IntroductionWelcome to One-on-One| 00:04 | Hi! This is Deke McClelland.
| | 00:06 | Welcome to Illustrator CS6
One-on-One Fundamentals.
| | 00:10 | Part one in a series of four video courses
devoted to your ultimate mastery of the world's
| | 00:16 | most powerful vector-based drawing software.
| | 00:19 | Adobe Illustrator recently turned 25 years old.
| | 00:23 | I began using the program when it first
came out back when I was 25 years old.
| | 00:28 | I like to joke that makes
Illustrator and I about the same age.
| | 00:33 | But the truth is I've been using a program
writing books about it and recording videos
| | 00:38 | about it for more than half of my life,
which is why I feel uniquely suited to make you
| | 00:43 | this promise: Give me your time and attention,
and I will mentor you through every facet
| | 00:48 | of the software you need to know
in the order you need to know it.
| | 00:53 | No crowded classroom and
no scheduling conflicts.
| | 00:56 | It's just you and me one on one any
time that is convenient for you to learn.
| | 01:02 | This course is devoted to project-based
learning, meaning you're going to make stuff, you'll
| | 01:08 | create professional quality artwork from
scratch using nothing more than Line and Shape tools.
| | 01:15 | You'll trace a piece of scan line art and
scale it to any size you like, you will paint
| | 01:20 | an elaborate mosaic design again from scratch
using some of Illustrator's simplest tools.
| | 01:27 | You'll create a beautifully-
formatted text document.
| | 01:31 | And you'll experience the
unbridled power of the Pen tool.
| | 01:35 | The result is a
contextualized learning program.
| | 01:38 | Illustrator's features will make sense because
you'll apply them to a clearly defined task.
| | 01:44 | And you will leave each chapter
with a sense of accomplishment.
| | 01:48 | I really hope there are moments where you
feel, "I rule, I did this, and I can do more."
| | 01:53 | I will start by showing you how to open a
file in Illustrator by double-clicking on
| | 01:58 | it, first in Windows and then on the Mac.
| | 02:01 | Then I will show you how to make a new document,
add a few text elements, and save your changes.
| | 02:07 | This may not be the most exciting stuff we
will do, but it's stuff that you have to know.
| | 02:12 | And it's how you get to work
in Illustrator immediately.
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1. Making a DocumentOpening from the Windows desktop| 00:00 | In this movie, I will show you how to open
an Illustration file inside Illustrator from
| | 00:04 | the Windows desktop.
| | 00:06 | Now if you are a Mac user, go ahead and
skip to the next movie in which I show you how
| | 00:09 | to do the same thing from the Macintosh Finder.
| | 00:12 | If you're a premium member, or you have
access to the DVD version of this course, then you
| | 00:16 | also have access to my exercise files which
are downloadable from the site, in which case,
| | 00:22 | go ahead and locate the 01-make-doc folder,
and you'll notice among other files inside
| | 00:26 | this folder, three files called Welcome, they really
ought to be called Welcome.ai, Welcome.eps and Welcome.svg.
| | 00:34 | We are not seeing those
extensions however by default on a PC.
| | 00:39 | So let's take care of the problem first.
| | 00:41 | Just go ahead and tab the Alt key to bring
up this menu bar, then click on tools and
| | 00:45 | choose Folder options.
| | 00:47 | Then switch over to the View tab, and then
down this list of Advanced Settings, you will
| | 00:52 | see a check box called Hide
extensions for known file types.
| | 00:55 | Go ahead and turn that check box off and click
OK, and now you'll see all of the extensions.
| | 01:01 | Now the Welcome.ai file, that's an Adobe
Illustrator file, you should be able to just double-click
| | 01:06 | on it in order to open Illustrator, if the
program comes up in this reduced view, and
| | 01:12 | you can just go up here and click on the
Maximize button in order to fill the screen.
| | 01:16 | I'm going to go ahead and minimize Illustrator,
however so that we can test out the EPS document.
| | 01:22 | In my case, that just goes ahead and opens up inside
of Illustrator as well when I double-click on it.
| | 01:27 | However, we are going to get a
different result from this SVG file.
| | 01:31 | Notice that it has an
Internet Explorer icon on it.
| | 01:34 | If I double-click on the file, it's going
to open inside of Internet Explorer which
| | 01:38 | isn't going to do to me any good if I want
to edit the file in Illustrator, So here's
| | 01:43 | what you do to correct that problem.
| | 01:45 | Go ahead and close Internet Explorer or
whatever program the SVG file opened it.
| | 01:50 | Then right click on that file and choose
Open with, and then choose default program, in
| | 01:56 | order to bring up the Open with dialog box.
| | 01:59 | Now in my case, most recent version of Illustrator is
listed in the recommended programs, which is great.
| | 02:04 | If you're not finding it, however, go ahead
and click on that down-pointing arrow head
| | 02:08 | in order to bring up a list of other
programs, you may find Illustrator there.
| | 02:12 | If you don't, you'll have to click the Browse
button and find Illustrator on your hard drive.
| | 02:17 | However, in my case, it's
selected in the top corner.
| | 02:20 | Make sure this check box, Always use the
selected program to open this kind of file, is turned
| | 02:24 | on, and then click on the OK button.
| | 02:27 | That will go ahead and
switch that icon to an AI icon.
| | 02:31 | It also goes ahead and opens
the file inside of Illustrator.
| | 02:35 | And that folks is how you open files
inside Illustrator from the Windows desktop.
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| Opening from the Macintosh Finder| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you have to open a
document inside Illustrator just by double-clicking
| | 00:05 | on a file from the Macintosh finder.
| | 00:08 | Now if you are not using a Mac, go ahead and
skip to the next movie in which I will show
| | 00:11 | you how to create a new
document inside Illustrator.
| | 00:15 | If you're a premium member, or you own the
DVD version of this course then you have access
| | 00:19 | to my exercise files which contains a
folder called 01_make_doc and inside that folder
| | 00:25 | you'll find three files called Welcome.
| | 00:28 | Each one of these is a document that was created in
Illustrator specifically to be viewed in Illustrator.
| | 00:35 | But the likelihood of them opening
automatically in Illustrator is pretty low.
| | 00:39 | Now I should say that I'm looking at the
contents of this folder in the Icon View.
| | 00:43 | If you'd like to do the same, you go up
to the View menu, and you choose As Icons.
| | 00:48 | Now you should see extensions after each one of these
file names, Welcome.ai, Welcome.eps, and Welcome.svg.
| | 00:56 | If for some reason you don't, then go up to
the Finder menu and choose the Preferences
| | 01:01 | Command and then inside the Finder Preferences
dialog box go ahead and click on the Advanced
| | 01:07 | icon and turn on this check box,
Show all file name extensions.
| | 01:12 | This is a really great option to have turned
on, in my opinion, because what it does is
| | 01:16 | it shows you extensions even if
they are not part of the file name.
| | 01:21 | And that way you can tell
exactly how a file was saved.
| | 01:24 | Once you've made a change, you can go and
close the Finder Preferences dialog box.
| | 01:29 | Now ideally you'd be able to double-click
on any one of these three files and have it
| | 01:33 | open in Illustrator.
| | 01:35 | For example, this first file, Welcome.ai--
AI stands for Adobe Illustrator--this is the
| | 01:41 | program's native file format.
| | 01:43 | So if I double-click on this file, sure
enough it opens up in Illustrator just fine, which
| | 01:48 | is to be expected.
| | 01:49 | However, that may or may
not be the case for you.
| | 01:52 | You may find that it opens in an older version
of Illustrator or something along those lines,
| | 01:57 | and I'll show you how to solve
that problem in just a moment.
| | 02:00 | But assuming that that worked out okay,
let's go check out the other files.
| | 02:04 | I'll go up to the Illustrator menu and choose Hide
Illustrator and that will return me to the Finder.
| | 02:10 | This next file Welcome.eps--EPS stands for
Encapsulated PostScript, which for years has
| | 02:16 | been used to play vector-based our work inside page
layout program such as QuarkXPress, and InDesign.
| | 02:23 | Now as I say this file was created in
Illustrator, however if I double-click on it, it ends up
| | 02:28 | opening up inside of Preview and Preview
goes ahead and automatically converts the file
| | 02:34 | from the EPS format to PDF, which is
not something that I want to have happen.
| | 02:40 | Also, of course, it's a big problem that I'm
seeing the file inside Preview because if
| | 02:44 | I wanted to edit it, then I couldn't
because Preview is not Illustrator.
| | 02:50 | So I'm going to go up to the
Preview menu and choose Quit Preview.
| | 02:54 | And we're going to setup this EPS file so that in the
future it opens in the Illustrator, and here's how.
| | 03:00 | Make sure the file is selected, then go to
the File menu and choose the Get Info command,
| | 03:05 | you also have a keyboard shortcut of Command+I and
that will bring up this little strip of a window here.
| | 03:10 | Now the little bucket of information that
we're interested in is this one, Open with,
| | 03:15 | but in my case it's collapsed.
| | 03:17 | So I'll click on the triangle to expand that
panel, and then I'll go ahead and switch from
| | 03:21 | Preview to the most recent version of Illustrator,
very important for working inside this series.
| | 03:28 | And if you don't Illustrator in the list, by
the way, then you have to choose the other
| | 03:32 | command and look for the
application inside your Applications folder.
| | 03:37 | Assuming that you do find it however, go
ahead and click the Change All, the OS will ask
| | 03:41 | you, hey do you really want to change all EPS
documents so they open inside of Illustrator
| | 03:46 | and the answer of course is Yes, so go ahead
and click on the Continue button to make it so.
| | 03:51 | And now you can close that Info window.
| | 03:53 | And when you double-click on the Welcome.eps
file this time, it should open successfully
| | 03:58 | inside Illustrator.
| | 04:00 | All right let's try that one more time.
| | 04:01 | I am going to go up to the Illustrator
menu and choose Hide Illustrator once again.
| | 04:06 | We've got a final file, Welcome.svg,
that's the Scalable Vector Graphics format.
| | 04:12 | And what it allows you to do is post
scalable vector-based graphics to a web site.
| | 04:17 | So not surprisingly when I double-click on
this file, it ends up opening in the web browser
| | 04:22 | that's installed on this machine,
which happens to be Safari.
| | 04:27 | So I could zoom out from the graphic, and I can go
ahead and expand the window and check out this file.
| | 04:31 | And it's nice to see that it ends up looking
so great inside of Safari of all programs.
| | 04:37 | But if I want to edit the file once again,
I need it to open inside of Illustrator.
| | 04:42 | So I'm going to escape out of this full screen view,
and I'll hide Safari just as I hid Illustrator
| | 04:47 | a moment ago, and let's solve the problem
the same way we did before, which is to select
| | 04:52 | the file, press Command+I, the
keyboard shortcut for the Get Info command.
| | 04:58 | Make sure that Open with is expanded let's
go ahead and switch from Safari to the most
| | 05:03 | recent version of Illustrator, then click
the Change All button, then click the Continue
| | 05:07 | button, and then close the Get Info window.
| | 05:11 | Now if I double-click on this file, it once
again ends up opening up inside of Illustrator
| | 05:17 | just as I'd hoped.
| | 05:19 | And that friends is how you set things up
so that any Compatible Vector Graphic file
| | 05:24 | will open up inside the Adobe Illustrator.
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| Creating a new document| 00:00 | In this movie, I will show you how to
create a new document inside Illustrator.
| | 00:04 | Like most of the movies in this
course, this one has cross-platform.
| | 00:08 | So even though I'm showing you how things work on
a PC, everything works exactly the same on a Mac.
| | 00:14 | You start off much as you might imagine by
going to the File menu and choosing the New
| | 00:18 | command where you have that standard keyboard
shortcut Ctrl+N here on a PC, or Command+N on a Mac.
| | 00:24 | That'll go ahead and bring up
the New Document dialog box.
| | 00:27 | Your first option is to name the document.
Now technically you don't name the file until
| | 00:32 | you save it, however this gives you a
chance to identify the document upfront.
| | 00:36 | I am just going to paste in a name I created
in advance because I am a terrible typist.
| | 00:42 | The next option allows you to select from a
few predefined Profiles all of which will
| | 00:47 | dial in settings inside this dialog box.
| | 00:50 | So if you intend to create a document for
Commercial Reproduction then you select Print.
| | 00:54 | If you're trying to dummy up a
web page then you select Web.
| | 00:58 | If you want to create a document for a device
such as an iPad or iPhone then you have got
| | 01:03 | this Devices option and so forth.
| | 01:05 | I am going to go ahead and switch to Device
for a second so that you can see that we have
| | 01:09 | a lot of different devices to select from.
| | 01:12 | In the case of iPad however the
information is little out of date.
| | 01:16 | If you're designing for an iPad 3, then you
want a Width 1536 pixels and a Height of 2048,
| | 01:24 | much higher resolution than the earlier iPads.
| | 01:26 | But for now, I'm more
interested in creating a print document.
| | 01:30 | There is this next option Number of Artboards.
| | 01:33 | Artboard is Illustrator's name for a page.
| | 01:36 | So if were to dial in 6 artboards, I'd
be creating a six page document.
| | 01:41 | Now there are a couple of reasons why
Illustrator uses this nomenclature.
| | 01:44 | First of all, an artboard doesn't have
to be linked to any specific page size.
| | 01:49 | You can print to a letter-size page but
you can make the page any size you like.
| | 01:54 | Also each and every artboard can be
a different size and orientation.
| | 01:58 | You can use artboards to create multi page documents,
or you can use them to create variations on a design.
| | 02:05 | These next icons allow you to change how the
artboards are gridded when you're zoomed way out from them.
| | 02:10 | So in other words, how
they're arranged on a pasteboard.
| | 02:13 | So most likely you are going to Grid by Row
at least here in the States but you could
| | 02:17 | just arrange things at along
row or even a long column.
| | 02:20 | Here is the thing to remember, you
can always change your mind later.
| | 02:24 | So, you don't have to get it exactly right now.
| | 02:27 | Notice this next option allows you to Change
to Right to Left Layout which is more common
| | 02:31 | in non-Western countries.
| | 02:34 | The Columns option determines how many
rows and columns of artboard you will have.
| | 02:38 | If I leave this set to 3 as by default then
I will arrange my six artboards in the three
| | 02:43 | vertical columns and 2 horizontal rows.
| | 02:46 | There's this next option Spacing it is set
2 pt by default and if you check out your
| | 02:51 | units over here, you'll see that
you have Points, Picas and Inches.
| | 02:55 | These are old school imperial measurements that
have been used for centuries in the world of design.
| | 03:01 | Now here's how they work.
| | 03:03 | There are 72 points in a single inch which
makes them great for measuring very small
| | 03:08 | items such as text, for example.
| | 03:11 | Picas follow in between, so there are 6 Picas
inside of an inch and 12 points inside of a pica.
| | 03:19 | We also have the metric units millimeters
and centimeters, if you prefer, and if you're
| | 03:23 | designing for the screen then
presumably, you would want to work in pixels.
| | 03:26 | I am going to simplify things a little bit
by switching to Inches, and then I am going
| | 03:31 | to dial in Width value 6 and a Height value
of 8, and I'm also going to change the Spacing
| | 03:37 | Value which determines the amount of
space between an artbord, and its neighbor.
| | 03:41 | We'll go ahead and change that to 0.5 inches.
| | 03:45 | You have these Orientation icons, so if I
were to switch to Landscape that would also
| | 03:50 | go ahead and swap my width and height values.
| | 03:52 | However, I want my pages to be upright.
| | 03:55 | Finally, you can adjust the Bleed, and you use
a Bleed specifically when creating documents
| | 04:00 | for commercial reproduction, and in other words,
you are going to take document to commercial
| | 04:05 | printer, and you want artboard to bleed all the
way past the edges of the trim size of the pages.
| | 04:12 | So what you're doing here is you are
creating a little bit of wiggle room.
| | 04:15 | Now by default all of the
Bleed values are linked together.
| | 04:18 | I am going to go ahead and take my Bleed up
to 0.25 in that will change all the values
| | 04:22 | in kind, which gives me a lot of room,
quarter inches big bleed, and now I'll go ahead and
| | 04:28 | click OK in order to make my new document,
and you can see that the black outlines and
| | 04:35 | the gray outlines as well indicate the
boundaries of artboards which translates to the final
| | 04:40 | trim size, and these red outlines indicate
a wiggle room or bleed, and those were the
| | 04:46 | basics of creating a new
document here inside Illustrator.
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| Advanced document controls| 00:00 | In this movie I'll introduce you to the Advanced
Controls that are available to you in creating
| | 00:05 | a new document, they are not really any
more advanced in what we've seen so far.
| | 00:09 | It just happened to reside in an
area of the dialog box called Advanced.
| | 00:13 | We will go up to the File menu and choose a New
command to bring up my New Document dialog box.
| | 00:19 | And I'll go ahead and call this document 8-page
newsletter because that's what it's going to be.
| | 00:24 | And I'll go ahead and change the
Number of Artboards to 8 as well.
| | 00:28 | And change the number of Columns to 4 so that the
Artboards are arranged in 4 columns and 2 rows.
| | 00:34 | I'm going to switch back to the default
unit of measure Points just so that I can show
| | 00:39 | you that you can override the
unit of measure anytime you like.
| | 00:43 | So notice that Illustrator has gone ahead
and converted all of my inch settings, my
| | 00:47 | active Points which is why now my Artboards
are going to be 432 pts wide and 576 pts tall.
| | 00:54 | I'm kind of thinking the Spacing value
is going to be a little bit too high.
| | 00:58 | I'd like to change it to a quarter inch, but let's
say I don't know what a quarter inch is in Points.
| | 01:02 | Well, all you have to do is dial in 0.25 in, like
that, and then press Tab, it will automatically
| | 01:09 | convert to a different unit of measure, or
I could even dial in Millimeters if I want,
| | 01:15 | 100mm, for example, then press Tab, and
Illustrator goes ahead and converts it to 283.46 pts--who
| | 01:23 | would've known? But a quarter inch
is probably closer to what I want.
| | 01:27 | Another way to do it is to dial in 0.25" and
then press the Tab key, convert it over to 18 pts.
| | 01:35 | So pretty much anything you think
you should be able to do you can.
| | 01:39 | There are so many different ways
to indicate these units of measure.
| | 01:42 | I can even dial in a
fraction if I want to, like 1/3".
| | 01:47 | That will go ahead and give me a third of
an inch, and that converts over to 24 pt.
| | 01:52 | Here are the Advanced options, to see them
you just click on this Arrowhead in order
| | 01:57 | to expand the dialog box.
| | 01:59 | And notice that we have got a
total of four new options in all.
| | 02:03 | The first allows me to change my color space,
CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and
| | 02:09 | the key color Black, which are the inks
most commonly used in commercial printing.
| | 02:14 | RGB stands for Red, Green, Blue which is
a color space employed by your Monitor.
| | 02:19 | So typically it works like this.
| | 02:21 | If you are creating a document for print, you
want CMYK, if you're creating a web graphic
| | 02:26 | something that's going to be displayed on
a screen or an illustration that you want
| | 02:31 | to bring over into Photoshop or
Flash, then you want to select RGB.
| | 02:36 | I'm going to stick with CMYK.
| | 02:38 | Next we have a Raster Effects.
| | 02:40 | Now Raster means pixels and most common Raster
Effect, we'll see lots of them in the future
| | 02:45 | chapter, but the most
common one is the Drop Shadow.
| | 02:48 | And it's just more efficient to render a Drop
Shadow using pixels instead of vector-based outlines.
| | 02:55 | So you want to specify what the resolution
of your Drop Shadows and other typically soft
| | 03:00 | effects are going to be.
| | 03:01 | Now if you are creating
screen art then 72 ppi is fine.
| | 03:05 | If you're creating print document, presumably
you would want high-resolution imagery, the
| | 03:10 | problem is it will take longer for Illustrator to
render those Drop Shadows in other pixels effects.
| | 03:15 | In which case, if the program is behaving
sluggishly, you may want to switch that down
| | 03:19 | to Medium (150 ppi), again, you're probably
not going to see that lower resolution, because
| | 03:25 | you're working with a soft effect like a
Drop Shadow, so you don't need a lot of pixels
| | 03:29 | in the first place.
| | 03:30 | That's what I'm going to do,
switch over to Medium here.
| | 03:33 | Next, we have the Preview mode and by default
you are just going to see standard illustration
| | 03:38 | preview on screen just as you would expect.
| | 03:39 | If you are creating graphics for the web or
for devices like the iPad, iPhone, and so
| | 03:45 | forth, then you probably want to see a pixel
preview, that way you can see how your vector
| | 03:49 | art aligns to the actual pixels
that it will ultimately become.
| | 03:54 | And then finally, for some commercial
output, you may want to switch to Overprint.
| | 03:59 | What that means is if you're overprinting
a cyan object on top of a magenta object,
| | 04:03 | for example, you can see that they
will overprint to produce a deep Blue.
| | 04:08 | But if you don't use overprinting, it's
just an option available to you, and you might
| | 04:12 | as well leave the Preview mode set to Default.
| | 04:15 | And then finally, we have got this check box,
Align New Objects to Pixel Grid, which is
| | 04:19 | perfect if you're creating web designs, that kind of
thing, anything that's going to the screen ultimately.
| | 04:24 | If you are not going to the screen, this is
a print document after all, then you don't
| | 04:28 | need to worry about it.
| | 04:30 | And now I will go ahead and click OK, in
order to create that new 8-page document with the
| | 04:34 | Artboards arranged in 4 columns and 2 rows.
| | 04:38 | And that's how you take advantage of the more advanced
settings inside the New Document dialog box.
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| Modifying your document| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how I created
the document that you see before you on screen.
| | 00:05 | I'll give you a rough sense for what you can
do in Illustrator and also give us a chance
| | 00:09 | to save our changes in the very next movie.
| | 00:12 | The name of the file is 8-page newsletter.
ai is found inside the O1makedoc folder, and
| | 00:18 | you can see that I've label each of
my artboards with these big numbers.
| | 00:23 | And each one of the numbers is
exactly centered on the page.
| | 00:26 | I am excited to show you how I did that
because it's a really cool technique.
| | 00:30 | So I am going to starts things off by going
up to the Select menu and choosing the All
| | 00:33 | Command, or you can press Ctrl+A, or Command+A on a Mac,
that's going to select all eight of those numbers.
| | 00:40 | And then I'll press the Shift key and Click
on the 1 in order to deselect it, and you
| | 00:45 | can see that is no longer selected
because its baseline is disappeared.
| | 00:48 | And the baseline is the imaginary line upon
which all text sets, so in other words we
| | 00:54 | have everything but the 1 selected.
| | 00:56 | And I am going to press the Backspace key
or the Delete key on the Mac, in order to
| | 01:00 | get rid of everything.
| | 01:01 | And I'm take this one is just could want to
them to move them to an arbitrary location.
| | 01:05 | So let's start things off by centering the one,
and you do that by going up to the Control
| | 01:10 | panel at the top of the screen, go over here
to the right-hand side, and you'll see word
| | 01:14 | Align, go ahead and click on it.
| | 01:17 | And then we'll go and change is Align to Option
from Align to Selection to Align to Artboard.
| | 01:23 | And now I'll click on each one of these
Middle Align Icons both Horizontal Align Center,
| | 01:29 | and then Vertical Align Center.
| | 01:31 | And then I'll go ahead and hide the Align
panel and that looks a little high to me.
| | 01:36 | So I am going to press Shift Down arrow--let's say
two times--in order to nudge the number downward.
| | 01:43 | Now I'll go up to the Edit menu, and I'll
choose the Cut Command or press Ctrl+X, or
| | 01:48 | Command+X on the Mac.
| | 01:49 | To go ahead and move that one to the clipboard,
and now I'll go up to the Edit menu and choose
| | 01:54 | one of the coolest commands inside the
software paste on all artboards which has a gigantic
| | 02:00 | keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+
Alt+V, or Command+Shift+Opt+V.
| | 02:06 | And then we'll go ahead and paste
that number onto every single page.
| | 02:10 | And all you have to do is switch to the Type
tool, which I can get by pressing the T key.
| | 02:15 | But I should say here you may notice
that on your toolbox the T is further down.
| | 02:21 | That's because you're working with a Single
Column toolbox, and you can switch between
| | 02:25 | them by clicking on this
whole Double Arrow Icon.
| | 02:28 | I have to work with a Double Column toolbox
because my screen's not tall enough to accommodate
| | 02:33 | all of the tools otherwise.
| | 02:35 | Now I am going to switch to the Type tool,
and then it's just a matter of selecting each
| | 02:40 | one of these numbers and
changing it to a different number.
| | 02:44 | So I'm selecting all the ones and
changing them, of course, to 2 through 8.
| | 02:49 | And now I'll just switch back to my Default
tool which Illustrator calls the Selection tool
| | 02:54 | I just call it the Black Arrow tool
because after all it is a black arrow.
| | 02:58 | And that is how you construct a quick
and dirty document here in Illustrator.
| | 03:03 | In the next movie, I'll show
you how to save your changes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Saving changes| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you how to save a
document to the native AI or Adobe Illustrator format.
| | 00:06 | Take a look at the name of the document up here
in the Title tab, it says 8-page newsletter.ai
| | 00:11 | with an asterisk at the end of it.
| | 00:13 | That Asterisk indicates
that we have unsaved changes.
| | 00:17 | You can update the file on
disk in one or two ways.
| | 00:20 | Go to the of the File menu and choose to Save
command, which will overwrite the existing file.
| | 00:24 | The thing is if you choose to Save command
in the case of this specific file, you'll
| | 00:29 | see this warning message.
| | 00:31 | And what it's telling you is that when you
save to a legacy format, you to can lose stuff.
| | 00:37 | Basically, as you'll see shortly, Illustrator
allows you to save to a lot of its older file
| | 00:43 | formats which is a very good thing if you
want to share files with other people, such
| | 00:48 | as in the case of me sharing files with you.
| | 00:51 | Now this file happens to be saved in the CS4
format and that's because I want people who
| | 00:57 | have CS4 and later to be
able to open this file.
| | 01:00 | I've made sure that every single file I give
you is still compatible with the newest version
| | 01:06 | of the software, so you
have nothing to worry about.
| | 01:09 | So what I'd like you to do is click on the
Don't Show Again check box, and then go ahead
| | 01:14 | and click OK if you want to
save the changes to this file.
| | 01:18 | In my case I'm going cancel out, because I
want to save a new version of this file.
| | 01:23 | So I'll go up to the File menu, and I'll choose
a Save As command, or you can press the shortcut
| | 01:29 | Ctrl+Shift+S, or Command+Shift+S on the Mac.
| | 01:32 | And that will bring up the Save As dialog box.
| | 01:34 | Notice that I am already
pointed to my O1_make_doc folder.
| | 01:38 | So I'm just going to give this a new name,
and that name will be let's say, New numbers.
| | 01:44 | And now I'll click on the Save button, in order
to bring up the Illustrator Options dialog box.
| | 01:49 | It's pretty complex dialog box, I'm
going to walk through how it works.
| | 01:53 | However, if you like, if you just want to
save a standard document, all you have to
| | 01:56 | do is click on the OK button, and you're done.
| | 01:59 | But here's what's going on.
| | 02:00 | We have got that this Version option, as
you can see here, and Illustrator does allow
| | 02:05 | you to go back way, way to previous versions
of the software, so in other words, if you're
| | 02:10 | working with someone who doesn't have the
most recent version of Illustrator, you can
| | 02:14 | save off a file that they could use.
| | 02:16 | Think to bear in mind is each step backward
loses features, so, for example, if were to
| | 02:22 | select the Illustrator CS3 format, then
Illustrator is going to tell me down here that Saving
| | 02:27 | to a legacy format may cause some changes
to your text layout and disable some of the
| | 02:32 | editing features when the
document is read back in.
| | 02:35 | Also, any hidden Appearance
attributes will be discarded.
| | 02:39 | Problem is that that's pretty vague, this is
one specific item about the hidden Appearance
| | 02:44 | attributes, otherwise you don't know, for
example, that one of the things you're going
| | 02:48 | to lose is your multiple artboards, because
Illustrator CS3 didn't support multiple artboards,
| | 02:53 | that feature was introduced in Illustrator CS4.
| | 02:56 | You kind of have to know what's
going on with the previous format.
| | 03:00 | If you were want to work with CS3 then you
probably want to go ahead and save each one
| | 03:03 | of your artboards to a separate file, and
you can either save all the artboards, all
| | 03:08 | eight of them to separate files, or you could
define a range, I could say 2 and also comma
| | 03:14 | 5-7 so that would indicate pages 2, 5, 6, & 7.
| | 03:20 | Safest thing to do, though, is to go ahead
and stick with either Illustrator CS6, or
| | 03:25 | you just lose a few features if you go back to the
Illustrator CS5, nothing inside of this file actually.
| | 03:30 | But I'll go and stick with CS6, the safest
thing to do, by the way, is to make sure you
| | 03:34 | save at least one version of the file to the CS6
format and if you want to save a backward-compatible
| | 03:40 | version, you could do that as well,
and that way you are fully protected.
