Illustrator CS4 Getting StartedWelcome| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:06 | Hi, I'm Deke McClelland.
| | 00:08 | I'm a self-appointed authority on
computer graphics and electronic design,
| | 00:12 | and I've been writing books and recording videos on
Adobe Illustrator longer than anyone else on the planet,
| | 00:18 | which is why I'm here to tell you three things.
| | 00:21 | First,
| | 00:22 | Illustrator is a smooth line drawing program.
| | 00:25 | It is the first and foremost program for graphic artists and
whether you know it or not, you see examples of Illustrator
| | 00:31 | artwork every day of your life.
| | 00:34 | That magazine logo, that billboard, the art
on that water bottle right next to you,
| | 00:39 | everything you buy comes in a box
that was designed in Illustrator.
| | 00:43 | Second, Illustrator is the industry standard, but that doesn't
mean it's an easy program to learn. In fact, it's hard,
| | 00:50 | which is why Illustrator artists
are such a rare and employable commodity.
| | 00:54 | Third, over the course of the next
two hours-- in just two hours, that's it--
| | 00:59 | I'll get you up and running with Adobe Illustrator.
| | 01:01 | And here's what you're going to learn:
how to set up a new document.
| | 01:05 | Not sexy, but you got to do it.
| | 01:07 | Starting a drawing, working with brushes
and blobs. Yes, there's an actual blob brush.
| | 01:12 | Creating graphic text treatments,
including type on a curve.
| | 01:16 | Working with gradients. Sounds dull but not dull.
Illustrator CS4's gradients are out of control.
| | 01:22 | Combining simple paths into complex ones,
| | 01:25 | reshaping paths to make them smooth and organic,
| | 01:28 | drawing anything you want with the Pen tool.
| | 01:31 | Just two hours. That's all I'm asking.
| | 01:34 | I know, you've got a lot on
your plate. It's been a long day.
| | 01:37 | So get started with Illustrator and learn how to direct
your creative energies. I think you're going to like this.
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| Starting a new document| 00:00 | In this exercise I will show you
how to start a new document in Adobe
| | 00:03 | Illustrator CS4. We are currently
looking at the Welcome Screen, which comes up
| | 00:08 | each and every time you start
Illustrator as well as whenever you have no
| | 00:12 | illustration open as is the case for me
right now. If you don't see the Welcome
| | 00:17 | Screen and you would like to display it,
go up to the Help menu and choose the
| | 00:20 | Welcome Screen command. Notice that the
right side of the Welcome Screen lists
| | 00:24 | a series of new document settings.
These are called Document Profiles, these
| | 00:30 | guys that say, Print Document, Web
Document and so on. Clicking on any one of
| | 00:34 | them will bring up the New Document
dialog box with a group of predefined
| | 00:38 | settings in place, but you can
override those settings if you like.
| | 00:42 | If you would prefer to just cut to the
chase and create a new document without
| | 00:46 | having the New Document dialog box
come up on screen then press the Alt key
| | 00:50 | here on the PC or the Option key on the
Mac and click on one of these items.
| | 00:55 | I went ahead and Alt-clicked or Option-
clicked on Print Document which created a
| | 01:00 | single letter sized page as we see it
right here. Notice that the document
| | 01:04 | opens up inside of a tabbed window, so
we are a seeing a tab at the top of the
| | 01:08 | screen that indicates this document's
name. Because it hasn't been saved so far
| | 01:13 | it appears as Untitled-1.
| | 01:15 | Now let's see how to adjust the
settings in the New Document dialog box.
| | 01:19 | I'll go on up to the File menu and choose
New or you can press Ctrl+N, Command+N
| | 01:24 | on the Mac. That brings up the New
Document dialog box right here, which invites
| | 01:28 | you by the way to go ahead and name the
document. So you can call it something
| | 01:32 | that indicates your purpose. I am just
going to call it 'My document' for now.
| | 01:36 | Then you can select a document profile,
which are those exact same options we
| | 01:41 | were seeing just a moment
ago inside the Welcome Screen.
| | 01:44 | So if I bring up this menu, you can see
that I have got Print, Web, Mobile And
| | 01:48 | Devices and so on. The exact same options.
All right, I will go ahead and escape
| | 01:52 | out of there.
| | 01:53 | In Illustrator CS4 you have the option
of creating multiple artboards, which are
| | 01:58 | analogous to multiple pages inside
of other programs but they are also
| | 02:02 | different; it's a unique thing here
inside Illustrator. Each artboard can be
| | 02:06 | any size you want it to be and it can
be any orientation, so that you can mix
| | 02:10 | horizontal and vertical artboards
inside of a single document and they are all
| | 02:15 | going to appear side by side or above
each other and below inside of a large
| | 02:20 | canvas and you specify upfront how
much spacing you want between each of the
| | 02:25 | artboards. A Spacing value of 20
points is pretty nice for starters.
| | 02:29 | You can also specify the order in
which the artboards appear by selecting one
| | 02:34 | of these Arrange icons. You can change
the layout from right-to-left so that
| | 02:39 | the right-most artboard is numbered
one and the one of the left of it is two,
| | 02:42 | and so on. You can also decide how many rows.
| | 02:45 | None of these things are set in stone
by the way. So you can always override
| | 02:48 | them later. You can also select from
various paper sizes. Notice that, if you
| | 02:53 | are going to print. Or you can enter
your own custom artboard size if you want to.
| | 02:57 | By default, Illustrator works in points,
but you can override that. Even if
| | 03:02 | you know what points are there, they're
1/72 of an inch incidentally. And even
| | 03:07 | if you are familiar working with
points from setting type for example, most
| | 03:11 | folks don't know that 612 points
equals eight-and-a-half inches.
| | 03:15 | So when you are thinking of larger
measurements you are probably thinking of
| | 03:18 | other units of measure. For example,
I want these artboards to be 6 inches
| | 03:22 | wide, so I will just type in 6in.
As soon as I press the Tab key,
| | 03:26 | Illustrator goes ahead and converts the
measurement for me. I could also enter
| | 03:30 | a value in millimeters and when I
press Tab, Illustrator is going to go ahead
| | 03:36 | and convert the value as well.
| | 03:37 | I am going to say 8" for height, which
is another way of saying 8 inches, and
| | 03:42 | then press Tab. You also have this
Bleed value, which is useful if you are
| | 03:47 | sending your job to a commercial
printer and you want to be able to print all
| | 03:50 | the way to the edge of the paper. You
would just ask your printer what the best
| | 03:54 | Bleed setting is. And once you are
done, go ahead and click OK in order to
| | 03:58 | create that new document and you will
see I now have a document that contains a
| | 04:02 | total of 6 artboards and notice it's
called 'My document' at the top of the
| | 04:07 | screen which makes it easy to
distinguish from the other document that I have
| | 04:11 | open, Untitled-1. So there you have it.
That's how you create a new document
| | 04:17 | inside Illustrator CS4.
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| Setting up artboards| 00:00 | In this exercise I will show you how to
change the size, quantity and position
| | 00:04 | of artboards inside of an existing
document. I have opened the illustration
| | 00:09 | called Branded Clothing.ai found
inside the Exercise Files folder. This
| | 00:14 | document happens to feature one and
only artboard that measures 10 inches wide
| | 00:19 | by 8 inches tall. How do I know that?
Well, I could go up to the View menu and
| | 00:24 | I could choose Show Rulers in order
to display the vertical and horizontal
| | 00:28 | rulers but they are currently set to
points and it's difficult to extrapolate
| | 00:31 | points to inches.
| | 00:33 | If this were another Adobe program
then I could view and modify the page size
| | 00:37 | using the Document Setup command
under the File menu. Now Illustrator does
| | 00:41 | provide a Document Setup command and
you can get it to as easily as clicking
| | 00:45 | this button here in the control panel.
And while I can change my Units from
| | 00:50 | Points to Inches, I can't for the
life of me find any information on the
| | 00:55 | existing artboard except for this
button right here that says Edit Artboards.
| | 01:00 | So, I will go ahead and click on it
and what it's going to do is it's going
| | 01:02 | to close this dialog box and select a
tool and that tool is this one right
| | 01:08 | here, the Artboard tool. And the
Artboard tool is how you modify artboards in
| | 01:13 | Illustrator. So if you are working with
some other tool like the Selection tool
| | 01:17 | for example, you will be working inside
the standard illustration mode. If you
| | 01:21 | want to switch to editing artboards
then you just click on the Artboard tool or
| | 01:24 | you press the keyboard shortcut, Shift+O.
| | 01:27 | Now, I can see that this artboard
measures 10 inches wide by 8 inches tall up
| | 01:33 | here in the control panel. Let's say
that I want to create a total of four
| | 01:37 | artboards, one each for the two
shirts and the two pair of shorts.
| | 01:41 | So I am going to go ahead and scale this
artboard. But before I do, I want to confirm
| | 01:45 | under the View menu that I have Smart
Guides turned on and I do because I can
| | 01:49 | see a check mark in front of it. The
Smart Guides will help me size and align
| | 01:53 | my artboards as I create them.
| | 01:54 | I am going to go ahead and drag this
right handle until I see that the width of
| | 01:59 | the artboard has changed to 5 inches,
you can see that W value just to the
| | 02:02 | right of my cursor there and I will
go ahead and release. Now, I will also
| | 02:07 | change the height of the artboard and
I will drag it up until I see a height
| | 02:10 | value of about 4.5 inches. Now I am
having a hard time getting that to work out
| | 02:15 | because I am snapping to various
portions of the shorts right there.
| | 02:20 | If I ultimately just can't get the
exact values I am looking for, I can release
| | 02:23 | and then I can change the values up
here in the control panel. I will change
| | 02:27 | the height to 4.5 inches for example
and now I have got my first artboard.
| | 02:32 | I could now set about drawing other
artboards with the Artboard tool like so, but
| | 02:38 | why bother drawing another identically
sized artboard from scratch, when I can just
| | 02:42 | go ahead and duplicate the first one.
So I will press the Backspace key or the
| | 02:46 | Delete key on the Mac to get rid of
that new artboard. Then I am going to go
| | 02:49 | ahead and move this artboard over to
the left a little bit and notice how the
| | 02:54 | items that are attached to the artboard,
even slightly attached to the artboard
| | 02:57 | like this pair of shorts here, are
moving over to the left as well. That's a
| | 03:01 | result of this setting right here.
Notice Move/Copy Artwork With Artboard is
| | 03:04 | turned on. I want to turn it off
and that way we can move the artboard
| | 03:08 | independently of the objects that are set on it.
| | 03:11 | Now, I am going to go ahead and
duplicate this artboard by pressing the Alt key
| | 03:15 | or the Option key on the Mac and
dragging the artboard over to the right and
| | 03:20 | notice it snaps into position. I also
have this intersect line that's telling
| | 03:23 | me that it's exactly centered up and
down. So I will release in order to create
| | 03:28 | a duplicate of the first artboard and
it's automatically numbered Artboard 2.
| | 03:32 | Then I am going to press Shift+Right
arrow, one, two, three, four, five times
| | 03:36 | to create a gutter between these
artboards and the reason I counted it is
| | 03:40 | because I want to be able to create
a similar vertical gutter between the
| | 03:44 | artboards for the shirts and the shorts.
| | 03:46 | Now, I will click on the first artboard
to select it once again and I am going
| | 03:50 | to Alt-drag it down downward or Option
-drag on the Mac and I will notice my
| | 03:55 | intersect line just to make sure I am
nice and centered and then I am going to
| | 03:59 | resize this artboard by panning my
artwork up a little bit and I am doing that
| | 04:03 | by Spacebar-dragging incidentally.
| | 04:08 | Now, I will drag this edge upward until
the height of this artboard is exactly
| | 04:13 | 3.5 inches. All right, that looks good.
Now I will press Shift+Down arrow one,
| | 04:17 | two, three, four, five times in a row.
And then just to finish things off I will
| | 04:22 | Alt-drag artboard number 3 or
Option-drag it on the Mac until I get two
| | 04:26 | intersect lines that are showing me
that it's both vertically and horizontally
| | 04:30 | centered with the neighboring pages.
Then I will release. We are now ready to
| | 04:34 | align the objects inside of our
illustration. In order to leave the Artboard
| | 04:39 | mode, you either click on any tool
but the Artboard tool or you just press
| | 04:43 | the Escape key and you are
back in the standard editing mode.
| | 04:46 | Now, I am going to click on this shirt.
I want to go ahead and align it to this
| | 04:50 | artboard so it's centered on the
artboard. I will go up to the control panel
| | 04:54 | and notice this option right there. If
I click on it I will bring up a menu and
| | 04:58 | I can choose Align To Artboard and
then I will click each one of these
| | 05:02 | centering options right there, this
one and this one, in order to center the
| | 05:06 | shirt and then I will just run that
same operation on the other one. So I have
| | 05:11 | already set this to Align To Artboard,
so I don't have to redo that but I do
| | 05:14 | have to click on each one of the
centering options up there in the control
| | 05:18 | palette after going ahead and
selecting each one of the graphics.
| | 05:23 | And that's it, friends. We have now
managed to setup four independent artboards
| | 05:28 | inside of this illustration thereby
preventing us to relegate each of our
| | 05:32 | assets to a different artboard. I could
then turn around and print each one of
| | 05:36 | these artboards to a separate piece
of paper. I could also export all four
| | 05:41 | artboards to a single multi-page
PDF document. It's an unusual but very
| | 05:45 | flexible approach here inside Illustrator.
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| Getting around the Illustration window| 00:00 | In this exercise I am going to show you
how to get around in illustration, how
| | 00:04 | to take advantage of Illustrator's
navigation functions. I am working on the
| | 00:08 | document called Clothing On Artboards.ai
found inside the Exercise Files folder.
| | 00:13 | Let's say I want to zoom in on
Artboard 1 in this illustration, then I
| | 00:17 | would go down to the bottom left corner
of the illustration window to where it
| | 00:21 | says Artboard Navigation, I will click
and then I will choose 1 and Illustrator
| | 00:25 | will not only switch to Artboard 1,
but it will fill my screen with the
| | 00:29 | artboard as well.
| | 00:30 | But I still might want to zoom farther
in and I can zoom in by going up to the
| | 00:34 | View menu and choosing these commands,
Zoom In or I can Zoom Out. Even better
| | 00:39 | though, you have keyboard shortcuts.
