that goes beyond the page edge to be trimmed off at commercial printers in the event of paper movement or design inconsistencies.
- Blend mode—a mode applied to your layer which changes how the applied pixels interact with existing pixels on the layer below.
- Blend range—let you blend layers in a project by controlling opacity across the tonal range of the currently selected layer or the underlying layer(s).
- Boolean operations—methods of joining vector shapes together to create composite shape variations which can be fully edited as curves.
- Bounding box—a temporary frame around a selected object showing its outer dimensions.
- Clipboard—a memory space used for short-term storage and transfer of content during cut, copy and paste operations.
- Clipping—the act of positioning one object inside another.
- Closed shape—a shape created by closing an open curve drawn with the Pen Tool.
- CMYK—a colour model that is often used for commercial process printing.
- Colour picker—a tool used to select and sample colours.
- Colour space—the range of colours used to display and print colours in your file.
- Contour—the line that is used to define the shape of an object.
- Control handle—extending from nodes as a pair of opposing handles, these can be dragged in different directions and extended to different lengths to adjust the shape and length of the segments between individual nodes.
- Cusp—a point where two branches of a curve meet and the tangents of each branch are equal.
- Document preset—a blank file containing a group of recommended document setup options according to how you plan to work.
- Document template—a file containing reusable pre-formatted text styles, graphics, and layouts which you can use to form the basis of another document.
- Embedded file—a placed copy of an original file that is embedded into a document. If the original file is moved or updated, the embedded copy will remain unchanged.
- Global colour—a colour that can be created, applied, and updated for different objects across your design from a single place.
- Glyph—a specific shape of a letter presented in a particular typeface.
- Gradient—a gradual blend from one colour to another.
- Grid—a pattern of lines which is overlaid over your page to help you align objects.
- Fill mode—determines how self-intersecting segments of a shape will be filled.
- Guide—non-printing, non-exporting lines that float over page objects and assist with object positioning.
- Layer effect—an effect that can be applied to either selected objects or the entire layer, changing its appearance.
- Layer mask—used to reveal a portion of a layer while the rest of the layer remains hidden.
- Linked file—a placed file containing a link between the document and the file on disk to allow it to update if it is changed on disk.
- Margin—the area between the main content of the page and the page edges.
- Marquee—a shape drawn around an object in order to make a selection.
- Node—a connection point between segments of a vector line, curve, or shape that controls the direction, length and curvature of its connected segments.
- Outline—see Path.
- Overprinting—printing one ink colour on top of another instead of the underlying colour being removed.
- Palette—a selection of stored colour swatches.
- Pasteboard—the area around the document or artboard.
- Path—an outline representing a series of smooth vector lines.
- Process colour—colours that are mixed by varying the percentages of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black ink. See Spot colour.
- Raster—a type of graphic made up of a grid of pixels.
- RGB—a colour model that is often used for digital work.
- Ruler—guideline used to accurately place objects or guides in the document view.
- Segment—the path between two nodes.
- Snapping—aligning images, brush strokes, lines, shapes, and selection areas to nearby grid lines, guides, margins, artboards or spreads, or any combination of these.
- Spot colour—a colour that can be used when your artwork contains a very limited colour set, reducing print costs significantly and allowing you to accurately reproduce colours otherwise impossible with process colours.
- Stop—a point where a specific colour is introduced in a gradient.
- Stroke—a drawn line that can have different defined attributes such as weight, colour, and style (solid, dotted, or dashed) applied to it.
- Symbol—an intelligent object that can be placed repeatedly in your document. Editing one symbol will edit all other placements of that symbol (unless they have been unsynced).
- Text frame—a frame containing paragraph text which uses a formalised structure and layout.
- Text style—a set of text attributes and properties which can be applied to text.
- Transform—a general term for resizing, moving, rotating or shearing objects.
- Vector—a type of graphic made up of mathematical paths.
- Vector curve—an open path with a distinct start and end.
- Vector shape—a closed path with no discernible start or end.
- White space—areas of the design that contain no images or text.