| | 03:44 | Subset fonts, you don't need to worry about that, Create PDF
Compatible Files, this one is really interesting.
| | 03:50 | If you have this check box turned on as by
default, then you can do two things, open
| | 03:55 | the file inside the free Adobe Reader, so
the person doesn't have to have Illustrator
| | 03:59 | to take a look at your file.
| | 04:01 | And you can download the free
Adobe Reader from adobe.com.
| | 04:04 | And the other thing is you can place the file
into a different application such as in InDesign,
| | 04:09 | InDesign requires this
check box to be turned on.
| | 04:12 | As for the next two check boxes, you want
to have them turned on, because you do want
| | 04:16 | to embed a color profile so that the colors
on another person's screen assuming that it's
| | 04:21 | calibrated, will match the colors that you
saw, and you want to use Compression, that
| | 04:26 | is lossless compression, by the way, it bears
no resemblance to JPEG, for example, so it's
| | 04:30 | not going to do any harm to your file.
| | 04:32 | And then presumably we would actually want
to turn this check box Save each artboard
| | 04:36 | to a separate file off so that worth
saving a single multipage document.
| | 04:41 | And then I'll drop down here
and click on the OK button.
| | 04:44 | There are a couple of other things to know
about saving just in passing here, I'll go
| | 04:49 | back to the File menu and
choose the Save As command.
| | 04:52 | I want you to see how there's the Save as
Type option here, which allows you to specify
| | 04:57 | different file types, the most
common of which are PDF and EPS.
| | 05:01 | So if you wanted to create a straight PDF
file that you can open once again in the free
| | 05:06 | Adobe Reader or inside Acrobat Professional,
then you could to choose this but by default
| | 05:12 | the .ai file is already compatible with Adobe
Reader and so forth, because it has got that
| | 05:17 | embedded PDF description of the file.
| | 05:19 | So that's not really a reason
specifically to choose PDF.
| | 05:23 | And then finally, there's EPS, it's a very
popular format, back in the day we used to
| | 05:28 | uses it for everything, anytime you wanted
to create an illustration and place it into
| | 05:32 | say PageMaker or
QuarkXPress, you would go with EPS.
| | 05:36 | But InDesign totally changed that, you don't
need EPS if you work with InDesign, you can
| | 05:41 | place ai files directly.
| | 05:43 | So the only reason to go the EPS route is
to create a very backward-compatible version
| | 05:49 | of the file that you are going to place in
some older version of QuarkXPress, for example.
| | 05:52 | All right, I'm going to
go ahead and cancel out.
| | 05:55 | That is everything there is
to know about saving a file.
| | 05:59 | In the next movie, I will show you how to
close multiple documents in one operation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Closing all open documents| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you how to close
multiple Illustrations in a single operation.
| | 00:05 | And the reason this is variable is because
most folks don't know the feature exists.
| | 00:09 | And there are times we are cleaning up for
the day, and you just want to get everything
| | 00:13 | off your screen and feel a
sense of accomplishment.
| | 00:17 | Now I want you to notice in passing here
that I have Three Illustrations open, and I've
| | 00:21 | made slight changes to every one of them.
| | 00:24 | Just so that Illustrator will generate
a Warning when I try to close the file.
| | 00:28 | Now one way to close all Illustrations is to
click on the Close button for the Application
| | 00:33 | which on the PC is located
in the upper right corner.
| | 00:36 | However, that will quit the program that's
just the same as going to the File menu and
| | 00:39 | choosing either the Exit Command here on
the PC or the Quick Command on the Mac.
| | 00:44 | Now if you're working on a Mac, you may see
all of your Open Documents as Tabs inside
| | 00:50 | of one big document window with a light gray
title bar, in which case, you can go ahead
| | 00:56 | and click on the Close button on the far left
side of the Title Bar, and that will go ahead
| | 01:01 | and close all documents that are
open as tabs inside of that Window.
| | 01:07 | And then you'll be asked if you want to save your
changes, we will come back to that in a moment.
| | 01:11 | The problem is this option while convenient
is not an option on the PC and whether you're
| | 01:17 | working on a Mac, or the PC you only have one
Standard Close Command under the File menu.
| | 01:23 | And that Command Closes the Active
Document and only the Active Document.
| | 01:28 | What we really want to do is close everything,
there's just one Standard Close Command which
| | 01:33 | is going to close the Active
Illustration and nothing more.
| | 01:36 | Notice however, that there is a keyboard
shortcut of Ctrl+W, or Command+W on the Mac.
| | 01:41 | If you have the Alt key here on the PC or
the Option key on a Mac, you'll initiate the
| | 01:46 | closing of all open Illustrations.
Let me show you how that works.
| | 01:49 | Go ahead and escape out of there, and then press
Ctrl+Alt+W, that would be Command+Opt+W on a Mac.
| | 01:56 | You'll notice now I get warning that's telling me
that I have Unsaved Changes What I Want to Do about It.
| | 02:01 | And I am going to get this warning for
each and every document that has changes.
| | 02:06 | On a PC, your first buttons is going to be Yes let's
Save on the Mac, and that will course update the file.
| | 02:11 | If you don't want to update the file you
just want throw your edits away, then you click
| | 02:15 | No here on the PC or don't Save on a Mac,
and finally you have got a Cancel button which
| | 02:20 | will stop the closing of the files
and leave everything the way it was.
| | 02:24 | You also have keyboard shortcuts incidentally.
| | 02:26 | Here on the PC their Y for Yes and N
for No and Escape for Escape or Cancel.
| | 02:32 | Here on a Mac, your the buttons appear in
a different order, it's S for Save, it's D
| | 02:37 | for Don't Save, and it's
the Escape key to Cancel Out.
| | 02:41 | I am just doing this for
the sake of demonstration.
| | 02:45 | So I am going to press the End key in over
to activate the No button, that would be D
| | 02:49 | for Don't Save on the Mac, and finally I'll
just press the End key again and that closes
| | 02:55 | every single one of those three opened files.
| | 02:58 | And now you can go home knowing you had a
productive day and no one can ruin your
| | 03:02 | Open Documents while
you're away from the office.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Working with ArtboardsPages of any size, at any angle| 00:00 | Illustrator is an exceedingly flexible program.
| | 00:03 | It lets you create a single piece
of artwork or a multi-page design.
| | 00:07 | Only Illustrator has a special word for pages,
it calls them artboards, because each artboard
| | 00:13 | is less a page, and more a digital canvas.
| | 00:17 | Within a single document, each artboard can
be any size you want, and you can spread the
| | 00:22 | artboards out anywhere, all across your desktop.
| | 00:26 | This isn't page 1, page 2, page 3, page 4,
this is artboard 1, artboard 2, artboard 3,
| | 00:34 | artboard 4, really whatever you want.
| | 00:37 | In this chapter, I show you how to create
artboards wherever you like, even if it means
| | 00:42 | creating artboards inside other artboards.
| | 00:45 | And then I show you how to clean them up so that
all the artboards fall into perfect alignment.
| | 00:51 | You can work however you like,
Illustrator knows its job is to keep up with you.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Moving and modifying artboards| 00:00 | In this movie, I will show you how to modify a
document by moving its artboards to different locations.
| | 00:06 | This works a little differently inside
Illustrator than it does inside other programs.
| | 00:10 | Quite a bit differently than you would
reasonably think as well but once you come to terms with
| | 00:14 | it makes a fair amount of sense.
| | 00:17 | Working inside of a document called 8-page
newsletter.ai, it's found inside the O2artboards folder.
| | 00:23 | Notice if you go up here to the File menu,
you have a Document Setup Command, that allows
| | 00:28 | you to modify the existing document.
| | 00:30 | The keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+Alt+P, or Command+Opt
+P on the Mac, I will go and choose the command.
| | 00:36 | Notice that we have a whole slew of options
that we did not see in the new Document Dialog
| | 00:42 | Box, and we're missing a lot of those options
as well, we have no control over page size.
| | 00:48 | The only options that we have that are the
same these Bleed values, and the option to
| | 00:52 | change the unit of measure.
| | 00:54 | We do have this button right here called
Edit Artboards, and you can either click on it,
| | 00:59 | which will take you to the Edit Artboard
mode or going Cancel out of this dialog box.
| | 01:04 | You also have the option of selecting the
Artboard tool, so you have to switch tools
| | 01:10 | in order to edit the Artboards, and this
tool has a keyboard shortcut of Shift+O.
| | 01:15 | I'm going to go ahead and click on it
in order to switch to the Artboard mode.
| | 01:19 | And notice now that the active Artboard is
highlighted, and I can drag it to a different
| | 01:24 | location to move it, and this area back
here on which the Artboards rest, this area of
| | 01:30 | gray is known as the Pasteboard, or you sometimes see
it called the Canvas as well inside of Illustrator.
| | 01:37 | I prefer Pasteboard, however, because you
can move objects into the Pasteboard if you
| | 01:41 | want to get them off the printed
pages just to keep them around for later.
| | 01:45 | Notice up here in the Options bar, we have
this icon that says Move/Copy Artwork with
| | 01:51 | Artboard, and by default it's turned on.
| | 01:54 | So that means if I drag this Artboard with
a 1 in it, the one moves along as well, and
| | 01:59 | now that if I put Artboards in this location,
it thinks that the 2, 5 & 6 are part of the
| | 02:04 | gang, and I would move them along with.
| | 02:07 | Now I have got the 3 & 7 involved and
ultimately I could get all the numbers on to this one
| | 02:11 | Artboards if I like.
| | 02:13 | Of course, there's no reason to do that I've
made a mess of this document, which is why
| | 02:17 | it's fortunate that Illustrator not only provides an Undo
command but it also provides you with multiple Undo's.
| | 02:24 | And you perform the Undo's either by choosing
this first command from the Edit menu or by
| | 02:27 | pressing Ctrl+Z on the PC,
or Command+Z on the Mac.
| | 02:31 | And I'll just keep pressing that keyboard
shortcut until I get my pages back to where they were.
| | 02:37 | Another option for restoring the appearance
of your Artwork is to go up to the File menu
| | 02:41 | and choose the Revert command.
| | 02:43 | Now my case revert is dimmed and that's
because I went ahead and undid everything that I've
| | 02:47 | done since opening the document.
| | 02:49 | So, go ahead and redo the last operations by
going up to the Edit menu and either choosing
| | 02:54 | the Redo command, or you can press Ctrl
+Shift+C, or Cmd+Shift+C on the Mac.
| | 02:59 | And again, we've got multiple redo's as well.
| | 03:02 | So if I press Ctrl+Shift+C, or Cmd+Shift+C, again,
then I go ahead and remove the 1, 2, 5, & 6.
| | 03:09 | Now let's say I want to get back to
the original version of this Artwork.
| | 03:13 | Go up to the File menu and choose the Revert
command, or you have a keyboard shortcut of F12.
| | 03:19 | When I choose this command I get a warning that
tells me hey, you're about to lose everything
| | 03:23 | you've done that you didn't
save associate with this document.
| | 03:26 | And this is not an undoable operation.
| | 03:29 | So, it's something of a defcon
if you really messed things up.
| | 03:33 | This is a command to take care of things, and
then you click on the Revert button everything
| | 03:37 | goes back to the way was you notice up here
in the Edit menu, the Undo command is dimmed
| | 03:41 | because as I say reverting is not
undoable, so take care with that one.
| | 03:47 | Now let's say you want to move in Artboard but
you don't want move the contents of that Artboard.
| | 03:51 | You want to everything stay where it is.
| | 03:53 | Then you go to the Options bar and turn off
Move/Copy Artwork with Artboard, and then
| | 03:59 | you drag the Artboard any where you like
and notice that the contents of that Artboard
| | 04:03 | never move along with it.
| | 04:05 | That's how you move in Artboard
either with or without the Artwork.
| | 04:09 | Just remember, anytime you want to change
your Artboards, whether you're moving them
| | 04:13 | or changing their size as
we'll see in the next exercise.
| | 04:16 | You want to go ahead and switch over to the
Artboard tool which you can get by pressing Shift+O.
| | 04:22 | To leave the Artboard mode, you either
switch to any other tool here inside the toolbox,
| | 04:27 | or you just press the Escape key, which will
take you back to your last used tool which
| | 04:31 | in my case is the Black arrow.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Changing the size and shape of artboards| 00:00 | In this movie, I will show you how to change
the change the shape and size of your artboards.
| | 00:04 | I have gone ahead and restored the saved
version of 8-page newsletter.ai found inside the
| | 00:08 | 02_artboards folder.
| | 00:10 | Now the first thing I would like you to do,
just to make sure that you and I are on the
| | 00:14 | same page, is to go up to the View menu, and make
sure that the Smart Guides command is turned on.
| | 00:20 | If you see a check mark everything's good,
if not go ahead and choose the command, you
| | 00:24 | also have the keyboard shortcut
of Ctrl+U and Command+U on a Mac.
| | 00:28 | What Smart Guides do is they allow you to
align objects inside of your illustrations
| | 00:33 | as well as artboards on the fly.
| | 00:35 | Next step, of course, is to switch to
Artboard tool, you can get by pressing Shift+O, or
| | 00:40 | you can just click on it
here inside the toolbox.
| | 00:42 | But before I do that, I
want you to notice something.
| | 00:46 | At this point, you can see that page 1 is
active because it has a black outline, whereas
| | 00:52 | page 2 or Artboard 2 if you prefer is not
selected nor or any of the others, because
| | 00:57 | they have gray outlines.
| | 01:00 | If you click on let's say Artboard 4, you
can see that it gets the black outline because
| | 01:04 | it's now active and the others are inactive.
| | 01:07 | You'll also see a number 4 down here in
the bottom left corner of the window.
| | 01:12 | Illustrator goes ahead and numbers Artboards
automatically, in the order you create them.
| | 01:16 | You can override that however that
I will show you in a later movie.
| | 01:20 | Now I will go ahead and switch to the Artboard
tool and notice that Artboard 4 is highlighted.
| | 01:25 | So I just want you to see that artboard that's
selected in a standard mode also become selected
| | 01:30 | here inside Artboard mode.
| | 01:33 | I am going to go ahead and switch back to
Artboard 1 by clicking on it and notice that
| | 01:37 | you have these handles that
are surrounding the Artboard.
| | 01:39 | If you drag one of the handles then you will
resize Artboard on the fly and see those green
| | 01:45 | lines, those are the Smart Guides.
| | 01:47 | So I have got one Smart Guide on the far
right side of artboard and another down there at
| | 01:51 | the bottom that's showing me
that I have a center intersection.
| | 01:54 | So I know that I'm exactly aligned to the
right side of pages 2 and 6 as well as the
| | 02:01 | center of the bottom row of artboards.
| | 02:03 | Now, I am going to drag this bottom handle
down until I get alignment with the bottom
| | 02:08 | of those artboards, and I now have this
large artboard that includes 1, 2, 5, and 6 and
| | 02:14 | has independent artboards inside of it for 2,
5, and 6, which can be a very useful way
| | 02:19 | to work if you want to have one larger
artboard that includes all the artwork inside of a
| | 02:23 | document, for example, as well as
independent artboards for each item.
| | 02:28 | It's a great way to organize and
control the output of your artboard.
| | 02:32 | You also have some options that are
available to you up here in the Options bar.
| | 02:36 | Notice that I have these orientation icon,
so I can switch from Portrait to Landscape
| | 02:40 | just by clicking on it.
| | 02:42 | You can also select from preset artboard sizes,
such as the popular page sizes letter here
| | 02:48 | in States and A4 in Europe and elsewhere.
| | 02:50 | I'll go ahead and select A4 for now.
| | 02:53 | You also have numerical control over
the size and location of your artboard.
| | 02:58 | Let's say, I want to go ahead and
switch mine back to 6x8 inches.
| | 03:03 | I would go ahead and highlight Width value,
and you can do that, by the way just by clicking
| | 03:07 | on the letter next to it.
| | 03:09 | So I'll click on the W, and I'll change it
to 6 in, and then press the tab key, and I'll
| | 03:14 | change the Height value which is now active
to 8 in order to reset the size of that page.
| | 03:21 | Notice however, that Illustrator went ahead
and resized the artboard with respect to its
| | 03:25 | center, and that's because the center reference
point is selected up here in the Options bar.
| | 03:30 | If I want to position the artboard with respect
to its upper left corner, I go ahead and click
| | 03:35 | on the upper left point inside of that
reference matrix, and now I'll change the X value to 0,
| | 03:41 | and then I'll tab to the Y value and change it to
0 as well, and that go's ahead and restores
| | 03:46 | the original location of the page. In order
to accept the work just press the Escape key
| | 03:51 | in order to return to the Black Arrow tool.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating and copying artboards| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you a couple ways to
create new artboards, and I'll also introduce
| | 00:05 | you to some artboard editing tricks that hinge on
pressing the Shift and the Alt and Option keys.
| | 00:11 | I've once again restored my
8-page newsletter.ai file.
| | 00:14 | I am going to switch over
here to the Artboard tool.
| | 00:18 | One way to create an artboard is just to drag
somewhere in an empty portion of the pasteboard,
| | 00:24 | like so. And let's say I want to create an artboard
that completely encompasses all of the other artboards.
| | 00:31 | So I've got a new artboard that's
coming in automatically called Artboard 2.
| | 00:36 | I am going to click on the Name item up there
in the Options bar, and I'll change this guy
| | 00:40 | to Uberboard let's say, and then press
the Enter key or the Return key on a Mac.
| | 00:45 | And we can now see that it's artboard number
09, up here in the upper left-hand corner,
| | 00:49 | because after all, it's the
ninth artboard I've created.
| | 00:51 | And we can see it's named Uberboard as well.
| | 00:55 | Now let's say I want this big artboard to
exactly encompass all the other ones with
| | 00:59 | a margin of an inch all the way around.
| | 01:02 | I'd start by reducing the size of the artboard,
so I'm dragging the corner handles until they
| | 01:07 | snap into alignment with the top left corner of
page 1, and the bottom right corner of page 8.
| | 01:14 | Then I'll go up here to be Options bar, and
I'll set the Reference Point back to the center,
| | 01:18 | I'll expand both the Width and Height values
by clicking first on the far right side of
| | 01:23 | that Width value, and then I will enter +
1in, which will give me an additional inch.
| | 01:29 | But that's not really what I want, if I want
an inch all the way around, I need two inches,
| | 01:34 | so I'll go and change that value from 1
to 2, like so, and then press the Tab key.
| | 01:41 | So the remarkable thing is I can not only do
simple math in Illustrator, but I can also
| | 01:46 | do that math using different units of measure.
| | 01:49 | So in this case, for example, with the H value,
I'm adding 1212 points to 2 inches, and then
| | 01:55 | I press the Enter key or the Return
key on the Mac, to accept that change.
| | 02:00 | The difficulty when you're working this way
is getting to the other artboards, because
| | 02:04 | Illustrator considers artboard
09 to be in front of 1 through 8.
| | 02:09 | If I try to click on 1 to select
it, I won't end up selecting it.
| | 02:13 | Instead, I'll create a new artboard.
It just comes in at this arbitrary size.
| | 02:17 | You can see the Width value is 312.
| | 02:20 | 27 points, where is this coming from? I have
no idea, but obviously it's not what we want.
| | 02:26 | Two ways to get rid of this artboard or any
other existing artboard, when it's selected
| | 02:30 | you can just press the Backspace key here
on the PC, or the Delete key on the Mac, or
| | 02:35 | notice that there's this
little closed box right there.
| | 02:37 | If you click on the X in the upper right-
hand corner, then you close the artboard, which
| | 02:42 | is to say you delete it.
| | 02:43 | All right, what I want to do though
as I was saying is select Artboard 01.
| | 02:48 | So here is how that works.
| | 02:49 | To cycle through artboards that are on top
of each other, you press the Alt key or the
| | 02:53 | Option key on the Mac, and you click.
| | 02:56 | And that'll go ahead and
select Artboard 01 instead.
| | 02:59 | What if I want to create a new artboard inside
of an existing artboard, like I want to create
| | 03:04 | this little tiny artboard inside of Artboard 2?
If I were to just start dragging in order
| | 03:09 | to draw a new artboard, I wouldn't draw the
artboard, instead I would move the existing artboard.
| | 03:15 | So I'll press Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z
on the Mac, to undo that movement.
| | 03:19 | Here's what you do instead, you
press the Shift key, and you drag.
| | 03:23 | Now notice, as long as I have the Shift key
down, I go ahead and create an artboard with
| | 03:28 | the proportions of the other
artboards inside this image.
| | 03:31 | If I don't want to constrain the proportions, then I would
release the Shift key as I am drawing the artboard.
| | 03:36 | So you just need to press it right at the
outset of the drag in order to create that
| | 03:39 | new artboard, like so.
| | 03:42 | What if you want to duplicate an artboard? Well,
if I want to move it of course, I just drag.
| | 03:47 | If I want to duplicate it, I press and
hold the Alt key or the Option key on a Mac.
| | 03:51 | Notice that gives me that little clone
cursor there, because I'm seeing two arrow heads,
| | 03:56 | one on top of another.
| | 03:57 | Then you drag while the Alt or Option key is down, and
you go ahead and create a duplicate of that artboard.
| | 04:03 | You may ask, didn't I just say a moment ago
that when you press the Alt key or the Option
| | 04:07 | key on the Mac, and you click on an existing
artboard you cycle back to one of the other
| | 04:10 | ones, and that's true, if I were to Alt+Option-click,
I'd go and select Artboard 2 right through Artboards 09 and 11.
| | 04:19 | However, if you Alt drag,
then you make a copy.
| | 04:22 | Finally, I want to show you how to copy not
only the artboard, but the art that's inside
| | 04:27 | of it as well, and I'll
demonstrate that using Artboard 04.
| | 04:31 | I want to select the artboard right away without
selecting the bigger one, so I'll just Alt-click
| | 04:36 | or Option-click on it so
that I cycle right to it.
| | 04:39 | Then you go up to the Options bar, and you
click on this icon Move/Copy Artwork with
| | 04:44 | artboard to turn it back on, and now you go
ahead and Alt-drag or Option-drag that artboard,
| | 04:50 | and you'll copy both the Artboard, and
the number 04 inside of it, along with.
| | 04:56 | And that friends is how you create and copy
artboards with the help of the Shift as well
| | 05:00 | as the Alt and Option key.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Introducing the Artboard panel| 00:00 | In this movie I'll how you how to delete and
organize artboards from the Artboards panel.
| | 00:05 | I've gone ahead and saved this document 12-page
mess.ai because it is a 12-page mess after all.
| | 00:13 | Let's say I want to tidy things up here, so we
end up with ten identically sized artboards,
| | 00:19 | all of which are absolutely in order.
| | 00:22 | Let's say I make some additional
modifications to what I've got so far.
| | 00:27 | I'll go ahead and switch over to the Artboard
tool, and then I'll Alt-click or Option-click
| | 00:31 | on this Artboard 4 here in order to select
it independently of the Uberboard, and I'll
| | 00:36 | drag it down to the lower right corner.
| | 00:39 | Then I'll Alt-click or Option-click on
Artboard 8 and move it up to this location.
| | 00:44 | And now let's say I want to add another artboard,
but I'm going to do so from the Artboard panel.
| | 00:50 | I'll go up to the Window menu which lists
all the panels inside Illustrator, which we'll
| | 00:55 | discuss in more detail in a later chapter.
| | 00:58 | I'll drop down to this command right there
Artboard and click on it and that brings up
| | 01:02 | Artboards panel over here in the lower
right region of the screen by default.
| | 01:06 | I'm going to drag up on the top of the panel so
I can see every one of my 12 artboards so far.
| | 01:11 | Then I'm going to drop down this little page
icon which allows me to create a new artboard,
| | 01:16 | that's exactly the same
size as the selected artboard.
| | 01:19 | So I'll go ahead and click on it.
| | 01:21 | We end up with a new artboard way over
there in the top right section of the screen.
| | 01:25 | In order to see it better, I'll go up to the
View menu and choose Fit All in Window, or
| | 01:30 | you can press Ctrl+Alt+0, or
Command+Option+0 on a Mac.
| | 01:34 | And that's one of the many navigation
functions that's available to you in Illustrator, all
| | 01:38 | of which we'll discuss in more detail in the
next chapter, and I'm going to go ahead and
| | 01:42 | drag this artboard into its new location.
| | 01:45 | Now what I want to do is get rid of the
Uberboard here, as well as these two little artboards.
| | 01:50 | We'll go ahead and Alt-click a couple of times,
it'd be an Option-click a couple of times
| | 01:54 | there on the one that's number 11.
| | 01:57 | But it's reading as Artboard 4, and I'll just call
it miniboard 1 so that we can keep track of it.
| | 02:03 | I'll do the same with this one.
| | 02:04 | I'll go ahead and Alt-click on it, Option-click
on a Mac, and change its name to miniboard 2.
| | 02:10 | And that's just so we can make sense of
these artboards here inside the Artboards panel.
| | 02:15 | What you think you might be able to do is
with one of the boards selected you could
| | 02:18 | Shift-click on another artboard to add it to
the selection, because Shift-clicking does
| | 02:24 | add to a selection
elsewhere inside Illustrator.
| | 02:26 | It doesn't work here
however inside the Artboard mode.
| | 02:30 | Instead you end up drawing a new very tiny
artboard, which obviously is not what we want.
| | 02:35 | However, you can select multiple
artboards from the Artboards panel.
| | 02:39 | If I click on Uberboard, and then Shift-
click on miniboard 2, notice that I select that
| | 02:44 | range of artboards right there.
| | 02:46 | And then I could add the nonadjacent
Artboard 8, which is that tiny thing I just created
| | 02:51 | a moment ago, by Ctrl-clicking on it
that would be a Command-click on the Mac.
| | 02:57 | So Shift-clicking on artboards inside the
panel selects multiple adjacent artboards,
| | 03:02 | whereas Ctrl-clicking, or Command-clicking
adds a nonadjacent artboard to the selection.
| | 03:07 | Now rather than pressing the Backspace key
or the Delete key on the Mac, which would
| | 03:10 | select just the one artboard that appears to
be selected here inside the Document window,
| | 03:16 | instead you go ahead and drag any one of the
selected artboards on to the trashcan, and
| | 03:21 | that will go ahead and get rid of them.
| | 03:24 | Now let's make some
sense of this document here.
| | 03:26 | Obviously the numbers are fairly wrong
at this point, and we're missing one.
| | 03:30 | So I'm going to click on the Type tool to
select it, or I could press the T key, and
| | 03:34 | then I'll go ahead and select the 8 and make it 4;
select the 4, make it a 5; select the 5, make it a 6.
| | 03:39 | So a lot of busy work here.
Select the 6, make it a 7; the 7, make it an 8.
| | 03:44 | Go ahead and select that
final 4 and make it a 0.
| | 03:47 | And then I'll return to my Black Arrow tool
just by clicking on it, and you can see that
| | 03:51 | the 0 remains selected.
| | 03:53 | So I'm going to go up to the Edit menu and
choose the Copy command or press Ctrl+C, or
| | 03:57 | Command+C on the Mac, and then I'll click
on this ninth page right there, and I'll go
| | 04:02 | up to the Edit menu, and I'll choose this
command, Paste in Front, which has a keyboard
| | 04:07 | shortcut of Ctrl+F, Command+F on a Mac.
| | 04:10 | That goes ahead and aligns the number to
that artboard, and then I'll press the T key to
| | 04:14 | switch back to my Type tool, go ahead and
select that 0, change it to a 9, and then
| | 04:19 | let's similarly modify the artboard.
| | 04:21 | So I'll go ahead and click on the
Artboard tool to switch away from the Type tool.
| | 04:25 | Notice that we have Artboard 1 through 3
just fine but then everything becomes a mess as
| | 04:31 | of this Artboard 8 which should be 4.
| | 04:33 | So I'll go ahead and click on it to make it
active, and I'll change its name to Artboard 4.
| | 04:37 | Then I'll click on this Artboard 4 copy 2,
and I'll change its name to Artboard 5, and
| | 04:43 | I'll click on Artboard 5 and
change its name to Artboard 6.
| | 04:46 | I know a lot busy work, but this is the kind
of stuff you do routinely when you're working
| | 04:50 | with multiple artboards inside of Illustrator.
| | 04:52 | It can be a little cumbersome, a little labor-intensive
as well, but you do have a great deal of flexibility.
| | 04:57 | So I'm changing the names of all these
artboards to match their numbers essentially, but that
| | 05:02 | doesn't really take care of a problem
because I've got Artboard 1, 2 and 3 according to
| | 05:07 | the little numbers up there in the upper left-
hand corner followed by 8, 10, 5, 6, 7, 9, and 4.
| | 05:14 | So the artboards aren't in the
right order, and this can be a problem.
| | 05:19 | I'm going to double-click on Artboard 1 here
inside the Artboards panel which will zoom
| | 05:23 | me in on that page.
| | 05:25 | And then I can advance to the next page by
clicking on this little Next button down here
| | 05:29 | in the lower left-hand corner of the window.