Keyboard shortcuts that you will want to
| | 00:43 | memorize because these are really
frequent operations and you don't always want
| | 00:47 | to have to go up to the menu to get to
them. So it's Ctrl+Plus to zoom in; that's
| | 00:51 | Ctrl+Plus on the Mac. And it's Ctrl+Minus to
zoom out; that's Command+Minus on the Mac.
| | 00:56 | All right, so I am going to go ahead and
zoom in just an increment then I will
| | 01:00 | press Ctrl+Plus to zoom in again, Ctrl
+Plus zoom in again; that's Command+Plus,
| | 01:05 | Command+Plus on the Mac. Now Ctrl+Minus or
Command+Minus on the Mac zooms out. Another way
| | 01:11 | to zoom inside of Illustrator is to
take advantage of the Zoom tool. The nice
| | 01:16 | thing about the Zoom tool down here at
the bottom of the toolbox is that you
| | 01:19 | can click on a certain portion of an
illustration to center your zoom at that
| | 01:24 | location. If you want to zoom out, you
press and hold the Alt key or the Option
| | 01:29 | key on the Mac and click.
| | 01:32 | You also have a means of getting to
the Zoom tool on the fly if you want to.
| | 01:37 | Now this is a strange keyboard
shortcut, but I find it very, very useful.
| | 01:41 | I'll switch back to the standard
Selection tool there just so that we have some
| | 01:45 | other tool selected, then you can get
to the Zoom tool at any time by pressing
| | 01:49 | and holding Ctrl and Spacebar and then
I will Ctrl+Spacebar click to zoom in,
| | 01:54 | that's Command+Spacebar on the Mac. To
zoom out, you press Ctrl+Alt+Spacebar;
| | 02:00 | that's Command+Option+Spacebar on
the Mac. So as I say, strange keyboard
| | 02:06 | shortcut, but if you can remember it,
it's really useful. Watch this one as well.
| | 02:10 | If I press Ctrl and Spacebar at
the same time or Command and Spacebar in
| | 02:14 | the Mac, I get that Zoom tool. Then
I can drag around the portion of the
| | 02:19 | illustration that I want to zoom in on,
so that's also an option available to you.
| | 02:24 | Now when you are zoomed in this far,
you will sometimes need to pan around the
| | 02:28 | image, that is scroll to a different
location. You can use your scroll bar
| | 02:32 | just as you do inside of any other
program, but you will see you go pretty
| | 02:36 | fast when you are zoomed way in like I
am right now. Better for small zooms is
| | 02:41 | to press and hold the Spacebar which
gets you the Hand tool on the fly and this
| | 02:46 | is definitely a keyboard shortcut to
remember. So Spacebar-drag to move the
| | 02:52 | illustration without having to switch
tools at all and then when you are done
| | 02:56 | using the Hand tool, go ahead and
release the Spacebar. All right, I am going to
| | 03:00 | zoom out, if only to show
you a few more tricks here.
| | 03:04 | Now I don't know how you feel about
your scroll wheel on your mouse, or even if
| | 03:08 | you have one. But if you are the kind
of person who likes to take advantage of
| | 03:11 | the scroll wheel, here is something
you can do. You can scroll up to pan
| | 03:15 | upward, you can scroll down to pan
downward, you can also scroll side-to-side
| | 03:21 | if you have a Mighty Mouse for the
Mac or some other mouse that provides a
| | 03:25 | button on top instead of a wheel. But
if you are working with a wheeled mouse,
| | 03:30 | then press and hold the Ctrl key on
the PC or the Command key on the Mac and
| | 03:35 | scroll up to move to the left or scroll
down to move to the right. You can also
| | 03:40 | incidentally, you can zoom in using the
scroll wheel, if you press and hold the
| | 03:45 | Alt key on the PC or the Option key on
the Mac and scroll up, you will zoom in.
| | 03:52 | If you press and hold Alt, or on the Mac
Option, and scroll down, you will zoom out.
| | 04:01 | That pretty much takes care of your
navigation functions inside of Illustrator.
| | 04:05 | If, however, you might find it useful to
also be able to navigate from a panel,
| | 04:09 | you can go up to the Window menu and
choose the Navigator command and that
| | 04:14 | brings up this Navigator panel right
there, which is scalable incidentally.
| | 04:17 | If you have got a big monitor you can
make the Navigator panel bigger, but of
| | 04:21 | course I have a pretty small monitor
so I will reduce its size. Notice now I
| | 04:27 | can move the window, the illustration
window, just by dragging it here inside
| | 04:31 | the Navigator panel. I can also press
the Ctrl key or the Command key on the
| | 04:36 | Mac and marquee an area in order to
zoom in on it. So that's a Ctrl-drag or
| | 04:43 | Command-drag on the Mac.
| | 04:44 | All right, so that pretty much takes care
of all of our options. I will zoom out
| | 04:49 | to take in more of this illustration,
by Ctrl-dragging or Command-dragging
| | 04:53 | inside the Navigator panel. You now
have a sense of how to get around inside of
| | 04:58 | Illustrator. A fair number of different
tools, a fair number of different keys
| | 05:02 | that you can press. But if you learned
nothing else, remember that you have got
| | 05:06 | the ability to zoom in with Ctrl or Command+Plus,
zoom out with Ctrl or Command+Minus
| | 05:11 | and then pan around inside of the
image by Spacebar-dragging. Those are the
| | 05:17 | most important things to remember when
you are navigating inside Illustrator.
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| Starting a drawing| 00:00 | In this exercise we are going to start
drawing. Now we are not going to draw
| | 00:04 | anything too terribly complicated. We
will be using just the Rectangle, Ellipse
| | 00:08 | and Star tools and yet by the time we
are finished, we will have a carefully
| | 00:12 | crafted piece of artwork. Notice that
I am working inside of a new document.
| | 00:17 | If you would like to achieve the same
results as me then you can open the New
| | 00:21 | Document.ai file from the Exercise
Files folder. Now I would like to setup a
| | 00:25 | regular grid in the background and I am
going to do that using something called
| | 00:29 | the Rectangular Grid tool.
| | 00:31 | I will go down to the Line Segment tool,
which allows me to draw straight lines.
| | 00:35 | I will click and hold to bring up
the flyout menu and then I will choose
| | 00:38 | Rectangular Grid tool. Now you can drag
with this tool if you want to in order
| | 00:44 | to draw a grid on the fly. You
could also change the number of lines by
| | 00:48 | pressing the arrow keys. For example,
the up and down arrow keys change the
| | 00:52 | number of horizontal dividers. The left
and right arrow keys change the number
| | 00:56 | of vertical dividers.
| | 00:58 | But I would rather draw this grid
numerically, so I am going to press the
| | 01:01 | Backspace or Delete key to delete that
new grid and I will move my cursor into
| | 01:05 | the upper left corner of my document.
I should see the word Intersect right
| | 01:09 | there. If you don't, you need to go to
the View menu and turn on Smart Guides,
| | 01:13 | but my Smart Guides are already on. So
I will just go ahead and click at this
| | 01:17 | location, right there in the upper
left corner of the document, and that will
| | 01:21 | bring up the Rectangular Grid tool
Options dialog box which allows me to draw a
| | 01:25 | grid numerically.
| | 01:27 | I will change the Width value to
seven and the Height value to five, then I
| | 01:31 | will Tab my way to the number of
Horizontal Dividers, I want that to be 11 and
| | 01:34 | I will press Tab twice to advance to
the Vertical Dividers value, change that
| | 01:39 | to 13 and I will click OK. And I now
have the grid that I am looking for. Now
| | 01:44 | right now this grid would print. These
are a series of stroked lines. I want to
| | 01:49 | change them into non-printing,
snapable guides. So I will go up to the View
| | 01:54 | menu and I will choose Guides and then
I will choose Make Guides, which will go
| | 01:59 | ahead and convert these
objects to guides on the fly.
| | 02:02 | Now assuming that my guides are visible,
I will see these turn into a series of
| | 02:06 | cyan lines. Now let us start drawing
with this grid in the background.
| | 02:10 | I'm going to click and hold on the
Rectangle tool and I am going to choose the
| | 02:13 | Ellipse tool. We will start with a big
circle and I am going for an American
| | 02:18 | star insignia as you will see. I am
going to draw from the center outward with
| | 02:24 | the ellipse. That is going to be the
best way to make sure that were centered
| | 02:27 | on the page, so this grid
intersection right there is where I will begin
| | 02:30 | drawing and I am drawing outward.
| | 02:32 | As I am drawing, if I press and hold
the Shift key, I will constrain my ellipse
| | 02:36 | to a perfect circle. If I also press
the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac,
| | 02:42 | then I will draw from the center
outward like so. So I have both Shift and
| | 02:45 | Alt+down, if you are on the Mac, you
would have Shift and Option down. As soon
| | 02:49 | as intersect with this bottom
guideline down there, do you see that? Then I
| | 02:52 | will go ahead and release and I have
drawn my circle. Now I want to set a five
| | 02:57 | pointed star in the middle of that so
I will go over here, once again to the
| | 03:01 | Ellipse tool, click and hold
and now choose the Star tool.
| | 03:05 | The Star tool always draws from the
center outward, so I will go ahead and
| | 03:08 | start dragging from this location. I
can change the number of points on my star
| | 03:13 | by pressing the up arrow key or the
down arrow key. I want to do whatever it
| | 03:17 | takes so to get five points. Notice
that the lines are at various angles here.
| | 03:23 | I want to lock them down into alignment
with each other by pressing and holding
| | 03:27 | the Alt key here on the PC or the
Option key on a Mac, so keep that key down.
| | 03:32 | I also want to press the Shift key
so that the star is upright.
| | 03:36 | So I have got Shift and Alt+down,
Shift and Option on the Mac, just as I did
| | 03:40 | when I was drawing the circle, and as
soon as I get it to about this location,
| | 03:43 | I'll go ahead and release. We now have
a star that is exactly centered inside
| | 03:48 | this circle. Let us draw off these
strips in the background using the Rectangle
| | 03:51 | tool, which I will choose from what is
now the Star tool flyout menu, and I am
| | 03:55 | going to draw from here to here in
order to create a rectangle that looks like
| | 04:00 | this, that cuts through the
center once again of the other shapes.
| | 04:03 | I am going draw the other stripes just
by dragging with the Rectangle tool as I
| | 04:07 | did before. I can also duplicate the
first rectangle if I wanted to, but
| | 04:12 | because I have these guidelines setup,
it is very easy just to draw in the
| | 04:15 | rectangles. Now let us apply the proper
colors. I will go back to the Selection
| | 04:19 | tool, then I am going to click on this
big circle here and I will go up to the
| | 04:25 | first color swatch, the one that has
a slash to it, up here in the Control
| | 04:29 | panel. I will click on it and I will go
ahead and choose a dark blue like this
| | 04:33 | one right here in order to
fill that shape with blue.
| | 04:36 | Now click on the star to make it active.
Click on this first swatch once again
| | 04:42 | and change it to white and now I will
click on the outline to this first stripe
| | 04:46 | and then I will Shift-click on the
outlines for the other two in order to add
| | 04:51 | them to the selection. So click on one,
Shift-click on the other two and then
| | 04:56 | go up to that first swatch again and
change the fill to red. Now the only thing
| | 05:01 | left to do is to send these stripes to
the back of the stack, so I will right-
| | 05:05 | click on them. If you don't have a
right mouse button, you are working on a Mac,
| | 05:08 | you can press the Ctrl key and
click, then choose Arrange and then choose
| | 05:13 | Send to Back and all of those
stripes will go to the back of the stack.
| | 05:17 | Now I am going to select all the shapes.
Notice that they all have these black
| | 05:20 | outlines. I want to get rid of those
strokes as they are known. So I will go up
| | 05:25 | to the Select menu and choose the All
command or press Ctrl+A, Command+A on the
| | 05:29 | Mac to select all of the objects inside
of this illustration. And I will go to
| | 05:34 | this second swatch here in the
control panel, click on it and change that
| | 05:38 | stroke to none.
| | 05:41 | Now we have just a collection of
colored shapes and nothing more. I will go to
| | 05:44 | the Select menu and choose the
Deselect command in order to deselect all of
| | 05:49 | these objects. Then I am going to go up
to the View menu, I will choose Guides
| | 05:54 | and I will choose Hide Guides in order
to make the guides go away so we can
| | 05:58 | just see the artwork. That quickly,
that easily and that precisely, you are
| | 06:03 | able to create this insignia using a
combination of just a Rectangle tool,
| | 06:08 | the Ellipse tool and the Star
tool here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Brushes and blobs| 00:00 | In this exercise, I am going to
introduce you to the Blob and Brush functions
| | 00:04 | in Illustrator, which strange as they
sound are great methods for painting
| | 00:08 | freeform lines and shapes. They
also give you a sense for the underlying
| | 00:12 | nature of drawing inside Illustrator.
I am working on a document called Surf
| | 00:16 | Elements.ai that's found inside the
Exercise Files folder. I am going to go
| | 00:21 | ahead and zoom in on this top
central artboard, the one that contains the
| | 00:25 | faces. The face on the left, I drew
with a Paint Brush tool. The face on the
| | 00:30 | right, I drew with the Blob Brush tool.
| | 00:32 | I am going to go ahead and select
these dark gray shapes in the center and
| | 00:37 | delete them because I am going to
redraw them for you. Now because these are
| | 00:41 | the only shapes that are filled with
this particular shade of gray, I can go up
| | 00:45 | to the control panel, click on this
down pointing arrowhead right here, and I
| | 00:49 | can choose Fill Color in order to
select all objects that have this particular
| | 00:54 | fill color. Then I will go ahead and
delete them by pressing the Backspace key
| | 00:58 | or the Delete key on a Mac. Now I am
going to grab the Paint Brush tool right
| | 01:02 | here which I can get by pressing the B key.
| | 01:05 | I should note that I have a graphics
tablet with a pressure sensitive stylus.
| | 01:09 | These things are fantastic drawing
tools. They would run anywhere from $50 at
| | 01:14 | the low end to a couple of 100 bucks
at the high end. They are great tools if
| | 01:18 | you are a graphic artist and you
plan on doing a lot of work in various
| | 01:21 | graphics programs. But you can use
these tools with a mouse as well. Next I am
| | 01:26 | going to go up to the control panel and
I am going to click this down pointing
| | 01:30 | arrowhead to bring up the Brushes panel
and I am going to select a brush I have
| | 01:34 | created in advance. It is called
Pressure Brush. Go ahead and click on it to
| | 01:37 | select it, then I will hide the panel
by clicking on that arrow once again.
| | 01:41 | Now I am going to draw some very
simple lines here. I am going to click and
| | 01:45 | hold with my stylus in order to create
this biggish blob and then I am going to
| | 01:50 | release a little bit for the bridge of
the nose and press a little harder as we
| | 01:53 | get down toward the bottom of the nose.
And then in a separate pass I am going
| | 01:57 | to click to make a mouth and then I
will draw a couple of eyes here as click
| | 02:02 | points as well. The Illustrator is
going ahead and filling them in, in order to
| | 02:06 | make them these ovals. Now I am going
to go back to the Selection tool and
| | 02:12 | notice that I can select these items if
I want to. For example, if I click along
| | 02:15 | the nose I can see the path outline of
the nose and it is a little easier to
| | 02:19 | see if we are not seeing this bounding box.
| | 02:22 | So, I am going to go up to the View
menu and choose Hide Bounding Box and now I
| | 02:26 | can see the plain path outline, which
is stroked with this pressure-sensitive
| | 02:31 | stroke right there. These guys, the
eyes and the mouth, are pretty much just
| | 02:35 | single points. It is amazing what
Illustrator can do. I am going to move this
| | 02:39 | eye down, just by dragging it. So even
though these are painterly expressive
| | 02:43 | lines that I have created here, they
are still independent objects in the
| | 02:46 | Illustrator that I can
move and modify as I like.
| | 02:49 | Next, I want to change this orange
outline that's around the guy's face and
| | 02:54 | there are several paths going on here.
So I will go back up to the control
| | 02:58 | panel, click this down pointing
arrowhead and I will choose Stroke Color to
| | 03:01 | select all the orange lines around his
face. Then I am going to go once again
| | 03:05 | up to the Brushes panel and I am going
to apply what's known as an Art Brush
| | 03:10 | and this is the brush I want to use.
This one is called Fountain Pen and notice
| | 03:14 | now we get a really expressive brush
going on. It looks like something that you
| | 03:20 | would create with traditional tools.
| | 03:22 | Now, I think it looks really great
except for this jaw, I don't like the way
| | 03:26 | the jaw line is looking, I want to
flip that brush, so it starts thick over
| | 03:30 | here and then is thin on this side.
So I will click off all the shapes to
| | 03:33 | deselect them, then I will click on the
jaw to select just it. I am going to go
| | 03:38 | over to another version of the Brushes
panel. Panels hang out in all kinds of
| | 03:42 | different locations inside of
Illustrator. I am going to get to this one by
| | 03:45 | clicking on this little Brush icon
over here on the right side of the screen
| | 03:49 | and that brings up the Brushes panel.
As you can see it's the exact same panel
| | 03:52 | we saw a moment ago.
| | 03:53 | I am going to click on this icon, the
one that says Options Of Selected Object.
| | 03:58 | And the reason I am bringing up the
Brushes panel over on the right side of the
| | 04:01 | screen, is just so we can see what
are we are doing. Otherwise it would be
| | 04:04 | hanging in front of this guy's face.
This allows me, this dialog box, allows me
| | 04:08 | to change how the Brush stroke is
applied to the selected path and so I am
| | 04:14 | going to make sure the Preview check
box is on, that's very important, so you
| | 04:17 | can see what you are doing. Then I am
going to click Flip Along, which is just
| | 04:20 | going to change the beginning
and ending points for the path.
| | 04:24 | Notice that does exactly what I want
it to do. Now we have got the thick edge
| | 04:27 | over here on the left and a thin edge
over on the right. I will click OK in
| | 04:31 | order to accept that change. Now let's
check out the Blob Brush. Now I am going
| | 04:37 | to select the Blob Brush tool, which is
new to Illustrator CS4, and notice it has
| | 04:42 | a keyboard shortcut of Shift+B. I will
select it and I will start in painting
| | 04:48 | with this guy. Now he works a little
differently as you will see, the tool
| | 04:52 | works a little differently that is
and notice I am painting in orange. So
| | 04:55 | that's fine for now because we can change that.
| | 04:57 | So, I am going to go ahead and paint a
brow and then I will paint in the nose
| | 05:00 | for this fellow and give him a mouth
and paint a little bit of a lip as well.
| | 05:06 | I am going to paint in some eye contours
like so and then I am going to paint in
| | 05:10 | a little bit of a furrowed brow there
and that's the final version of those
| | 05:15 | paths. Now an interesting thing to note
about how these paths are put together
| | 05:19 | with the Blob tool, they are configured
differently than they are with a Brush
| | 05:22 | tool. So where the Paint Brush was
concerned, we have these strokes that are
| | 05:27 | painted around these thin
outlines, these path outlines here.
| | 05:31 | If I wanted to change that, so I have
the path outlines on the outside of these
| | 05:36 | black areas then I could go up to the
Object menu and choose Expand Appearance
| | 05:41 | and then we get black filled shapes,
which can be a little easier to work with.
| | 05:46 | Compare that to the Blob tool, which
delivers filled shapes in the first place,
| | 05:51 | that's the way it works and anytime you
paint over a similarly colored area, it
| | 05:55 | goes and fuses those areas together.
If the area has a different color like
| | 06:00 | this blue hair then it does not fuse
the paths together. I am going to go ahead
| | 06:05 | and click and Shift-click on these
three paths in order to select all of them.
| | 06:10 | Then, I am going to go up to the Fill
swatch here in the control panel and I am
| | 06:13 | going to switch the fill to black and
then finally because this furrowed brow
| | 06:18 | is overlapping the hair, I am going to
right-click inside of the shapes. If you
| | 06:23 | don't have a right mouse button on the
Mac then press the Ctrl key and click,
| | 06:26 | then I will choose Arrange and then I
will choose Send to Back, which will send
| | 06:30 | those shapes in back, the black shapes,
in back of the blue shapes. So the hair
| | 06:35 | overlaps the furrowed brow and that's
the end of my drawing. Gives you a quick
| | 06:41 | and easy sense of how you can use the
Paint Brush and Blob Brush tools to paint
| | 06:46 | freeform line, shapes and
other paths here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with text| 00:00 | In this exercise we are going to
examine the basics of working with type inside
| | 00:04 | Illustrator. I am currently looking
at a sheet of stickers and I want to go
| | 00:08 | ahead and label those stickers with
a little bit of information about the
| | 00:12 | company. The name of this document
is Sticker Sheet.ai, found inside the
| | 00:16 | Exercise Files folder. In order to
create a basic text object in the
| | 00:20 | Illustrator, you go over here to the
Type tool, which you can also get to by
| | 00:24 | pressing the T key, and then you draw a
text frame in order to hold your type.
| | 00:31 | Now I have already created some text in
advance that I copied to the clipboard.
| | 00:34 | I am going to press Ctrl+V or Command+V
on the Mac to paste that text into the
| | 00:39 | text frame and now let us apply some
basic formatting. I am going to press
| | 00:43 | Ctrl+A or Command+A on the Mac in order
to select all of the text in this frame
| | 00:48 | and then I will go up to this Font
option right here inside the control panel.
| | 00:53 | I can click on the down pointing arrow
in order to choose a font from the list
| | 00:57 | or better still, I can just click on
the font name to make it active and I can
| | 01:02 | type in the first few
letters of the font I want to use.
| | 01:05 | I know I want to use a font called
Myriad Pro that is available on this system,
| | 01:09 | so I just need to type in Myriad and
then Space+P in order to make it active
| | 01:14 | because that is the first font that
begins with that string. Then I would press
| | 01:18 | the Enter key or the Return key
on the Mac in order to accept that
| | 01:21 | modification. Now you can see that the
text automatically wraps inside of that
| | 01:26 | text frame. The text frame is a little
bit wide, I want that 'and,' that word
| | 01:31 | 'and' right there to drop down to the next line.
| | 01:33 | So I am going to switch back to the
black arrow Selection tool which I can do
| | 01:38 | just by clicking on it here at the
top of the toolbox. But here is a little
| | 01:41 | trick you'll want to know. You can
go ahead and accept all of your text
| | 01:44 | modifications and switch back to the
selection tool as easily as pressing the
| | 01:48 | Escape key. That is all it takes. So
just remember the Escape key is available
| | 01:53 | to you. Now assuming my bounding box is
turned on I can go ahead and drag this
| | 01:58 | right-hand handle in order to move
the right edge of the text frame over to
| | 02:03 | left here and knock the
word 'and' down to the next line.
| | 02:07 | If for some reason your bounding box
is turned off, you can go up to the View
| | 02:10 | menu and choose what would be the Show
Bounding Box command. If it says Hide
| | 02:15 | Bounding Box, it is already on. All right,
now let us apply a few more formatting
| | 02:19 | modifications. To switch back to the
Type tool and make your text active, all
| | 02:23 | you have to do is double-click inside
of your text object and notice now my
| | 02:28 | Type tool is active once again. I am
going to select this phone number right
| | 02:33 | there and there is a couple of
different ways to select type. One is to drag
| | 02:36 | over it of course. Another is to
double-click in order to select a word and
| | 02:41 | that is what I am going to do here and
then I will go up to the word Character,
| | 02:44 | here in the control palette and I will
click in order to display the Character panel.
| | 02:48 | So you can get to a lot of
Illustrator's panels just by clicking on these blue
| | 02:53 | links right there. All right, I am
going to go ahead and assign Bold, not by
| | 02:57 | clicking on any little bold icon.
Notice there isn't one to choose. I'd go
| | 03:02 | here to this second pop-up menu here
and I would switch from Regular to Bold.
| | 03:09 | Notice that a style option is also
available directly in the control panel next
| | 03:13 | to the font name. Next, I am going
to go ahead and add a little bit of
| | 03:17 | paragraph spacing to a couple of lines
of type. I am going to click. I don't
| | 03:21 | really need to select the entire line;
just click inside the word Main there in
| | 03:25 | the address line.
| | 03:26 | I will go up to the Paragraph panel,
which allows me to apply paragraph level
| | 03:31 | formatting attributes that affect an
entire paragraph at a time. Then notice
| | 03:36 | this icon right there, Space Before
Paragraph. I'll click on it to select its
| | 03:40 | value then I am going to change that
value to three and press the Enter or
| | 03:43 | Return key to knock that text down a
little bit. Now I am going to do the same
| | 03:48 | thing inside this line that says
info@groundswell.com. Go up to Paragraph
| | 03:53 | again, click, three and press
Enter or Return to apply that change.
| | 03:58 | Now I want to format both info@groundswell.com,
the email address, and the URL after it
| | 04:04 | as if they were hyperlinks. So
I will triple-click on groundswell and
| | 04:08 | on the third click I will drag down
like so, in order to select both of those
| | 04:13 | lines of type. Now I am going to go up
to the Character panel by clicking on
| | 04:18 | the word Character in the control panel
and now I will add a underline to this
| | 04:22 | text, just by clicking on this
Underline icon right there. I also want to make
| | 04:26 | the text blue, so it looks like a
hyperlink, but there is no color option here
| | 04:30 | inside the Character panel.
| | 04:32 | You have to go instead to this option
right here at the outset of the control
| | 04:37 | panel which is the Fill option. Click
on it to bring up your Swatches panel and
| | 04:43 | click on a blue color swatch and that
will change that text to blue. Now I am
| | 04:48 | going to go ahead and press the Escape
key in order to accept my modifications
| | 04:53 | and switch back to my black arrow tool
and that is all there is to it. I could
| | 04:58 | go ahead and scale this frame a little
bit as well. And that is how you create
| | 05:03 | and format a text object
here inside Illustrator.
| | 05:09 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with point and path text| 00:00 | In addition to creating text inside of
a frame, which is called Area text inside
| | 00:05 | Illustrator, you can also create two
other varieties of text, which are Point
| | 00:09 | text and Path text and I am going to
introduce you to both in this exercise.
| | 00:14 | I am working inside a document called
Stickers With Address.ai found inside the
| | 00:18 | Exercise Files folder. I am going to go
ahead and scroll up and zoom in on this
| | 00:23 | text right here. Notice that it's
just a couple of lines of text and it's
| | 00:27 | aligned to a point. If a click on it,
you can see a point right there, square
| | 00:31 | point, right there in the center of
the text and that's the alignment point.
| | 00:35 | Now it looks like there is a frame
around this text but there isn't really.
| | 00:38 | That's just a bounding box. If I
went up to the View menu and chose Hide
| | 00:42 | Bounding Box, then that frame will
disappear. There is no text frame in this
| | 00:47 | case which means Illustrator does
not automatically wrap the text down to
| | 00:51 | another line, making it perfect for
creating specialty texts like headlines and
| | 00:57 | logos and other text treatments.
| | 00:59 | I am going to go ahead and delete this
text and recreate it for you. So I'll
| | 01:03 | press the Backspace key, the Delete key
on the Mac. I will grab my Type tool by
| | 01:08 | clicking on it here, pressing the T key.
Then I am just going to click to add a
| | 01:12 | point inside of my illustration. I don't
have to drag it all. I will just click
| | 01:18 | and then I will go ahead and say
California on one line, press the Enter key or
| | 01:23 | the Return key to move my blinking
insertion marker down to the next line and
| | 01:28 | I'll say groundswell. Then I'll go
ahead and select all of my text by pressing
| | 01:32 | Ctrl+A or Command+A on the Mac. There
are a few problems with the text right now.
| | 01:35 | It's conforming to the last formatting
attributes I applied. So I am going
| | 01:39 | to go up to the Character panel right
here, by clicking on the word Character
| | 01:43 | in the control panel. I will turn off
Underline because I don't want underline.
| | 01:47 | I also incidentally want all caps.
| | 01:49 | So I'll click on this little menu
icon right there, notice that, this little
| | 01:54 | icon that appears in the upper right
hand corner of the panel, which brings up
| | 01:57 | this flyout menu and I will choose All
Caps. And that will change that text to
| | 02:02 | all caps on the fly. I am also going
to change the font to a font called Hobo
| | 02:07 | that's available to this system and I
will press the Enter or Return key in
| | 02:11 | order to apply that font. I also want
the text to be bigger. So I am going to
| | 02:15 | change this Font Size value up here in
the control panel, I will go ahead and
| | 02:19 | select the existing value and then
enter in 28 and press the Enter or Return
| | 02:23 | key on the Mac in order to apply that change.
| | 02:26 | Now the text is currently flushed left.
I need to change it to Centered. So
| | 02:30 | I'll go up to the Paragraph panel and I
will select this second option in here
| | 02:34 | Align Center which will center my text.
So far so good, but there is a couple
| | 02:39 | of problems. The lines of text are
spaced too far from each other and the word
| | 02:43 | groundswell wants to be sized, so
that it's the same width as the word
| | 02:47 | California. So let's double-click on
the word groundswell there and then I am
| | 02:52 | going to take advantage of a keyboard
shortcut that allows me to reduce the
| | 02:56 | size of my text incrementally. I am
going to press Ctrl+Shift+Comma several times
| | 03:02 | in a row and that's Command+Shift+Comma
on the Mac and you can remember that
| | 03:06 | because the Comma key also
has the less than (<) sign on it.
| | 03:09 | So Ctrl+Shift+< reduces the size of
the type, Ctrl+Shift+>, which would be
| | 03:13 | period increases it. That's Command+
Shift+Period on the Mac. All right, I am going
| | 03:17 | to take this size of that type down to
there and then I am going to decrease
| | 03:23 | the leading, which is the amount of
line spacing assigned to the type. It's
| | 03:27 | known in the design world as leading
and you can do that by going to the
| | 03:32 | Character panel and changing this
option right there to something else.
| | 03:36 | However, what I am going to do instead
is I am going to change the leading from
| | 03:40 | the keyboard incrementally. So another
keyboard shortcut, Alt+Up Arrow; this is
| | 03:45 | Option+Up Arrow to nudge that text
upward on the Mac. It's Alt+Down arrow or
| | 03:50 | Option+Down arrow to increase the
leading and move the text downward. All right,
| | 03:54 | I will go ahead and take that to about
there, that looks good. And then I will
| | 03:58 | press the Escape key in order to
accept my changes. Now I can drag that point
| | 04:03 | to a different location to move my
text around or I can just drag the text in general.
| | 04:09 | That's Point text. Now let's check out
Path text. I will scroll down to this
| | 04:14 | line right there that's right next
to the edge of this surfboard and I am
| | 04:19 | going click on the line to select it.
So this is just an open path. In other
| | 04:23 | words it's not close to form a
continuous shape. I will grab my Type tool once
| | 04:28 | again. There is special variety of the
Type tool called the Type On Path tool,
| | 04:31 | but we don't need it. The standard
Type tool works just fine our purposes. So
| | 04:36 | this one Type tool does the work of all
of the other ones you are seeing there.
| | 04:40 | Then I am going to move my cursor over
the open path. Notice that it changes
| | 04:44 | and as soon as I click on the open
path, then I set my blinking insertion
| | 04:49 | marker, I will go ahead and enter the
words Surfs Up like so and some of it's
| | 04:54 | falling off the edge. I have got a
little red plus sign there showing me I have
| | 04:57 | some overflow text, but I can still
press Ctrl+A or Command+A on the Mac to
| | 05:01 | select all of the type. I will go to
the Paragraph palette and I will click
| | 05:05 | this first option to align my text to
the left and then I will go ahead and
| | 05:10 | press Ctrl+Shift+< or Ctrl+Shift+Comma.
That's Command+Shift+Comma on the Mac to
| | 05:16 | incrementally reduce the size of my
type and I want it to be about this big.
| | 05:20 | Then I will the press the Escape key
to accept my changes. Now notice that I
| | 05:24 | have got this alignment line right there.
I can drag it around to move my type
| | 05:29 | on the path, actually move it back
and forth there until I get it exactly
| | 05:33 | where I wanted to be. Could not be
simpler. There is how you create Point and
| | 05:38 | Path type inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Filling and stroking| 00:00 | In this exercise I am going to introduce
you to the concepts of fill and stroke
| | 00:04 | inside Illustrator, which allow you to
apply color to the interior and to the
| | 00:10 | outline of an object and we will see
that you can control how the fill and
| | 00:14 | stroke interact with each other. You
can even apply multiple fills and strokes
| | 00:18 | to a single object. I am working
inside of a document called Type And
| | 00:22 | Stickers.ai found inside the Exercise
Files folder. I am going to zoom in on
| | 00:28 | this modified highway sign right here
and I am going click on it in order to
| | 00:32 | select it. Then notice up here at the
top of the screen the control panel goes
| | 00:36 | ahead and tracks the attributes, the
Fill and Stroke attributes, that are
| | 00:40 | assigned to the selected object.
| | 00:42 | You can also change the Fill and
Stoke attributes from the control panel.
| | 00:46 | Starting with this very first color
swatch. If you click on it you gain access
| | 00:50 | to what's known as the Swatches panel
inside of Illustrator, which contains all
| | 00:54 | of the saved colors inside of this
particular document. I am going to go ahead
| | 00:59 | and change the fill by clicking on a
different swatch and notice when I click
| | 01:03 | on orange I have changed the interior
of the selected object to orange as well.
| | 01:07 | You can also dial in a custom color if
you prefer and to get to those dials,
| | 01:12 | you would go ahead and click off
inside the control panel, in order to hide
| | 01:16 | that Swatches panel. Then you would
press the Shift key and click on the color
| | 01:21 | swatch, in order to bring up
what's called the Color panel inside of
| | 01:25 | Illustrator.
| | 01:27 | Now, I am going to go ahead and back
off the Magenta value to take it down to a
| | 01:31 | 30%. So we have something of an amber
color. All right I'll press the Enter key
| | 01:37 | or the Return key on the Mac in order
to hide that panel. Now let's change the
| | 01:40 | color of the stroke by clicking on the
second swatch in the control panel and
| | 01:44 | then I will select this violet swatch
right here. You also have the option of
| | 01:48 | Shift-clicking on that swatch in order
to bring up the Color panel instead and
| | 01:53 | I am going to actually increase the
amount of cyan to add some blue to what was
| | 01:58 | formally violet.
| | 01:59 | You can change the stroke weight by
adjusting this value right here. I am going
| | 02:04 | to take it from 6 down to 4 in order
to reduce the thickness of that stroke.
| | 02:09 | You also have the option of accessing
other stroke functions by clicking on the
| | 02:12 | word Stroke which brings up the Stroke
panel. For example I could decide that I
| | 02:17 | want to round off the corners of my
sign by clicking on this Round Join icon.
| | 02:23 | Next, I am going to go ahead and add a
second stroke to this shape that will
| | 02:27 | serve as a little bit of white buffer
between the violet stroke and the orange
| | 02:32 | fill and you can add strokes in other
attributes from the Appearance panel.
| | 02:37 | The Appearance panel is one of the most
important essential panels inside of
| | 02:41 | Illustrator. Go up to the Window menu
and choose the Appearance command in
| | 02:46 | order to bring up this panel and you
can see it also lives here with this icon.
| | 02:50 | So if you click on that icon right
there you bring up the Appearance panel as
| | 02:53 | well. I am going to make the panel a
little taller just by dragging the bottom
| | 02:57 | of it. Notice we can see the stroke
and the fill. You can click on these
| | 03:01 | swatches in order to bring up the
Swatches panel or you can Shift-click on an
| | 03:07 | active swatch to bring up the Color panel,
just as we saw before in the control panel.
| | 03:12 | The difference is this panel allows you
to add and modify strokes and fills as
| | 03:18 | well as dynamic effects and other
options. I am going to go down here to this
| | 03:23 | icon and click Add New Stroke in
order to add it to the shape. And what I
| | 03:29 | really want to do here is I want to
create a stroke that's sandwiched between
| | 03:33 | the violet stroke and the orange fill.