That'll take me to 2, and then the 3.
| | 05:33 | And then if I click that Next button again,
I will go to what I'm thinking is Artboard
| | 05:37 | 10, but it's really numbered 4.
| | 05:40 | Now I should mention you also have a
Previous button if you want to go back.
| | 05:43 | If you want to do this from the keyboard,
you press Shift+Page Down to go to the next
| | 05:49 | page, or you press Shift+Page
Up to go to the previous page.
| | 05:54 | But for any of this to work the
pages need to be in the right order.
| | 05:58 | What I'm going to do is go back up to the
View menu and again choose Fit All in Window
| | 06:02 | in order to zoom out from my artboards.
| | 06:05 | Notice that they appear in this wrong order
here inside the Artboards panel, and it's
| | 06:09 | the order inside the panel that
determines the real order of those pages.
| | 06:14 | So if I want 10 to be the last page, I need to go
ahead and drag Artboard 10 to the end of the list.
| | 06:19 | Notice you can also select an artboard such
as 9 which is out of place, and I could nudge
| | 06:24 | it down by just clicking on the Move Down
icon here at the bottom of the Artboard panel.
| | 06:29 | 4 and 5 are adjacent to each other, so I'll
click on one Shift-click on the other, then
| | 06:33 | I'll drag one of these pages and notice,
this is being interpreted as a double-click for
| | 06:38 | some reason, which is why we
just zoomed in on the page.
| | 06:41 | But I'll go ahead and drag both of them up the list,
so we now have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 in sequential order.
| | 06:48 | And so that means now that I'm looking at
Page 4, I could press Shift+Page Down to advance
| | 06:52 | to Page 5, Shift+Page Down again to go to
6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, which has a 0 on it.
| | 07:01 | Again, a little bit labor-intensive, a lot
of busy work going on there, but that's how
| | 07:05 | you delete and manage your
artboards from the Artboards panel.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Auto-arranging artboards| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you among other
things how to auto arrange your artboards so that
| | 00:05 | they are in regular alignment once again.
| | 00:08 | I've saved my progress as 10-page jumble.ai.
| | 00:11 | Again, it's found inside
the 02_artboards folder.
| | 00:14 | The reason I saved these progress files, by
the way, is just in case you're dropping in
| | 00:18 | on a single movie, and you don't
have a progress file of your own.
| | 00:22 | I'm going to start by getting my Artboards
panel out of the way by clicking on this little
| | 00:26 | double-arrow icon there.
| | 00:28 | Now switch back to the Artboard tool, and
notice that Artboard 10 is selected in my case.
| | 00:34 | I want to show you couple of other
options that are available to you.
| | 00:37 | If you go up to the Object menu, and you choose
Artboards, you'll get the submenu of commands,
| | 00:42 | including this one here Fit to Artwork Bounds.
| | 00:45 | And that's going to go ahead and expand the
Artboard so it encompasses every bit of artwork
| | 00:50 | inside your document.
| | 00:51 | And that's not the effect I want but I
wanted to show you that the document is there.
| | 00:55 | I'll go ahead and press Ctrl+Z, or
Command+Z on the Mac, to undo that change.
| | 01:00 | Here is another option that's available to you.
| | 01:02 | If you want to scale an artboard so it exactly
encompasses the stuff inside of it, you double-click
| | 01:08 | on it, like so, Now you may ask me well, how is
that artboard exactly encompassing that zero.
| | 01:15 | When you're working with Type inside of
Illustrator, the program is always consulting essentially
| | 01:20 | all the characters in that font.
| | 01:22 | A lowercase G, for example, would have a
descender that comes farther down, and there might be
| | 01:27 | other characters that have
ascenders that go higher up.
| | 01:31 | And the way you can confirm this is to switch
back to the Black Arrow tool here, and then
| | 01:36 | I'd just go ahead and click on the baseline
of the zero, and notice that I get this big
| | 01:40 | bounding box and that bounding box shows me
exactly how big Illustrator thinks that character is.
| | 01:47 | I'm going to press Shift+0 in order to switch
back to the Artboard tool, and I'm going to
| | 01:51 | press Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z on
the Mac, to undo that change.
| | 01:55 | Here is what I really want to do.
| | 01:57 | I want to go ahead and automatically
arrange all of these artboards, and I can do that
| | 02:01 | by once again going up to the Object menu
choosing the Artboards command, and then choosing
| | 02:07 | Rearrange, and I'll get this dialog box here
that features those same options that we saw
| | 02:13 | inside the New Document dialog box, so I
can change the arrangement of my artboards if
| | 02:18 | I want to, but I'm happy
with the existing layout.
| | 02:21 | What I want is to have five columns instead
of four so that I'll have five columns in
| | 02:25 | two rows of course.
| | 02:27 | And then I'm just going to go ahead and increase
the Spacing value as well to 1/2 inch like that.
| | 02:32 | So 1/2" meaning that you have the
press Shift along with the quote key.
| | 02:38 | I do want to move the artwork along with the
artboards so I'll leave this check box on,
| | 02:42 | and then I'll go ahead and click OK, and
that takes care of my problems automatically.
| | 02:48 | And just so that you know, if I bring back
up the Artboards panel which I can get by
| | 02:53 | clicking on what is by default, this lowest
icon here in this column of panels, and then
| | 02:59 | I click on what's known as the flyout menu
icon in the upper-right corner of the panel.
| | 03:04 | I also have access to the Rearrange
Artboards command here, so a little more convenient
| | 03:09 | many times and that brings up that same
dialog box that we saw just a moment ago.
| | 03:13 | All right, I'm going to cancel out
because I don't want to mess things up
| | 03:16 | now that I've gotten everything perfect. That
is how you take advantage of automatic artboard
| | 03:21 | modifications here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Artboards and rulers| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how Artboards and
Rulers interact with each other inside Illustrator.
| | 00:05 | I have saved my progress as Nice and tidy.ai.
| | 00:08 | I'm going to once again switch to the
Artboard tool, and then I'll bring up my Rulers by
| | 00:14 | going up to the View menu choosing
Rulers and then choosing the Show Rulers Command.
| | 00:19 | And what that does is it shows me about the
Horizontal Ruler at up the top of the screen
| | 00:23 | and the Vertical Ruler over
here on the left-hand side.
| | 00:26 | And we can see that the unit of measure is
points and the reason we can see that is because
| | 00:31 | they're very dinky units.
| | 00:33 | If you wanted to switch out the unit of measure
the easiest option is to right-click on either
| | 00:38 | one of the Rulers, and then choose a different unit,
such as Inches, and then both Rulers will update in kind.
| | 00:44 | Now notice this 00 point right there, so
there is a 0 point for the Vertical Ruler,
| | 00:49 | and there is a 0 point
for the Horizontal Ruler.
| | 00:52 | I am going to go ahead and put a couple of
guides at those locations by dragging out
| | 00:56 | from the Vertical Ruler, and I am going to
press the Shift key as I drag in order to
| | 01:01 | snap into Alignment with the tick marks.
| | 01:03 | I have snapped into Alignment with 0 on the
Horizontal Ruler, and I'll Shift-drag down
| | 01:08 | form the Horizontal Ruler in order to snap into
Alignment with the 0 point there on the Vertical Ruler.
| | 01:14 | So that's our 00 point right now.
| | 01:17 | Used to be the 00 point was at the upper
left corner of the First Artboard but that was
| | 01:22 | before I went and made
all of these Modifications.
| | 01:25 | The reason I am showing you this couple of
reasons just want you to see, what's going on.
| | 01:29 | Artboard 10 is still selected and
notice we're seeing this X and Y coordinates.
| | 01:32 | And if I go ahead and change Reference Point
to the upper left point there, then I'll see
| | 01:38 | that the pages 24 is .25 inches to the right
of and 8.92 inches down from that 00 point.
| | 01:48 | If I wanted to move this Artboard into
alignment with the 00 point, I'd start by turning off
| | 01:53 | that move copy Artwork with Artboard Option,
because I want to move just the Artboard let's
| | 01:57 | say, then I'll change the X value 0 and the Y value to
0 as well and that snaps it exactly into alignment.
| | 02:04 | Now press Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z, a couple of
times in order to reinstate the position of
| | 02:09 | that Artboard because I say that's not what
I want to do when I do want to do is I want
| | 02:14 | to go ahead and move the 00 point into exact
alignment with the top left corner of Artboard 10.
| | 02:22 | Well one way to move the 00 point is to go
ahead and drag from the upper left corner
| | 02:28 | where the two Rulers intersect each other,
and then you can just drop that 00 point in
| | 02:33 | the place, and now my 00 points right about there, as
you can see, in the Horizontal and Vertical Rulers.
| | 02:40 | If you want to snap into alignment with an
Artboard however, you just double-click on
| | 02:45 | that point, and now notice the 00 point is
aligned with the upper left corner of Artboard 10.
| | 02:51 | If I wanted to be aligned with the upper left
of Artboard 1 instead, I'll go head and click
| | 02:55 | on Artboard 1 and double-click on that Ruler
Intersection Point up there in the upper left-hand corner.
| | 03:02 | I don't need those Guides anymore.
| | 03:03 | So I'll go to the View menu choose Guides and then choose the
Clear Guides command to get rid of them.
| | 03:09 | One more thing I wanted to know about Rulers
when you're working inside the Artboard mode,
| | 03:14 | you have what's known as Global Rulers
which are aligned to all the Artboards.
| | 03:19 | So in other words, we have 100 point, that's
aligned to the upper left-hand corner of the
| | 03:24 | first Artboard and all the other tick marks
are aligned to that point, regardless of which
| | 03:30 | of the artboards is selected.
| | 03:32 | Compare that to the behavior when we're out
of the Artboard mode, I am going to press
| | 03:35 | the Escape key here in order to
switch back to my black arrow tool.
| | 03:40 | And now notice that my 00 point appears at the upper
left corner of Artboard 3 when Artboard 3 is active.
| | 03:47 | If I were to click on Artboard 2, then I'd
switch 00 point to its upper left corner, and so on.
| | 03:53 | So each and every Artboard has
its own independent Ruler System.
| | 03:57 | That's the way it works in every application
out there however you can switch this behavior
| | 04:02 | inside of Illustrator.
| | 04:04 | By going up to the View menu Rulers Command,
and then notice this guy change to Global
| | 04:10 | Rulers Ctrl+Alt+R, or Command+Opt+R on the Mac.
| | 04:14 | And that will go ahead and switch you to
Uniform Global Ruler System regardless of
| | 04:19 | which of the Artboards is selected.
| | 04:21 | So notice, I am clicking on different
Artboards here and that is not changing the behavior
| | 04:25 | of the Rulers at all.
| | 04:27 | And that is the exciting world of Rulers and
Artboards working in tandem with each other
| | 04:33 | here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Getting AroundNavigating your artwork| 00:00 | This chapter is all about getting around in
Illustrator, magnifying your artwork, panning
| | 00:06 | to another location, and
managing your workspace.
| | 00:09 | I spend nine movies on this topic, which is a lot,
for the simple reason that there's a lot to know.
| | 00:15 | I want you to be able to move around inside
Illustrator without even thinking, because
| | 00:20 | that's how everything about the
program is going to make sense.
| | 00:24 | Better still, you will be able to focus
less on the mechanics of the software and more
| | 00:29 | on the task of creating great artwork.
| | 00:32 | Allow me to help you feel
at home in Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The dark vs. the light interface| 00:00 | All right, so the first thing that we are
going to look in, in this chapter is the new
| | 00:03 | dark interface, and I'm a big fan.
| | 00:06 | Very much like the new dark interface in Photoshop
CS6, but the great thing about it, in my opinion,
| | 00:11 | is that it allows me to focus in on the illustration
without being distracted by all the screen folders.
| | 00:17 | And Illustrator takes it even farther than
Photoshop does, by darkening dialog boxes,
| | 00:23 | and other screen folders.
| | 00:24 | Now, there's a few exceptions to this rule
on the Mac, on a Macintosh side of things,
| | 00:29 | you got a bright menu bar, you can't do anything
about that, because Adobe doesn't have control
| | 00:34 | over the menu bar.
| | 00:36 | And if you're your illustration inside of a
floating window, then you'll see a bright
| | 00:39 | title bar for that window as well, and you
may see elements of applications running in
| | 00:45 | the background, as well as the
finder desktop and so forth.
| | 00:49 | If you would rather have illustrator take
over your screen, so you can focus your energies
| | 00:53 | on the task of drawing, then here on the Mac, you go
up to the Window menu, and choose Application Frame.
| | 01:00 | This command is not available on the PC,
because the Application Frame is always in force.
| | 01:04 | And then once I choose that command, notice that
the bright title bar goes away, and essentially
| | 01:10 | everything you see on screen is going to
match what you're seeing inside the video except
| | 01:15 | for the location of this application bar,
which is right here under the menu bar instead
| | 01:20 | of these icons being next door to the menus,
and of course, the bright menu bar at top.
| | 01:25 | However, let's say you want to lighten the
interface, or otherwise customize the brightness.
| | 01:30 | Here's what to do.
| | 01:31 | Go on to the Edit menu here on the PC that
would be the illustrator menu on the Mac,
| | 01:35 | all the way over on the left-hand side, drop
down to the Preferences command, which isn't
| | 01:38 | nearly so far down on the Macintosh menu.
| | 01:41 | And then choose this command
right there, User Interface.
| | 01:44 | That will bring up this Dark dialog box,
and notice right here, we've got Brightness.
| | 01:49 | So you can select from four
predefined brightness settings here.
| | 01:53 | We've got Light, which is pretty much what
we had inside of Illustrator CS5 in earlier.
| | 01:58 | And I will say, by the way, you did have a Dark
Interface option in Illustrator CS5 as well.
| | 02:05 | It was just awful, because even when you
made the interface dark, such as this if we go
| | 02:10 | all the way here, the text remained
black, so you could barely read it.
| | 02:14 | Now the text goes ahead and inverts
so that you can see it very nicely.
| | 02:19 | And the Medium Dark is the default setting,
by the way, and then we've got Medium Light,
| | 02:22 | and you really don't need me to show
you those, you can test them out yourself.
| | 02:25 | Here's what you might need help with.
| | 02:27 | You have the slider, which is just awesome,
I am going to go ahead and turn mine down
| | 02:31 | to 20%, which is a little darker than the
standard setting, but I think it's going to
| | 02:35 | make things pop pretty nicely for video here.
| | 02:38 | And then finally, you have control over the
Canvas Color, better known as the pasteboard,
| | 02:44 | which is the area outside of the artboards.
| | 02:46 | And by default, it's going to be the same
color as the User Interface, it's actually
| | 02:50 | a little lighter, as you can see here.
| | 02:52 | But it's going to very along with User Interface, and
then when you go to very light basically, it catches up.
| | 02:58 | But if you don't like that, let
me dial this back down to 20.
| | 03:02 | Then you have one other option
to choose from, and that's White.
| | 03:05 | Unfortunately, you can't dial in your own
custom pasteboard color, I don't know why
| | 03:10 | you can't, but these are your two options,
either Match what's going on, or White.
| | 03:13 | Anyway, 20% is what I am going to go with
here, and then I am going to click OK, and
| | 03:18 | so that is your option, where
the interface is concerned.
| | 03:21 | And so, I don't want anybody complaining about
the New Dark Interface, so if you don't like
| | 03:24 | it just go ahead and customize
it to whatever degree you like.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Zooming a document and its artboards| 00:00 | In this movie, I will show you how
to zoom in and out in Illustrator.
| | 00:04 | And the idea is this, sometimes you are going
to want to magnify portions of your illustration
| | 00:08 | in order to fine-tune adjustments, and other
times you are going to want to zoom out so
| | 00:12 | that you can take in your
entire artwork at a time.
| | 00:15 | I am working inside of a document called Welcome
again.ai found inside the 03_navigation folder.
| | 00:21 | If I go up to the Window menu and choose Artboards
command, you can see that this document contains
| | 00:26 | a total of six Artboards.
| | 00:28 | So we have the central Welcome screen, and then we
have renderings of a bunch of paint tool cursors.
| | 00:34 | These are the new paint tool cursors in
Illustrator CS6, and then finally I have got this big
| | 00:39 | Artboard that contains everything.
| | 00:41 | I just wanted you to see that because these
Artboards will become important in a moment.
| | 00:45 | In the meantime though, you zoom in and out
from an Illustration using these commands
| | 00:50 | right here located in the View menu.
| | 00:52 | Now notice that each one of
them has a keyboard shortcut.
| | 00:55 | I find that folks fall into a couple of
different categories where shortcuts are concerned.
| | 00:59 | They either love them and they use them
all the time that would be me, by the way.
| | 01:03 | That's why I mentioned them as I
am going through these movies.
| | 01:05 | Other folks just hate them especially when
they are first trying to come to terms with
| | 01:09 | a piece of software.
| | 01:10 | So tell you this you can use keyboard
shortcuts or not but I do recommend that you at least
| | 01:15 | learn these shortcuts here.
| | 01:17 | Because that will help you move more quickly
through the software, also it allows you to
| | 01:20 | spend less time on focusing on the mechanics of
Illustrator and more time and energy on your artwork.
| | 01:26 | So if you want to zoom in, you can choose
the Zoom In command as I am doing here but
| | 01:30 | you are better of using the keyboard shortcut
which are easy to remember Ctrl+Plus, or Command+Plus
| | 01:35 | on the Mac, and you can see that
that's zooming me in incrementally.
| | 01:40 | If I want to Zoom Out, I press Ctrl+Minus,
or Command+Minus on the Mac, and again that
| | 01:45 | zooms me out incrementally.
| | 01:47 | Notice that I am viewing the
illustration right now at 100%.
| | 01:50 | Now extensively, this is Illustrator
showing you Artboard at the sizable print.
| | 01:54 | However, it is not really accurate and the
reason is Illustrator is assuming your screen
| | 01:59 | resolution is 72 pixels per inch which dates
way back to those old 1984 Macintosh boxes,
| | 02:06 | that just isn't the case anymore.
| | 02:07 | Your screen is more likely to have a
resolution in a neighborhood of 100 to 120 pixels per
| | 02:13 | inch, in which case the Artboards is actually
going to print larger than it appears at 100%.
| | 02:18 | So that's just something to bear in mind.
| | 02:20 | Now if this were a program like Photoshop,
and we kept zooming in from 100% then we would
| | 02:24 | get bigger and bigger pixels, but Illustrator
is working with vectors, and it is rendering
| | 02:29 | those vectors to your screen on the fly and
as a result we get greater and greater detail
| | 02:35 | as we zoom in, and you can see that you can zoom
in all the way to 6400%, which is a sufficient
| | 02:42 | level of magnification to see a large bacteria,
which is why I have gone ahead and drawn a
| | 02:46 | little bacteria, right here an Illustration.
| | 02:49 | That's how big the largest bacteria are.
| | 02:51 | So Illustrator really allows
you to hone in on that detail.
| | 02:54 | Now if you want to return to the 100%
percent view at any point in time, you just press
| | 02:58 | Ctrl+1, or Command+1 on the Mac.
| | 03:01 | You may also remember from the previous
chapter that if you want to zoom in on a specific
| | 03:06 | Artboard, all you have to do is double-click on
that Artboard here inside the Artboards panel.
| | 03:10 | Another way to work, if I press Ctrl+Alt+0,
or Command+Option+0 on the Mac, to go all
| | 03:16 | the way out and take in my
entire artwork at a time.
| | 03:19 | I can click on any one of these Artboards
to make it active, and then press Ctrl+0,
| | 03:23 | or Command+0 on the Mac, to zoom in on it, and
just as with double-clicking on an Artboard,
| | 03:29 | here inside the Artboards panel, Ctrl+0, or Command+
0 goes ahead and fits the Artboard on the screen.
| | 03:35 | And incidentally, if you ever need to
refresh your memory on the shortcuts, all you need
| | 03:39 | to do is go up to the View menu and
check out these five commands right there.
| | 03:43 | These are the shortcuts that I've mentioned.
| | 03:45 | Ctrl+Plus, or Command+Plus to Zoom In, Ctrl+Minus,
or Command+Minus to Zoom Out, Ctrl+0, or Command+0
| | 03:50 | to fit the Artboard in the window, Ctrl+Alt+0, or
Command+Options+0 on the Mac, to fit everything,
| | 03:56 | the entire document inside the window, and
then Ctrl+1, or Command+1 on the Mac, to go
| | 04:00 | to the Actual Size which is the 100% view.
And that's how you zoom in and out from an
| | 04:05 | Illustration from the
keyboard inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Honing in a specific detail| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you how to zoom with
more control using the Zoom tool as well as
| | 00:05 | a Special Scroll Wheel Trick.
| | 00:07 | Now the problem with Ctrl+Plus, or Command+
Plus on a Mac, it is that you're zooming in on
| | 00:13 | the center of whatever
you are seeing on screen.
| | 00:16 | And right now, the center of my screen is
this dot at the top of the first colon and
| | 00:20 | that's why I chose to draw my little bacteria there
because after all, that's the dead center of the artboard.
| | 00:26 | However, what if you want to zoom in
on, let's say, a more appealing detail.
| | 00:31 | Well, that's when you to take
advantage of the Zoom tool.
| | 00:34 | So I'm going to press Ctrl+Alt+0, or Command+Opt
+0 on a Mac, this is a Zoom tool right there.
| | 00:40 | If you're looking at the Single Column tool Box
it's going to be the very last tool on the list.
| | 00:44 | It has a keyboard shortcut of Z and if I select the tool,
and then click on some other detail in the illustration.
| | 00:51 | For example, I'll go ahead
click on this bottom left pen cursor.
| | 00:54 | You can see that Illustrator not only zooms but
it also goes ahead and centers that detail on screen.
| | 01:00 | Now that I could switch to another if I want
to just by clicking again, and then clicking
| | 01:05 | once more to zoom in even further, to zoom
out you press and hold the Alt key or the
| | 01:10 | Option key on a Mac, and then you click.
| | 01:12 | And again, you are going to center the location of the
newly zoomed screen each time you click with this tool.
| | 01:18 | Now the tool is so incredibly useful in my opinion that
you really want to learn a keyboard shortcut for it.
| | 01:25 | You don't to have one has to switch to the Zoom
tool every five seconds in order to magnify a detail.
| | 01:30 | So here is what you do.
| | 01:31 | Again I will press Ctrl+Alt+0, or Command+Opt+
0 on a Mac, to go ahead and center my artwork.
| | 01:36 | I will switch back to the black error tool
to get to the Zoom tool on the fly you press
| | 01:41 | Ctrl+spacebar, that's Command+spacebar on a Mac,
then you just go ahead and click to zoom on in.
| | 01:48 | If you want to zoom out, you have the Alt
or Option key so that's Ctrl+Alt+spacebar here
| | 01:54 | on a PC, or Command+Opt+spacebar on the Mac,
and then of course you click to zoom out.
| | 01:58 | Here is another great thing you can do with
the Zoom tool if you press Ctrl+spacebar,
| | 02:03 | or Command+spacebar on a Mac, in order to
get that Zoom tool, and then you drag to draw
| | 02:08 | marquee around a detail, Illustrator will go
ahead and zoom just that detail, and it'll
| | 02:13 | take you to a Custom Zoom Level.
| | 02:15 | In my case, it's 1341.3%.
| | 02:19 | And then of course, notice that when I
release the keys, I returned to my Selected tool in
| | 02:23 | my case the black arrow.
| | 02:24 | All right let's say that keyboard
shortcut just doesn't work for you.
| | 02:27 | Here's another I'll go ahead and zoom out again by
pressing Ctrl+Alt+0, or Command+Opt+0 on the Mac.
| | 02:33 | Another option that is available to you is
to press the Alt key or the Option key on
| | 02:38 | the Mac, and scroll up with your mouse's
scroll wheel to zoom out is an Alt+ Scroll down or
| | 02:45 | an Option+ Scroll down on the Mac.
| | 02:47 | And notice that, that works incrementally
just as is the case with the Zoom tool, and
| | 02:52 | all the zooming options we
discussed in a previous movie.
| | 02:54 | So there you have it that's how you zoom with
ultimate control using the Zoom tool or Alt
| | 03:00 | or Option along with your mouse's scroll wheel.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Scrolling (or panning) a document| 00:00 | In this movie, I will show you how to
scroll or if you prefer pan your illustration.
| | 00:05 | And this comes in handy when you are zoomed in.
| | 00:07 | So here I am zoomed in on a detail, but I
want to be able to scroll around a little bit.
| | 00:12 | Take a look at a different
detail at this exact zoom level.
| | 00:15 | You can take advantage of the scroll bars
down here at the bottom and along the right
| | 00:18 | side of the Document window.
| | 00:21 | But the better way to work
is to get the Hand tool.
| | 00:24 | So if I switch to the Hand tool which has
a keyboard shortcut of H, then I can just
| | 00:29 | drag my illustration around as much as I like.
| | 00:31 | Of course, you don't want to have to go running
after the Hand tool every time you need to scroll.
| | 00:36 | So here's a better way to work.
| | 00:37 | I will switch back to my black arrow tool,
and then I will press and hold the spacebar.
| | 00:42 | Notice that gets me the Hand tool as long
as the spacebar is down, and then I can drag
| | 00:46 | the document as much as I want.
| | 00:48 | Now, what happens though, if you've got live
text? Now, none of the text in this document
| | 00:53 | is live, by the way.
| | 00:55 | I use special fonts that aren't on your
system so I had to convert everything to outlines.
| | 01:00 | But let's just go ahead and create some text.
| | 01:01 | I'll switch to the Type tool, which I
can do of course, by pressing the T key.
| | 01:05 | And I'll click inside the document,
and I will just enter the word Hello.
| | 01:08 | Now if I try to press the spacebar and scroll at
this point, I will enter a space character of course.
| | 01:13 | So one option is to press the Escape key so
the text is no longer active, and then you
| | 01:18 | can spacebar-drag, but because I pressed the
Escape key I am back to the Black arrow tool so.
| | 01:22 | Now if want to do some more text editing I'd
have to switch back to my Type tool, and then
| | 01:27 | click after that space
character and enter some more text.
| | 01:31 | Here is the way I work, when I have live text.
| | 01:33 | I will just go head and
scroll using the Scroll wheel.
| | 01:36 | So obviously scrolling down moves
you down, scrolling up moves you up.
| | 01:39 | If you want to move more quickly, it's a Shift+
Scroll down or a Shift+Scroll up, if you want to
| | 01:44 | move back and forth then you press the Ctrl
key, or the Command key on the Mac, and you
| | 01:49 | scroll down to go right, scroll up to go left,
if you want to move more quickly it's Ctrl+Shift
| | 01:54 | on a PC, or Command+Shift on the Mac, scroll
down to go right and scroll up to go left.
| | 02:00 | Also, by the way, those of you with Macintosh
trackpads, you can use that two finger swipe as well.
| | 02:05 | Illustrator will respond to that, and that's
probably the easiest way to work on that platform.
| | 02:10 | So there you have it, the myriad ways to
scroll or pan a document here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Page Up and Page Down keys| 00:00 | In this movie, I am going to show you how
to get around a document using the Page Up
| | 00:04 | and Page Down keys.
| | 00:05 | Now I am going to be throwing a lot of
keyboard shortcuts at you this time.
| | 00:09 | I am going to expect even the biggest
shortcut fanatic to remember all of these.
| | 00:14 | Just remember this Page Up and Page Down combined with
any of the modifier keys, does something in illustrator.
| | 00:22 | So let's go ahead and zoom in quite a bit
here, and then I'll press the Page Up key,
| | 00:27 | and notice that I move
almost a full screen upward.
| | 00:30 | And then if I press Page Down, I
move almost a full screen downward.
| | 00:34 | If I want to move in smaller increments, then
I press Alt+Page Up, this would be Option+Page
| | 00:39 | Up on the Mac, or Alt+Page Down, this
would be Option+Page Down on the Mac.
| | 00:43 | What if I want to move to the right? Well, then I'll
press Ctrl+Page Down, that's Command+Page Down on the Mac.
| | 00:50 | If I want to move to the left, it's
Ctrl+Page Up, or Command+Page Up.
| | 00:54 | To move in smaller increments,
once again, you add the Alt key.
| | 00:57 | So its Ctrl+Alt+Page Down, to move in small
increments to the right, and Ctrl+Alt+Page
| | 01:03 | Up, or Command+Option+Page up on the Mac,
to move in smaller increments to the left.
| | 01:08 | Now of course, that leaves the Shift key,
and you may recall from the previous chapter
| | 01:14 | that the Shift key combined with Page UP and
Page Down actually moves you between artboards.
| | 01:18 | So Shift+Page Up, will take you to the
previous artboard, as we're seeing here.
| | 01:23 | And in my case, I am going all
the way back to the first one.
| | 01:26 | And then Shift+Page Down is going
to move me to the next artboard.