So it's this stroke that I want to
| | 03:37 | modify right there, that second stroke,
that's between the two. So you can see
| | 03:41 | it would be actual order of the
attributes listed here inside the Appearance panel.
| | 03:45 | I am going to go ahead and change the
color of the stroke from violet to white.
| | 03:50 | That in and of itself doesn't do
anything because the white stroke is
| | 03:53 | underneath the violet one. So now I am
going to change the stroke weight from 4
| | 03:58 | to 6 in order to create a little bit
of extra stroke that's overlapping the
| | 04:04 | orange fill and showing
through and that looks good to me.
| | 04:08 | You also have the option of applying
the same functions to Live Type inside of
| | 04:13 | Illustrator. I am going to click on
this type right here with my Selection
| | 04:17 | tool. I'll bring up the Appearance
panel again, notice it's telling me Type.
| | 04:21 | It doesn't show me that it's filled with
black right now, that's okay. I am just
| | 04:25 | going to go ahead and say I want to
add new fill and I will click on this Add
| | 04:28 | New Fill icon right there and then I
will set the fill by clicking on its
| | 04:32 | swatch and I will set the fill to this
light blue right here. Next I will go
| | 04:36 | ahead and add a stroke and the stroke
that I want to assign is a deep blue like so.
| | 04:42 | Now, notice at this point, we have a
little bit of a problem that gets even
| | 04:46 | worse. Actually I will go ahead and
make the stroke weight even heavier here.
| | 04:49 | I will send it two points and notice we
have an issue with the stroke overlapping
| | 04:54 | inward and outward around the
letter forms. That not only diminishes
| | 04:58 | legibility, but it also
just makes the text look bad.
| | 05:02 | The good news though is you can change
the order of the fill and the stroke.
| | 05:05 | For example I could grab my fill and
drag it upward like so, so it appears in
| | 05:10 | front of the stroke and I get this
effect right here. And the text remains
| | 05:14 | editable by the way. If I have got my
Type tool and selected some text and
| | 05:19 | entered some new text and I can
even go ahead and size it by pressing
| | 05:23 | Control+Shift along with the Period key;
that would be Command+Shift+Period on the
| | 05:28 | Mac. Then I will press the Escape key
to accept my modifications. So I can
| | 05:32 | still edit that text even thought
it has these dynamic fill and stroke
| | 05:36 | attributes assigned to it and that's how
you apply fill and stroke inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with gradients| 00:00 | In this exercise, I'll show you how to
work with gradients. Now gradients have
| | 00:04 | been dramatically enhanced in
Illustrator CS4 to the extent that you can create
| | 00:09 | and modify a gradient directly inside
the shape giving you realtime feedback.
| | 00:14 | I'm working inside of a document
called Fearless.ai that's found inside the
| | 00:17 | Exercise Files folder. I am going to
start things off by filling each of the
| | 00:22 | red stripes with a linear gradient.
| | 00:24 | So I will select one of the red
stripes by clicking on it with my Selection
| | 00:27 | tool. Then I will go up to the control
panel, click on the Select option right
| | 00:31 | here and choose All. Now I am sure
everything that has the same fill and stroke
| | 00:36 | as this stripe become selected,
meaning all the three of stripes. Now I will
| | 00:40 | fill the stripes using the new
Gradient tool. So I will select the Gradient
| | 00:44 | tool which you can also get by
pressing the G key. Then if I click inside a
| | 00:48 | stripe, notice that I fill it with a
gradient. I will click inside this stripe
| | 00:52 | to fill it and then this stripe to fill it.
| | 00:54 | Now the problem is I now have three bars.
See these bars right here? They allow
| | 00:58 | to control the gradient directly inside
the shape, but because I have three of
| | 01:02 | them, that means I am allowed to create
three separate gradients. But let's say
| | 01:07 | I want to control these gradients all
at once. I want to be able to change the
| | 01:10 | colors of all three bars in one pass,
then I need to combine the stripes into a
| | 01:15 | single compound path. I will do that
by going up to the Object menu, choosing
| | 01:19 | Compound Path and choosing Make.
| | 01:22 | Now the paths aren't going to look any
different, but we will now have a single
| | 01:26 | gradient bar to work with. Now I will
move this gradient up a bit by dragging
| | 01:30 | this left hand point which indicates
the start of the gradient. Then I will
| | 01:35 | move over to the right hand side where
the end point is located and I can move
| | 01:40 | it over to the right just a little bit,
but what I really want to do is I want
| | 01:43 | to rotate the angle. So I move my
cursor just slightly beyond that endpoint and
| | 01:47 | you can see I have a rotate cursor.
I will now drag in order to rotate the
| | 01:52 | gradient more or less into alignment
with these stripes. Now I'll change the
| | 01:57 | color assigned to the gradient. I will
double-click on this color stop. Notice
| | 02:01 | the color stop right at the beginning
of the gradient, then I will double-click
| | 02:03 | on it. That brings up the Swatches
panel and I am going to set the first swatch
| | 02:08 | to red and then I am going to create
another point right here in the middle,
| | 02:12 | another color swatch right at this
location here by clicking below the bar. See
| | 02:16 | how I get a little plus sign next to my
cursor. It's a little hard to see there
| | 02:19 | against this backdrop, but there is a
plus sign right next to that white arrow
| | 02:22 | cursor. I will click in order to
create a new color stop and I will double-
| | 02:26 | click on that and change
its color to say, yellow.
| | 02:28 | Then I will go the final color stop
right there, double-click on it and change
| | 02:33 | it back to red. So we have a gradient
that jumps from red to yellow in middle
| | 02:38 | and red again on the edges and then you
could go ahead and add more color stops
| | 02:42 | to the mix if you like. This is good
enough for my purposes however. So I will
| | 02:47 | just press the Enter key or the Return
key on the Mac in order to accept that
| | 02:50 | modification.
| | 02:51 | Now let's apply a radial gradient to
this dark blue circle. I will start by
| | 02:55 | grabbing my Selection tool and then I
will click on the dark blue circle to
| | 02:59 | select it. Now I will go back to the
Gradient tool and I will click inside the
| | 03:03 | circle. Notice that Illustrator goes
ahead and applies the last gradient that
| | 03:07 | you created. I don't want a linear
gradient however in this case. So I am
| | 03:10 | going change to a radial gradient by
going over here to the Gradient icon and
| | 03:15 | clicking on it to bring up the
Gradient palette. You can also, by the way,
| | 03:18 | choose the Gradient command from the
Window menu. And I am going to change the
| | 03:22 | type of gradient from Linear to Radial
and that's about all I need to do inside
| | 03:27 | the palette. Everything else can be
done directly here with the Gradient tool.
| | 03:31 | So I'll hide the palette and now notice
that I have three color stops. I really
| | 03:35 | only want two.
| | 03:36 | So I'll take this center color stop,
the yellow one and drag it down to delete it.
| | 03:40 | Then I will double-click on the
one in the center of the shape and I will
| | 03:44 | change it to white and after pressing
the Enter key or Return key to hide that
| | 03:49 | panel I will double-click on this red
color stop and I will change it to the
| | 03:53 | this medium blue and then I will
press the Enter or Return key again.
| | 03:57 | Now you have the option of dragging the
gradient around inside the shape if you
| | 04:02 | want to, but I want to move
this center point of the gradient
| | 04:06 | non-proportionally inside the shape.
Rather than dragging on this big circle,
| | 04:10 | I will drag on this little circle right
there and notice how that allows me to
| | 04:15 | move the center of the gradient
without changing where the last point in the
| | 04:20 | gradient is located. So in other words,
there is blue, that medium blue is
| | 04:24 | tracing the entire perimeter of the
circle and I am just moving the center
| | 04:28 | point of the gradient closer to the
upper left edge and compressing the colors
| | 04:33 | in this area, while stretching the
colors down in the lower right area. So as I
| | 04:37 | say, I get a non-proportional radial
gradient with this nice hot spot up here
| | 04:43 | in the upper left corner. And that's the
completed shape. Now I will switch back
| | 04:48 | to the standard Selection tool and
click off of the shape in order to deselect
| | 04:52 | it and that's my final piece of art
work created using a combination of linear
| | 04:57 | gradients and radial gradients along
with the new and improved Gradient tool
| | 05:02 | here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Combining paths| 00:00 | In this exercise, I am going to show
you how to combine simple shapes to create
| | 00:03 | more complex ones. I am working
inside of a document called CA Surf Sign.ai
| | 00:09 | found inside the Exercise Files folder.
We are going to take these ellipses
| | 00:13 | plus a few other shapes and combine
them together to create this modified
| | 00:17 | highway sign that we see in the background.
| | 00:20 | Now I have set this document up, so
that I have a Template layer that we can
| | 00:24 | trace as we are building our document.
I also have a Drawing layer that I am
| | 00:28 | working on. So if you are working
along with me, make sure to click on that
| | 00:32 | Drawing layer.
| | 00:34 | Now I will hide the Layers palette
and I want to combine these two shapes
| | 00:38 | together by taking the ellipse and
subtracting it from the larger circle and
| | 00:43 | because both the ellipse and the
circle trace contours of the object that we
| | 00:47 | want to make, we are in pretty
good shape. I don't have to sit there
| | 00:49 | meticulously build this sign
using say, the more complex Pen tool.
| | 00:54 | So I am going to click on this
ellipse to select it and then I am going to
| | 00:58 | Shift-click on the circle to select it
as well. Now I will go up to the Window
| | 01:01 | menu and choose this command here,
Pathfinder in order to bring up the
| | 01:05 | Pathfinder panel. These Pathfinder
operations allow you to combine paths
| | 01:10 | together. The one I am looking for is
this one here. It's called Minus Front
| | 01:15 | and it goes ahead and carves the front
shape, which is the smaller ellipse, away
| | 01:19 | from the rear shape, which in my case
is the large circle. Just by clicking on it,
| | 01:24 | I clip that shape away like so.
| | 01:27 | Now let's build a couple of other
shapes that we are going to clip.
| | 01:30 | I'm going to get the Rectangle tool and I'm
going to draw a rectangle at the top of the
| | 01:36 | illustration like so. Notice that its
base is aligned with this horizontal
| | 01:40 | guideline that I have set up in advance.
I will draw another shape along the
| | 01:45 | vertical guideline that consumes
the left half of the illustration.
| | 01:48 | Then I will go back to my Selection tool
and I will Shift-click on the first
| | 01:53 | rectangle. So both of the rectangles
are selected and I will go down here to
| | 01:56 | the Pathfinder panel and I will click
on Unite to merge them together and then
| | 02:02 | I will Shift-click on this modified
circle here in the background and I will
| | 02:06 | click on this icon once again, Minus
Front, in order to carve the rectangles
| | 02:10 | away from the ellipse that I was building.
| | 02:13 | Now we have half a highway sign. I
want to flip it so that we have a full
| | 02:16 | highway sign, but first, I want to
get rid of this vertical segment right
| | 02:20 | there. I will go to my Direct
Selection tool, click off the shape to deselect
| | 02:25 | it and then I will click on this
vertical segment to select it. Just click on
| | 02:28 | the segment and press the Backspace key
or the Delete key on the Mac. Then that
| | 02:33 | leaves an entirely selected open
path. Now we want to flip a copy.
| | 02:37 | So let's make a copy by going up to
Edit menu and choosing the Copy command or
| | 02:41 | pressing Ctrl+C, Command+C on the Mac.
Then I will go back to the Edit menu and
| | 02:46 | choose Paste In Front, that's Ctrl+F
or Command+F on the Mac and that pastes
| | 02:51 | the copy directly in front of the
original. You can't even tell we have done
| | 02:55 | anything at this point, but we do have
two open paths directly on top of each
| | 02:58 | other and notice the Transform panel
sits here next to the Pathfinder panel by default.
| | 03:04 | I will go ahead and click on it and
then I will make sure this left-hand
| | 03:08 | reference point is selected, it is. And
I will go to my panel menu, click on it
| | 03:14 | and choose Flip Horizontal in order to
flip the shape to the opposite side of
| | 03:19 | the artboard. Now I want to go ahead
and merge these paths together. I already
| | 03:24 | have my Direct Selection tool active,
notice that. I want to fuse these two
| | 03:28 | endpoints right here, but they are
right on top of each other. These are known
| | 03:32 | as coincident endpoints when you
have one point directly on the other.
| | 03:35 | The easiest way to select coincident
endpoints is to draw a marquee with the
| | 03:39 | Direct Selection tool like so, so that
you are enclosing both of those points.
| | 03:44 | Then I want to fuse them together by
going up to the control panel. See this
| | 03:47 | option that says Connect Selected End
Points? It's right next toward these
| | 03:50 | scissors here. Go ahead and click on
Connect Selected End Points and with any
| | 03:56 | luck you will see a dialog box as I
have here that's asking you how you want to
| | 04:00 | join the points. I don't want to continue
a smooth arc; I want a corner. So I'll
| | 04:04 | make sure Corner is selected and click OK.
| | 04:07 | Now let's scroll down to the bottom.