| | 01:31 | If I press Ctrl+Shift+Page Up, or Command+Shift+
Page Up on the Mac, I go to the first artboard,
| | 01:38 | and if I press Ctrl+Shift+Page Down, or Command+Shift
+Page Down on the Mac, I go to last artboard, which
| | 01:44 | in my case is the big artboard
that encompasses all the other ones.
| | 01:48 | And that for those of you who are interested
is how you get around a document, using the
| | 01:52 | Page Up and Page Down keys,
combined with every modifier key you got.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Navigating numerically and from a panel| 00:00 | Now let's say you want to magnify your illustration
on screen, but none of the standard zoom increments
| | 00:06 | are really working for you.
| | 00:07 | For example, here I am taken in the illustration
wide and if I press Ctrl+Plus, or Command+Plus
| | 00:13 | on the Mac, then I'll zoom to 100%.
| | 00:14 | And if I do it again, I'll zoom to 150%
and then 200% and then 300% and so on.
| | 00:22 | So we've got some pretty big increments
going on and these are the exact same increments
| | 00:27 | we get with the Zoom tool and
with the other zooming techniques.
| | 00:30 | I'm going to go ahead and press Ctrl+1, or
Command+1 on the Mac, to zoom out to 100%.
| | 00:34 | If you want to dial in a custom zoom value
then you can drop down here to this zoom option
| | 00:40 | that's listed in the very bottom
left corner of the document window.
| | 00:44 | Click on it, and then instead of entering
a value, which you can do if you like, but
| | 00:48 | my preferred method of working here is to
press the Up arrow key in order to zoom in
| | 00:54 | increments of one so you
have very tight control.
| | 00:57 | You can also press the Shift Up
arrow to move in 10% increments.
| | 01:02 | And so at 120%, I'm thinking I'm zoomed in a
little bit too far, I'll go ahead and take
| | 01:07 | that down by pressing the Down arrow key until I
reduce that value to 116% and that looks good to me.
| | 01:14 | Now as I say, the other option of
course is to dial in your own value.
| | 01:17 | For example, I could go
ahead and zoom in to 2400%.
| | 01:21 | Now the problem becomes when you're this far
zoomed into an illustration it's difficult
| | 01:26 | to get your bearings, you may not
necessarily know where you are.
| | 01:30 | In that case, you want to bring up the
Navigator panel, and you do that by going up to the
| | 01:34 | Window menu and choosing the Navigator command,
and then you'll see this panel that's showing
| | 01:40 | you your entire illustration and a tiny red
thing right there that shows you the portion
| | 01:45 | of the illustration that
you're seeing right now.
| | 01:47 | All right, I'm going to go ahead and expand this
panel, like so so that I can see my illustration
| | 01:53 | in a little more detail.
| | 01:54 | And by the way, working this way is great
if you have two monitors, so you can go ahead
| | 01:58 | and throw the Navigator panel on one monitor and of
course have your document window open up in another.
| | 02:04 | Anyway at this point, I could scroll inside
the illustration by dragging this guy to a
| | 02:11 | different location, or if I prefer I can
just click somewhere in the illustration.
| | 02:14 | You also have these zoom controls right here,
so you can click on the little mountain to
| | 02:19 | zoom out incrementally, or you can click on
the big mountain to zoom in, you can also
| | 02:23 | drag this zoom slider.
| | 02:25 | The only problem with this slider from my
vantage point is it doesn't really show you
| | 02:29 | a dynamic zoom, so you have to pause while
you're dragging in order to update the screen.
| | 02:34 | It is a final way to work.
| | 02:36 | You can press and hold the Ctrl key or the
Command key on the Mac, that will change your
| | 02:40 | cursor to a little magnifying glass, and then you
can drag around the portion of the illustration
| | 02:45 | that you want to zoom.
| | 02:47 | As soon as you release Illustrator
will show you that region on screen.
| | 02:51 | And then of course if the Navigator panel
is getting too big for you, you can go ahead
| | 02:54 | and drag a quarter or one of the
sides in order to make it smaller.
| | 02:58 | And that's how you zoom to any degree you
desire as well as get around using the Navigator
| | 03:03 | panel here in Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with multiple open documents| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to
work with multiple open Illustrations.
| | 00:04 | Now I've a total of six files open both this
big one that contains my one-on-one welcome
| | 00:10 | screen as well as the various enlarged pen
tool cursors, and then I went ahead and broke
| | 00:14 | up each one of art board into a
separate document as you see here.
| | 00:18 | Now you may wonder how you take multiple art
boards and save them off as separate Illustrations.
| | 00:23 | Well, what I did was I went to the File menu
and chose a Save As command, and then I went
| | 00:28 | ahead and gave this file an introductory name,
so I went ahead and called it Busted up_ and
| | 00:35 | that way Illustrator will go ahead and name all
these file Busted up_ followed by the art board name.
| | 00:41 | So, there is welcome for the welcome screen there
is join for the pen tool, join cursor and so forth.
| | 00:47 | All right, now I'll click the Save button,
and what I decided to do was go ahead and
| | 00:51 | save this in an older version I chose Illustrator
CS, because everything I've done in this document
| | 00:57 | is compatible with the CS format, and then
I dropped down to save each artboard to a
| | 01:01 | separate file, selected range, and then change
that range to 1 through 5, because after all
| | 01:07 | I don't need the big all-
encompassing art board which is number 6.
| | 01:11 | Anyway, I'm going to cancel out, because I've
already done that in advance, but I want you
| | 01:14 | to see how that works.
| | 01:15 | Now then when you open multiple Illustrations,
you end up getting this tab display, and you
| | 01:20 | can click on one of the tabs to switch to
that Illustration, or you can switch between
| | 01:25 | windows from the keyboard by pressing Ctrl+
Tab here on the PC that would be Command+Tilde
| | 01:31 | on the Mac, and the tilde key is that key
that's just above the Tab key and below the
| | 01:36 | Escape key over in the upper left corner of
an American keyboard and if you want to move
| | 01:41 | backwards through the Windows, you press
Ctrl+Shift+Tab, or Command+Shift+Tilde.
| | 01:46 | Now let say, you want to be able to view
multiple Illustrations at the same time.
| | 01:50 | In that case, go up here to the menu bar in
the PC, it's going to be a little application
| | 01:55 | bar just below the menu bar in the Mac, and
you'll see this Arrange Documents icon, click
| | 01:59 | on it, and then select something like 2-Up, for example
so that we can see two illustrations at the same time.
| | 02:07 | And now you can switch between illustrations
both on the right and left sides of the screen.
| | 02:12 | Now in my case, I'm going to go ahead and
center both of these guys by clicking in one
| | 02:16 | windows and pressing Ctrl+0, Command+0 on
a Mac, and then clicking inside the other
| | 02:20 | window and doing the exact same thing.
| | 02:22 | Let's say you prefer to work
inside of a floating window.
| | 02:24 | Why, then you can just go ahead and grab
one of these tabs here and drag it and drop
| | 02:30 | it in any old location, like so, and you'll
end up with a floating window that not only
| | 02:34 | floats above the other illustrations, but it
also floats above the panels and everything
| | 02:40 | else that's going on screen.
| | 02:42 | As you can see, I can cover
up the toolbox if I want.
| | 02:44 | If you want to take that floating window
and throw it back in a tab then just go ahead
| | 02:48 | and drag the title bar and drop it when you
see a blue rectangle around the area where
| | 02:54 | you want to put the window, and
that's goes ahead and locks that guy down.
| | 02:56 | All right, I'm going to click in that guy and
press Ctrl+0, Command+0 on the Mac as well.
| | 03:01 | If you want to consolidate all the windows,
so they're all tabbed together, then go back
| | 03:05 | up to that arrange documents icon click on
it and select the very first item Consolidate
| | 03:11 | All, and that'll go ahead and
give you a single window once again.
| | 03:15 | You can also, by the way, if you want to change
the order of these windows, then you can just
| | 03:19 | go ahead and drag one to a different location,
like so, so you can drag the tab, you have
| | 03:24 | to be little careful though that you're
dragging the tab inside of this vertical line of tabs,
| | 03:29 | because if you drag it out of that areas, you run
the risk of dropping a floating window and so forth.
| | 03:34 | I'm going to finish things up by selecting
this icon here Tile All In Grid and that'll
| | 03:39 | allow me to see each and every one of these
files and by the way, I'm centering them by
| | 03:44 | clicking in the window, and then pressing
Ctrl+0, or Command+0 on the Mac, and that
| | 03:49 | is how you master the display of
multiple open documents inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Panels and workspaces| 00:00 | Now as you know, Illustrator is a very powerful,
and therefore a very complex program, with
| | 00:06 | literally thousands of options that live all
over the place and these things called panels.
| | 00:12 | Now by default, you can get to the panels
by clicking on these icons over here in this
| | 00:16 | far right-hand column.
| | 00:17 | And that's not even all the panels, by the way.
| | 00:20 | To get to the other ones, you have to go to
the Window menu and choose one of these commands
| | 00:24 | starting with Actions.
| | 00:25 | Wouldn't it be better though if you could
get to the most important panels, a little
| | 00:28 | more easily, and then you had access to just
about all of them on-screen at any given time?
| | 00:34 | So what we are going to do is we are going
to build a workspace, and it's going to be
| | 00:37 | called the One-on-One workspace.
| | 00:39 | You don't have it yet so far.
| | 00:40 | I am going to show you how to make
it over the course of this movie.
| | 00:43 | But it's going to end up looking like this.
| | 00:45 | So again, we can get to these very important
panels just by clicking inside them, and then
| | 00:49 | the other panels are available
as icons inside of this column.
| | 00:53 | So here is how it works.
| | 00:54 | I am going to switch back to Essentials, and then I
am going to click on this little double-arrowhead
| | 00:58 | right there at the top of the column in
order to expand the panels, like so. And now at
| | 01:03 | this point, I am going to
start moving things around.
| | 01:05 | So first of all, I want to make
my Color panel a little smaller.
| | 01:08 | So I am going to click on that little up-
down arrow icon, next to the word Color, and I
| | 01:13 | want the Swatches panel to live
along with Color and Color Guides.
| | 01:16 | So I am going to drag this Swatches tab up
and drop it inside of that same panel group
| | 01:21 | right there, and then I'll go
ahead and switch back to color.
| | 01:25 | Notice that we get this big huge color field.
| | 01:27 | If you don't want it to be that large, you
can just drag up on this horizontal line.
| | 01:31 | All right! Now I am going to take both Brushes
and Symbols, and I am going to move them off
| | 01:35 | to the side, like so, so they are
going to start a new column of panels.
| | 01:38 | And I want them to appear as icons, so I'll go
ahead and click that double-arrow icon once again.
| | 01:43 | Now you can tell what each one of these icons
means just by hovering over it so that Brushes
| | 01:48 | icon means brushes, and this
little clover icon means symbols.
| | 01:52 | However, if that's not good enough for you,
and you have got a lot of screen real estate,
| | 01:55 | and you want to be able to see the names of
the panels, you can just drag this vertical
| | 01:59 | edge, like so. Anyway, I don't have a lot
of room, so I am going to leave it set to
| | 02:03 | just a column of icons.
| | 02:05 | Now I am going to grab Graphic Styles.
| | 02:06 | It's got right there, and I am going to drag
it up and drop it right there on that clover
| | 02:10 | and by virtue of the fact that I'm seeing that
blue outline around those couple of icons there.
| | 02:15 | I am going to combine Graphic Styles into
a group along with Brushes and Symbols.
| | 02:19 | All right! Now I am going to grab Appearance,
and I am going to drag the Appearance tab
| | 02:24 | in between layers and Artboards, like so. So
that way we can easily get to our Appearance
| | 02:29 | option, the formatting attributes in the future,
and now I'll switch back to layers and obviously,
| | 02:34 | I am going to show you how all these panels
work in great detail in future chapters, right
| | 02:38 | now we are just trying to
organize them so we can get to them.
| | 02:41 | Color field is way too big at this point,
so I'm going to go ahead and drag up on that
| | 02:44 | horizontal bar again.
| | 02:46 | All right! Now let's get to
the other panels we need.
| | 02:49 | I'll go to the Window menu and choose the
Pathfinder command and that brings up a group
| | 02:54 | of panels that includes Transform, Align
and Pathfinder, that's exactly what I want.
| | 02:58 | So I'll go ahead and drag the title, like
so, the title bar for the panel group, and
| | 03:03 | I'll drag it just below the icons, notice
I get a horizontal line that shows me I am
| | 03:07 | starting a new group of icons.
| | 03:08 | All right, now for some of the type panels,
to get to them, you have to go all the way
| | 03:12 | down to the bottom of the Window menu, in my
case, I have to scroll down the list here,
| | 03:17 | until you see word Type, and then go ahead
and choose Character and that'll bring up
| | 03:21 | the Character, Paragraph and OpenType panels.
| | 03:24 | Go ahead and drag that title bar
and drop it below the other icons.
| | 03:28 | Then go up to the Window menu, choose Type
again, and this time choose Character Styles
| | 03:33 | in order to bring up the
Character and Paragraph Styles panels.
| | 03:36 | Go ahead and drag that title
bar and drop it below the icons.
| | 03:40 | Next, go up to the Window menu, and choose
the Info command and that will bring up the
| | 03:44 | Navigator, and Info panels, we'll
come back to them in the moment.
| | 03:48 | Go up to the Window menu again and choose,
this time, Document Info which goes ahead
| | 03:52 | and brings up Document Info and Attributes.
| | 03:54 | All right! I am going to move just the Info
panel by dragging its tab and dropping it
| | 03:59 | below the other icons, and then I'm going
to click on the title bar, if I can get to
| | 04:04 | it for Document Info, I'll go ahead and
drag that title bar and drop it into that same
| | 04:10 | area, I am going to drop it right on that
I for info in order to combine Info along
| | 04:16 | with Document Info, and then Attributes.
| | 04:18 | Next, I'll drag the Navigator panel, and I'll
drop it into a new group, and then finally,
| | 04:23 | I'll go up to the Window menu let's scroll
up this list again, and choose Actions that
| | 04:27 | brings up both the Actions and Links panel,
I'll drag its title bar and drop it at the
| | 04:32 | bottom of the list as well.
| | 04:34 | All right! Now all that's left is to go
ahead and save out these panels as a workspace,
| | 04:38 | and I'll do that by going up to the word
Essentials, clicking on it, and then you want to choose
| | 04:42 | New Workspace and go ahead and call your workspace One-
on-One or whatever in the world you want to call it.
| | 04:49 | Now in my case, I already have one, but that's okay,
I'll just go ahead and OK in order to replace it.
| | 04:55 | You have now successfully organized your
panels on-screen for maximum productivity inside
| | 05:00 | of Illustrator as well as save
the panels out as a workspace.
| | 05:03 | That way if you ever change your mind, and you
want to try out one of these other workspaces,
| | 05:07 | such as Tracing which is new to Illustrator
CS6, why then you can just go ahead and choose
| | 05:11 | that workspace and return to the one you
saved at old time just by choosing it as well.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Cycling through screen modes| 00:00 | All right, the final thing I'm going to show
you is how to cycle between the screen modes
| | 00:04 | and the idea is you want to focus in on your
illustration without all the clutter of the
| | 00:08 | interface around it.
| | 00:09 | If you go down to the bottom of the toolbox
you'll see this option called Change Screen mode.
| | 00:14 | If you click on it you can switch between three
screen modes just by choosing any one of them.
| | 00:19 | Notice however, if I escape out and hover over
that icon that it's got a keyboard shortcut of F.
| | 00:24 | You don't have to press any other
key just the F key and that's it.
| | 00:27 | So notice that I have multiple illustrations
open, I can see that, because I've got all
| | 00:31 | these tabs listed at the top of the screen.
| | 00:33 | And by the way, if you want to go to any
specific open illustration, you can click
| | 00:37 | on this double-arrowhead to the far right
of the tabs, and you can just go ahead and
| | 00:41 | choose an illustration.
| | 00:43 | But I'm going to stick with this window.
| | 00:45 | If I press the F key to switch to the Full
Screen mode, I'll go ahead and get rid of
| | 00:48 | all those tabs, and it is in the document
window behind the toolbox in the right side panels.
| | 00:54 | But I can still switch between my illustrations
using that keyboard shortcuts, so I can press
| | 01:00 | Ctrl+Tab, for example, to
switch to the next illustration.
| | 01:03 | On the Mac that would be Command+Tilde in
order to switch between each one of these
| | 01:08 | items, and then come back
to that first illustration.
| | 01:11 | So this can be a pretty powerful way to work.
| | 01:13 | You just have to bear in mind that some of
the items in your illustration are hidden
| | 01:16 | behind those panels.
| | 01:18 | If you want to get rid of the interface entirely,
then you press the F key again, and notice,
| | 01:23 | now I've lost my panels on the right-hand
side, my toolbox has gone away on the left,
| | 01:27 | and I've lost my menu bar and
control panel at the top of the screen.
| | 01:30 | However, I can still get any work done that
I like here inside the Illustration, because
| | 01:35 | you can switch between most of the
tools as you'll see from the keyboard.
| | 01:39 | Now if you want to get the tools up on screen
temporarily, you just hover your cursor over
| | 01:43 | on the left-hand side, and then you could
select a different tool, for example, I might
| | 01:47 | select the Pen tool, and then move my
cursor out and the toolbox goes away.
| | 01:52 | The same is true for the right side panels.
| | 01:54 | If I hover over the far right side of the
screen, the panels come up temporarily, I
| | 01:58 | could switch to a different layer, for example,
and then I could move my cursor away from
| | 02:02 | the panels, and they'll go away.
| | 02:04 | Now if I want to switch back to the standard
display, so I can see all my interface items
| | 02:08 | and so forth, then I either just press the F
key yet again, in order to cycle back around,
| | 02:14 | or you can press the
Escape key that works as well.
| | 02:18 | Another thing to note is that
you can tab away your panels.
| | 02:21 | So if you press the Tab key, you're going to
hide both the toolbox over on the left-hand
| | 02:25 | side and the right side panels as well.
| | 02:28 | In a standard screen mode, I'll still see
the menu bar, although the Control panel is
| | 02:32 | hidden, and I'll see my tabs as well.
| | 02:34 | If I want to bring the panels back, all
I have to do is press the Tab key again.
| | 02:39 | If you want to hide just the right side
panels, press Shift+Tab and they will go away.
| | 02:43 | To bring them back, you press Shift+Tab again.
| | 02:46 | And these tab key techniques can be useful
when you're working in the Full Screen mode.
| | 02:50 | So if I press the F key a couple of times
in order to switch to Full Screen, then I'll
| | 02:55 | press Ctrl+Alt+0, or Command+Option+0 on the
Mac, to fit my entire artwork on the window.
| | 03:00 | Now if I need to bring my panels back, I can
either press the Tab key to bring back everything,
| | 03:06 | or I can press the Tab key to hide
everything as well, or I can press Shift+Tab in order
| | 03:11 | to bring back those right side panels, and
of course, I can press Shift+Tab again in
| | 03:16 | order to hide those panels.
| | 03:18 | And that's how you cycle through the screen
modes as well as hide and show panels when
| | 03:22 | you're working inside of Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Making Line ArtNow, we draw| 00:00 | Illustrator offers five simple Line tools,
one draws a straight line, another draws a
| | 00:06 | smooth arc, and the other three
draw spiral and a couple of grids.
| | 00:11 | They may not sound terribly exciting, but
rest assured there is no end to what you can
| | 00:16 | do with these seemingly banal tools.
| | 00:19 | For example, you can draw a heart, you can
make a target, you can put the target into
| | 00:24 | the heart, and then you can
fire an arrow into the target.
| | 00:28 | This may look like a complex
project but it's not, it's easy.
| | 00:33 | You can do this, asleep you can do this.
Click on the next movie and learn how.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Meet the line tools| 00:00 | Here's the final piece of line art that we'll
create over the course of this chapter, and
| | 00:04 | we'll do so using the simplest tools in all
of Illustrator, which are the Line tools.
| | 00:09 | And you can get to the Line tools by dropping-
down to this tool that looks like a diagonal line.
| | 00:16 | Notice that it has a little corner marker
in its lower right corner, that indicates
| | 00:20 | that if you click and hold on that tool icon,
it'll bring up a flyout menu, of all the Line tools.
| | 00:26 | Also notice over here on the far
right side we've got this bar.
| | 00:30 | If you release on the bar, you'll go ahead and
create a free floating panel of those Line tools.
| | 00:35 | And this works with any of the
tools with the markers, by the way.
| | 00:39 | So if I click and hold on the rectangle to
bring up its flyout menu of Shape tools, and
| | 00:43 | then release on its bar, I'll get
a floating panel of Shape tools.
| | 00:47 | We'll see how those work in the next chapter,
but for now I am going to go ahead and close
| | 00:51 | this panel by clicking on the little X.
| | 00:54 | Now in this movie what I want to do is just
briefly run through each of these tools so
| | 00:58 | that you know they're there.
| | 01:00 | We will be using each and every one of
them in the creation of this design.
| | 01:05 | So for starters we've got the Line Segment tool
which draws straight lines, couldn't be more simple.
| | 01:11 | Next, we have the Arc tool,
which draws arcing lines.
| | 01:15 | It's more accurate to say however that they're
quarter ellipses, because that's what they are.
| | 01:20 | They don't have to be quarter circles in other
words, they can stretch to become quarter ellipses.
| | 01:25 | And arcs are great for
laying down basic curving shapes.
| | 01:29 | As you'll see, we'll be creating this
hard outline exclusively using that tool.
| | 01:34 | Next we have got the Spiral tool which draws
spiraling lines, so you can see examples of
| | 01:38 | those down here at the bottom of the design.
| | 01:41 | The fourth tool is the Rectangular Grid tool,
which could be great for laying down guidelines,
| | 01:46 | which is exactly what we'll be doing
with that tool in the very next exercise.
| | 01:49 | And then finally, we've got the Polar Grid
tool, we'll be using that tool to create this
| | 01:54 | red and white target, inside of the heart.
| | 01:57 | So there you have it, the five basic Line
tools, remarkably powerful and undeniably
| | 02:03 | easy to use bunch that we'll begin
putting to work in the very next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating custom guides| 00:00 | All right let's get to
work creating that heart.
| | 00:03 | We're going to start things off
inside this file called Starter guides.ai.
| | 00:07 | It contains a few guidelines that will ensure
that you and I get the same results and also
| | 00:12 | contains a Tracing Template for the spirals that
we will be creating toward the end of the chapter.
| | 00:17 | Now we need to create an additional guide
that marks both the horizontal center of my
| | 00:21 | entire artboard, and the artboard, by the
way, measures 800 pts Wide x 620 pts Tall.
| | 00:27 | I also want to find horizontal center between the
top of artboard, and this long guideline right there.
| | 00:35 | And we can locate the center of an
illustration using the Rectangular Grid tool.
| | 00:40 | So if you are working along with me go
ahead and select the Rectangular Grid tool from
| | 00:43 | that Floating panel.
| | 00:45 | And then I want you to click on the Guides
layer to make it active, because it's the
| | 00:49 | layer that contains all the
Guides inside the Artwork.
| | 00:53 | Now I'm going to scroll over a little
bit so I have some more room to work.
| | 00:56 | And you want to make sure that
your Smart Guides are turned on.
| | 01:00 | So go the View menu, make sure you're
seeing a check mark in front of Smart Guides.
| | 01:04 | Then move your cursor up to the top left corner,
and I want to see the word Intersect right
| | 01:09 | there, which I can see.
| | 01:10 | And you want makes sure that you're starting
exactly from that corner, and then drag down
| | 01:16 | into the right, until you snap into
alignment with that long horizontal Guideline.
| | 01:22 | And you should see in that heads-up display,
that little light gray area, that the width
| | 01:27 | this thing you're creating is
800 pts and height is 500 pts.
| | 01:32 | Then go ahead and release.
| | 01:34 | Now we have identified the center right there,
these sort of heavy looking lines here are
| | 01:39 | the Horizontal center and the
Vertical center of the space.
| | 01:43 | But we also have all of these
other Guidelines that we don't need.
| | 01:45 | So, couple of ways to address that, I'm going
to press the Backspace key or the Delete key
| | 01:50 | on the Mac, to get rid of that shape, and
I'm going to move my cursor back up here to
| | 01:54 | the top left corner of the Artboard and click.
| | 01:57 | And that will bring up a dialog box
of Rectangular Grid tool Options.
| | 02:01 | So this is a common way to create items
inside of Illustrator, you just go ahead and click
| | 02:07 | with either a Line or a Shape tool, and you
bring up a dialog box of Numerical Options.
| | 02:12 | So notice it's telling me all the
information associated with the last item I drew.
| | 02:17 | So it measured 800 pts Wide, 500 pts Tall,
that's exactly what I'm looking for.
| | 02:22 | However, we have too many
dividers, in fact, all we want is 1.
| | 02:26 | We just want 1 Horizontal Divider right to
the middle and 1 Vertical Divider right down
| | 02:32 | the middle of the Artboard.
| | 02:33 | And that's all we're looking for.
| | 02:35 | Now you want to make sure that that top left
point is selected to the right of the Width
| | 02:39 | value, and then you click OK, and you go ahead and
create 1 Horizontal Guideline and 1 Vertical Guideline.
| | 02:46 | All right so that's one-way work.
| | 02:47 | I 'm going to show you another way to achieve this
effect that allows you to modify the grid on the fly.
| | 02:53 | So I'm going to go and press the Backspace
key, and I will once again drag from that
| | 02:57 | top left corner, I want to see the word
Intersect, and I'll drag down till I snap to the long
| | 03:02 | Horizontal Guideline, I should see a Width
value of 800 pts and the height of 500 pts.
| | 03:07 | I still have my mouse button down, and this
is very important, you want to hold it down
| | 03:10 | while you try this out.
| | 03:12 | If you want to add Horizontal Guidelines,
you press the Up arrow key, like so, if you
| | 03:18 | want to delete Horizontal lines, then you
press the Down arrow key, and you can even
| | 03:24 | totally get rid of the Horizontal lines
if you want to, but we want to have 1.
| | 03:28 | If you want to increase the number of
Vertical lines, you press the Right arrow key and if
| | 03:33 | you want to decrease the number of
lines you press the Left arrow key.
| | 03:37 | And I want to take it down
to 1 Vertical long line so.
| | 03:40 | And once I achieve the effect I'm looking for,
I will go ahead and release the mouse button.
| | 03:44 | The final thing that we need to do is turn
these path outlines as they are known into
| | 03:49 | Snapping Guidelines.
| | 03:51 | And you do that by going up to the View menu,
choosing Guides, and then you choose Make Guides.
| | 03:56 | So the idea is that you can turn anything you
can draw in Illustrator into a Snapping Guide.
| | 04:03 | All right, now that if we've identified that
central area right there, which will serve
| | 04:07 | as the center of our heart, we are ready to
begin drawing the heart with Art tool in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Drawing a heart with the Arc tool| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to begin
creating the heart outline using the Arc tool.
| | 00:05 | I've saved my changes as All guides.ai
found inside the 04_line_art folder.
| | 00:10 | Let's go ahead and switch to Arc tool, and
it's a pretty easy concept when you drag with
| | 00:16 | a tool you can see that you create as I
was saying before, a quarter ellipse.
| | 00:21 | And you might imagine that this is going to
serve as well for the first hump in our heart,
| | 00:26 | but we are not going to start
at this arbitrary location.
| | 00:28 | We are going to start right there at the
intersection of the central vertical guide and the second
| | 00:34 | horizontal guide down.
| | 00:35 | So I will go ahead and press the Backspace
key or the Delete key on the Mac, in order
| | 00:39 | get rid of that bad arc.
| | 00:41 | And now I will drag up on to the left, like
so, while pressing the Shift key, and you
| | 00:46 | want to drag until you snap
to that guideline up there.
| | 00:50 | And you kind of want to inch it back a little
bit to the right so that the heads-up display
| | 00:55 | says, a Width of 112 pts
and a Height of 112 pts.
| | 00:59 | And by virtue of the fact incidentally that
we were pressing the Shift key we're getting
| | 01:03 | a perfect quarter circle.
| | 01:05 | So you want to keep that Shift key down the
entire time, and then you want to release
| | 01:08 | your mouse button, and
then release the Shift key.
| | 01:12 | Now you want to drag from that anchor point, so make
sure that your cursor says the word Anchor on it.
| | 01:18 | And you want to drag down into the left until
you intersect with the first vertical guideline
| | 01:24 | and the second horizontal guide.
| | 01:26 | Now the arc will definitely go in the
wrong direction just as you see on my screen.
| | 01:30 | To flip it, what you do is you keep your
mouse button down, and you just tap the F key.
| | 01:36 | Then you go ahead and release the mouse
button in order to create the second arc.