I want to go ahead and fuse these two
| | 04:12 | points together as well, but if I were
to click on this icon, I would not see a
| | 04:16 | dialog box. I am not going to do it,
just going to tell you in advance. I would
| | 04:20 | not see a dialog box which indicates
that the points aren't exactly coincident.
| | 04:23 | It's a strange thing in Illustrator. It
means that they got joined by this tiny
| | 04:27 | little segment. So I am not even going
to do it. I want to join the points into
| | 04:31 | a single point. We need
to average their locations.
| | 04:33 | By going to the Object menu, choosing
Path and choosing the Average command.
| | 04:38 | That brings up this dialog box. I want
Both to be selected, then I click OK.
| | 04:42 | Now the two points occupy exactly the
same location. So I will go back up to
| | 04:46 | this icon, Connect Selected End Points,
click on it. Again I get the dialog box,
| | 04:51 | again Corner, again OK and we have now
created a highway sign shape in the background.
| | 04:57 | All right, let's build another shape
from that one. I will go get the standard
| | 05:01 | Selection tool and click on the shape
to select the whole thing. Then I will go
| | 05:05 | up to the Object menu, I will choose
Path and I will choose Offset Path and I
| | 05:11 | want to offset the path -12 points as
I have entered here in advance. To make
| | 05:15 | sure that's correct, I will click on
the Preview checkbox and sure enough,
| | 05:19 | that gets this path right where it needs to be.
| | 05:21 | So if I offset -12 points, I have a
new path in the center. Now I am going to
| | 05:26 | grab my Rectangle tool and I am going
to draw a shape that goes right through
| | 05:31 | here like so and incidentally, when you
are drawing rectangles and ellipses and
| | 05:37 | other simple shapes, you can press the
Spacebar as you are drawing to move that
| | 05:41 | shape on the fly and get it into
exactly the position you want it to be. Then
| | 05:45 | when you release the Spacebar you go back to
drawing the shape. It's a handy little trick.
| | 05:50 | Anyway, I want the shape to be this
size. Then I am going to go back to my
| | 05:54 | Selection tool, I will Shift-click
on the smaller of the two highway sign
| | 05:58 | shapes. I will go back to the
Pathfinder panel and I will once again click on
| | 06:04 | Minus Front. All right, I can now put
the Pathfinder panel away because we are
| | 06:09 | done with it. Now to fill and stroke
these shapes, I will set the stroke for
| | 06:14 | both of these selected shapes to None.
| | 06:15 | Then I will go ahead and set the fills
of both shapes to red, just so that I
| | 06:21 | can see where they are and I will click
off the shapes to deselect them. Click
| | 06:26 | on the bottom shape to select it. Oh,
they are grouped together, that's my
| | 06:29 | problem. So I need to go up to the
Object menu and choose Ungroup in order to
| | 06:34 | split them apart. Then I will click
off the shapes again to deselect them,
| | 06:38 | click on this shape, just the bottom
shape is selected. I will go up to the
| | 06:42 | Fill icon once again and I will switch
it blue and now I will select all three
| | 06:47 | of these shapes. The blue
shape is already selected.
| | 06:49 | So I will Shift-click on the red one
and then Shift-click on the outline for
| | 06:52 | the outer highway sign to select it
as well and I will right click, choose
| | 06:56 | Arrange and choose Send to Back so that
we can see the text as well. That is my
| | 07:03 | completed highway sign, a fairly
complicated shape that I created entirely
| | 07:08 | using ellipses and rectangles that I merged
together with Pathfinder operations in Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Selecting and isolating paths| 00:00 | In this exercise, I am going to show
you how to select, group and isolate
| | 00:04 | objects inside of Illustrator. I am
working inside this document Type And
| | 00:09 | Stickers.ai, which is found inside
the Exercise Files folder. I am going to
| | 00:13 | zoom in on this sign that says woody
underneath the drawing of a car and I want
| | 00:20 | to introduce you to two tools that you
are going to be using a lot inside Illustrator.
| | 00:24 | These arrow tools up here at the top
of the toolbox. There is the black arrow
| | 00:28 | tool or the Selection tool if you
prefer then there is the white arrow tool or
| | 00:32 | the Direct Selection tool. You can get
to the black arrow tool by pressing the
| | 00:36 | V key which is the last consonant in
the word move because it lets you move
| | 00:41 | objects inside of Illustrator. The
white arrow tool, you can get to by pressing
| | 00:45 | the A key for arrow. The purpose of
these tools is to select large objects in
| | 00:50 | the case of the black arrow tool and
then select small objects inside of
| | 00:54 | objects with the Direct Selection
tool and I will show you how that works.
| | 00:58 | Let's start things off with our
standard Selection tool here, the black arrow
| | 01:01 | tool and I will go ahead and click on
some portion of this car to select the
| | 01:06 | entire car. Now the reason I am
selecting the entire car when I click on it, is
| | 01:11 | because it has been combined into
what's called a group. I can confirm that by
| | 01:16 | bringing up my Appearance palette,
which I can also get by choosing the
| | 01:19 | Appearance command from the Window
menu and you can see here inside the
| | 01:25 | Appearance palette, it's telling me
what's selected and it's a group, which is
| | 01:29 | great. It's great to be able to confirm
that because there is different ways to
| | 01:32 | combine objects together inside of
the Illustrator. Grouping is just the
| | 01:35 | simplest and the most useful probably of the ways.
| | 01:38 | Let's say that I want to go ahead and
group the car along with the sign behind
| | 01:43 | it and this text right here that says
woody. I will go ahead and select all of
| | 01:47 | these objects first before grouping
them and I can do that in one of two ways.
| | 01:51 | One way is having selected the car, I
could Shift-click on the woody text right
| | 01:56 | there and then Shift-click on the sign
in the background. Shift-clicking adds to
| | 02:01 | the selection or if something is
already selected and you Shift-click on it,
| | 02:04 | you will deselect it.
| | 02:06 | So it reverses the selected state of
objects. Another thing you can do is
| | 02:10 | marquee around objects which is a
really great way to work. I will zoom out a
| | 02:14 | little bit here so that we can
see some other objects inside of the
| | 02:18 | illustration. Notice I am dragging
from an empty portion of the illustration.
| | 02:21 | As I drag, I get this dotted
outline which is called a marquee.
| | 02:25 | Anything that partially falls inside
of that marquee becomes selected. So you
| | 02:30 | don't have to marquee around the entire
thing like this. In fact, you probably
| | 02:34 | don't want to because it's very easy
to select too many objects that way. You
| | 02:38 | just want to partially drag through
the objects like so. That goes ahead and
| | 02:43 | select all those objects. I am going to
zoom in once again so we can see this a
| | 02:47 | little more closely. Then I want to
group these objects together by going up to
| | 02:51 | the Object menu and choosing the
Group command or you can press Ctrl+G or
| | 02:56 | Command+G on the Mac.
| | 02:57 | To ungroup, notice you have got this
Ungroup command that's available to you as
| | 03:01 | well. All right, I am going to go ahead
and group these objects together. Now if
| | 03:05 | I click off, in order to deselect the
objects, you can also by the way, if you
| | 03:09 | have got something selected, you can
go up to Select menu and choose the
| | 03:13 | Deselect command to deselect
everything inside an illustration.
| | 03:18 | Notice now, if I click on any one of
these objects, all of them become selected
| | 03:24 | and I can even drag them to a
different location to move them altogether. So
| | 03:28 | grouping goes ahead and retains the
relative positioning of all the objects
| | 03:33 | inside the group, but it doesn't
prevent you from getting into the group.
| | 03:38 | You still can do that. All I need to do
is take advantage of a different tool,
| | 03:43 | the Direct Selection tool.
| | 03:45 | So let's go ahead and deselect all
these objects first. Then I will go to the
| | 03:50 | Direct Selection tool and I will click
inside of one of these white shapes and
| | 03:57 | notice I select that shape independently.
I could then move it to a different
| | 04:00 | location if I like. I am going to go
ahead and undo that by pressing Ctrl+Z or
| | 04:05 | Command+Z on the Mac. I could also
click on the outline, this diamond shape
| | 04:09 | outline around the wood pattern.
| | 04:11 | Notice, now I can see the anchor
points that are associated with this path.
| | 04:16 | I can click on one of the points to
select it and then I can move it to a
| | 04:20 | different location like so. So you have
point by point control using the white
| | 04:25 | arrow tool as well. We will go ahead
and undo that modification by pressing
| | 04:28 | Ctrl+Z, Command+Z on the Mac. One
other way that I need to tell you about
| | 04:33 | because otherwise, there is a good
chance you will discover it and be confused.
| | 04:37 | You can also isolate a group.
| | 04:39 | So I am going to go back to the black
arrow tool and I am going to click on
| | 04:45 | this group to select it and then I am
going to double-click on it. When you
| | 04:49 | double-click on an object, you enter
what's called the Isolation Mode and you
| | 04:53 | can tell that you are in the Isolation
Mode because you will see this gray bar
| | 04:56 | at the top of your window and you will
see that you are inside -- in my case,
| | 04:59 | inside this group. Also notice this,
if I zoom out all the other objects are
| | 05:04 | dimmed. If I try to click on them, I
can't because I am isolated to just
| | 05:08 | working inside this object right here.
| | 05:10 | All right, now notice that I can select
the car independently because I am inside
| | 05:15 | the group now. I can select the text
independently and I can select the sign
| | 05:19 | independently. I will go ahead and
undo the movement of the car. If I were to
| | 05:23 | double-click on any of the shapes
associated with the car, I would enter that group.
| | 05:26 | Notice now I am in a group inside a
group and now I can only select the car
| | 05:30 | shapes and move them around if I like.
I can't get to the woody text or the
| | 05:35 | sign in the background. I will go ahead
and undo that modification once again.
| | 05:40 | To get out of the Isolation Mode,
definitely something you want to learn,
| | 05:44 | you press the Escape key, that's all there is to it.
| | 05:47 | Now I can get access to anything
inside of my illustration once again. So
| | 05:52 | that's how you select, group and
isolate objects inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Organizing layers| 00:00 | As you will see when you start
assembling your own illustrations, objects build
| | 00:03 | up quickly. You can go from a
relatively simple document to a very complex one
| | 00:08 | in a matter of say, a half an hour,
which is why it pays to spend a little bit
| | 00:12 | of time every once in a while
organizing your illustration in the Layers
| | 00:15 | palette. The some of you that may
sound like pure tedium, but Illustrator
| | 00:19 | handles this topic so well that I would
go so far as to say, it's actually kind
| | 00:24 | of fun and it's definitely
fascinating as you are about to learn.
| | 00:28 | I am working inside of a document
Group Stickers.ai found inside the Exercise
| | 00:33 | Files folder and this document as
simple as it is, contains several hundred
| | 00:38 | different objects including paths and
text objects and so on. I have gone ahead
| | 00:42 | and combine every single one of these
stickers into a separate group using the
| | 00:47 | Group command under the Object menu.
| | 00:50 | Let's see what those groups look like
in the Layers palette. I am going to
| | 00:53 | bring up the Layers palette by
clicking on this Layers icon right there or I
| | 00:57 | could go up to the Window menu and
choose the Layers command. You also have
| | 01:01 | this keyboard shortcut F7, which may
seem pretty abstract, but it does happen
| | 01:06 | to be the keyboard shortcut for
the Layers palette across the Adobe
| | 01:09 | applications. So learn it once, know it forever.
| | 01:13 | I am going to make my Layers panel
taller by dragging up on the top of the
| | 01:16 | panel. Notice that we have just one
layer that's called Layer 1. I am going to
| | 01:22 | click this little triangle to expand
the layer and this triangle by the way is
| | 01:26 | often called a twirly triangle because
it allows you to twirl things open and
| | 01:30 | closed. Notice when it's open, I can
see a series of groups right here. I will
| | 01:36 | go ahead and make my panel wider and
I can grab any one of these groups and
| | 01:41 | notice I can tell what each group is
because I have a thumbnail that matches
| | 01:45 | one of my objects inside of the illustration.
| | 01:47 | So there is the selected group. I can
also tell it's selected because I see
| | 01:51 | this little colored square next to this
grouped item. Now if I really wanted to
| | 01:55 | truly recognize this object in the
future, I could go ahead and name it just by
| | 02:00 | double-clicking on this group item here
to bring up the Options dialog box and
| | 02:05 | then I will go ahead and call this
Dawn Patrol to match the text that's
| | 02:08 | associated with this sticker and I
will click OK and now I know that this is
| | 02:12 | the Dawn Patrol object. This guy right
here of course is the Surf board and so
| | 02:19 | on throughout this graphic.
| | 02:21 | I can also -- notice this, I can move
these guys up and down the stack so I can
| | 02:25 | change their stacking order. So now
Dawn Patrol, for example, will appear in
| | 02:30 | front of the Surf sign. If I wanted it
to be the other way around, I could just
| | 02:34 | drag Surf above Dawn Patrol. So you
can change stacking order from the Layers palette.
| | 02:39 | All right, I am going to go ahead and
move Dawn Patrol back into place. I can
| | 02:43 | also combine objects into different
layers. So for example, let's say I want
| | 02:48 | to create a layer for all the
stickers that have colors in them. I would go
| | 02:51 | ahead and click on this Create New
Layer button down here at the bottom of the
| | 02:56 | Layers panel and that's going to
add a layer to the top of the stack.
| | 03:01 | Then I will go ahead and rename it by
double-clicking on this Layer 2 item and
| | 03:05 | I will call it Colored stickers and
then click OK and then I would go ahead and
| | 03:10 | select all of the stickers that have
colors in them by Shift-clicking on them,
| | 03:15 | like so. So I am just Shift-clicking
with the black arrow tool of course, until
| | 03:20 | I have every one of these stickers selected.
| | 03:24 | Next, notice that I have a series of
colored squares appearing next to all of
| | 03:29 | the selected items here inside the
Layers palette. I also, if you look very
| | 03:34 | closely, actually I will click off of
here so you can see it better. I have a
| | 03:38 | blue square next to Layer 1. I am going
to grab that blue square and I am going
| | 03:43 | to drag it up to the Colored stickers
layer and release and that just moved all
| | 03:48 | of these objects on to
the Colored stickers layer.
| | 03:50 | Now why did they suddenly turn red?
Because red is the color that's associated
| | 03:54 | with this particular layer and I
could change that by once again double-
| | 03:58 | clicking and see this color right here.
I could change it to say something like
| | 04:02 | Orange and then click OK and then all
of the anchor points and other selection
| | 04:07 | edges are going to appear orange
instead. So it's a great way to visually
| | 04:11 | identify what layer an object is
assigned to. Now let's go ahead and rename
| | 04:17 | this Layer 1, so it says Black and
White stickers and then I will click OK.
| | 04:24 | Of course, I can change it's color as
well if I like, but I am happy with blue.
| | 04:27 | I will click OK now and so we have
these items Colored stickers and B&W
| | 04:32 | stickers relegated to independent
layers and now notice this, I could go ahead
| | 04:36 | and turn off Colored stickers in order
to hide all those objects on screen. So
| | 04:41 | this would allow me to print these
objects independently if I wanted to and
| | 04:45 | then I would turn these objects back
on and I could turn these objects off
| | 04:49 | instead if I like.
| | 04:50 | So it's just another degree of
relegating your objects, separating them out,
| | 04:55 | organizing the information inside of
an illustration, so it's easier to track
| | 05:00 | in the future, so that you can better
manage your artwork here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Scaling and rotating| 00:00 | In this exercise, I am going to
introduce you to scaling and rotating inside
| | 00:04 | Illustrator. I am working inside of
document called Dawn Patrol.ai found
| | 00:09 | inside the Exercise Files folder.
Scaling and rotating are known as varieties
| | 00:14 | of transformations, which is why if I
click on an object such as this point
| | 00:18 | text right here using the black arrow
style Selection tool, I will see on the
| | 00:24 | right side of the control panel the word
Transform. If I click on Transform, I will
| | 00:29 | bring up the Transform panel, which
offers me scaling options in the form of the
| | 00:33 | width and the height values as well as
an angle value for rotating the selected
| | 00:38 | object, but as opposed to entering
numerical values, it is typically easier to
| | 00:42 | scale and rotate graphics in
Illustrator just by dragging inside the
| | 00:46 | illustration window. Notice that my
point text is surrounded by a bounding box.
| | 00:51 | If you do not see a bounding box you
can go up to the View menu and choose what
| | 00:55 | would be the Show Bounding Box command.
If you see Hide Bounding Box as I do,
| | 01:00 | the bounding box is already visible.
I'm going to go ahead and zoom in this
| | 01:04 | graphic a little bit so that
we can see it in more detail.
| | 01:07 | Notice that the bounding box is
surrounded by a total of eight white handles.
| | 01:12 | I can drag on one those white handles in
order to scale the graphic. Now because
| | 01:17 | there is this point text, I can scale
the text independently horizontally and
| | 01:21 | vertically. If I want to scale the
text proportionally as I resize it then I
| | 01:26 | press and hold the Shift key as I drag
and this applies to graphical objects as well.
| | 01:32 | Make sure to keep that Shift key down
until after you release the mouse button
| | 01:36 | and then release the Shift key. If you
position your cursor close to, but not
| | 01:41 | exactly on one of those white handles
you will get a rotate cursor. Do not move
| | 01:46 | your cursor too far away or it will
once again appear as the black arrow. So
| | 01:50 | move it close as you can see there and
then drag in order to rotate the object.
| | 01:56 | If you press and hold the Shift key,
you will rotate in 45 degree increments.
| | 02:01 | All right, I am going to go ahead and
undo those changes because I want to match
| | 02:06 | that hole that I have created for my
text in the background, where we are
| | 02:10 | seeing those larger pinkish letters. So
I will press Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Z. That would
| | 02:15 | be Command+Z, Command+Z on the Mac in
order to undo those last two operations
| | 02:20 | and I am going take advantage of the
Scale and Rotate tools, which give me a
| | 02:24 | greater degree of control and they are
located right here. Here is the Rotate tool
| | 02:28 | and here is the Scale tool. We're
going to start with the Rotate tool,
| | 02:32 | because it is little easier to understand
when you are first learning these tools.
| | 02:36 | I will go ahead and click on the tool
or press the R key to select the Rotate tool,
| | 02:39 | then notice that I see a little
target. Now on your screen, this target
| | 02:43 | may appear cyan or it may appear
some other color that is a little bit
| | 02:47 | difficult to see. I have set things
up so it appears nice and black. That
| | 02:50 | target indicates what is known as the
reference point, the point around which
| | 02:54 | you will rotate the graphic. I want
to move my reference point down to the
| | 02:59 | bottom left corner of the P.
| | 03:01 | So I will go ahead and drag it to
that position. Then I will drag moving my
| | 03:06 | cursor fairly far away from the
target point so I have as much control as
| | 03:09 | possible, then I will go ahead and
drag in order to rotate the text with
| | 03:14 | respect to that reference point,
notice that and I will go ahead and drag the
| | 03:18 | text until it is at about this
angle here, then I will release.
| | 03:21 | It looks like I have pretty well
matched the angle of the larger pink letters
| | 03:25 | on the background. Now I will switch
over to my Scale tool, which I can also
| | 03:30 | get by pressing the S key. Notice that
target remains in the same point so the
| | 03:36 | Rotate and Scale tools as well as
the other transform tools, go ahead and
| | 03:40 | subscribe to a common
reference point which is really handy.
| | 03:44 | Now I am going to move my cursor
about 45 degrees away from that reference
| | 03:49 | point so I give myself as much control
as possible. So you want to be diagonal
| | 03:52 | from the reference point, whether up
and to the right or down and to the right,
| | 03:56 | down and to the left or up and to the left.
| | 03:58 | It will make sense in just a moment why
I am doing this. I am going to go ahead
| | 04:02 | and click and drag now in order to
scale the text and I am going to press the
| | 04:06 | Shift key in order to ensure than I am
scaling the text proportionally.
| | 04:10 | Notice if I drag away from the reference point,
I increase the size of the text. If I
| | 04:15 | drag toward the reference point, I reduce
the size of the text and that is how it works.
| | 04:20 | That is how it always works with the
Scale tool. So move toward the reference
| | 04:23 | point to reduce; move away from it to
expand. And given that we want to expand
| | 04:28 | proportionally, it is best to be 45
degrees away. All right, so with the Shift
| | 04:33 | key still down, I am going to go
ahead and scale that text like so, this
| | 04:39 | actually looks pretty great and then
I will go ahead and release the mouse
| | 04:42 | button and then release the Shift key
in order to complete the transformation.
| | 04:47 | Finally, I just want to scoot my
letters down a little bit and I will do that
| | 04:50 | by pressing the down arrow key just
once in order to nudge the selection down
| | 04:55 | one point. You can also use the other
arrow keys to nudge the selection as well.
| | 05:00 | For example, the right arrow key
would nudge the text to the right,
| | 05:03 | the left arrow key would nudge it back to the left.
| | 05:05 | That is our completed transformation.
Thanks to the high degree of control that
| | 05:11 | is afforded to you by
the Scale and Rotate tools.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reshaping a path outline| 00:00 | In this exercise I will show you how to
reshape paths by dragging anchor points
| | 00:04 | with the Direct Selection tool. We
will also take advantage of a wonderful
| | 00:08 | feature called Smart Guides that
allow us to align objects on the fly.
| | 00:12 | I'm working inside of a document called Hawaiian
Shirt.ai found inside the Exercise Files folder.
| | 00:17 | I am going to start by zooming in on
the collar. Notice that we only have half
| | 00:23 | a collar over here on the left-hand
side and that the collar tapers as it moves
| | 00:27 | inward as opposing to flaring outward
like a standard collar does. Let's go
| | 00:31 | ahead and fix this by dragging the
anchor points which occur at the corners of
| | 00:36 | this path outline.
| | 00:37 | Notice that I currently have my
standard black arrow Selection tool active. So
| | 00:42 | if I click on the path I will select
the entire thing and then if I were to
| | 00:46 | drag the path, I would move the entire
thing as well and that's not what I want.
| | 00:49 | So I will go ahead and undo that
movement, click off the path to deselect
| | 00:53 | it and I will grab the Direct Selection
tool which I can get by pressing the A
| | 00:58 | key as well, A for arrow.
| | 01:00 | Then notice if I hover over this point,
this is the one that I want to move,
| | 01:05 | it tells me it is an anchor point. You
can see that in green if you look really
| | 01:08 | carefully and I also see the
coordinate position of that point. This is the
| | 01:12 | function of Smart Guides. If you are
not seeing that information, then you
| | 01:16 | could go up to the View menu and choose
the Smart Guides command to turn it on.
| | 01:20 | Notice it has a keyboard shortcut of
Ctrl+U, Command+U on the Mac. That's a
| | 01:24 | really great shortcut to remember
because if you get in the habit of using
| | 01:28 | Smart Guides, you will probably want
to turn them on and off regularly as you
| | 01:32 | work inside the illustration. I am
going to go back and click on this anchor
| | 01:37 | point right here to select it. Then I
will drag the anchor point to move it to
| | 01:42 | a new location. Say about here it looks
pretty good and then I will release. And
| | 01:47 | that's called reshaping because I
have changed the basic form of the path.
| | 01:52 | Now this point I would like to flip the
path in order to create the right half
| | 01:56 | of the collar and that means selecting
the entire path outline. Now I could go
| | 02:00 | back and grab the Selection tool and
then click on the path, but as long as I'm
| | 02:03 | using the Direct Selection tool, here
is something else I can do. I can press
| | 02:07 | the Alt key on the PC or the Option
key on the Mac and click on the path
| | 02:11 | outline to select the entire thing. The
best way to flip the path and create a
| | 02:16 | copy of it is to use this tool that's
available from the Rotate tool flyout menu.
| | 02:21 | So, I will click and hold on the Rotate
tool and select the Reflect tool.
| | 02:25 | This tool is a really useful tool, but it
does behave a little differently then you
| | 02:28 | might expect. In order to flip the path
right at this fulcrum right there, I am
| | 02:34 | going to press the Alt key once again
or the Option key on the Mac and click.
| | 02:39 | And what that does is it sets the
reference point right there at that location
| | 02:44 | and it brings up the Reflect dialog box.
| | 02:46 | I want to select the path horizontally,
which means I want to flip it around a
| | 02:51 | vertical axis, but as long as you have
the Preview checkbox turned on you can
| | 02:55 | see what you are doing. So this would
be the result of flipping the collar
| | 02:59 | around the horizontal axis which
would be a vertical flip and this is the
| | 03:03 | result of flipping it across a
vertical axis which is a horizontal flip.
| | 03:07 | Finally what you want to do in this
case is you want to click on the Copy
| | 03:11 | button so that you are flipping a
duplicate as opposed to the original.
| | 03:16 | Now I've got the two halves of a collar.
Now notice things do not quite line up
| | 03:20 | where the seams of the shirt are
concerned. So I am going to go grab my Direct
| | 03:25 | Selection tool once again and I am
going to click on this point right there,
| | 03:30 | this anchor point to make it active
and I am going to drag it down a little bit.
| | 03:34 | I am pressing the Shift key as I
drag it to constrain the angle of my
| | 03:38 | movement to the perpendicular,
in this case the vertical axis.
| | 03:42 | Then I will drag it back upright, I was
just giving myself a little bit of room there.
| | 03:46 | I will drag it back upward
while pressing the Shift key and notice
| | 03:49 | there is the intersection, the exact
intersection of the point I am dragging
| | 03:53 | along with this edge of the collar, so
that I am ensured alignment, which is a
| | 03:59 | marvelous thing here, thanks
to Smart Guides in Illustrator.
| | 04:02 | I will now go ahead and click on this
anchor point to select it and I will drag
| | 04:06 | while pressing the Shift key, keep that
Shift key until you are done dragging,
| | 04:09 | watch for the intersection, then
release the mouse button and then release the
| | 04:13 | Shift key. All right, now I am going to
zoom out a little bit here. Now let's say
| | 04:17 | that I want to make this bottom edge of
the shirt something of a jaunty angle.
| | 04:21 | So I am going to go ahead and grab this
anchor point here by clicking on it.
| | 04:25 | I will drag it downward. I am also
dragging it inward a little so that the shirt
| | 04:29 | doesn't flare outwards quite as much
as it does now and I will drag this guy
| | 04:33 | inward as well.
| | 04:35 | Now I need to move the seams so they
match its bottom edge and I can do it the
| | 04:39 | exact same way I did it before. I am
going to press the Shift key as I drag,
| | 04:42 | watch for the word Intersect and release.
Drag, press the Shift key, watch for
| | 04:46 | the word Intersect, release the mouse
button and then release the Shift key.
| | 04:51 | And we have got a reshaped version of
the shirt, thanks to our ability to drag
| | 04:55 | independent anchor points
using the Direct Selection tool.
| | 05:01 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with control handles| 00:00 | In this exercise, I am going to show
you how to use control handles, which
| | 00:04 | define the curvature of segments
inside of Illustrator. I'm working with a
| | 00:08 | document called Tapering shirt.ai found
inside the Exercise Files folder. Let's
| | 00:13 | start off by examining a standard,
everyday average circle. I will go to the
| | 00:18 | Rectangle tool flyout menu and I will
choose the Ellipse tool and then I will
| | 00:22 | draw a circle by dragging with the
tool while pressing the Shift key.
| | 00:27 | Having finished that, let's go ahead
and switch to the Direct Selection tool.
| | 00:32 | Now even though this circle was drawn
with a standard geometric shape tool,
| | 00:35 | I can still edit its anchor points and
control handles. I will click off the
| | 00:39 | shape to deselect it. Then I will go
ahead and click on an anchor point here.
| | 00:43 | Let's go ahead and zoom in a little so
we can inspect this object a little more
| | 00:47 | closely. Notice what we have is an
anchor point right there in the center and
| | 00:51 | the anchor point falls on the path
outline. So there is this anchor point and
| | 00:55 | this anchor point and this anchor
point. So we have a total of four anchor
| | 00:59 | points. They are called the anchor
points because they anchor down the path outline.
| | 01:03 | Meanwhile, on either side of the
selected anchor point, you see control handles
| | 01:07 | right there. So there is one handle,
there is the other and they define the
| | 01:11 | curvature of the segment. Handles do
not appear on the outline itself, but I
| | 01:16 | can drag a handle in order to change
the curvature of the segment and notice
| | 01:21 | that the segment has a strange attraction
to that handle. If I move the handle away,
| | 01:26 | the segment curves in an effort to keep
up with it. If I move the handle back,
| | 01:30 | the curve retracts and I can move
the handle so far back as to cross the
| | 01:35 | segment and go to the other direction.
| | 01:38 | All the while, Illustrator is bending
the segment to keep up with me and I can
| | 01:42 | switch to other handles just by
clicking on their anchor points and then
| | 01:46 | dragging the handles around like so
and this is a great way to learn by the way,
| | 01:52 | just to start with the circle,
start dragging around the control handles
| | 01:55 | because a circle is the kind of thing
you can draw and redraw very easily so
| | 01:59 | you are never going to feel like you
are modifying something that you are going to break.
| | 02:02 | All right, I am going to go ahead and
zoom back out and I am going to delete this
| | 02:07 | shape just by pressing the Backspace
key a couple of times. The first press of
| | 02:11 | the Backspace key or the Delete key
on the Mac deletes the selected anchor
| | 02:15 | point. The second time I press Backspace
or Delete, I delete the rest of the path.
| | 02:19 | All right, let's say we want to work
with a bending segment inside of the shirt
| | 02:24 | graphic here. I will go ahead and zoom
in on the sleeve and I will click on the
| | 02:27 | segment, not on an anchor point this
time, just on the segment and I can see
| | 02:31 | both of the control handles that are
affecting this segment and I can move them
| | 02:35 | around. I can even drag this handle
to the other side in order to curve the
| | 02:41 | segment out in a consistent direction
or I could switch the placement of the
| | 02:45 | handles to change the direction of this wave.
| | 02:49 | What about this curving segment at the
bottom of this pocket? Notice that it's
| | 02:53 | a little shallow currently. If I
click on its segment you can see that the
| | 02:56 | control handles don't go very far. I
could drag each of the control handles to
| | 02:59 | move them or I can actually drag
directly on a segment. You want to make small
| | 03:04 | drags because if you go too far, you
are going to cross the handles and get a
| | 03:07 | weird loop right there. So I will just
drag it down slightly or you can even
| | 03:11 | nudge the curvature of the segment,
by pressing the Down Arrow key in this
| | 03:15 | case, to increase the curvature or the
Up Arrow key in order to decrease the
| | 03:19 | curvature and that looks
pretty good right there.
| | 03:21 | Now I am going to zoom out to take in
the bottom of the shirt. Let's say I want
| | 03:26 | to take this existing straight segment
and I want to curve it. Why then I'd
| | 03:30 | click on it with the Direct Selection
tool, then I will go up to this tool here.
| | 03:34 | I will go up to the Pen tool,
click and hold on it and choose
| | 03:37 | Convert Anchor Point tool.
| | 03:40 | Now this is a pretty interesting tool
here. I will just go ahead and drag from
| | 03:44 | this right hand point, I will drag
inward like so and I am moving out,
| | 03:47 | notice I am drawing forth a control
handle on both sides of the anchor point.
| | 03:52 | I don't want it on this side because it's
creating a weird loop in the right side
| | 03:56 | of the shirt. So I will go ahead and
just drag it back so that it snaps to the
| | 04:01 | anchor point right there. Then I will
do the same on this side except I have
| | 04:05 | got to drag in the same direction.
| | 04:07 | So I have got to drag to the left
once again like so and this time, I am
| | 04:11 | actually interested in the opposite
handle of the one I am dragging. I will
| | 04:15 | release and then I will drag the
control handle I was just dragging back into
| | 04:20 | alignment with that anchor point again
and then I will go back to the Direct
| | 04:23 | Selection tool, click on this bottom
segment to select it and now I can move
| | 04:30 | these control handles as I like. Now
it looks pretty good. Then of course, I
| | 04:37 | would want to go ahead and make sure
this bottom point in the straight segment
| | 04:41 | of the scene is aligned properly as well.
| | 04:44 | Finally, notice this little circle on
the center of the pocket. Let's say I
| | 04:50 | want to turn it into something
completely different than what it is now.
| | 04:54 | I'll just go ahead and click anywhere on
that path outline with the Direct Selection
| | 04:57 | tool. Then I am going to go up to the
Select menu, choose Object and choose
| | 05:02 | Direction Handles. That's another name
for control handles in Illustrator and
| | 05:07 | now we will select all of the curve segments.
| | 05:10 | Now watch this. It is pretty amazing.
I am going to grab the Scale tool, I am
| | 05:15 | going to leave the reference point
right there in the center. I am going to
| | 05:18 | move my cursor up and to the right of
that reference point and I am going to drag
| | 05:24 | outward while pressing the Shift key
and I end up getting a clover leaf symbol
| | 05:29 | by dragging those segments outward
while leaving the anchor points in place.
| | 05:33 | It's amazing the things you can do to
path outlines here inside Illustrator
| | 05:38 | once you understand how to
add and modify control handles.
| | 05:44 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Pen tool basics| 00:00 | In this exercise, I am going to
introduce you to the most flexible drawing tool
| | 00:04 | in all of Illustrator and that's this
tool right here, the Pen tool. In fact,
| | 00:08 | it's that Pen tool that really put
Illustrator on the map more than 20 years ago
| | 00:12 | and it continues to be the most
flexible drawing tool because it allows you
| | 00:15 | to precisely position anchor points
and control handles as you draw them,
| | 00:20 | meaning that it allows you
to draw pretty much anything.
| | 00:23 | I am working inside of a document
called Tracing Shirt.ai found inside the
| | 00:27 | Exercise Files folder and notice if I
bring up the Layers palette, you can see
| | 00:32 | that I have set up a Tracing layer
that contains this dimmed version of the
| | 00:36 | shirt in the background and I have
gone ahead and locked down this layer so
| | 00:40 | that I can't mess anything on the
layer up, I can't edit the contents of that
| | 00:43 | layer and you can lock and unlock
layers just by clicking in this second column
| | 00:48 | next to the eye.
| | 00:49 | I have also set up this Pieces layer
that contains things like the buttons and
| | 00:54 | the lines in the shirt and so on and
that's locked down too. The only layer
| | 00:58 | that's not locked is Shirt and it's
currently empty. I am going to be tracing
| | 01:01 | on that Shirt layer. So I will go and
click on it to make it active.
| | 01:04 | Then I'll hide the Layers palette. Now
I'm going to start things off by tracing
| | 01:08 | this collar right here and notice that
I have got my Smart Guides turned on so
| | 01:14 | that I can very precisely
trace the shirt in the background.
| | 01:18 | All right, I am going to go ahead and
select the Pen tool by clicking on it or I
| | 01:22 | could press the P key. Notice the
appearance of my cursor. It looks like a pen nib
| | 01:27 | with an x next to it. That x tells
us that we were not in the middle of
| | 01:31 | drawing anything. So if I click I am
going to begin a new path. I am going to
| | 01:35 | move my cursor over the first point
in the collar and I am going to click.
| | 01:38 | What I have done by clicking there, I
have set a corner point and that's going
| | 01:43 | to result in a sharp corner in my path.