| | 01:40 | Next, we need to go ahead and draw the bottom
portion of the heart, and you might be tempted
| | 01:45 | to do one of these numbers, where you draw
the outer lump here, and you press the F key
| | 01:49 | in order to flip it, and then you draw a final
arc, and you press F again, once to flip it,
| | 01:55 | but that would result in
one ugly looking heart.
| | 01:58 | So that's not what we want.
| | 01:59 | Let's go ahead and get rid of those path outlines
by switching to the Black Arrow tool and notice,
| | 02:04 | by the way, the Black Arrow has a keyboard
shortcut of V, all you have to do is just tap the V key.
| | 02:09 | And you might think of V as
being an upside down arrow.
| | 02:13 | So we've got the Black Arrow that's got an
upside down arrow for a keyboard shortcut,
| | 02:18 | that is the V key.
| | 02:19 | And then we've got a White Arrow, I'll tell
you how it works later, that's got a right
| | 02:23 | side up arrow for its keyboard shortcut,
which is the A key, which of course also happens
| | 02:28 | to stand for arrow.
| | 02:29 | All right, I am going to go ahead and switch
to the Black Arrow, which allows me to select
| | 02:33 | entire path outlines, which is what these
things are called inside of Illustrator.
| | 02:38 | Notice that at this point I'm seeing a
bounding box around my selected arc.
| | 02:43 | The bounding box extensibly makes it
easy to scale and rotate a graphic.
| | 02:48 | But in my experience it gets in the way of
getting actual work done, and there are better
| | 02:52 | ways to scale and rotate, as
I'll show you in a future chapter.
| | 02:57 | So I am going to advise that you turn the
bounding box off, and I'm definitely doing so.
| | 03:01 | By going up to the View menu and
choosing the Hide Bounding Box command.
| | 03:06 | If you ever need the Bounding Box in the future
just choose this command again and of course,
| | 03:10 | it's got a keyboard shortcut Ctrl+
Shift+B, or Command+Shift+B on a Mac.
| | 03:15 | Now I am going to draw this dotted marquee
in order to partially select these two path
| | 03:20 | outlines and that will select them both, and
then I'll press the Backspace key or the Delete
| | 03:24 | key on a Mac, to get rid of them.
| | 03:27 | Instead what we want to do is go ahead and
switch back to the Arc tool here, and you
| | 03:31 | want to drag from the last anchor point there,
all the way down to the intersection of the
| | 03:37 | middle vertical guide and the
fourth horizontal guide down.
| | 03:41 | So it's not the long guide, it's
the shorter one just above it.
| | 03:44 | And you want to make sure you see the word
Intersect, so you're intersecting those guidelines,
| | 03:49 | and then tap the F key if necessary in order to send
the arc in the other direction, and then release.
| | 03:54 | Now of course, where our heart concerned, that
doesn't look any better than one I showed you before.
| | 03:59 | We are going to make it look way better by
manually modifying this arc in the very next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting control handles| 00:00 | I've saved my progress as Ugly lumpy half
heart.ai found inside the 04_line_art folder.
| | 00:06 | Fortunately we're going to fix this half a
heart, and we're going to do so by manually
| | 00:10 | modifying the control handles
that are associated with the arc.
| | 00:15 | Let me show you what I mean.
| | 00:16 | Now are a little hard to see, especially
when the Guidelines are turned on, so let's go
| | 00:19 | ahead and hide the Guides by right-clicking
somewhere inside the Document Window, and
| | 00:24 | choosing the Hide Guides Command.
| | 00:25 | Now actually this doesn't give rid of the
guides, it just turns them off on screen.
| | 00:30 | You also have a keyboard shortcut for this command
which is Ctrl+Semicolon, or Command+Semicolon on the Mac.
| | 00:37 | Anyway, I'll go ahead and choose a Command.
| | 00:39 | Now you may recall I was telling you there
is a black arrow, the Selection tool, and
| | 00:43 | there is a white arrow, which
illustrator calls the Direct Selection tool.
| | 00:47 | I have got the black arrow selected, and
I'll go ahead and demonstrate that if you click
| | 00:51 | on one of these arcs you
select the entire thing.
| | 00:54 | So if you drag it around,
you're going to move the entire arc.
| | 00:56 | They are currently separated from
each other, we will join them shortly.
| | 01:00 | I am going to press Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z on
the Mac, in order to Undo that move, compare
| | 01:05 | that to the behavior of the white arrow
tool, which you can get by pressing A key.
| | 01:11 | If I were to click on this bottom mark, notice
that the Anchor Points at either end, so there
| | 01:16 | is one anchor point at the
beginning, one anchor point at the end.
| | 01:19 | They are appearing not as filled
squares, like we saw just a moment ago.
| | 01:24 | But it's hollow squares,
indicating that they're not selected.
| | 01:28 | We also have these balls on these levers
that are coming off the path outline, these are
| | 01:33 | known as control handles.
| | 01:35 | And what they allow you to do is
modify the curvature of the path.
| | 01:40 | So check this up, if I go ahead and grab this
handle and start dragging on it, I'm actually
| | 01:46 | stretching the curvature of the path outline,
it's almost as if there's some sort of magnetic
| | 01:51 | attraction between this ball
right here and the path itself.
| | 01:55 | And if I keep dragging the
ball, I keep stretching it.
| | 01:59 | If I drag the control handle the opposite
direction, like so, then I end up curving
| | 02:04 | the path outline in the other direction.
| | 02:07 | So it's really only flat when the control
handle is directly on top of that path outline.
| | 02:13 | Otherwise it's curving to some degree, and it
might be curving pretty darn far, depending
| | 02:18 | on how far you drag that handle.
| | 02:20 | Anyway, I am going to take it back there,
this looks pretty darn good to me, and I didn't
| | 02:25 | give you any guidelines for these control
handles, because I figured, if you want to
| | 02:29 | get a sense of how they work, and
you might want to go your own way.
| | 02:32 | Now also I want to make this curve a little
shallower, it seems to me that it's coming
| | 02:36 | down too far, so I am going
to I drag this handle up.
| | 02:40 | If I were to drag it down, by the way, I would
increase the roundness of that curve, because
| | 02:44 | again, it's trying to get to that handles,
it's got that magnetic attraction toward.
| | 02:49 | I am going to go ahead and press Ctrl+Z, or
Command+Z on the Mac, however, and drag it
| | 02:53 | upward and notice that that gives me
a shallower curve, as you can see.
| | 02:59 | I could also once again center the other
direction if I wanted to, naturally I don't.
| | 03:04 | Now if you want to constrain the angle of
the control handle to exactly vertical or
| | 03:08 | horizontal, you press and Hold+
Shift key as you're dragging.
| | 03:12 | So I want to keep this guy exactly vertical
as he is so that I am managing the curvature
| | 03:17 | of the arc above, so I've a nice
smooth curve at this location.
| | 03:21 | So that means I am going to keep the Shift
key down until after I release the handle,
| | 03:26 | and then I can release the Shift key.
| | 03:28 | All right, now I want to join all these path
outlines together, and we'll do that by switching
| | 03:33 | back to the Black Arrow tool, and I am just
going to go ahead and partially marquee all
| | 03:38 | three of these path outlines,
in order to select all of them.
| | 03:42 | And then we'll go out to the Object menu
Path Join, and this is one of those commands
| | 03:47 | that you use all the
time inside of Illustrator.
| | 03:50 | So remember its keyboard shortcut,
it is Ctrl+J, or Command+J on a Mac.
| | 03:54 | The path won't look any different after I
choose the Command, but now all the points
| | 03:58 | are fused together, and I can show you that that's
the case by switching back to the white arrow tool.
| | 04:03 | Then I click off the path outline in order
to deselect, I'll click on that top anchor
| | 04:08 | point and notice, if I drag it around, it's
now fused into one, the same goes for this
| | 04:14 | anchor point over here.
| | 04:15 | So we've got one continuous path outline
that I've messed up terribly, so I'll go ahead
| | 04:20 | and press Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z on the Mac,
a couple of times in order to reinstate my
| | 04:25 | smooth half a heart.
| | 04:26 | Of course, it is half a heart, we need to
turn it into a full heart, and we will do
| | 04:30 | so by copying and flipping that
half a heart in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reflecting and completing a shape| 00:00 | In this movie we're going to take our half a
heart, we're going to copy it, we're going
| | 00:04 | to flip it, and we're going to
join it into a full heart shape.
| | 00:07 | I've saved my progress
as Perfect half heart.ai.
| | 00:11 | Now I've gone ahead and switched back to the
Black Arrow tool, which of course is going
| | 00:14 | to let me select the entire path outline.
| | 00:16 | I'll go ahead and click on it to make it active,
and then I'll go up to the Edit menu and choose
| | 00:21 | the Copy command or press
Ctrl+C, Command+C on the Mac.
| | 00:26 | Then we want to paste the copy of that heart,
and we want to paste it into this exact same
| | 00:30 | location, and you do that by going to the
Edit menu and choosing Paste in Front, or
| | 00:36 | you can press Ctrl+F, or Command+F on the Mac.
| | 00:39 | Now it doesn't look any different, because
the two path outlines are directly on top
| | 00:42 | of each other, but we now have two paths.
| | 00:45 | All right, I'll go ahead and press
Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z to undo that move.
| | 00:50 | The next step is to flip the line, and
where Adobe products are concerned, things like
| | 00:55 | scaling, and rotating, and flipping, are
all considered forms of transformations.
| | 01:01 | So you'll notice the word
Transform up here in the Control panel.
| | 01:05 | If you click on that word, then you'll bring
up this pop-up panel, and then you could go
| | 01:09 | to the little flyout menu right
there and choose Flip Horizontal.
| | 01:14 | Problem is if you do that then you're going
to get this wacky shape right here, because
| | 01:19 | you've flipped around the
center of the path outline.
| | 01:22 | That's not what we want.
| | 01:23 | So I'll go ahead and press Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z on
the Mac, and then I'll bring back the Transform panel.
| | 01:28 | I need to set a reference point, and it
needs to be over here in the right-hand side.
| | 01:32 | So I'll click this middle right reference
point, and then I'll choose that command again.
| | 01:37 | I'll go to the flyout menu icon and choose Flip
Horizontal, and now we have the proper effect.
| | 01:43 | Now I want to go ahead and give this heart a
thicker outline, so I'll partially marquee
| | 01:47 | the line choosing my Black
Arrow tool to select both of them.
| | 01:51 | And then I'll go up to the Stroke item in
the Control panel, and I'll change the value
| | 01:55 | from 1 point to 10 point, so where Illustrator
is concerned, if you want to change the outline
| | 02:02 | that's called the stroke, and if you want to
change the interior of a shape, that's called the Fill.
| | 02:07 | All right, we now have a thicker stroke,
problem is I'm going to go ahead and zoom in here,
| | 02:13 | notice that we don't have a
proper corner down here at the bottom.
| | 02:17 | The reason being that these are two
independent path outlines, need to join them together.
| | 02:21 | So they're both selected, all we need to do
is go up to the Object menu, choose Path,
| | 02:26 | and then choose Join again, or you can
just press Ctrl+J, or Command+J on the Mac.
| | 02:31 | And notice now we have a single path, and
we can tell that's the case because we have
| | 02:35 | this nice sharp so called miter joint.
| | 02:39 | Problem is however, that we're not seeing
that kind of miter joint up here at the top,
| | 02:44 | we're just getting this flat beveled edge
and the reason for that is if you take a look
| | 02:49 | at the severe curvature, notice that these
two portions, these two segments right here
| | 02:55 | are meeting each other.
| | 02:56 | It's such an angle that there's no way to
reconcile that miter, it would go infinitely deep.
| | 03:02 | So we're just going to leave the corner the
way it is and in fact, we're going to end
| | 03:06 | up covering it up, with that target that
we're going to draw and paste inside the heart,
| | 03:11 | starting in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Drawing a target with the Polar Grid tool| 00:00 | In this movie we will create these concentric
red and white rings inside of the heart, using
| | 00:05 | the Polar Grid tool.
| | 00:06 | I'm going to switch over to my file in
progress, which I have called Classic heart.ai, and
| | 00:10 | I'll select the Polar Grid tool, which is
final tool in this little flyout panel.
| | 00:15 | And I need to bring up my Guidelines as well,
so I will right-click inside the Document
| | 00:19 | Window and choose Show Guides--
not the Grid, but the Guides.
| | 00:23 | Or you can press Ctrl+Semicolon,
or Command+Semicolon on the Mac.
| | 00:27 | We want to center our rings at this point
here where the third Horizontal Guide intersects
| | 00:33 | with the Central Vertical Guide.
| | 00:35 | And so I am going to drag from that location,
but unfortunately I'm creating this thing
| | 00:41 | whatever it is these concentric rings with
pie wedges from corner to corner, that is
| | 00:46 | the entirety of the rings fits inside of a
Bounding Box that I'm drawing from corner to corner.
| | 00:51 | That's not what I want, I want to draw from
the center outward and to make that happen
| | 00:55 | with any tool, by the way, as you're
drawing with that tool you press and hold the Alt
| | 01:00 | key or the Option key on a Mac,
and you keep that key down.
| | 01:04 | Now I also want to constrain my rings to perfect circles,
so I want to press and hold the Shift key as well.
| | 01:10 | So I have both Shift and Alt down, that
would be Shift and Option on the Mac.
| | 01:15 | Now I need to change these pie wedges and
the number of rings, and I do that while I
| | 01:21 | am drawing, by pressing the Arrow keys.
| | 01:23 | Well, I am not an octopus, so I don't have
any fingers left to jump over to the other
| | 01:29 | side of the keyboard and play with arrow key.
| | 01:31 | So I'm going to have to release Shift and
Alt or Shift and Option for a moment, I still
| | 01:35 | have my mouse button down.
| | 01:37 | And what I'm going to do here is if you
press the Up arrow, you're going to increase the
| | 01:42 | number of concentric rings, if you press the Down
Arrow, you're going to reduce the number of rings.
| | 01:47 | And I want 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 rings all together,
so that's what this thing should look like.
| | 01:54 | And if you want to increase the number of
pie wedges, that is those rays going outward,
| | 01:58 | you press the Right arrow key and if you want to
reduce the number of them, you press the Left arrow key.
| | 02:03 | And I don't want any, so I want this effect
right there, then still got the Mouse button down.
| | 02:09 | I'll press the Shift and Alt keys or the
Shift and Option keys on the Mac, and if you look
| | 02:14 | at that heads-up display down there, you see
that my width and height values are 522, that's
| | 02:19 | exactly what I'm looking for, by the way.
| | 02:22 | Now I'll go ahead and release the Mouse button.
| | 02:24 | All right, I want to increase the thickness
of the stroke a little bit, so I'll change
| | 02:28 | that Stroke value to 4, and then notice these
two Swatches right here, the first one controls
| | 02:34 | the color of the fill and the second
one controls the color of the stroke.
| | 02:38 | I'm going to go ahead and click on the one
associated with fill, and then I'm going to
| | 02:41 | select there is first red swatch right here,
in order to assign it to the fill of the rings.
| | 02:48 | Problem is it goes and fills in all the rings,
I wanted alternating, so we have a red ring
| | 02:52 | followed by a white ring.
| | 02:54 | And to accomplish that I need
to basically redraw the rings.
| | 02:58 | So I'm going to press the Backspace key or the
Delete key on a Mac, to get rid of the rings.
| | 03:04 | And then you may recall how we clicked with
the Rectangular Grid tool in order to bring
| | 03:10 | up that dialog box.
| | 03:11 | And we can do the same thing with the Polar
Grid tools as well, however, if we do, we
| | 03:16 | will be creating the Polar Grid down in to the
left just as when I was originally drawing it.
| | 03:21 | I don't want that, so I'll cancel out.
| | 03:23 | Instead what you want to do is press and
hold the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac,
| | 03:28 | and click at that Guide intersection right
there and that way you can see my cursor changes.
| | 03:33 | When I have the Alt or Option key down, it
shows me that I'm going to be creating this
| | 03:37 | shape from the center outward.
| | 03:38 | So basically, you can think of the Alt or
Option key, as just kind of like reversing
| | 03:43 | the behavior of anything inside of Illustrator.
| | 03:46 | All right, so we're seeing the settings
associated with the last Grid that we drew.
| | 03:51 | The Width and Height values should both be
522, the Number of Concentric Dividers should
| | 03:56 | be 6, if it isn't, go ahead and change it.
| | 03:59 | We don't want to skew, that would make the
rings all different sizes as they go outward.
| | 04:03 | Radial Dividers we definitely want to set to 0,
we don't need any skew there, even though
| | 04:08 | it's not going to make any difference, because
with 0 dividers, we are not going to see anything.
| | 04:12 | What we really want to do, assuming all of
these other settings are the way they should
| | 04:15 | be is turn on both of these check boxes,
Create Compound Path From Ellipses, that will allow
| | 04:21 | every other ring to be invisible
or appear white against white page.
| | 04:26 | And then you should also turn on Fill Grid,
so we get the red rings, then click OK, and
| | 04:31 | we get the exact effect we're looking for.
| | 04:33 | And when I say the exact effect, I mean of
course, we don't want the rings to be in front
| | 04:38 | of the heart, we want
them to be inside the heart.
| | 04:40 | And I'll show you how we
accomplish that in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Pasting one shape inside another| 00:00 | In this movie we're going to take these concentric rings,
and we're going to paste them inside the heart shape.
| | 00:06 | I've saved my progress as The target.ai, and
I'm going to switch to the Black Arrow tool,
| | 00:10 | which I can get by pressing the V key, and
then I'll go ahead and click on any of the
| | 00:14 | rings to select all of them.
| | 00:16 | Now let's go up to the Edit menu and choose
the Cut command, or you can press Ctrl+X,
| | 00:21 | or Command+X on the Mac.
| | 00:23 | Now I'll go ahead and click
on the heart to select it.
| | 00:26 | What we're going to be creating here is a
mask, so in another words, the heart will
| | 00:29 | be masking the rings, and we do that
by forcing the rings inside the heart.
| | 00:35 | So if you drop down to the bottom of the toolbox,
you'll notice these icons that say draw Something.
| | 00:41 | So we've got Draw Normal, which is the way
things are setup normally inside of the software,
| | 00:46 | and the idea is you just go ahead and draw
one shape on top of the one before, so each
| | 00:51 | path is stacked on the next one.
| | 00:54 | If you want to change that so you draw a
shape behind the active shape, then you turn on
| | 00:59 | Draw Behind, and then if you want to put one
shape inside of another, you switch to Draw
| | 01:03 | Inside, and you can draw shapes directly inside
each other if you want to, or you can paste them.
| | 01:11 | Notice that you can switch between these
modes by pressing Shift+D, the D being for Draw
| | 01:15 | of course, but I'm just going to go ahead
and click on Drawn Inside in order to make
| | 01:19 | it active, and you can see that now we
have these dashed corners rounding the shape.
| | 01:24 | Now all you need to do is go up to the Edit
menu and choose Paste in Place and that goes
| | 01:29 | ahead and puts the rings inside the heart.
| | 01:32 | Now I want to show you what's going on over
here inside the Layers panel and if you can't
| | 01:36 | see the Layers panel, you go up to the Window
menu and choose the layers Command, you also
| | 01:41 | have keyboard shortcut of F7.
| | 01:43 | Notice that each one of these layers here
has a little triangle in front of it and if
| | 01:49 | you click on that triangle, you'll expand
the contents of the layer, because the angle
| | 01:53 | of the triangle changes, some folks
say that you're twirling open the layer.
| | 01:58 | I'm going to expand my
Layers panel a little bit.
| | 02:01 | Directly below you can see that we have this
thing called a clip group, which is actually
| | 02:05 | short for clipping group, for what that's
worth, and you can twirl it open as well,
| | 02:09 | and it contains the path outline, which is
the mask, by the way, and the target inside
| | 02:15 | of it, which is a group.
| | 02:17 | And we can go ahead and twirl that item open as
well if we want to see the contents of the group.
| | 02:22 | Actually, we don't really need a group for
single item like this so you can just drag
| | 02:27 | the item out of the group, like so, by
dragging it upward just a little bit of housekeeping,
| | 02:31 | you don't have to do, because
the group is not hurting anything.
| | 02:34 | But the point I'm kind of trying to make here
is that the Layers panel inside of Illustrator
| | 02:40 | is amazingly powerful, you can see every
single item in your entire Illustration, and you
| | 02:46 | can name the items too, like if I were
to double-click on the existing name.
| | 02:51 | Notice it doesn't bring up a dialog box
like it has in the past, we have direct access
| | 02:55 | to the name, and I'm going go ahead and call
this guy target, and then I'll double-click
| | 03:00 | at the name of the heart above, and I'll go ahead
and call it outline, and then I'll double-click
| | 03:06 | on clip group here, and I'll just call it
heart, and so you have this amazing level
| | 03:12 | of controls if you want
to organize your artwork.
| | 03:14 | Now you may look at this and think, well,
that's for people who have a great time organizing
| | 03:19 | their sock drawer or something like that,
but it actually can be very useful, especially
| | 03:23 | if you're sharing files with other people,
if the files are sufficiently complicated,
| | 03:27 | they'll really be glad that you took the
time to name a few things, and it's often times
| | 03:33 | very helpful for your own purposes.
| | 03:34 | If you find yourself working in an
Illustration you created a couple of years ago, you too
| | 03:39 | will be grateful that you took
the time to name a few things.
| | 03:42 | All right, now I'm just going to click off
the object in order to deselect it, and I'll
| | 03:47 | switch back to the Draw Normal mode and the result
is a target successfully pasted inside the heart.
| | 03:53 | In the next movie, we're
going to begin work on the arrow.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Drawing an arrow with the Line tool| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to draw the
arrow using what has to be the simplest tool
| | 00:05 | in all of Illustrator, the Line tool.
| | 00:08 | I've saved my progress as Clipping mask.ai
found inside the 04_line_art folder, and notice
| | 00:13 | if you hover over the Line tool--which
Illustrator calls the Line Segment tool--that it has a
| | 00:18 | keyboard shortcut of Backslash, just FYI.
| | 00:22 | Anyway, I'm going to select the tool to make
it active, and then I'm going to change this
| | 00:27 | Stroke value up here in the
Control panel to 10 points.
| | 00:31 | Then I'll drag from the center of the
heart all the way over here to the left.
| | 00:36 | So I'm creating a horizontal line.
| | 00:38 | Now you may you think that's weird that I'm
not creating a line at the right angle at
| | 00:43 | the angle of the arrow, but I've got to
build all those feathers and everything else.
| | 00:47 | So it's going to be easier if we build the arrow
horizontally, and then we rotate it in the place.
| | 00:52 | So over time you'll get a sense of how to
save your self-work inside the program.
| | 00:57 | Anyway, I'm looking for a Distance value there and
that has a display of somewhere around 318 points.
| | 01:04 | So 317.5 works just great, I will mention, by
the way, if you want to create a perpendicular
| | 01:09 | line that is a horizontal line or a vertical
line or a diagonal line, then you press and
| | 01:15 | hold the Shift key as
you're dragging with the tool.
| | 01:19 | So you might think I should press the Shift key,
but because I'm dragging along a guideline,
| | 01:22 | it doesn't really matter.
| | 01:23 | Anyway, we'll go ahead and release
when I get an arrow about yea long.
| | 01:28 | Now I'm going to press Ctrl+Semicolon, or
Command+Semicolon on the Mac, to hide my guides,
| | 01:33 | and I'm going to zoom in here a little bit.
| | 01:35 | Notice that we've got a
couple of rough transitions.
| | 01:38 | First of all, this line shouldn't just end
like this, it should have a little bit of
| | 01:42 | curve, because it's going into that target,
and I can achieve that effect by clicking
| | 01:47 | on the word Stroke to bring up his pop-up
panel, and then selecting the second Cap icon,
| | 01:53 | which gives my line a round cap.
| | 01:55 | So I end up getting this effect here.
| | 01:57 | I'm also noticing that the top of my
heart isn't properly aligned with the target.
| | 02:02 | So I'm going to go ahead and press the Escape
key to hide the Stroke panel, and I'm going
| | 02:06 | to switch to my white arrow tool which I get
by pressing the A key, and I'll click on this
| | 02:09 | anchor point to select it.
| | 02:13 | And notice that the anchor point is right
there in the center of the stroke, by the way.
| | 02:17 | And then I'll press the Down arrow key a couple of
times in order to nudge that anchor point in the place.
| | 02:23 | All right, so now we have
the shaft of the arrow.
| | 02:26 | We need to go ahead and draw the feathers.
| | 02:27 | So, I'm going to press Ctrl+Semicolon, Command+
Semicolon once again in order to bring back my guides,
| | 02:33 | and I'll go ahead and select Line tool this
time from the toolbox, it doesn't really matter,
| | 02:38 | and I'm going drag down from that anchor,
while pressing the Shift key so that I get
| | 02:43 | a diagonal line, like so, and I'm looking
for a line that's about 55 points long.
| | 02:49 | Again, I don't expect to get it exactly right,
but I seem to have it at 55.15 which is just
| | 02:55 | fine, and now I'll drag from this anchor point
while pressing the Shift key over to the right
| | 03:00 | until I have a line that's about 90 points
long, and I've seem to have nailed that one.
| | 03:05 | Great! And then I'll drag from this final
anchor point backup while pressing the Shift
| | 03:10 | key, and I hope to snap into alignment with
that guideline right there, but snapping doesn't
| | 03:16 | always work so well with certain tools, and
it might be because I have the Shift key down
| | 03:21 | that is not quite working.
| | 03:23 | So, I'll create a shorter line,
but I do want to press Shift.
| | 03:26 | I'll just create a shorter line like that
one right there, and then I'll go ahead and
| | 03:31 | switch to the white arrow tool.
| | 03:33 | I'll click off the path to deselect it, I'll
go ahead and sort of marquee around that point
| | 03:37 | in order to select the anchor point, and I'll
drag while pressing the Shift key once again,
| | 03:41 | and this time I get a snap, I can see
that I'm snapping to the guideline.
| | 03:45 | So that's good news.
| | 03:46 | Now I'm going to grab my black arrow tool,
and I'm going to click on this path right
| | 03:50 | here, and I'm going to drag it over while
pressing the Shift key, so you want to press
| | 03:55 | the Shift key after you begin dragging.
| | 03:58 | That way you'll drag in a perpendicular direction,
in this case, horizontally, and you also want
| | 04:04 | to press and hold the Alt key
or the Option key on the Mac.
| | 04:07 | So start dragging first, then press Shift
and Alt or Shift and Option on the Mac.
| | 04:12 | Shift constrains, the Alt or Option key will
create a duplicate, and you can see I've got
| | 04:16 | that double cursor there which
indicates that I'm going to clone this line.
| | 04:21 | So now I'll just drop it in the place.
| | 04:23 | I want this line to be 4.6, so I'll change
the Stroke value up there in the Control panel
| | 04:28 | to 4, and now I'm going to duplicate this
path again, but I'm going to automate the
| | 04:34 | process, and you can do that by going to
the Object menu, choosing Transform, and then
| | 04:38 | choosing the Transform Again command, or you
can just press the keyboard shortcut, Ctrl+D,
| | 04:43 | or Command+D on the Mac,
the D begin for Duplicate.
| | 04:47 | And as soon as I choose the command or
press Ctrl+D, or Command+D, I get a second copy
| | 04:51 | of this feather line.
| | 04:53 | Now, obviously, these lines are distributed
properly, which is why I'm going to partially
| | 04:57 | marquee all four of these lines, and then
notice to where the line up here in the Control
| | 05:01 | panel, click on it to bring up this pop-up panel
and make sure that Align To is set to Selection.
| | 05:09 | That's very important, and then go ahead and
click on this second to last icon, Horizontal
| | 05:14 | Distribute Center and that will go ahead
and give you the effect we're looking for.
| | 05:18 | All right, I'm going to
click to hide that panel.
| | 05:20 | All right, now let's go ahead and join these
paths, I'm looking to join the thick ones,
| | 05:25 | and then the thin ones.
| | 05:27 | So I'm going to Shift-click on each of
these thin lines in order to deselect them, and
| | 05:31 | then I'll Shift-click on this thick
horizontal line in order to add it to the selection.
| | 05:37 | So the Shift key always reverses the selection
when you're working with the black arrow tool,
| | 05:42 | and now I'll go out to the Object menu, choose
Path, and then choose Join, or you can press
| | 05:47 | Ctrl+J, or Command+J on a Mac, and that goes
ahead and joins the path and notice we get
| | 05:52 | these nice mitered corners as well.
| | 05:54 | So if I press Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z on a Mac,
these are the bad corners we have before,
| | 05:59 | because the paths were not joined to each other
and if I press Ctrl+Shift+C, or Command+Shift+C
| | 06:04 | on the Mac, in order to redo the
operation, we now have the miters.
| | 06:08 | All right, so we've managed to create a
shaft for the arrow, half of feather.
| | 06:12 | In the next movie, create the other half of
the feather, and we'll rotate the arrow into place.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Rotating, filling, and stacking| 00:00 | In this movie we're going to copy and flip
the feathers, we're going to rotate the arrow
| | 00:04 | into place, we're going to fill the feathers,
and we're going to adjust the stacking order
| | 00:08 | in the Layers panel just
so you know what's coming.
| | 00:12 | I've saved my progress as Half an
arrow.ai, armed with a Black Arrow tool.
| | 00:17 | I'm going to partially marquee all of these
paths that are associated with the feather,
| | 00:21 | which include this one four point path along the
outside and each of the two thinner parts in between.
| | 00:26 | Now we're going to copy and flip them, and
we're going to do these operations from the
| | 00:30 | keyboard, because they're really common
operations that you'll be doing a lot.
| | 00:35 | So I'll press Ctrl+C, Command+C on the Mac,
that copies the feathers to the clipboard,
| | 00:39 | then I'll press Ctrl+F, or Command+F on the
Mac, that goes ahead and pastes those feathers
| | 00:45 | in the exact same location, and you
could see that we now have two copies.
| | 00:49 | I'll press Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z
on the Mac, to undo that change.
| | 00:52 | Now click on the word Transform
up here in the Control panel.
| | 00:56 | To bring up the Transform panel,
select the top middle reference point.
| | 01:00 | Click on the flyout menu icon and choose
Flip Vertical in order to flip those feathers.
| | 01:06 | Now we need to go ahead and join the feathers
together, so I'm going to Shift-click on these
| | 01:10 | two thinner lines to deselect them, and then Shift-
click on a thicker bottom line in order to select it.
| | 01:16 | Now we want to join these paths together,
and we can do so as easily as pressing Ctrl+J,
| | 01:21 | or Command+J on the Mac.
| | 01:23 | All right, now let's go ahead and rotate the
feather into place, I'm going to press Ctrl+1,
| | 01:27 | or Command+1 on the Mac, in
order to zoom out to 100%.
| | 01:31 | Then I'm going to partially marquee all
of the paths associated with this arrow.
| | 01:35 | And I'm thinking I want to rotate the arrow
30 degrees, so I'll click on Transform once
| | 01:40 | again, because rotation is a transformation.
| | 01:42 | I'll select this middle right reference point
so that we're rotating with respect to this
| | 01:48 | location here, and notice this rotate
value, third value down on the left.
| | 01:53 | I'm going to change it to 30
degrees and press the Tab key.
| | 01:56 | Well, obviously I rotated the
arrow in the wrong direction.
| | 02:00 | Anytime that happens to you just Press Ctrl+Z,
or Command+Z on the Mac, and instead of entering
| | 02:05 | a positive value just change it
to the exact same value negative.
| | 02:09 | So I'll enter negative 30 degrees and press
Tab, and I get the result I'm looking for.
| | 02:13 | All right, now let's go ahead and zoom in on
this guy, obviously we've got some problems here.
| | 02:18 | The feather should be covering up the heart,
so I'll click off the shapes to deselect them,
| | 02:23 | click on the external feather shape, and then
go up to the Control panel and click on this
| | 02:28 | first swatch right there in order to bring up the
Swatches panel and select White as the fill-color.
| | 02:34 | And we have another problem, which is one
of stacking order, the feather is in front
| | 02:39 | of everything else, and it needs to be behind.
| | 02:41 | So the easiest way to address that problem
is to go ahead and twirl open the Drawing
| | 02:45 | layer here inside the Layers panel.
| | 02:48 | You can see by the preview there
that this top layer is our problem.
| | 02:52 | I'm going to drag it below all of those lines
just above the heart, and then drop it into
| | 02:58 | place and that changes the so-called stacking
order, so we get the effect we're looking for.
| | 03:03 | Finally, we might as well select these arrow
shapes, we'll go ahead and partially marquee
| | 03:07 | them once again and group them together by
going up to the Object menu and choosing the
| | 03:12 | Group Command, another keyboard shortcut for
you which is Ctrl+G, or Command+G on the Mac.
| | 03:18 | And then let's just go ahead and rename
this item Arrow and press the Enter key or the
| | 03:23 | Return key on the Mac, in
order to finish off the job.
| | 03:26 | All right, Ctrl+1, or Command+1 on the Mac,
click off the arrow in order to deselect it.
| | 03:31 | The only tool left is this Spiral tool, and
I'll show you how to work with it in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Spiral tool| 00:00 | As promised in this movie I am going to show
you how to use the Spiral tool, and then in
| | 00:04 | the next movie, I'll show
you how to put it to work.
| | 00:07 | I've saved my progress as Angled arrow.ai,
it's found inside the 04_line_art folder.
| | 00:13 | Just a bit of a word of warning upfront here
just as the Line Segment tool is the easiest
| | 00:18 | of the Line tools to use, the Spiral tool is
not only the weirdest, but it's also pretty
| | 00:24 | difficult to predict.
| | 00:26 | And I'll explain why that is in just a moment.
| | 00:27 | But it can be made to produce
some very interesting effects.
| | 00:31 | Now just so that we don't have a lot of
guides flashing on screen here, I am going to go
| | 00:35 | up to the View menu, and I'm going to
choose the Smart Guides command to turn it off, or
| | 00:39 | I could press Ctrl+U, or Command+U on the Mac.
| | 00:42 | All right, now I'll select the
Spiral tool from my little tool panel.
| | 00:47 | And I am going to start dragging this guide
intersection right here, four horizontal guides
| | 00:51 | down, three to the right.
| | 00:53 | And the reason I'm starting there is I want
you to see exactly the beginning of my drag.
| | 00:58 | So I'll drag outward, like so, and notice by default
I am creating a counterclockwise spinning spiral.
| | 01:05 | The endpoint of that spiral
is right there on my cursor.
| | 01:09 | So that part's fairly easy, it's the
beginning of the spiral that's a problem.
| | 01:13 | Notice that no point on the
spiral intersects those guides.
| | 01:18 | So it's difficult to know where to
start when drawing with this tool.
| | 01:22 | Fortunately, you can press the spacebar as you're
dragging in order to move the spiral on the fly.
| | 01:29 | Now you can do that with any of the tools,
the Line tool, the Arc tool, any of them.
| | 01:34 | It's just that, where the Spiral tool is
concerned, it's an essential trick to know.
| | 01:39 | Also worth knowing, you can press and hold
the Ctrl key, or the Command key on the Mac,
| | 01:43 | to change the decay as we're seeing here.
| | 01:46 | You can even flip the spiral the other
direction if you like, which means that now the inner
| | 01:51 | point coincides with the cursor, however that
doesn't make it any more difficult to predict,
| | 01:56 | and I think it makes it
a little harder frankly.
| | 01:59 | So, I'm going to Ctrl-drag, or Command-
drag the decay in the other direction.
| | 02:04 | If you want to change the number of segments,
you press arrow keys, so I'll press the Up
| | 02:07 | arrow key in order to add segments, press
the Down arrow key in order to reduce the
| | 02:12 | number of segments.
| | 02:13 | And then finally, if you want to flip the spiral
so it goes clockwise instead of counterclockwise,
| | 02:19 | you press the R key for Reflect.
| | 02:23 | Did you get that? When you're working with
the Arc tool, you press the F key, for Flip.
| | 02:29 | When you're working with the Spiral
tool, you press the R key for Reflect.
| | 02:33 | I guess you know that the
Spiral tool is fancier or something.
| | 02:37 | I am going to go ahead and release the mouse
button, because my finger is getting very tired.
| | 02:41 | And I'll press the Backspace key or the Delete key
on the Mac, in order to get rid of that spiral.
| | 02:45 | You can also click just as you can, with the
other tools in order to bring up a dialog box.
| | 02:50 | And I am going to go ahead and restate these
values to their defaults, which is a Radius
| | 02:54 | of 80, a Decay of 80 as well,
Segments are by default set to 10.
| | 02:59 | And the counterclockwise
option right here is the Style.
| | 03:02 | Then I will go ahead and click OK, and when I do,
I'll create a spiral right there on the screen.
| | 03:08 | Don't want that, so I'll press the Backspace key or
the Delete key on the Mac, in order to get rid of it.
| | 03:12 | Here's what we're going to do.
| | 03:14 | Notice this Template layer which is turned off
right now, I'm going to go ahead and turn it on.
| | 03:19 | And what it is is it's a layer that's set
to a reduced opacity so that we can try our
| | 03:23 | hands to tracing these spirals.
| | 03:25 | And we'll do exactly that in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Tracing existing spirals| 00:00 | All right. Who's ready to draw spirals?
What we are going to do in this movie is trace
| | 00:05 | three of the spirals, and we
are going to flip them of course.
| | 00:07 | We are going to try to align them with the
outline of the heart, which means that we
| | 00:12 | should probably take a moment to
turn that outline into a custom guide.
| | 00:17 | I am working inside a file called Spiral template.
ai, and I am going to twirl open the Drawing layer
| | 00:22 | right there, and then I am going
to twirl open this heart group.
| | 00:26 | As you may recall, we have got this mask in the
shape of a heart, and then we've got the target.
| | 00:31 | Now I need to select that heart shape
independently of the target, and the easiest way to do that
| | 00:37 | is to click on this little circular target
icon right there, which Adobe internally calls
| | 00:43 | the meatball, believe it or not, and so when
you click on this circle, you are actually
| | 00:47 | meatballing the object.
So it becomes a verb.
| | 00:51 | What it does is it selects this heart shape
independently of the target, which is essential.
| | 00:55 | Now I am going to go up to the Edit menu and
choose the Copy command, or I can press Ctrl+C,
| | 01:00 | Command+C on the Mac.
| | 01:02 | Then I'll go ahead and target this Guides
layer by clicking on its meatball, so you
| | 01:07 | can select an entire layer this way, and then
I'm going to go up to the Edit menu and choose
| | 01:12 | Paste in Back or press Ctrl+B, or Command+B
on the Mac, in order to paste that heart at
| | 01:18 | the back of the layer.
| | 01:19 | And then finally, in order to turn the heart
into a custom guide, I'll go up to the View
| | 01:24 | menu, choose Guides, and
then choose Make Guides.
| | 01:27 | Now we have a snapping guide
in the shape of the heart.
| | 01:30 | All right! Next, what we are going to do is
twirl the heart back closed here, I am going
| | 01:34 | to target it, and then I want
to draw the spirals behind it.
| | 01:38 | So I'm going to go ahead and select the Draw
Behind icon down here at the bottom of the toolbox.
| | 01:44 | Now let's begin creating the spirals.
| | 01:46 | It's anyone's guess where you start,
somewhere approximately around here, it seems like it
| | 01:51 | should work to me, and well, look at that,
after years and years of using this tool,
| | 01:56 | I am totally wrong.
| | 01:57 | So I am going to press the spacebar here in
order to move it, the shape around a little
| | 02:01 | bit, and then I'll try to get it closer to
the right place, and this looks pretty good,
| | 02:08 | and between you and me, I'm not all that interested in
getting the spiral exactly aligned with the template.
| | 02:14 | So, good enough is actually good enough.
| | 02:17 | Notice that we've got an extra segment
hanging off the end, so I'll press the Down arrow
| | 02:20 | key to get rid of it, and then I'll release,
and we've got ourselves a nice spiral.
| | 02:25 | The Line Weight should be 10 so the Stroke
option right here should be set to 10 points.
| | 02:29 | Then I am going to click on the word Stroke, and I'm
going to assign a Round Cap by clicking on this icon.
| | 02:35 | Then I'll click on Stroke again to hide it.
| | 02:38 | All right! Let's try our
hand at another one of these.
| | 02:39 | It's so fun, drawing spirals after all, so,
look I didn't get this right either, I don't
| | 02:45 | seem to be learning a thing as I'm working
here along with you, hopefully you are, maybe
| | 02:49 | your results are turning out to be better.
It could be you are just a spiral wizard.
| | 02:54 | Anyway, I'm going to draw to about this location
here, and I have to use the spacebar to adjust
| | 02:58 | the position of the spiral, and I'm snapping into
alignment with the outline of the heart of course.
| | 03:04 | Now I am going to change the Line Weight for
that stroke to 4 points, and it should still
| | 03:10 | have a Round Cap on the end of it, and it
appears that it does, and then I'll drag from
| | 03:15 | here, that's not going to work too well either,
and I'll go ahead snap into alignment with
| | 03:20 | the heart, but look at that, I nailed that one
much more quickly, I am very proud of myself.
| | 03:24 | That appears to have an extra segment as well, so
I'll press the Down arrow key to get rid of it.
| | 03:30 | Didn't need that, actually I'll press Up
Arrow again to reinstate it, looks like it's got
| | 03:34 | some sort of partial thing
going on there, which is fine.
| | 03:38 | All right! I'm going to change the stroke
weight to 2 points this time around and that
| | 03:42 | takes care of drawing those spirals, I don't
see any reason to belabor things by redrawing
| | 03:48 | the spirals on the left-hand side here.
| | 03:50 | So what I am going to do is turn off the Template layer
by clicking on its eyeball here inside the Layers panel.
| | 03:56 | Then I'll switch to the Black Arrow tool,
and I'll go ahead and partially marquee these
| | 04:01 | spirals, like so, and let's copy them by
pressing Ctrl+C, or Command+C on the Mac, and then
| | 04:06 | I'll Ctrl+F, or Command+F on
the Mac, to paste them in front.
| | 04:10 | I'll visit the Transform panel here.
| | 04:12 | We want to flip these guys with
respect to this middle left point.
| | 04:18 | So I'll go ahead and click on it, and then
I'll go to the flyout menu and choose Flip
| | 04:22 | Horizontal in order to flip
those spirals to the other side.
| | 04:26 | And the only thing left to do in my opinion
is to Shift+Marquee the original spirals let's
| | 04:32 | go ahead and group them together by going
up to the Object menu and choosing the Group
| | 04:35 | command, and we might as well, since we have been
doing it so far let's go ahead and double-click
| | 04:40 | on the name of that object and call it spiral,
and then I'll click off the spirals in order
| | 04:46 | to deselect them, and I'll press Ctrl+
Semicolon, or Command+ Semicolon on the Mac, to hide
| | 04:51 | the Guides and that is our finished piece
of line art, an elegant design drawn from
| | 04:57 | start to finish, using the five
line tools here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Drawing Geometric ShapesAnd now, we draw better| 00:00 | Illustrator provides you with six Shape tools: Rectangle,
Rounded Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon, Star, and Flare.
| | 00:09 | Again, they don't sound terribly
exciting, but they are terribly exciting.
| | 00:15 | In this chapter, you will use the Ellipse
tool to draw inset ovals in which the innermost
| | 00:21 | oval cuts holes in the outer two.
| | 00:23 | Then you will adorn the ovals
with stars and other elements.
| | 00:27 | Finally, you'll draw the arrowhead at a
30-degree angle with the Polygon tool.
| | 00:33 | Along the way, you'll learn all about compound
paths, how to rotate the constraint axis and
| | 00:38 | how to draw a few hundred
shapes in a single drag.
| | 00:43 | Most Illustrator users don't even know these
features exist, and yet you will after having
| | 00:48 | expended only the modest energy
required to learn the Shape tools.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Meet the shape tools| 00:00 | In this movie I will give you a preview of
the artwork that we will be creating over
| | 00:03 | the course of this chapter.
| | 00:05 | And I will also introduce you to each of the
six shape tools included with Illustrator.
| | 00:09 | So what we are going to do is take that
heart artwork from the previous chapter, and we
| | 00:13 | are going to surround it with the few ellipses,
we will add a couple of rounded rectangle
| | 00:16 | ornaments here, we've got some
stars at the top and the bottom.
| | 00:20 | And I have also drawn an arrow head in
the background, going through the heart.
| | 00:25 | To get to the Shape tools, you go to the
Rectangle tool, that's the default Shape tool anyway
| | 00:30 | inside of the toolbox.
| | 00:32 | Click and hold on it, and you bring up
a flyout menu of the six shape tools.
| | 00:36 | And then if you move your cursor over to
this vertical bar and release, you will create
| | 00:40 | an independent panel of Shape tools.
| | 00:42 | Now they are not too difficult to use I
have to say, and you'll see that there's a lot
| | 00:46 | of tips and tricks associated with each tool.
| | 00:49 | However, they can be extremely useful.
| | 00:52 | So we have got the Rectangle tool, which
allow us to draw either rectangles that are wider
| | 00:57 | than they are tall or taller than they
are wide, or you can draw perfect squares.
| | 01:02 | Next, we've got the Rounded Rectangle tool,
which does exactly the same thing except you
| | 01:07 | can round off the corners of the
rectangles, and you can even do so on the fly.
| | 01:12 | We've got this Ellipse tool, which allows you to
draw standard regular ovals or perfect circles.
| | 01:19 | Next is the Polygon tool, which allows you
to draw regular polygons, that is polygons
| | 01:24 | whose sides are exactly the same
length and the same angle from each other.
| | 01:29 | Things like Pentagons and Hexagons
and Octagons and even Triangles.
| | 01:34 | Next, we've got the Star tool, which allows
you to draw stars, and you can change both
| | 01:39 | the number of points associated with the star
and the pointiness of those points on the fly.
| | 01:45 | And then finally, we have the Flare tool
which really isn't technically speaking a Shape
| | 01:50 | tool, instead it's a wacky tool that allows you
create synthetic lens flares, and it operates
| | 01:55 | like no other tool on the planet.
| | 01:57 | I am frankly skeptical how often you will
use the tool, but I will show you how to use
| | 02:00 | it toward the end of this chapter.
| | 02:02 | So those are you six shape tools.
| | 02:04 | In the next chapter, we will begin using
these tools to create this piece of artwork.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Ellipse tool| 00:00 | We're going to start things off with a look
at how you use the Ellipse tool inside of
| | 00:04 | Illustrator, which allows you to
draw regular ovals as well as circles.
| | 00:09 | I'm working inside a file called Big star
graphic.ai found inside the 05_shapes folder.
| | 00:15 | And what I'm going to do is right-click inside
of the document window and choose Show Guides,
| | 00:21 | so we can see a few guides
that I have setup in advance.
| | 00:23 | All of these guys, by the way, are contained
inside the Guide's layer, so if you open up
| | 00:27 | the Layers panel and twirl open that Guides
layer, I will just click on this little triangle
| | 00:32 | to expand it, you'll see that we have a
series of Grouped Guides labeled 1-4 and right now
| | 00:39 | we can only see Guides 1, but we'll be turning
that off and turning on 2 and 3 and 4 later,
| | 00:46 | it's just fairly confusing to have
them all turned on at the same time.
| | 00:49 | All right, so I'm going to go ahead and
drag along those eyeballs to turn them off, so
| | 00:54 | I'm just seeing guides 1, and then I'm going
to scroll up a little bit and click on the
| | 00:59 | Drawing layer to make it active, and I'm
also going to turn off the layer called shapes
| | 01:04 | by clicking on its eyeball so that
we have a clean slate to work with.
| | 01:08 | So in other words, we're seeing only that
piece of artwork that we created in the previous
| | 01:13 | chapter and nothing more.
| | 01:15 | Now if you're working along with me, I like
you to go ahead and select the Ellipse tool,
| | 01:19 | which is the third tool in here
inside of this floating toolbox.
| | 01:24 | If you're working from the standard toolbox,
you click and hold on Rectangle tool or one
| | 01:28 | of the other shape tools and select a
third tool down here in the flyout menu.
| | 01:33 | Now there are a variety of ways to use the
Ellipse tool, and I'm going to show you every
| | 01:37 | one of them in this movie.
| | 01:39 | First of all, you can drag
essentially from corner to corner.
| | 01:42 | In other words, the ellipse fits inside of
the area described by your drag, because that
| | 01:48 | drag area is the bounding box.
| | 01:51 | So if I drag over to the right here, I'll
create a wide but short ellipse, if I drag
| | 01:56 | down further, like so, then I'll
create a tall but narrow ellipse.
| | 02:00 | If I want to create a circle, then I'll press
and hold the Shift key, and it's very important
| | 02:04 | that you keep that Shift key down if you want a
circle, until after you release the mouse button.
| | 02:10 | If you first release the Shift key, and then
release the mouse button, you'll end up with in Ellipse.
| | 02:15 | Also, by the way, and this one can be very,
very useful, because it's difficult to anticipate
| | 02:20 | exactly where an ellipse is going to land on
the page, you can press and hold the spacebar
| | 02:26 | as you drag in order to move that ellipse
to a different location and that's the exact
| | 02:31 | same technique we used with the Spiral tool
in the previous chapter, but it works with
| | 02:34 | all of the Line and Shape tools as well.
| | 02:37 | All right, so what I like you to do where
this graphic is concerned, I'll go ahead and
| | 02:41 | release my mouse button and press the
Backspace key or the Delete key on the Mac, in order
| | 02:45 | to get rid of that shape.
| | 02:46 | I want you to drag from one guide intersection
to the opposite guide intersection, like so.
| | 02:53 | So look here if you drag down into the right,
like I'm, or down into the left or up into
| | 02:58 | the right, anyway you want to work, it's
just fine and that way we'll create the initial
| | 03:02 | ellipse that we're looking for.
| | 03:04 | So, as you can see, these guides describe
the bounding box into which the ellipse fits
| | 03:10 | and that's very important when you're using
the tool, because that's not the only way
| | 03:15 | to work, let me show you a different way.
| | 03:16 | I'm going to go over to my Layers panel here,
and I'm going to turn off guides 1, so it's
| | 03:21 | important that you have the guide's layer
expanded, and then I'll turn on guides 2 so
| | 03:26 | that we have a different
section of guides going.
| | 03:29 | Let's say you would prefer that the
beginning and end of your drag actually occur on the
| | 03:36 | ellipse, so rather than having the ellipse
fit inside of a bounding box, the ellipse
| | 03:40 | is better described by your actual drag.
| | 03:43 | So, for example, if I've begin dragging from this
point, like so, so one of the guide intersections
| | 03:49 | once again to the opposite guide intersection.
| | 03:52 | Notice right now that that beginning of my
drag is not actually anywhere on the ellipse.
| | 03:59 | However, if during my drag I press and hold
the Ctrl key or the Command key on the Mac,
| | 04:05 | notice now that the guide intersection
actually occurs on the ellipse, so this is the Ctrl
| | 04:10 | key on the PC or the Command key on the Mac.
| | 04:13 | Again, you need to keep that key down the
entire time you're dragging, then go ahead
| | 04:19 | and release the mouse button,
and then release the key.
| | 04:23 | Now notice that the bounding box fits inside
of the ellipse, as opposed to the outside.
| | 04:29 | So, basically you can work either way, you
can choose your poison here, a lot of folks
| | 04:33 | feel better by creating an ellipse inside
of the bounding box what I call the corner
| | 04:39 | to corner method, even though obviously
an ellipse does not have any corners.
| | 04:43 | Other folks prefer for the drag points to
actually occur on the outline of the ellipse.
| | 04:50 | One more way to work, and I'm going to turn off
guides 2, by the way, and I'm going to turn on guides 3.
| | 04:57 | You can drag from the center outward, if you
so desire, and you do that by dragging, like
| | 05:02 | so, and as you drag press and hold the Alt
key or the Option key on the Mac, and then
| | 05:07 | drag outward and what you want is an ellipse
that basically aligns at the bottom, so all
| | 05:14 | three of our ellipses that should line right there
at the bottom point, as you can see, on screen.
| | 05:19 | You want to keep that Alt or Option key down
throughout your drag if you want to create
| | 05:23 | the ellipse from the center outward, and
then go ahead and release the mouse button, and
| | 05:27 | then of course release the key.
| | 05:29 | And of course, if you're feeling particularly
ambitious, you can use all of these keyboard
| | 05:34 | tricks at the same time.
| | 05:35 | So, if I were to begin dragging at a point
here, I can press this Shift key in order
| | 05:39 | to constrain the shape to a perfect circle.
| | 05:42 | I could press the Alt or Option key in order
to create the ellipse from the center out,
| | 05:47 | I could press and hold the Ctrl key or the
Command key in order to ensure that the end
| | 05:52 | of my drag occur somewhere
on the outline of the shape.
| | 05:56 | Now, because the Shift key is also down, it
may vary a little bit, because Illustrator
| | 06:01 | is trying to make sure that you're creating
a perfect circle at the same time, but it
| | 06:04 | bears mentioning that I now have all of the
modifier keys down, that is Ctrl+Shift+Alt
| | 06:09 | on the PC, Command+Shift+Option on the Mac,
and then if I have a spare pinky and I want
| | 06:15 | to press the spacebar as well, then I can
go ahead and move that shape on the fly.
| | 06:20 | So there you have it, that's the Ellipse tool.
| | 06:22 | I'll go ahead and press the Backspace key or the
Delete key on the Mac, to get rid of that shape.
| | 06:26 | A seemingly powerful tool, however, you have
an awful lot of ways to get exactly the results
| | 06:32 | you're looking for.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating compound paths| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to take
the three ellipses we have created so far and
| | 00:05 | convert them into what's known as compound paths,
which are paths that have holes inside of them.
| | 00:11 | So let me start off by explaining what compound
paths are, and then I'll show you how to make them.
| | 00:17 | Switch over to this demo file which is called
Compound paths.ai found inside the 05_shapes folder.
| | 00:23 | And you can see what we have here is the
first four letters of the alphabet A, B, C, D.
| | 00:28 | And A is actually two path outlines working
together, so you've got one path outline describing
| | 00:34 | the outside of the A and another
one describing the inside of the A.
| | 00:38 | A B is actually three paths outlines, one
describing the outside and two describing the inside.
| | 00:42 | A C is just one path outline, so it
doesn't really apply to this discussion.
| | 00:46 | But it's interesting to see that some letters
are made that way, and then a D has one path
| | 00:51 | outline, and then one path on
the inside, so two all together.
| | 00:55 | Now, if we take all of the paths and fill
them with this exact same shade of dark gray,
| | 01:01 | we can still read the letters, especially
when they're stroked, and we are seeing the
| | 01:05 | letters very large, but if we were to reduce the
size of the letters, they won't make any sense at all.
| | 01:11 | So you might figure, I'm going to go ahead
and twirl open this text demo layer inside
| | 01:15 | the Layers panel, and you can see
that just one item is displayed so far.
| | 01:19 | I'll go ahead and turn on the next group down.
| | 01:22 | So you might figure what you do is you just
go ahead and fill the inside paths with white
| | 01:27 | and that's what I've done in this case, so
the inside of the A is filled with white,
| | 01:30 | the two inside paths in B, they're filled
with white and the inside of the D is filled
| | 01:35 | with white as well.
| | 01:36 | However, here is a problem, what if the
background isn't white? I'll just go ahead and turn on
| | 01:41 | a couple of other objects down here at the
bottom of the Layers panel which describe
| | 01:46 | this fairly loud background, and you can see
right away that filling the insides of the
| | 01:51 | letters with white just doesn't do us any good.
| | 01:53 | What we need instead is for the insides of
the letters to be transparent, as in the case
| | 01:57 | of this final line of type.
| | 01:59 | And what's happening is that the inside of
the A, for example is cutting a hole in the
| | 02:04 | outside of the A, and the inside paths of
the B are cutting two holes inside of the
| | 02:10 | outside of the B, and so forth, and that
friends is what is meant by a compound path.
| | 02:16 | So let me show you how to make one.
| | 02:18 | I'll go ahead and switch over to our
illustration at hand, which I've named Initial ellipses.ai.
| | 02:23 | I'm going to go ahead and zoom
in a little bit and scroll down.
| | 02:27 | We'll start things off by clicking with the
Black Arrow tool, notice I have gone ahead
| | 02:31 | and switched back to the Black Arrow, which
of course you can get by pressing the V key.
| | 02:35 | I'm going to start things off by clicking
on this innermost ellipse, the last one we
| | 02:40 | drew, and then I'll go up to the Edit menu
and choose the Copy command or press Ctrl+C,
| | 02:45 | or Command+C on the Mac, because
we'll need to bring it back later.
| | 02:49 | Then I'll go ahead and Shift-click on the
next ellipse outward, which was the second
| | 02:53 | ellipse we drew, in order to select it as well.
| | 02:57 | And I'm going to change the Line Weight of
both these paths, this value next to the word
| | 03:00 | Stroke appear in the Control panel to 4 points,
so we get some thicker outlines, and then
| | 03:05 | I'll go to this Fill Swatch which is the first
swatch in the Control panel, and I'll change
| | 03:10 | it from White to Black, and that goes
ahead and fills both those paths with black.
| | 03:14 | What I want is for the forward
path to cut a hole in the rear path.
| | 03:18 | So I'll press the Enter key or the
Return on the Mac, to hide that popup panel.
| | 03:23 | And then I'll go up to the Object menu, choose
Compound Path and choose Make and that's what
| | 03:30 | you do is this kind of a weird process here
to have to dig this deep into the menus, and
| | 03:35 | it's not necessarily
very intuitive, I must say.
| | 03:38 | But what happens when you choose the Make
command is you use the forward path in order
| | 03:42 | to cut a hole in the rear path, and
Illustrator automatically considers such a path to be
| | 03:48 | a single path outline, even though we see
it to be two paths that is one big ellipse
| | 03:53 | with a smaller ellipse inside of it.