Now notice the appearance of my cursor.
| | 01:48 | It's a pen nib without an x next to it
meaning that I have a live path outline
| | 01:52 | in process. So if I go ahead and click
anywhere else, I am going to set a point
| | 01:56 | at that location and I am going to
connect the two points with a straight segment.
| | 02:00 | Notice also I have this D value right
there, D 0.14 inches in my case which
| | 02:05 | indicates the distance between my
cursor and the first anchor point. All right,
| | 02:09 | I'm going to move my Pen down here and
that's just a function by the way. That
| | 02:13 | distance value is purely a function of
Smart Guides. If I turn Smart Guides off,
| | 02:16 | it would go away.
| | 02:16 | I am going to move my cursor down here
to this point and click and notice that
| | 02:21 | Illustrator goes ahead and connects
the two points with the straight segment.
| | 02:24 | Now I will click up here and it draws
another straight segment. It also goes
| | 02:28 | ahead and fills in the path.
Illustrator is capable of filling open paths but
| | 02:33 | just because it is capable of doing it,
it doesn't mean I want it to happen.
| | 02:36 | In this case I don't.
| | 02:37 | So, I want to swap the fill and stroke.
I want a black stroke and no fill and I
| | 02:41 | can swap the two by clicking on this
little Swap icon down here at the bottom
| | 02:45 | of the toolbox or by pressing Shift+X
and now I have exactly what I want.
| | 02:50 | Notice that the path is still active
so if I move my cursor up here and click,
| | 02:54 | it will go ahead and connect those
points as well. I am done with this first collar.
| | 02:58 | Now I want to create the second collar.
Now normally I tell you there is no
| | 03:01 | sense in creating a shape twice. I
could just grab this first path here and
| | 03:06 | flip it in order to create the other
collar. But I want to give you the sense
| | 03:10 | of how this tool works. So I
am going to draw it manually.
| | 03:12 | Now if were to click to set about
drawing the next path, notice that
| | 03:16 | Illustrator still thinks I am in the
middle of drawing the previous path. So I
| | 03:19 | have to undo that modification by
pressing Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on the Mac and
| | 03:24 | then I need to tell Illustrator that I
am about to start a new path. So I will
| | 03:28 | go up to the Select menu and I will
choose Deselect. Now notice the appearance
| | 03:33 | of my cursor. It goes back to being a
pen nib with an x next to it, indicating
| | 03:37 | nothing is active.
| | 03:38 | Now I will click here and I will
start a new path. Notice the change in my
| | 03:42 | cursor. I have no x. I do have a D
value. I will click in order to set other
| | 03:47 | points in the path and then to let
Illustrator know that I am done, I will go
| | 03:53 | up to the Select menu and choose the
Deselect command again, or even easier
| | 03:57 | just press Ctrl+Shift+A here on
the PC or Command+Shift+A on the Mac.
| | 04:03 | One other part of this illustration I
want to draw is this rounded shape right
| | 04:08 | there. This sort of modified O in
the Groundswell logo. Now this involves
| | 04:13 | curved segments as you can see right
here and you draw a curved segment in
| | 04:19 | Illustrator by dragging with the Pen
tool. So I am going to start at this point
| | 04:22 | right there and I am going to drag like
so and I don't want to go too far with it,
| | 04:26 | about here is probably good and
then I will drag at this point right there
| | 04:30 | and I will drag upward.
| | 04:31 | Notice I am dragging in a
consistent direction. I started the path in a
| | 04:34 | counterclockwise direction. I am
going to continue dragging in a
| | 04:38 | counterclockwise direction. As I drag,
I not only set the anchor point at the
| | 04:42 | beginning of my drag but at the end
of the drag I set the control handle as
| | 04:46 | well as an opposite symmetrical control
handle and these control handles target
| | 04:51 | the segment forcing it to bend.
| | 04:54 | Now I will drag from this location
right here and again I will drag in a
| | 04:57 | counterclockwise direction in order to
set the locations of both of the control
| | 05:02 | handles and notice I continue getting
these curved segments and each one of
| | 05:07 | these anchor points that I am drawing
by dragging with the Pen tool is called a
| | 05:11 | smooth point. So before when we
clicked with the Pen tool we were creating
| | 05:15 | corner points, now we are creating
smooth points. I will drag here in order to
| | 05:19 | create another smooth point. Notice I
am just trying to match the path outline
| | 05:22 | at this point.
| | 05:24 | Now if I was to close things up, I am
pretty much done with this path now. If I
| | 05:27 | was to close it off by clicking on
the point that I had started on or in my
| | 05:32 | case, dragging on that point, notice
that I will create a smooth point in which
| | 05:38 | both control handles are symmetrical.
What I want though is a cusp point,
| | 05:44 | which is a point at which two
curved segments meet to form a corner.
| | 05:48 | So, I am going to undo that modification.
To create a cusp point, you press and
| | 05:52 | hold the Alt key. This is the
trickiest thing about drawing with the Pen tool
| | 05:56 | in Illustrator. You press and hold the
Alt key here on the PC or the Option key
| | 06:00 | on the Mac and then you drag and
notice now, this control handle that I am
| | 06:05 | drawing with, is independent of the
one that's on the side that I am dragging on.
| | 06:10 | So I was telling you, you are always
continuing in the direction you set up in
| | 06:14 | the first place. In my case, I am
going counterclockwise, so counterclockwise
| | 06:18 | around the O but I am actually
controlling because I have the Alt or Option key
| | 06:22 | down while closing up the shape. I'm actually
controlling the opposite control handles.
| | 06:27 | It's a little bit tricky.
Take some getting used to as well.
| | 06:30 | But once I have that shape drawn right
I will go ahead and release and then I
| | 06:35 | want to again swap the stroke and fill,
because I want a black fill this time
| | 06:38 | and no stroke. So I will press that
keyboard shortcut I was telling you about,
| | 06:42 | Shift+X or I can just click on this
little Swap icon down here at the bottom of
| | 06:46 | the toolbox and that my friends is my introduction
to the Pen tool here inside Adobe Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Drawing a custom path| 00:00 | In this exercise, I will show you how
to draw a fairly complex custom path
| | 00:05 | using a combination of the Pen tool
and the Direct Selection tool and they
| | 00:09 | should give you a sense of how you create
paths on a regular basis inside Illustrator.
| | 00:14 | I am working on a document called
Completed Collar.ai found inside the Exercise
| | 00:19 | Files folder. So called because I have
completed the collar and now I need to
| | 00:23 | draw the larger shirt outline. Here
inside the Layers palette, you can see that
| | 00:28 | I have two locked layers with a Shirt
layer in between. I am going to go ahead
| | 00:31 | and click on that Shirt layer to select
it and now I will go to the toolbox and
| | 00:37 | select the Pen tool.
| | 00:41 | Now notice my Pen tool cursor is a pen
nib with an x next to it. So I am about
| | 00:45 | to create a new path with the Pen tool.
I am going to start things off from the
| | 00:49 | bottom point of this left sleeve,
just by clicking and notice now the x
| | 00:53 | disappears, so I have an active path.
I will click again in order to connect
| | 00:57 | these two anchor points with the
straight segment. Then I am going to move down
| | 01:01 | the shirt and I am panning by pressing
the Spacebar and dragging. As soon as I
| | 01:05 | release the Spacebar, I am
back to the Pen tool cursor.
| | 01:08 | So panning with the Hand tool doesn't
interrupt the flow of the path at all.
| | 01:12 | Now I will click down at the bottom
of the shirt like so in order to add a
| | 01:16 | second segment and notice I have gone
ahead and filled in the shape. I am going
| | 01:20 | to swap the fill and the stroke by
clicking on this Swap icon down here at the
| | 01:24 | bottom of the toolbox. Now notice the
last point that I created is a corner
| | 01:28 | point as indicated by the fact that
it's the end of a straight segment. I now
| | 01:33 | need to add a curving segment to the other side.
| | 01:36 | So, I need to pull out a control
handle. Now I will go ahead and pan down a
| | 01:41 | little more. And I do that by dragging
from the point like so and this control
| | 01:45 | handle will affect the next segment
that I draw. Now I am going to pan over to
| | 01:50 | the right and I am going to drag from
this point in order to create a smooth
| | 01:55 | point and notice I am dragging away
from the segment that I am drawing because
| | 01:59 | I am continuing in a consistent
direction, I am moving counterclockwise around
| | 02:03 | the path. You can move in either
directions. You can move clockwise or
| | 02:06 | counterclockwise; you just
need to keep it consistent.
| | 02:09 | Now noticed that I have fairly well
matched the line and the template in the
| | 02:14 | background there but not exactly
matched it. I can go ahead and edit this path
| | 02:18 | on the fly by pressing and holding the
Ctrl key or the Command key on the Mac.
| | 02:23 | Now notice pressing and holding Ctrl
or Command will take you to the last
| | 02:27 | selection tool you used which in my
case happens to be the black Selection
| | 02:32 | tool. I want the white Direct Selection tool.
| | 02:35 | So instead of pressing Ctrl or Command,
I am going to press the A key which
| | 02:39 | gets me the Direct Selection tool.
Notice that I want to make sure that I have
| | 02:42 | the white arrow cursor so that I know,
I can edit individual points and control
| | 02:46 | handles. Then I will drag this control
handle to a different location anywhere
| | 02:50 | where I want and then I can drag it
back in order to get it more or less
| | 02:54 | aligned and things look pretty good at
this point. You can spend some more time
| | 02:57 | on it if you want. I just want to make
sure that I am covering up the bottom of
| | 03:02 | these scenes here.
| | 03:04 | Now if I press the P key to switch
back to the Pen tool, notice I deactivated
| | 03:09 | the path, because I have an x. See
that? So if I click some place else I am
| | 03:13 | starting a new path. Don't want that.
So I will go back down to the selected
| | 03:18 | path outline and I will click and that's
going to serve two purposes. First of all,
| | 03:23 | it goes ahead and cuts off that
control handle that was flying off in this
| | 03:28 | direction here. Because I don't need
this control handle over in this area,
| | 03:32 | plus it goes ahead and activates the path.
| | 03:34 | So clicking or dragging on an end point
of an existing path will activate it so
| | 03:38 | that you can add more points and
segments using the Pen tool. Now I am going to
| | 03:43 | pan up and I am going to click at this
location under the arm and then I will
| | 03:47 | click here under the sleeve and now
let's just go ahead and zoom-in here by
| | 03:53 | Ctrl+Spacebar-clicking that's Command+
Spacebar-clicking on the Mac. I will drag
| | 03:58 | from this location to add a control
handle. I will drag from this location to
| | 04:02 | finish off that segment.
| | 04:03 | If I don't get the segment lined up
perfectly then I can now press the Ctrl key
| | 04:07 | on the PC or the Command key on the Mac,
it's going to get me that last arrow
| | 04:11 | tool that was active which is the
Direct Selection tool and I will go ahead and
| | 04:14 | drag with the Ctrl key down. I still
have the Ctrl key down or the Command key
| | 04:18 | on the Mac, I will drag that
control handle, now I will drag this one.
| | 04:21 | Now when I release the Ctrl key or
the Command key on the Mac, the path is
| | 04:25 | still active. All right, now I want to
add this segment here, this straight
| | 04:30 | segment up to the collar but if I click
on this collar point, I will go ahead.
| | 04:35 | Well, that's a mistake right there
obviously, but I also connect the path I am
| | 04:38 | working on, the shirt path to the
collar path, you can see it's all active now
| | 04:42 | and I don't want that.
| | 04:43 | So I will go ahead and undo that
modification. I am going to go ahead and click
| | 04:49 | on this anchor point right there to
get rid of that control handle that was
| | 04:53 | flying away off of the path and then
I will click up here. Pretty close to
| | 04:59 | where I want that point to be but
far enough away that it's not going to
| | 05:02 | connect the two and then I will move
in closer. I will drag from this point
| | 05:06 | like so and then I will drag from here.
| | 05:10 | In this way we get a little bit of
curvature going on this edge of the path and
| | 05:14 | now that I have these two points ready
to go, I am going to Ctrl-drag this one
| | 05:19 | into position like so and then I'll
Ctrl-drag this one into position and
| | 05:24 | that would be Command-drag, Command-
drag on the Mac and I have still got the
| | 05:28 | Ctrl or Command key down. I will go
ahead and move this control handle over
| | 05:32 | just a little bit and then notice I
must have had some curvature associated
| | 05:37 | with this sleeve up here but I am not
concerned about that. If we don't exactly
| | 05:40 | match the template that's
not the end of the world.
| | 05:43 | Now I will click right there in order
to sever off that control handle and
| | 05:48 | I'll click up here. Again, I don't want
to click right there because if I did I
| | 05:53 | would go ahead and connect the path I
am working on to that open collar path
| | 05:57 | and I will drag down from here a
little bit and then I will drag at this
| | 06:01 | location. Let's go ahead and zoom-in
once again. I will click actually in
| | 06:06 | advance just to get rid of
that extra control handle.
| | 06:08 | All right, now I will Ctrl-drag or
Command-drag this point into place or
| | 06:12 | Ctrl-drag or Command-drag this point
into place, so you can see how I can
| | 06:16 | actually modify the path while I am in
the process of drawing it and this goes
| | 06:21 | for not just the exact last segment.
We could be working on other segments in
| | 06:25 | the path as well. Now I will click at
this location. I still have an active
| | 06:29 | path. So everything is good to go.
Now I will drag here and I will finally
| | 06:34 | close off the path by dragging here.
| | 06:37 | Now notice I don't have a control
handle at the location of my cursor. See my
| | 06:42 | cursor down into the left on the
screen? And the reason I don't have a control
| | 06:46 | handle, the reason I am affecting just
the opposite control handle is because I
| | 06:49 | was starting from a corner point.
So this was a corner point that I was
| | 06:53 | dragging on.
| | 06:54 | All right, now I will Ctrl-drag or
Command-drag these control handles into better
| | 06:58 | locations and I am done. I can now
switch back to the black Arrow tool, do
| | 07:03 | whatever I want. Finally, I want to go
ahead and fill in the shirt. Now I will
| | 07:07 | go ahead and click on the shirt to
make it active. I will go up to the Fill
| | 07:10 | icon here in the control panel. I
will click and I will choose this swatch
| | 07:15 | right here, Flowers, which is the tile
pattern that I created in advance and
| | 07:19 | that goes ahead and fills in the shirt.
| | 07:21 | Now I am going to right-click on the
shirt. If you don't have the right mouse
| | 07:24 | button on the Mac, you would press
the Ctrl key and click and then I will
| | 07:27 | choose Arrange > Send to Back and that
will go ahead and send that shirt to the
| | 07:32 | back of the stack and that is the
finished version of the shirt. Thanks to my
| | 07:36 | ability to draw custom paths using a
combination of the Pen tool and Direct
| | 07:41 | Selection tool working
together inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Rounding off corners| 00:00 | In this exercise I will show you how to
round off the corners in a shape using
| | 00:04 | a special variety of dynamic effect and
dynamic effects inside Illustrator are
| | 00:09 | some of the most marvelous features
the program has to offer. I am looking at
| | 00:14 | this document called Square And Star.ai
found inside the Exercise Files folder.
| | 00:19 | Let's say I want to round off the
corners in this square in the background.
| | 00:22 | As opposed to drawing the corners as
rounded in the first place, which you can do
| | 00:26 | using the Rounded Rectangle tool, you
are better off using the Rectangle too,
| | 00:30 | giving yourself some square corners and
then rounding off after the effect and
| | 00:34 | that's what we are going to do.
| | 00:35 | So, I will go ahead and switch back to
my standard Selection tool. I have gone
| | 00:39 | ahead and selected the square and
now I will go up to Effect menu, choose
| | 00:44 | Stylize and choose Round Corners. Now
in my case I see a Radius value of 12
| | 00:50 | points, but I really don't know what
that means unless I turn on the Preview
| | 00:54 | checkbox and you will find yourself
turning on Preview a lot when you work with
| | 00:57 | dynamic effects.
| | 00:58 | So I will turn on Preview and now I can
see what the rounded corners look like
| | 01:02 | and now I could say, "Well you know what?