| | 03:56 | If you were to twirl open this Drawing layer,
you would see that this item is now a single
| | 04:00 | item, you can't twirl it open, as if it were a
group or something else, it's a single compound
| | 04:05 | path and that's the way Illustrator regards it.
| | 04:08 | All right! Now we want to do the
same thing with the outside path.
| | 04:11 | We want a hole cut in it as well.
| | 04:14 | So I need to bring the hole back by
selecting this shape first of all by clicking on the
| | 04:20 | outermost ellipse, and then going up to the
Edit menu and choosing the Paste in Front
| | 04:24 | command, or you'll press Ctrl+F, or Command+
F on the Mac, and that goes ahead and pastes
| | 04:29 | the copy of that path.
| | 04:30 | You can see it right here
inside the Layers panel.
| | 04:34 | Now, I'll go ahead and Shift-click on the
outermost ellipse, so we have two ellipses
| | 04:38 | selected, the one we just pasted in
the place and the outermost ellipse.
| | 04:41 | Let's go ahead and once again change the
Stroke Weight, and you can do that by clicking on
| | 04:45 | the down pointing arrowhead and
choosing 4 point from the menu if you prefer.
| | 04:50 | Let's also change the fill color, first swatch
up here in the Control panel from White to Red.
| | 04:55 | That goes ahead and creates two
ellipses filled with red on screen.
| | 04:59 | Turn them into a Compound Path, go back to the
Object menu, choose Compound Path and choose Make.
| | 05:04 | Now notice just FYI, there's a keyboard
shortcut of Ctrl+8, or Command+8 on the Mac.
| | 05:11 | You might think often that makes no sense at
all, it's just completely arbitrary keyboard
| | 05:15 | shortcut except for the fact that an eight
is a classic number that's a compound path,
| | 05:22 | right? It's got the outer path that's kind
of a snowman with no head, and then it's got
| | 05:27 | two circles on the inside
that are cutting holes.
| | 05:30 | So anyway, that's one way to remember that
keyboard shortcut, Ctrl+8, or Command+8 on the Mac.
| | 05:35 | Now we have these two path outlines, you can see
them, listed right here inside the Layers panel.
| | 05:41 | We've got the inner one right there
and notice that it's got a hole on it.
| | 05:45 | So it's a ring, and then we have
the outer one, that's a ring as well.
| | 05:48 | All right! I'm going to press Ctrl+Z, or
Command+Z on a Mac, to undo that move.
| | 05:52 | Just one more thing I want to do for the sake
of cleaning up this illustration, I'm going
| | 05:55 | to Ctrl+spacebar-click, or Command+spacebar-
click on a Mac, in order to zoom in, and notice
| | 06:01 | here, if I were to switch to the White Arrow
tool, which I can get by pressing the A key,
| | 06:05 | and I were to marquee or just draw a
rectangle marquee around these points, that there are
| | 06:11 | an awful lot of points going on and they are
not coincident, that is they are not exactly
| | 06:16 | aligned with each other.
| | 06:17 | By coincident, I mean directly on top of
each other, they occupy the same exact space.
| | 06:23 | Well, we can align them.
| | 06:25 | They are all currently aligned vertically.
| | 06:27 | So we just need to align their horizontal
locations, and you do that by going up to
| | 06:31 | the Control panel, and you click on this icon
right there Vertical Align Center, that will
| | 06:36 | bring them vertically to the same location.
| | 06:40 | So you want the Vertical Align Center icon,
go ahead and click on it, and you will now
| | 06:44 | have a series of four as it
turns out coincident anchor points.
| | 06:49 | All right! Now I'm going to press Ctrl+0,
or Command+0 on a Mac, in order to center
| | 06:53 | my artwork, click off of it to deselect it,
and that folks is how you create compound
| | 06:58 | paths, extremely practical objects that you
will be using all of the time inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Drawing a multi-point star| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you to
draw stars inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:04 | And the Star tool is
actually an awful lot of fun.
| | 00:06 | Not only does it allow you to change the size
and the angle of a star as you draw it, but
| | 00:11 | you can also increase or decrease the number
of points and change the spikiness of those
| | 00:16 | points on the fly.
| | 00:18 | I've saved my progress as
Ellipses with holes.ai.
| | 00:22 | And before we set about using the Star tool, I
want to turn the final version of the drawing
| | 00:27 | into a kind of tracing template just so that we can
make sure that you, and I are on the same page here.
| | 00:33 | And so here's what I'd like you to do,
inside the Layers panel go ahead and turn off the
| | 00:38 | Drawing layer by clicking on its eyeball.
| | 00:40 | Then click where the eyeball should be in front of
the shapes layer in an order to turn that layer on.
| | 00:46 | Now to serve as a tracing template, this
shapes layer needs to be translucent, almost as if
| | 00:51 | it's set on a piece of paper in back of a
layer of vellum so that we can easily distinguish
| | 00:58 | it from our version of drawing.
| | 01:00 | To make a layer
translucent, here's what you do.
| | 01:02 | Go ahead and click on it to make it active,
and then we need to target the entire layer
| | 01:07 | by clicking on that circle, what I was telling you
Adobe calls a meatball, back in the previous chapter.
| | 01:14 | Go ahead and click on that meatball
and that selects the layer itself.
| | 01:18 | Not necessarily the items on the layer,
although they appear selected here inside the document
| | 01:22 | window, but the entire layer.
| | 01:26 | Then you go up to the Control
panel, notice this Opacity value.
| | 01:29 | I want to select that value by dragging over it,
and then change the value from 100% to 25%.
| | 01:37 | And that reduces the Opacity
of the layer to 25% in kind.
| | 01:41 | So in other words, anything that was previously 100
% black, now appears as 25% black and so forth.
| | 01:49 | I also recommend that you lock this layer
down so that you don't accidentally modify
| | 01:53 | it, by dragging one of the objects.
| | 01:56 | And you do that by clicking in this
second column next to the eyeball.
| | 02:00 | And notice when you do so, you not only create
a Lock there, you lock down a layer, but you
| | 02:04 | also go ahead and deselect the contents of
the layer, so notice now it I try to marquee
| | 02:08 | around any of these objects here, they
steadfastly refuse to become selected.
| | 02:13 | All right, now I am going to Ctrl+spacebar-click
on the star a couple of times to zoom in on it.
| | 02:18 | So I am seeing this top
star at the 100% View Size.
| | 02:22 | And I am going to go ahead and select the Star
tool up here in my little Shape tool panel.
| | 02:25 | You can also select it from the
Shape tool flyout menu here if you like.
| | 02:30 | Notice in my case I end up getting what I
call the Ghostbuster's icon that is that little
| | 02:34 | circle with a line through it, which is
telling me that I cannot work on this layer.
| | 02:41 | And the problem is that my
locked shapes layer is selected.
| | 02:45 | And you cannot draw, you cannot add to an
existing locked layer inside of Illustrator.
| | 02:51 | So what we need to do instead is turn on the
Drawing layer, which is our version of the
| | 02:55 | drawing, and then go ahead and click on it
in order to make it active, and now you can
| | 02:58 | see you get a standard cursor.
| | 03:00 | All right, another thing I'd like you do is
twirl open the Guides layer, and let's go
| | 03:05 | ahead and scroll down the list, turn off
Guides 3 right there and turn on Guides 4 so that
| | 03:11 | you can see the center point of the star.
| | 03:13 | Because here's the thing, the Star tool
always draws from the center outward, that's just
| | 03:18 | the way it works in Illustrator.
| | 03:20 | So go ahead and position your cursor at the
intersection of those Guides and drag outward,
| | 03:25 | like so. And you'll by default create a five
pointed star from the center outward as I say.
| | 03:31 | Couple of things you can do here, if you like
five pointed stars, you can press the Shift
| | 03:35 | key as you drag in order to align
that star so that it's upright.
| | 03:41 | And then if you release the Shift key, you
return to sort of a sideways star, or what have you.
| | 03:46 | So I'll go ahead and keep the
Shift key down for a moment.
| | 03:49 | If you want to go ahead and align the sides
of the star so that you get a perfect five
| | 03:53 | pointed star as in the case of an American
star, for example, a star in an American flag,
| | 03:59 | then you press and hold the Alt key or the
Option key on the Mac, and that way opposite
| | 04:03 | sides align to each other.
| | 04:05 | For example, what I mean by that is this side right
here, and this side right here align to each other.
| | 04:10 | Then this side goes ahead and aligns to this
side, this one aligns to this one, and so forth.
| | 04:16 | And again, that's a function of having the
Alt key or the Option key down on the Mac.
| | 04:20 | So to draw a five pointed American star,
once again you press both Shift+Alt on the PC,
| | 04:27 | Shift+Option on a Mac.
| | 04:28 | All right, I am going to get rid of that guy
because that's not the kind of star I am looking for.
| | 04:32 | And I'll go ahead and begin
dragging from that center point again.
| | 04:36 | And as I drag, I can press the down arrow key,
like so, so I still have my cursor down,
| | 04:41 | in order to reduce the number of points.
| | 04:44 | And if you go far enough you'll get a
triangle, now which of course we don't want.
| | 04:48 | So I am going to going to press the Up arrow
key in order to increase the number of sides,
| | 04:51 | and I am looking for a total of eight points,
I think I have nine right now, so I'll press
| | 04:55 | the Down arrow key and sure enough I did
have nine points, so now I have eight.
| | 04:59 | All right, I'm going to go ahead and drag
straight down so that my cursor is aligned
| | 05:03 | with a vertical guideline.
| | 05:06 | Problem at this point however is
that my spikes aren't spikier enough.
| | 05:10 | Turns out if you press the Ctrl key or the
Command key on the Mac, while you have the
| | 05:15 | cursor down, and you drag, then you're
going to change the spikiness of those sides.
| | 05:19 | So you can either make them very spiky, or
rather un-spiky, like so, for kind of splash
| | 05:26 | if you want to, some sort of graphic like that.
| | 05:29 | What I want to do here, I am going to Ctrl-drag
outward just a little bit, and then I'll release
| | 05:34 | the Ctrl key, or the Command key on the Mac,
and I'll move inwards so that the inside corners
| | 05:39 | of each one of the spikes is aligned to the
inside corners of the spikes in my template star.
| | 05:46 | And once that happens, as you can see, on
screen right here, then I'll go ahead and
| | 05:50 | press the Ctrl key or the Command key on a
Mac, and drag downward, until I get a star
| | 05:55 | that's more or less exactly aligned, like so.
And then I will release in order to create
| | 06:00 | that eight-pointed star.
| | 06:02 | All right, so far so good, now I need to be
able to see through this star to my template.
| | 06:08 | So I am going to change the fill, which is
the first swatch up here in Control panel.
| | 06:12 | I'll click on that swatch, and then I'll
change it to None to get rid of the fill.
| | 06:17 | All right, now I am going to draw another star.
| | 06:19 | I'll just begin dragging, like so.
| | 06:21 | And notice that Illustrator goes ahead and
keeps the same spikiness level, it goes ahead
| | 06:27 | and keeps eight points as
we're seeing right here.
| | 06:30 | I'll drag down to about this location, and
by the way, I'm trying to cut through the
| | 06:34 | center of the strokes in the template.
| | 06:37 | And that will provide me with the
exact alignment I am looking for.
| | 06:39 | All right, now to change the Line
Weight associated with the stars.
| | 06:42 | I will go up to the Stroke option in the
Control panel, and I'll click on the down pointing
| | 06:47 | arrow head and change it to 4 point.
| | 06:49 | And then I'll switch to the Black Arrow tool,
which you can get by pressing the V key.
| | 06:53 | And I'll click on the outer star in order to select
it, and I'll change its Line Weight to 10 points.
| | 07:00 | And then I'll go ahead and marquee both of the
stars by dragging around any portion of them will do.
| | 07:06 | And then go up to the first Color swatch,
here in the Control panel and change it from
| | 07:10 | transparent back to white so that we
have opaque stars as you see here.
| | 07:15 | All right now click off
the paths to deselect them.
| | 07:18 | That gives you a sense of how
you create stars in Illustrator.
| | 07:21 | In the next movie I'll show you how to align a
star or other shape by adding a center point
| | 07:26 | from the Attributes panel.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding and aligning a center point| 00:00 | In this movie, we're going to create the red
star at the bottom of the graphic and by the
| | 00:04 | way, I'm currently looking at the finish
version of the drawing Big star graphic.ai and that
| | 00:09 | red star is exactly the same size, although
it's a slightly different orientation than
| | 00:14 | the inset white star at the top of the graphic.
| | 00:17 | But what we want to do is we want to
exactly align that star so that it is centered on
| | 00:22 | those anchor points at the bottom of the ellipse,
and that's tricky, because while you can align
| | 00:29 | one shape to another quite easily in
Illustrator, and you can align a bunch of anchor points
| | 00:33 | to each other if you so desire, you can't
align a full shape with an anchor point that
| | 00:40 | doesn't work, so we're going to have
to figure out a different approach.
| | 00:43 | I am going to switch over to this file that
I'm calling Great white star.ai, and armed
| | 00:48 | with a Black arrow tool I'll go ahead and
click on the inset star to select it, and
| | 00:52 | then I'll go up to the Edit menu, and I'll
choose the Copy command or press Ctrl+C, or
| | 00:57 | Command+C on a Mac.
| | 00:59 | Now I'm going to scroll down my graphic just
so using the scroll bar and the scroll wheel
| | 01:03 | on my mouse, because that's the easiest way
to work here, and I'll go up to the Edit menu
| | 01:08 | and rather than choosing Paste in Front or
Paste in Back or Paste in Place any of those
| | 01:12 | commands, which aligns the basic art work
with its previous position, I'm just going
| | 01:17 | to go ahead and choose the Paste command the
standard paste command or press Ctrl+V, or
| | 01:22 | Command+V on the Mac, and that will paste the
star essentially in the center of the screen.
| | 01:28 | Now I'm going to move it off to the side, because
it really doesn't matter where it appears initially.
| | 01:32 | I need to align it to these
bottom points right there.
| | 01:35 | And easiest way to do that is to give the
start its own center point, which is something
| | 01:41 | that you can do inside Illustrator, but it's a
little harder to find, it's a hidden function.
| | 01:45 | You get to the center point option by going up
to the Window menu and choosing the Attributes
| | 01:50 | command and that brings up this tiny little
panel, by default It just shows off a couple
| | 01:55 | of overprint check boxes.
| | 01:57 | What you want to do is click on this up down
arrow icon right next to the word Attributes
| | 02:01 | and that will expand the panel so that you
can gain access to its other options, and
| | 02:06 | you know it's right here these first two icons allow
you to either show the center or don't show the center.
| | 02:11 | We want the center, so go ahead and turn on that
center point, and we get the exact center of the star.
| | 02:17 | Now you don't always get the exact center of
the star, I want to stress something here.
| | 02:22 | Let's say I was to grab the Star tool again,
and I'll just go ahead and draw a star, press
| | 02:27 | the spacebar to move it to a different location here
that works with all the line and shape tools of course.
| | 02:32 | Press the down arrow key a few times until
we get our friend, the five pointed star and
| | 02:37 | press and hold the Shift and Alt keys or the
Shift and Option keys on the Mac, in order
| | 02:40 | to get the American star.
| | 02:41 | All right, then I'll go ahead and release.
| | 02:44 | Now if I were to add a center point notice
that that is not the exact center of the shape
| | 02:51 | it's waited far closer to the top that it do
not be the center of the stars right about
| | 02:55 | there if we were calculated exactly.
| | 02:59 | What's happening here is Illustrator's showing
us the center of the bounding box that contains
| | 03:04 | the star, so if you were to draw a square around this
star shape that would be the center of the square.
| | 03:10 | I just want to make that clear, because
sometimes a center point works away you wanted to use
| | 03:15 | sometimes it does not.
| | 03:17 | When you're working with the star that has
an odd number of points like an American star
| | 03:21 | then you're not going to get a true center
point, so I'll go ahead and press the Backspace
| | 03:25 | key or the Delete key on a Mac.
| | 03:27 | However, when you're working with the star
with an even number of points like this one
| | 03:29 | here then you will get an exact center point.
| | 03:33 | All right, I'm going to press the V key in
order to switch back to the black arrow tool,
| | 03:37 | and I'll go ahead and click on the star to
select it and notice there is our center point,
| | 03:41 | and now I have only to go ahead and drag
this center point and drop it at the bottom of
| | 03:47 | the ellipses, and I want to see a white
arrow ahead notice the difference here.
| | 03:51 | Here is the black arrow ahead which means
I'm just dragging along and as soon as I see
| | 03:55 | the white arrow ahead it means that
I have a snap of some sort going.
| | 03:59 | And now works whether you've
Smart Guides turned on or off.
| | 04:03 | Now I'm going to drag this star back for a
moment, because I want to show you I happen
| | 04:06 | to have Smart Guide turned off at the moment.
| | 04:09 | If I turn them back on by going up to the
View menu and choosing Smart Guides, and then
| | 04:13 | drag from the center point, you can see
that I'll actually see an intersect line there
| | 04:18 | as well as the white arrow have, so I have
additional information available to me, but
| | 04:23 | in any case I get that star centered exactly.
| | 04:26 | All right, now I want to rotate the star
exactly so many degrees so that it matches the angle
| | 04:33 | the red star in the background.
| | 04:35 | Well, here's how I figured out the angle of
rotation, and this is going to make perfect
| | 04:39 | sense to some of you and others might end
up scratching your heads, I'm going to go
| | 04:43 | ahead and hide the Attributes panel, so it's
not in a way, but the star has what's known
| | 04:48 | as a periodicity associate with it, it's a
fancy words for the distance between each
| | 04:55 | one of these points, so the angle between
each one this points, so you imagine 360 degrees
| | 05:02 | describes the entire route angle wise around
the star around the circle, for example, that
| | 05:08 | contains the star.
| | 05:10 | If we were going from one point to another
point that would be 45 degrees, because it's
| | 05:18 | from here measuring from here, we go 45
degrees then we go 90 degrees then we go 90 plus 45,
| | 05:24 | which is 135, and then we get to 180 degrees,
and then we start doing some additional adding
| | 05:30 | to get all the way back around to 360 degrees.
| | 05:33 | So from here to here is 45 degrees I want to
rotate the star exactly half that distance,
| | 05:40 | and I don't want to have to do the math I
already did enough math, so far to figure
| | 05:43 | out that it's 45 degrees divided by 2, so
what you do is with the star selected, you
| | 05:49 | go and click in the word transform up here in the
control panel that brings up this pop-up panel of course.
| | 05:55 | Make sure to select the center point inside
the reference point matrix right there, and
| | 05:59 | it happens to be selected for me, and then
you want to enter an angle value, you notice
| | 06:04 | this Rotate option right here, you want to
change that angle value to 45 divided by 2,
| | 06:10 | so 45/2, and then press the Enter key or the
Return key on the Mac, and you're going to
| | 06:16 | exactly split the difference and rotate that
guy halfway around just like it out to be.
| | 06:24 | Then I want you to go out to the control panel
click on the color swatch up there the first
| | 06:28 | color swatch and change it from white to red,
and we've got the exactly align star we're
| | 06:35 | looking for, I'm going to go ahead and
click off the star to deselect it.
| | 06:38 | So, remember if you want to add a center
point which is going to be exactly accurate for
| | 06:44 | any symmetrical shape, by the way, which
includes a polygon or a star with an even number of
| | 06:50 | sides or points then you want to go ahead
and add that center point from the Attributes
| | 06:55 | panel here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Drawing rounded rectangles| 00:00 | In this movie, we are going to draw these
little square ornaments that appear on either
| | 00:04 | side of our artwork.
| | 00:05 | And we are going to do so
using the Rounded Rectangle tool.
| | 00:08 | And then in the next movie,
we'll align them into place.
| | 00:11 | I am going to go ahead and switch over to my
illustration in progress, which I've called
| | 00:14 | Centered red star.ai.
| | 00:17 | And I will scroll up to somewhere over here on
the left-hand inside of the graphic, doesn't
| | 00:21 | really matter where, because we're not
necessarily going to draw our rounded rectangles in a
| | 00:25 | right place right off the bat.
| | 00:27 | All right! Now what I'd like you to do
is switch to the Rounded Rectangle tool.
| | 00:31 | Now the only difference between the Rounded
Rectangle tool and the Rectangle tool is the
| | 00:35 | Rectangle tool allows you to draw rectangles
and squares, and with the Rounded Rectangle
| | 00:40 | tool, you can do exactly the same thing,
but you can also round off the corners.
| | 00:44 | So I am going to go ahead and select the
tool by clicking on it of course, and then I'll
| | 00:48 | drag with the tool in
order to draw a rectangle.
| | 00:51 | So here's what's going on.
| | 00:52 | Imagine I'm just using Rectangle
tool, or this tool, doesn't matter.
| | 00:56 | As I'm dragging with the tool, I can press
the spacebar in order to move the shape to
| | 01:00 | a different location on the fly.
| | 01:02 | Then I can release the spacebar and continue
sizing the graphic, like so. If I press the
| | 01:07 | Shift key, I will create a perfect square,
I'll be at width rounded corners in this case.
| | 01:12 | And by the way, you have to keep that
Shift key down until you're done drawing.
| | 01:16 | So notice if I release the Shift key,
then I end up getting a rectangle again.
| | 01:20 | If you want to draw the rectangle from the
center outwards, you press the Alt or the
| | 01:24 | Option key on the fly, like so. And then if
you release Alt or Option, you go back to
| | 01:28 | the corner-to-corner metaphor.
| | 01:30 | And then finally, here's the big difference
between the regular Rectangle tool and the
| | 01:35 | Rounded Rectangle tool.
| | 01:36 | If you want to increase the roundness of
the corners, and I'll make my shape bigger so
| | 01:40 | you can see this happen, then you press the
Up arrow key, and you can even press and hold
| | 01:45 | the Up arrow key in order to make
the process happen more quickly.
| | 01:48 | If you want to increase the sharpness of the
corners, then you press the Down arrow key
| | 01:52 | or in my case, I am pressing and holding the
Down arrow key, like so. All right! Anyway,
| | 01:57 | I just wanted to show you
everything that's going on with tool.
| | 01:59 | I am going to get rid of the
shape by pressing the Backspace key.
| | 02:02 | I happen to know the exact dimensions of the
shapes that I am looking for, and any time
| | 02:08 | that is the case, with any of these tools,
by the way, you click with a tool inside the
| | 02:12 | document window, and that's going to go ahead
and bring up a dialog box of numerical settings.
| | 02:18 | And that works with the Rectangle tool,
Rounded Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon, Star as well.
| | 02:24 | Works a little differently as we'll
see where the Flare tool is concerned.
| | 02:27 | But in my case, I'm looking for a Width
value of 72 and a Height value 72 as well.
| | 02:33 | So 72 points x 72 points, and I
want the Corner Radius to be 9 points.
| | 02:39 | Now once you've established a square
incidentally, or any other dimension, but it's easier to
| | 02:44 | understand with a square, you can turn on this
link right here, and then you can change the value.
| | 02:50 | For example, I might change the Width to 100
points and that's going to change the Height
| | 02:54 | to 100 points as well.
| | 02:55 | But if I were to turn off the chain for a
moment, and then I set the Height to 200 points,
| | 03:00 | for example, now I'll turn the chain back on, so I
have got a shape that's 100 points x 200 points.
| | 03:06 | If I change the Width value let's say to 50
points, then that's going to reduce the Height
| | 03:12 | value to 100 points, because Illustrator is
trying to maintain the proportions of the shape.
| | 03:17 | So I just wanted you to see what's going
on there where that chain is considered.
| | 03:20 | Anyway, I am going to turn it off, because
I want to create a square, 72x72, a Corner
| | 03:25 | Radius of 9 points, I just happened to know
this from working with this graphic in the past.
| | 03:30 | And I will go ahead and click OK
in order to create that shape.
| | 03:33 | And now I am going to increase the line
weight by clicking on the down pointing arrowhead
| | 03:37 | up here in the Control panel and selecting
10 points, like so. All right! Now let's draw
| | 03:41 | another one by once again
clicking inside the document window.
| | 03:45 | This time, because I want another
square, I can turn on the chain icon.
| | 03:49 | And I'll change the Width value to 98.
| | 03:51 | That changes the Height
value as well to 98 points.
| | 03:54 | And then I am going to raise the Corner
Radius value to 18 points, and click OK.
| | 03:59 | And I end up with this shape
here, the stroke is too thick.
| | 04:02 | So I'll go up to the line weight value up
here in the Control panel, and I'll switch
| | 04:07 | it from 10 point to 4 point, like so. All
right! That shouldn't be in front however,
| | 04:12 | so I am going to go ahead and send the shape to back,
and by the way, I've made a terrible mistake here.
| | 04:17 | I've been working on a tattoo layer, which
I don't want to do, I should be working on
| | 04:20 | this Drawing layer here.
| | 04:21 | So I've got to make a couple of modifications.
| | 04:23 | I'm going to switch to my Selection tool,
and I'm going to partially marquee these two
| | 04:28 | shapes so that they are both selected.
| | 04:30 | Notice that I have this little
square, here inside the Layers panel.
| | 04:33 | That indicates all of the
selected objects inside the document.
| | 04:38 | If I want to move them to a different layer,
I just take that square, and I drag it to
| | 04:42 | a different layer, like so, and that goes ahead
and moves those two objects to the Drawing layer.
| | 04:47 | And I can see that they're now in the
Drawing layer, because previously, they had green
| | 04:51 | anchor points and outlines to indicate
that they were part of this green layer.
| | 04:55 | And now they are part of the blue layer, as
indicated by the fact that they have these
| | 04:58 | blue segments and anchor points.
| | 05:00 | All right! Now, if I twirl open this layer,
like so, I can see that the big path is in
| | 05:05 | front of the little path,
that's not what I'm looking for.
| | 05:08 | So, what I am going to do is click off the
shapes to deselect them, and then click on
| | 05:12 | the larger of the two paths.
| | 05:14 | And I want to set it all the way back in the stack,
and I can make that happen, by right-clicking
| | 05:20 | on the shape, which brings up the shortcut
menu, and then I'll choose Arrange, and I
| | 05:24 | will choose Send to Back, and that will send
the shape to the back of the active layer.
| | 05:29 | Now, I have got more or less
the effect I am looking for.
| | 05:32 | Of course, the alignment is not
right, ignore that for a moment.
| | 05:35 | Okay, one more thing I want to do, I am
going to click on this forward shape and move it
| | 05:38 | down a little bit just so we
can keep better track of it.
| | 05:41 | See that red line that cuts through the shape
? I want to add that red line on the inside
| | 05:46 | of the shape right here.
| | 05:48 | So I am going to switch my drawing mode from
Draw Normal, down here at the bottom of the
| | 05:52 | toolbox to this final item Draw Inside so
that I can draw a line inside of this shape.
| | 05:58 | Notice that I get my
dotted corners as you see here.
| | 06:00 | Next, I'll go ahead and grab my Line tool,
which might require me to select whichever
| | 06:05 | tool is visible here, and then select
Line Segment tool from the flyout menu.
| | 06:10 | I will align my cursor with that center point.
| | 06:13 | So, by the way, rectangles and ellipses
automatically get center points inside Illustrator.
| | 06:17 | I will go ahead and align my cursor with that
center point, and I will begin dragging, like
| | 06:22 | so, and then I'll press as I am dragging,
I'll press the Alt key so that I am dragging
| | 06:26 | line from the center outward, that
would be the Option key on the Mac.
| | 06:29 | I'll also press the Shift key so that I have
a diagonal line, like so. So I have got both
| | 06:35 | the Shift and Alt keys down, if you're working
on a Mac, you should have the Shift and Option
| | 06:38 | keys down, and drag your lines so it's larger
than the shape, like so. Now you can see that
| | 06:43 | the line indeed appears inside of the shape.
| | 06:47 | Now I want it to be a different color.
| | 06:48 | So I'll go ahead and click
on the second color swatch.
| | 06:51 | Notice we have one color swatch up here in
the Control panel that has a slash, so it's
| | 06:55 | showing me that there is no
fill associated with this line.
| | 06:58 | The second one tells me the stroke,
the second swatch right there.
| | 07:01 | So I'll click on it to bring up the Swatches
panel, and I'll switch to CMYK Red in order
| | 07:07 | to create this effect here.
| | 07:08 | All right! Now I'll press the Escape key in
order to hide that panel, press the V key
| | 07:13 | to switch back to My Black Arrow tool, and
click off the shape, and just make sure that
| | 07:17 | everything is back to normal.
| | 07:18 | I'll click on the Draw Normal icon
down here at the bottom of the toolbox.
| | 07:23 | Now you know how to draw any old rectangle or
a rounded rectangle inside the Illustrator.
| | 07:28 | In the next exercise, I'll show you yet
another method for aligning the shapes into place.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Aligning to a "split location"| 00:00 | In this movie I'm going to show you how to align
the center of a shape to an unspecified location.