I want to take that value higher."
| | 01:05 | And I could raise the value from the
keyboard just pressing the up arrow key like
| | 01:09 | I'm doing here and I will see the
roundness incrementally increase as I press
| | 01:14 | the up arrow key. If I want to move
faster, I will press Shift+Up arrow and
| | 01:19 | something along the lines
of 28 points looks pretty good.
| | 01:22 | It rounds off the corners so that they
intersect the star strokes right here.
| | 01:27 | Now I will go ahead and click OK. But
what if after applying the effect you
| | 01:32 | decide, nah, that's not really what I
want. You can edit it at any point you
| | 01:37 | want. So it doesn't have to be the next
operation, it can be two days later if
| | 01:41 | you like. Make sure that square is
once again selected. Then go to the
| | 01:45 | Appearance palette, either by clicking
on this little icon here or by going up
| | 01:49 | to the Window menu and
choosing the Appearance command.
| | 01:52 | Inside the palette you will notice
this Round Corners item here and this fx
| | 01:58 | icon that's telling you that you have
applied a dynamic effect. Go ahead and
| | 02:02 | click on the word Round Corner, you
will bring up the Round Corners dialog box,
| | 02:06 | you will turn on Preview. I was telling
you you'll need to do that a lot and
| | 02:10 | then I could go ahead and press Shift+
Up arrow, for example after making the
| | 02:14 | Radius value active to take it up into
the neighborhood of let's say 54 points.
| | 02:18 | Actually it looks pretty good and then
I will click OK. I am just eyeballing
| | 02:22 | this effect by the way. So you don't
have to go back to the Effect menu in
| | 02:26 | order to edit the effect. In fact you
don't want to do that; you will apply a
| | 02:29 | second layer of the effect if you do
that. Rather, you go to the Appearance
| | 02:32 | palette and click on the words Round
Corners. All right, next I will go ahead and
| | 02:36 | select the star shape. Let's say I
want to round its corners as well.
| | 02:40 | The Appearance palette is not showing me
a Round Corners effect because I haven't
| | 02:44 | applied one so far, but I can down
here to this fx icon and click and that
| | 02:48 | gives me access to that same menu I saw
when I click on Effect in the menu bar.
| | 02:53 | I will go up to this version of Stylize.
It's very important. You won't find
| | 02:58 | Round Corners down in this Stylize sub-
menu. Because these effects down here,
| | 03:02 | they take you to the thing called the
Effect Gallery, which allows you to apply
| | 03:06 | pixel level effects and that's not what
we want. We want a vector effect so I
| | 03:11 | will go up to this top group. They
are all vector effects. I will choose
| | 03:14 | Stylize and I will choose Round Corners
once again and I will turn Preview on
| | 03:19 | so I can see what I am doing. That
looks terrible. So I will go ahead and click
| | 03:23 | inside the Radius value and press Shift+
Down arrow in order to take that value
| | 03:27 | down to the neighborhood of about 24
points. It actually works pretty well for
| | 03:31 | the star. So again I have an
intersection between the star stroke and the
| | 03:35 | stroke of the rounded square in
the background. Now I will click OK.
| | 03:40 | Now one of the beauties of these
effects is that you can apply them
| | 03:43 | independently to the stroke and the fill.
So let's say I want to round off the
| | 03:48 | stroke but not the fill. I would click
on this Round Corners effect and I would
| | 03:52 | drag it down onto the Stroke and
release and notice now I am only rounding the
| | 03:56 | stroke, not the fill, and the fill
remains sharp in the background.
| | 04:00 | Let's go ahead and do something to that
fill, something independent, by clicking
| | 04:04 | on the Fill to make it active and
then I am going to go down to fx and
| | 04:09 | let's us say I want a scribbly-looking
fill. Then I would go the Stylize menu
| | 04:13 | and I would choose Scribble. Brings up
a pretty big dialog box with all these
| | 04:18 | options in it. Luckily you have
these settings you can choose from like
| | 04:21 | Childlike and Dense, for example,
which will give you different effects.
| | 04:25 | I actually like Default. Now you are
only going to see the effect applied in
| | 04:30 | the background if the Preview check
box is turned on of course. Then I will go
| | 04:34 | ahead and click OK in order to
accept that modification and then I could
| | 04:37 | decide, you know what? I want the fill
to be on top of the stroke and I could
| | 04:40 | just drag it in front of the stroke
here inside the Appearance palette and
| | 04:45 | there I have some very simple but
dynamic effects. I can change them anytime
| | 04:50 | I like. That's just the tip of the
iceberg. There is so much more to dynamic
| | 04:54 | effects, but this should get you
started on your way here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Alignment and guides| 00:00 | In this exercise, we are going to use
a combination of guides and alignment
| | 00:04 | functions to take this collection of
randomly positioned rings and precisely
| | 00:09 | arrange them as they would appear if
they were Olympic rings. I am working
| | 00:13 | inside this document called Five Rings.ai.
And I happen to like the relative
| | 00:18 | position of the red and green rings right here.
| | 00:21 | So, I am going to try to get the others
into alignment with that. I am going to
| | 00:26 | start things off by going up to the
View menu, choosing Guides and making sure
| | 00:30 | that Lock Guides is turned off. So if
it's got a check mark next to it, choose
| | 00:35 | it to turn that check mark off. I happen
to be fine. I also have my rulers up
| | 00:41 | on screen and if you don't see yours,
you would choose the Show Rulers command
| | 00:47 | also from the View menu.
| | 00:49 | I am going to select the red ring by
clicking on it and I am going to go over
| | 00:53 | to the vertical ruler and I am going to
drag a guide out of that ruler like so,
| | 00:57 | and then drag it until it snaps into
alignment with that center point right
| | 01:02 | there. This looks pretty good to me.
Then I am going to click on this green ring to
| | 01:07 | select it and then I am going to Alt-
drag or Option-drag that vertical guide in
| | 01:12 | order to snap it into alignment
with the center of that selected ring.
| | 01:16 | Now, by Alt or Option-dragging I went
ahead and duplicated the guide as you can
| | 01:21 | see here. So, I now have two guides
right in a row. Now, I will go up to the
| | 01:26 | Object menu, I will choose Transform
and I will choose this command right there,
| | 01:29 | Transform again or Ctrl+D, Command+D
on the Mac, for Duplicate and now we will
| | 01:35 | go ahead and duplicate that last
sequence. So, it duplicates the guide and it
| | 01:40 | ensures that we have the same
distance out between all three guides.
| | 01:43 | Then I will press Ctrl+D or Command+D
again and then I will press Ctrl+D or
| | 01:47 | Command+D again, so that we have a
total of five guide lines. Now, you can see
| | 01:52 | that the blue ring and the yellow
ring are pretty far out of alignment.
| | 01:56 | The black ring is way out of alignment;
it belongs in the third area here, but
| | 02:00 | we'll take care of that in a moment.
| | 02:01 | I am going to take the blue ring by
clicking on it and then I am going to drag
| | 02:04 | its center point so it snaps into
alignment with this guide line right there.
| | 02:09 | Next I will click on the yellow ring
and I will drag its center point so it
| | 02:13 | snaps into alignment like so. All right,
so far so good. Now let's go ahead and
| | 02:17 | align the yellow ring and green ring so
that they are on a row together. I will
| | 02:23 | Shift-click on the green ring to select it.
| | 02:25 | Then I will click on the green ring
a second time and it will get a heavy
| | 02:29 | outline, notice that, to indicate that
it is the key object. It is the one that
| | 02:33 | should stay in place; the other one
should move. Now I will go up to the
| | 02:36 | control panel and I will click on the
word Align and I will go ahead and click
| | 02:39 | on this icon, Vertical Align Center.
| | 02:42 | And we will get this alignment right
there,. Perfect. Now, I want to grab these
| | 02:47 | three rings, so click on the red
ring, Shift-click on the black ring,
| | 02:50 | Shift-click on the blue ring to select
those three. The red ring needs to be
| | 02:54 | the key object, so I will go ahead and
click on it in order to give it a heavy
| | 02:58 | outline. Now, I will go up to the
control panel and again click on the word
| | 03:01 | Align and I will click again on
the Vertical Align Center option.
| | 03:06 | Now, the problem here is that the black
circle is not at its proper horizontal
| | 03:10 | location. I can get it to its proper
horizontal location if I go ahead and
| | 03:14 | distribute these three shapes so that
the amount of space between them is the
| | 03:19 | same. Notice the second row of options,
Distribute Objects. You want to click on
| | 03:24 | this icon right there,
Horizontal Distribute Center.
| | 03:27 | But because I had a key object going,
it went ahead and moved all of the
| | 03:32 | objects into alignment. So, I will then
do that modification by pressing Ctrl+Z
| | 03:36 | or Command+Z on a Mac. That goes ahead
and deactivates the key object, but were
| | 03:40 | it is still active, I could go back
to the Align panel, I could change the
| | 03:44 | Align To setting from Align To Key
Object to Align To Selection. That will go
| | 03:49 | ahead and turn off that key object
and then I will click this icon here in
| | 03:54 | order to distribute the centers of
those objects. Finally I would like to go
| | 03:59 | ahead and center all these objects on
the page. So, I am going to start things
| | 04:04 | off by getting rid of my guides.
I no longer need them and they'll be
| | 04:07 | distracting in the future if my
rings are in a different location.
| | 04:10 | So, I will go up to the View menu, I will
choose Guides and I will choose Clear Guides.
| | 04:16 | That will get rid of them.
Then I will go ahead and press Ctrl+A or
| | 04:19 | Command+A on the Mac to select all
the objects inside this illustration.
| | 04:24 | You could also go to the Select menu and
choose All. And then finally I will align
| | 04:29 | these objects to the page but before I
do, were I to align them the way they
| | 04:33 | are right now, every ring would be
treated independently and they would all
| | 04:36 | appear right there in
the middle of the document.
| | 04:39 | So, I need to do an extra introductory
step here. I need to go up to the Object
| | 04:43 | menu and group them by choosing the
Group menu. Now, they are ready to go and I
| | 04:48 | can go up to the control panel, notice
my options have changed a little because
| | 04:52 | I have a group selected. I will
click on this guy right here, Align To
| | 04:55 | Selection, click on the down pointing
arrowhead and I will choose Align To
| | 05:00 | Artboard. Then I will get some
alignment options right here and I'll click on
| | 05:04 | Horizontal Align Center and then I
will click on Vertical Align Center.
| | 05:09 | I have now created a perfectly arranged
group of five rings in the center of my
| | 05:13 | artboard, thanks to Illustrator's
guides and alignment functions.
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| Live Paint| 00:00 | In this exercise, I will get you
started with the Live Paint feature in
| | 00:04 | Illustrator which allows you to fill
and stroke objects according to how they
| | 00:08 | intersect and overlap. You can see that
I have got these Olympic rings set up,
| | 00:13 | but they are not truly Olympic rings
because they do not interact with each
| | 00:16 | other, they do not actually
intersect the way the Olympic rings do.
| | 00:20 | Which means that the yellow ring needs
to be simultaneously in front of and in
| | 00:24 | back of its neighbors, which is
impossible and I was relating this problem to a
| | 00:29 | friend of mine, Mordy Golding, who
also happens to be a fellow trainer at
| | 00:33 | lynda.com and he came up with this
solution which I've since come to regard is the
| | 00:38 | best demonstration of Live Paint that there is.
| | 00:40 | I am working inside of a document
called Almost Olympic.ai and I am going to go
| | 00:45 | ahead and select all the objects in
this illustration by pressing Ctrl+A or
| | 00:49 | Command+A on the Mac, and I want to
convert these shapes to a Live Paint group.
| | 00:53 | First, I am going to zoom in on a
portion of the illustration that I want to
| | 00:57 | change here and you may note, before
I go any further, these strokes should
| | 01:01 | actually be white.
| | 01:02 | So I will go up to the control panel
and I will click this second swatch here
| | 01:07 | and I will change it to white. I also
want you to note while we are here that I
| | 01:10 | have gone ahead organized the other
colors in order so we have got blue,
| | 01:14 | yellow, next comes black. So I can
actually drag it over. Then green and red
| | 01:20 | and that will just ensure that we are
able to get around the colors more easily
| | 01:24 | because they are right at the front of
the swatches when we are working with
| | 01:27 | the Live Paint Bucket tool.
| | 01:29 | All right, now I will go ahead and click
again in order to hide that panel. Now I
| | 01:33 | want to fill this area with yellow
and we can do that and simultaneously
| | 01:37 | convert all of these objects into a
Live Paint group by selecting the Live
| | 01:41 | Paint Bucket and then I will move the
Live Paint Bucket cursor over this area
| | 01:48 | that I want to change. Notice those
swatches above the cursor; they indicate
| | 01:52 | the color that you can use to fill the region.
| | 01:54 | I am going to press the right arrow key
a couple of times to advance to yellow
| | 01:59 | so that yellow is right in the center
there and then I will click in order to
| | 02:03 | fill this region with yellow. Now
we have a Live Paint object inside of
| | 02:08 | Illustrator. Now I want to stroke
these regions on either side of the yellow
| | 02:12 | area with white, but by default the
Bucket tool is set just to fill. Let's
| | 02:17 | change that by double-clicking
on this icon in the toolbox
| | 02:21 | to bring up the Live Paint bucket
Options dialog box, then turn on the Paint
| | 02:25 | Strokes checkbox and click OK. Now when
I hover over this area, you can see my
| | 02:30 | cursor changes to a brush. White is
the active swatch so I will just click to
| | 02:35 | stroke this area with white. Then I will
move over here and click to stroke this
| | 02:38 | region with white as well.
| | 02:39 | Now you might think the next step is
to stroke this area with yellow. I will
| | 02:44 | press the right arrow key a couple of
times to advance to yellow. If I were to
| | 02:47 | click at this point, that makes
something of a mess of this region. The stroke
| | 02:51 | just isn't aligning properly. So let's
get rid of it. I will go down here to
| | 02:55 | this tool, the Live Paint Selection
tool, click on it and then I will move my
| | 03:00 | cursor over this area and then I will
click on the stroke to select it and
| | 03:04 | press the Backspace key or the
Delete key on the Mac to get rid of it.
| | 03:07 | Let us do the same thing right here.
Click and Backspace or Delete and there is
| | 03:12 | a lot other areas that we can do that
to as well. For example, this stroke
| | 03:17 | needs to go. I will Shift-click here
as well to select this little sub-stroke.
| | 03:21 | I will Shift-click here and here and
then I will Shift-click here and here.
| | 03:29 | So these are the regions that need to
interact differently and then once those
| | 03:33 | areas are selected and you can tell
they are selected by that dot pattern,
| | 03:37 | I'll press the Backspace key once again
on the PC or the Delete key on the Mac
| | 03:41 | to get rid of them.
| | 03:42 | Now we just need to do a little bit of
re-coloring. I will go back to my Live
| | 03:46 | Paint Bucket tool. I will make sure
that white is my active swatch and I will
| | 03:51 | click. Now if I get a thinner stroke,
it is nothing to worry about right now.
| | 03:55 | I'll go ahead and click here and in
these regions as well in order to stroke
| | 04:00 | them. The problem is just that I ended
up changing those Stroke Weight to one point
| | 04:04 | at some point here.
| | 04:06 | But we can go ahead and override that.
I am going to zoom out. In addition to
| | 04:11 | changing a Live Paint object using the
Live Paint tools down here in the lower
| | 04:15 | region of the toolbox, I can use other
tools as well. For example, I could grab
| | 04:20 | the standard Selection tool, click on any
one of these objects to select all of them.
| | 04:24 | You can see that I am working
with a Live Paint object because of little
| | 04:27 | sparkles inside of the handles.
| | 04:28 | Then I will go up to the Stroke
option here in the control panel and I will
| | 04:32 | change it to two point, which will give
us thinner strokes across the board and
| | 04:36 | they are all match now as you can see.
Even those ones that I applied at the end.
| | 04:41 | And there are my final intersecting
Olympic rings that are both in front of
| | 04:47 | and behind their neighbors, thanks to
the Live Paint function inside Illustrator.
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| Goodbye| 00:00 | So that in a nutshell is Adobe Illustrator. If you
feel like you got everything you need to know, fantastic!
| | 00:07 | There's nothing I like more than empowering people in record
time. But if you're hankering for more, let me just say that
| | 00:13 | wasn't a teaser; that was a
taste of the larger world to come.
| | 00:17 | The full story, everything you need to know is here in the
lynda.com Online Training Library. One 3-part in-depth series,
| | 00:25 | Illustrator CS4 One-on-One.
| | 00:33 | but for 30,
| | 00:34 | and Illustrator mastery will be yours.
| | 00:37 | Illustrator CS4 One-on-One.
| | 00:40 | I hope to see more of you.
| | Collapse this transcript |
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