| | 00:05 | And it's a very helpful trick, the kind of
thing you do all the time inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:11 | But to correctly understand what I'm talking
about, I need to set things up a little bit.
| | 00:16 | I've saved my progress as Two rounded rectangles.ai,
I'm zoomed in on the left side of these ellipses.
| | 00:23 | And using my Black Arrow tool I am going to
partially marquee these ellipses so that I
| | 00:28 | select just the ellipses and nothing more.
| | 00:30 | Notice this anchor point right there, which is
the leftmost anchor point in the largest ellipse.
| | 00:37 | And next-door here is the leftmost
anchor point in the next ellipse inward.
| | 00:43 | I want to align these rounded rectangles, to
the center of these two rectangles at precisely
| | 00:49 | this location, so in other words,
midway between these two anchor points.
| | 00:54 | Problem is there is nothing
identifying that location.
| | 00:57 | There is no center point I can assign there,
there is no anchor point, there is no anything,
| | 01:01 | there is no automatic alignment function
that's going to make that happen, so what in the
| | 01:05 | world do you do? And you can imagine, this
is kind of thing you might want to do a lot.
| | 01:09 | Well, we'll start things off by
aligning the rounded rectangles themselves.
| | 01:14 | So make sure if you are working along with
me that Smart Guides is turned on here inside
| | 01:19 | the View menu, if not, go
ahead and choose the command.
| | 01:22 | And then I am going to click on the path
outline of the smaller of the two rounded rectangles.
| | 01:28 | I can see the center point, I'll go ahead
and drag this shape by its center point, until
| | 01:33 | I see the word Center right there.
| | 01:35 | And that tells me that I'm aligning
to the center of the larger shape.
| | 01:39 | So you just want to drag one center point
into the other, and it's easiest to do when
| | 01:43 | you have Smart Guides turned on.
| | 01:45 | As soon as you see the word Center there, go
ahead and release, and you've got aligned shapes.
| | 01:48 | All right, now what you want to do is
partially marquee those two rounded rectangles so that
| | 01:53 | they are both selected, they share a
common center point at this point.
| | 01:58 | Now comes the tricky part.
| | 01:59 | We want to drag that center point until we
find that point along the edge, seeing all
| | 02:06 | those kind of good Smart Guide action going on
here so that indicates to me that I've made it work.
| | 02:12 | However, just to make sure I'm going to
partially marquee the ellipses again, I can see I am
| | 02:17 | off, I am looking for this point right there.
| | 02:20 | All right, so I'll try again, I know it's
just a little higher than where I am, so I'll
| | 02:23 | go ahead and marquee the ellipses again and
drag it up until I get this intersection.
| | 02:28 | That looks like it's going to work to me.
| | 02:30 | So now I'll marquee the
ellipses again, sure enough I got it.
| | 02:33 | Okay, now I want to go down to this point.
| | 02:36 | So in other words, I am going to move the
centers of the shapes from this anchor point
| | 02:39 | along the outer ellipse to this
anchor point along the inner ellipse.
| | 02:44 | And I can see that it's about ye far down,
which is very important to bear in mind.
| | 02:48 | I mean this is the way you work
inside the program all the time.
| | 02:51 | So I am going to go ahead and marquee these
two shapes, once again, grab the center point,
| | 02:55 | go about ye day down until I get some sort of
intersection information here from my Smart
| | 03:02 | Guides to tell me that I'm
probably in the right place.
| | 03:05 | It looks like that's going to be about right.
| | 03:07 | So I'll go ahead and release the shapes in
that new location, and then I'll marquee the
| | 03:11 | ellipses again, and sure enough
that looks like a good match.
| | 03:15 | All right now what you do? So basically I
told Illustrator to align the centers to one
| | 03:20 | location, and then I told Illustrator to
align the center points to another location, and
| | 03:26 | now I want to split the
difference, exactly. Here is how.
| | 03:30 | Go ahead and partially marquee the
rounded rectangles again to select them.
| | 03:35 | Basically what's happening here is that
Illustrator is always recording your last transformation.
| | 03:40 | And I mentioned earlier that transformations
in the Illustrator include things like scaling
| | 03:44 | and rotating, but it also includes moving.
| | 03:48 | So anytime you move an object,
you are transforming it.
| | 03:51 | And that information is
tracked by the Black Arrow tool.
| | 03:55 | So if you want to see the information, you
double-click on the Black Arrow tool to bring
| | 03:59 | up the Move dialog box.
| | 04:00 | Now this dialog box allows you to
perform any numerical movement you want to.
| | 04:05 | However, it also tracks the last movement.
| | 04:08 | So what it's telling me is just that last
time I moved from one anchor point to another
| | 04:12 | along the ellipses, I went ahead and moved
the rounded rectangles 20.8428 pts whatever,
| | 04:19 | horizontally, that is to the right, and
then vertically 15.8096 pts downward.
| | 04:26 | So any positive value is going to
be either to the right or downward.
| | 04:30 | Any negative value is going to
be either to the left or upward.
| | 04:33 | Now that's just the way it
works inside the program.
| | 04:35 | So what we want to do to split the difference
is change each one of these values, both the
| | 04:40 | horizontal value and the vertical value to
negative, like so. Then if you turn on the
| | 04:46 | Preview check box, you'll see that the rounded
rectangles jump back to their previous position,
| | 04:52 | here is the trick.
| | 04:53 | Now what you want to do is add a /2 to after
the horizontal value, and then add a /2 to
| | 05:00 | after the vertical value, and you split the
exact difference between those two anchor points.
| | 05:06 | Then click OK, and you have those
rectangles exactly aligned in place.
| | 05:11 | All right one more thing I want to do.
| | 05:13 | I am going to press Ctrl+0, or Command+0 on
the Mac, in order to center my illustration.
| | 05:18 | I need to take these two shapes and reflect
them onto the other side of the ellipses,
| | 05:23 | and I'll show you how to do
exactly that in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reflecting across an axis| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you how to
flip selected objects across a guideline.
| | 00:05 | For example, in this case I've got these two
rounded squares here, I am going to go ahead
| | 00:10 | and partially marquee them with
the Black Arrow tool to select them.
| | 00:13 | And what I want to do is both duplicate and
flip them to the other side of the artwork.
| | 00:18 | So I want to flip the shapes with respect
to this vertical guideline right there.
| | 00:23 | Now in a previous chapter I showed you how to
use the Transform panel in order flip objects.
| | 00:30 | And if I click in the word Transform, and
then click in the flyout menu icon, I have
| | 00:33 | this Flip Horizontal command.
| | 00:35 | And by virtue of the fact that I've selected
this right-hand point inside the reference
| | 00:39 | point matrix, I will go ahead and flip
the objects around their right-hand edge.
| | 00:45 | That doesn't do me any good, I want to flip them
way over here to the other side of the artwork.
| | 00:50 | For that purpose the Transform
panel is not going to help you.
| | 00:53 | So rather than transforming from a panel what you
want to do instead is transform using a dedicated tool.
| | 01:00 | So I am going to press Ctrl+Z, or
Command+Z on a Mac, to undo that change.
| | 01:04 | And just so you have a sense of where this
tool is located, I am going to switch back
| | 01:08 | to the single column toolbox, because more
likely than not that's the way you are working.
| | 01:13 | Notice down here, I've got this Rotate tool,
well, it has this corner marker which tells
| | 01:18 | me if I click and hold I'll get a flyout
menu of other tools, including in this case the
| | 01:22 | Reflect tool, which has a keyboard shortcut of O,
which is the most symmetrical letter in the alphabet.
| | 01:29 | That's why Adobe assigned
it as a keyboard shortcut.
| | 01:32 | Now there are all kinds of ways to use this tool,
you can click and drag inside the document window.
| | 01:36 | We're not ready for that however,
that's pretty complicated stuff.
| | 01:40 | Instead, we want to work with the dialog box.
| | 01:43 | So two different ways to bring up the Reflect
dialog box inside Illustrator, one is to just
| | 01:48 | double-click in the Reflect
tool icon in the toolbox.
| | 01:51 | That brings up the Reflect dialog box, and
notice, because the Preview check box is on,
| | 01:56 | we're seeing a reflected version of
the object inside the illustration.
| | 02:00 | Again, this isn't doing us any good however,
because by default, you're reflecting across
| | 02:05 | the center of the selected object
and that's not what we want at all.
| | 02:09 | So I am going to Cancel out of this dialog box.
| | 02:12 | Now a little bit of an aside here,
many of you probably already know this.
| | 02:16 | But you can tell whether a command name is
going to bring up a dialog box based on whether
| | 02:21 | the name is followed by ellipses.
| | 02:24 | By which I mean, if I go up here to the
Select menu, and I choose the All command, then I
| | 02:28 | am just going to select all of the artwork
inside the illustration, no questions asked.
| | 02:32 | However, if I choose Save Selection, which is
followed by an ellipse--that is a dot-dot-dot--that's
| | 02:39 | Illustrator and every other computer
application out there's way of saying we're striking up
| | 02:45 | a conversation using a dialog box.
| | 02:48 | Same thing happens with the old cursor here.
| | 02:51 | Notice I've got this cross shaped
cursor associated with the Reflect tool.
| | 02:55 | But if I press and hold the Alt key or the
Option key on the Mac, I get a little dot,
| | 02:59 | dot, dot next to the cursor, which means we're
going to have a conversation via a dialog box.
| | 03:05 | So in other words, dot, dot, dot means
dialog box, no dot, dot, dot means no dialog box.
| | 03:11 | So press and hold the Alt key or the Option
key on a Mac, and then click on this vertical
| | 03:16 | guideline, anywhere along the
vertical guideline is fine.
| | 03:19 | And that brings up the Reflect dialog box.
| | 03:21 | And you can see that by default I've gone
ahead and flipped these shapes to the other
| | 03:26 | side of the artwork.
| | 03:28 | Now that assumes incidentally
that axis is set to vertical.
| | 03:32 | Now this is a real head scratcher for most
people, because we're actually flipping the
| | 03:37 | object horizontally.
| | 03:39 | Why does it say vertical? If I was to select
horizontal instead, then you'll see that the
| | 03:46 | shape which is now located down here in the bottom
of the illustration, you can barely see it anymore.
| | 03:52 | We're now flipping it vertically to a new
location or flipping vertically with respect
| | 03:57 | to that little target right there, which indicates
the pointer which I Alt-clicked or Option-clicked.
| | 04:02 | The ideas is this is the axis so
we're flipping across an axis.
| | 04:05 | Do you want to flip across a horizontal axis,
well no you don't, because we're trying to
| | 04:10 | flip across a vertical guideline.
| | 04:12 | You want to go ahead and flip across that
vertical guideline by selecting Vertical,
| | 04:16 | which means you're going to perform a
horizontal flip across a vertical axis.
| | 04:23 | Really you just want to make sure you have the
Preview check box turned on, very important of course.
| | 04:27 | Then you can play around with these
items and see which one works for you.
| | 04:31 | But definitely before you leave and once you
figure out everything is all right, go ahead
| | 04:36 | and click not on OK, because that will just
flip the actual shapes themselves, you want
| | 04:40 | to click on copy in order to flip a copy of
those shapes, like so. Slight problem however,
| | 04:47 | I am going to go ahead and zoom in here
so you can see what I am talking about.
| | 04:51 | Notice that both shapes appear at the front
of the layer and that's not what we want.
| | 04:56 | We want that rear rounded square
to appear in back of the ellipses.
| | 05:00 | Go ahead and grab your Black Arrow tool once
again, click off the shapes to deselect them,
| | 05:04 | click on that rounded square in order to
select it, right-click inside the square to bring
| | 05:10 | up the shortcut menu, choose Arrange, and
then choose Send to Back, and you'll put the
| | 05:15 | rounded rectangle at the back of the
layer, which is exactly where it belongs.
| | 05:20 | And that's how you both copy and reflect
objects across an axis inside of Illustrator.
| | 05:25 | In the next exercise we'll
begin work on the arrow.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modifying the constraint axes| 00:00 | In this movie I am going to show you how to
work with one of the oldest and least known
| | 00:05 | features in all of illustrator.
| | 00:07 | And that's the constraint axis, which allows
you to setup an object, a cylindrical object
| | 00:12 | in particular, at a specific angle.
| | 00:15 | I am going to go ahead and zoom out.
| | 00:17 | You may recall, if you followed along with
me in the previous chapter, how we set up
| | 00:22 | this arrow and feather coming into the heart.
| | 00:25 | I am going to go ahead and click on it with the
Black Arrow tool to select that entire group.
| | 00:29 | I'll go up to the Transform panel by clicking
the word Transform up here in the Control panel.
| | 00:34 | And I've gone ahead and selected the bottom
right reference point, which is what we want
| | 00:38 | here, and I am going to change the Rotate
value to 30 degrees and press the Tab key.
| | 00:43 | And I am doing this because this is how we drew
the arrow and the feathers in the first place.
| | 00:48 | This way we could flip across the horizontal
axis to create the feathers, we could ensure
| | 00:53 | that every single one of these feather
lines is exactly 45 degrees and so forth.
| | 00:58 | And then once we had done that we went back
here to the Transform panel, selected the
| | 01:04 | middle right reference point, very important
and change Rotate value there to -30 degrees,
| | 01:09 | I want you to remember that, and
then I'll press the Enter key.
| | 01:14 | This time, what I want to do instead of having
to create this arrowhead perfectly horizontally,
| | 01:20 | and then rotate it into place, I want to
create it, rotate it in the first place.
| | 01:25 | And you can do that by
rotating the entire constraint axis.
| | 01:30 | Imagine here, if I were to drag this
selection around here, if I press the Shift key while
| | 01:35 | I drag down then I'm
performing a perfectly vertical drag.
| | 01:40 | If I drag to the left, still with the Shift
key down, then I'm dragging in a perfectly
| | 01:45 | horizontal direction.
| | 01:46 | If I drag down into the left, again with the
Shift key pressed, then I'm dragging diagonally.
| | 01:52 | So in other words as long as you have the
Shift key down, you're dragging in a direction
| | 01:56 | that is a multiple of 45 degrees.
| | 01:58 | All right, I'll go ahead and press Ctrl+Z,
or Command+Z on a Mac, to undo that change.
| | 02:03 | Imagine if that 45 degrees was not absolute but
relative to the angle of the entire constraint axis.
| | 02:11 | What we are going to do is we're going to
take this shaft right here, we're going to
| | 02:15 | duplicate it in order to
create the rest of the arrow.
| | 02:19 | In order to select the shaft independently
of the feathers, easiest thing to do is go
| | 02:24 | ahead and twirl open the tattoo layer there,
and then I'll twirl open the arrow group.
| | 02:28 | At very top path, if I go ahead and meatball
it, that should show me the shaft selected
| | 02:34 | by itself, which indeed it does.
| | 02:37 | Now I'll go up to the Edit menu, and I'll
choose the Copy Command, or you can press
| | 02:41 | Ctrl+C, or Command+C on a Mac.
| | 02:44 | Now let's go ahead and collapse
that layer by clicking its triangle.
| | 02:47 | Click on the Drawing layer to make it active,
and then go up to the Edit menu and choose
| | 02:51 | the standard Paste command,
Ctrl+V, or Command+V on a Mac.
| | 02:55 | And that just goes ahead and
plants that line into any old location.
| | 02:58 | I am going to drag it over a little.
| | 03:00 | Notice that I can select through objects, as long as
an object is selected here inside of Illustrator.
| | 03:06 | Then it will remain selected as you drag
around, the forward objects don't get in the way,
| | 03:12 | as long as the object was
selected in the first place.
| | 03:16 | Now I want to go ahead and move this object so
it's in perfect alignment with the original shaft.
| | 03:22 | So one portion of the shaft is going in, the
other portion is coming out in the background.
| | 03:27 | So I'm going to make sure my Smart Guides
are turned on, they aren't in my case so I'll
| | 03:30 | go back to the View menu and
choose Smart Guides to turn them on.
| | 03:34 | Now I'll go ahead and drag that first point.
| | 03:36 | And it's very important, by the way, if you're working
along with me that you have the Bounding Box turned off.
| | 03:42 | And if for some reason you're seeing a
Bounding Box around this line then go up to the View
| | 03:47 | menu and choose the Hide Bounding Box
command which will appear at this location.
| | 03:52 | In any event, most of you should
have turned that off long ago.
| | 03:55 | Now I'll go ahead and drag this top left anchor
point, and then as soon as you see that little
| | 03:59 | intersect symbol then you know that
you've got things aligned exactly right.
| | 04:04 | Go ahead and drop the line into place.
| | 04:06 | And now let's zoom in here.
| | 04:08 | And what I want to do is I want to extend
this shaft farther into the arrowhead just
| | 04:13 | to make sure that there's no chance
that we have a gap at this location.
| | 04:17 | So I'll go ahead and grab my White Arrow tool,
which I can get by pressing the A key, I'll
| | 04:21 | click off the line to deselect it, and then I'll
click on that anchor point to select it once again.
| | 04:27 | I could drag, and in my case right now, I
can see that I am matching the template layer,
| | 04:33 | because I've got Smart Guides turned on
but that's actually kind of cheating.
| | 04:37 | I am going to press Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z on
a Mac, to Undo that change, and I am going
| | 04:42 | to hide the template for a moment.
| | 04:43 | So I'm going to click in the
eyeball in front of the shapes layer.
| | 04:47 | And now I'll start dragging this anchor point,
and I can those you know sort of eyeball things,
| | 04:52 | make sure that I'm dragging in a good
direction, but I don't really know, and I don't have
| | 04:57 | any way to absolutely establish a constraint
because if I start pressing the Shift key,
| | 05:02 | things are going to get
pretty wonky indeed here.
| | 05:04 | All right, so this is a long set
up to this really great function.
| | 05:09 | I'll press Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z
on the Mac, to undo that change.
| | 05:13 | And I'll go up to the Edit menu
and choose the Preferences command.
| | 05:17 | On a Mac you would go to the Illustrator menu
and choose Preferences, and then choose the
| | 05:21 | very first command in the submenu General,
which has a keyboard shortcut, by the way,
| | 05:26 | which I'd like you to remember, because it's
going to make your life a lot easier and that's
| | 05:30 | Ctrl+K on the PC, Command+K on the Mac.
| | 05:33 | It is a consistent keyboard shortcut across the
Creative Suite, including Photoshop, InDesign and more.
| | 05:38 | Anyway, Ctrl+K, or Command+K will bring up
this dialog box, and notice the second option
| | 05:43 | down Constrain Angle.
| | 05:45 | We want to change that to the
angle that we rotated the feathers.
| | 05:50 | And you may recall that was -30 degrees,
that's exactly what we want in this case.
| | 05:54 | So I'll go ahead and enter-
30 degrees and click OK.
| | 05:58 | And now notice if I drag this point while
pressing the Shift key, that I am exactly
| | 06:04 | in line, right where I want to be.
| | 06:07 | So I'm extending this line in the
exact angle it was originally drawn.
| | 06:11 | I'll go ahead and extend it about this far
here, so you want to start dragging the point,
| | 06:14 | and then press the Shift key in order to
constrain the angle of the drag, and then release your
| | 06:19 | mouse button, and then release the Shift key in
order to constrain that movement to a multiple
| | 06:25 | of 45 degrees subject to the entire
constraint axis being rotated -30 degrees here inside
| | 06:33 | Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Turning a triangle into an arrowhead| 00:00 | In this movie, we are going to draw the
arrowhead using the Polygon tool, and you'll see how
| | 00:05 | the rotate a constrained
axis really comes our rescue.
| | 00:08 | I've saved my progress as Extended air line.ai,
and we will start things off by selecting
| | 00:14 | the Polygon tool which is fourth in either
the flat menu list or here in my little Shape
| | 00:20 | tool panel, and just so that we don't have
a lot guides appearing on screen I am going
| | 00:25 | to press Ctrl+U, or Command+U on the
Mac, to turn off the Smart Guides.
| | 00:29 | Now I will start by
showing you how this tool works.
| | 00:31 | It's a lot like the Star tool, by the way.
| | 00:34 | You draw shapes from the
center outwards as I am doing here.
| | 00:39 | You can press the Shift key in order to
constrain the angle of this shape, you can press the
| | 00:44 | spacebar in order to move the shape on the fly.
| | 00:46 | I will go ahead and release
both those keys for a moment.
| | 00:49 | You can press the Up arrow key in order to
increase the number of sides, and you can
| | 00:54 | press the Down arrow key to reduce the
number of sides, all the way down to a triangle.
| | 01:00 | And that's actually what I want, but I
want a triangle of a very specific size.
| | 01:04 | So I'll go ahead and press the Backspace key
or the Delete key on the Mac, to get rid of
| | 01:08 | the current one, and I'll just click with a
tool in order to bring up a Polygon dialog box.
| | 01:13 | I will change the Radius to 50 points, and
I'll leave the Sides values set to 3, which
| | 01:19 | after all represents the number of sides
associated with the last shape I drew.
| | 01:23 | Then I will click OK, and I end up
with this upright equilateral triangle.
| | 01:28 | Now I'm going to go ahead and press the V
key to switch to my Black Arrow tool, and
| | 01:33 | I will drag the shape over little.
| | 01:35 | I want my triangle to be filled
with black and have no stroke.
| | 01:39 | So the first thing I am going to do is drop
down to this little Swap icon here, notice
| | 01:44 | it says Swap Fill and Stroke, and it has a
keyboard shortcut of Shift+X for exchange.
| | 01:50 | So I'm going to go ahead and click on that
icon in order to swap my fill and stroke colors,
| | 01:54 | but I don't want a stroke, so I'll click on
its second swatch up here in the control panel,
| | 01:59 | and I will change it from white to None.
| | 02:02 | Now we have a fill triangle
with no stroke whatsoever.
| | 02:06 | This triangle happens to go at
exactly the right direction.
| | 02:11 | So imagine this imagine this top point here,
that's the point of the arrow, and we want
| | 02:16 | to rotate that point down so it
matches the angle of the line.
| | 02:19 | We would start by a rotating it -90 degrees,
which would be 90 degrees to the right here,
| | 02:26 | and then we would rotate it another -
30 degrees for a total of -120 degrees.
| | 02:32 | I hate to get too mathematical on you, but
these points are already 120 degrees away
| | 02:38 | from each other, because you divide a circle
which is 360 degrees by 3, and you get 120.
| | 02:43 | So the darn thing is already set up
exactly the way we wanted it to be.
| | 02:47 | The only problem is we need a point right
here in the center of this line with which
| | 02:53 | to align the arrowhead with
the endpoint of this shaft here.
| | 03:00 | We can create a point anyplace along the line,
but to ensure that it's going to be right
| | 03:04 | there in the center the best command
available to us is under the Object.
| | 03:07 | Go ahead and click on Object, then click on
Path, and then you choose this guy, Add Anchor
| | 03:13 | Points which adds new anchor points at 50%
positions along each one of the segments.
| | 03:21 | Now I am going to turn my smart guides back
gone by pressing Ctrl+U, or Command+U on the
| | 03:26 | Mac, and I'll drag up by
this anchor point right there.
| | 03:30 | Notice the entire shape is selected.
| | 03:31 | So again drag by that anchor point until it
snaps into alignment with this anchor point,
| | 03:36 | and I'll actually see a snap cursor.
| | 03:38 | I will hold the snap cursor to tell me
about things exactly where I want them to be.
| | 03:43 | Now I want to turn my template
back on so I can see what I'm doing.
| | 03:46 | So I will go ahead and turn on the
eyeball in front of Shapes layers.
| | 03:49 | Again, I can see him drawing
on the wrong darn layer again.
| | 03:52 | I am drawing on a Tattoo layer.
| | 03:53 | So I'll go ahead and drag that little green
square down into the Drawing layer so that
| | 03:59 | I'm working in the layer I am looking for.
| | 04:01 | Now I can go ahead and drag this arrowhead
into place while pressing the Shift key so
| | 04:07 | that I'm aligning the new arrow with
the arrowhead here in the template.
| | 04:11 | So I actually want this guy to be all the
way forward, I'll drag him by his nose while
| | 04:15 | pressing the Shift key
until I'm covering things up.
| | 04:19 | Again, by virtue of the fact that I have a
rotated constraint axis I get everything exactly
| | 04:25 | where I want it to be.
| | 04:27 | Now, I need to get rid of these two anchor
points right here, because they're just going
| | 04:31 | to mess things up.
| | 04:32 | I could select an anchor point with a White
Arrow tool and press Backspace or Delete,
| | 04:37 | but that will leave a hole in the path.
| | 04:39 | If you want to delete an anchor point
without leaving a hole, you use the Pen tool, and
| | 04:44 | we will get to the pen more in a later chapter,
but for now just go ahead and select the pen
| | 04:49 | which you can get by pressing the P key, and
now hover over one of those anchor points,
| | 04:54 | and you should see the Pen nib
with a little minus sign next to it.
| | 04:58 | And that tells you that as soon as you click
you're going to delete that anchor point without
| | 05:02 | creating a breaking the path outline.
| | 05:05 | Now hover the pen cursor over the other anchor
point and click, and you will get rid of it.
| | 05:09 | I am going to switch back to my White Arrow
tool, and I tell you what I'm starting to
| | 05:15 | get a little sick of the Smart Guides again.
| | 05:18 | So I am going to press Ctrl+U, or
Command+U on the Mac, to turn them off.
| | 05:21 | So that keyboard shortcut can be very handy.
| | 05:24 | Now I am going to drag this point right here
independently of the others while pressing
| | 05:28 | the Shift key until I get more or less in
the place, and I'll grab both this point,
| | 05:34 | I'll click on this point, and then I'll Shift-
click on this point so only these two outer points
| | 05:41 | should be selected, and I'll drag them while
pressing the Shift key until I move them into
| | 05:47 | about this location here.
| | 05:50 | This looks pretty darn good.
| | 05:51 | So by virtue of the fact that I have the
rotate a constrained axis, and I am pressing the
| | 05:55 | Shift key, I'm ensuring that I am moving these
points to the exact positions I am looking for.
| | 06:01 | We don't need that template layer anymore.
| | 06:03 | So I am going to turn off the shapes layer just
so I am not seeing any clutter in the background.
| | 06:07 | The last thing I want to do is create a
kind of two toned arrowhead that's red on top,
| | 06:13 | and then black on the bottom.
| | 06:15 | So I'm going to click off of the path outline to
deselect it, and then I'm still using the White Arrow tool.
| | 06:21 | I will go ahead and click on
this topmost point right there.
| | 06:24 | Then I'll go up to the Edit menu,
and I'll choose the Copy command.
| | 06:28 | When you have a single anchor point selected
in Illustrator, and you choose Copy or press
| | 06:33 | Ctrl+C, or Command+C on the Mac, you copy not only
the point but also the two segments next to it.
| | 06:40 | Now I'll go back up to the Edit menu and
choose Paste in Front or press Ctrl+F, or Command+F
| | 06:46 | on the Mac, and notice that goes ahead and
paste a two segment triangle right there.
| | 06:52 | So we don't have any line in-between.
| | 06:54 | We can still fill that open path outline,
however, by going up to the very first swatch
| | 06:59 | here in the Control panel, clicking on it,
and switching to CMYK Red, and we end up with
| | 07:05 | the final effect here.
| | 07:06 | I'm going click off the path outline to
deselect it, also go ahead and click on this X here
| | 07:12 | to close that little Shape tools panel, and I
will press Ctrl+0, or Command+0 on the Mac,
| | 07:17 | in order to zoom out, and I will even right-
click inside the document window and choose Hide
| | 07:21 | Guides so that we can focus on the artwork.
| | 07:24 | Now there's one last thing you
should do, and this is very important.
| | 07:29 | Notice if I were to say grab the Rectangle
tool, and start dragging inside of the document
| | 07:36 | window, I might be a little surprised to see that,
that rectangle has automatically rotated to -30 degrees.
| | 07:44 | The same holds for drawing with the rounded
rectangle or Ellipse tool, and it also applies
| | 07:49 | to creating text and a few
other things inside Illustrator.
| | 07:52 | So once you're done working with a rotate
a constrained axis very important, I'll I
| | 07:57 | will go ahead and Backspace
or Delete that rectangle.
| | 07:59 | You want to press Ctrl+K, or Command+K on the
Mac, to bring up the Preferences dialog box.
| | 08:05 | Tab to the Constrain Angle option, change
it to 0 degrees so everything is reset, and
| | 08:10 | then click OK, because that is a global
setting that we will apply to almost your documents,
| | 08:17 | and that friends is how you create a fairly
complicated piece of artwork using some of
| | 08:23 | the simplest functions inside of
Illustrator, the geometric shape tools.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Flare tool| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you how to use the
last tool in the Shape tool flyout menu, which
| | 00:05 | is the Flare tool.
| | 00:07 | Technically speaking it's not a shape tool,
because it doesn't allow you to create a shape,
| | 00:11 | instead it allows you to create an elaborate
lens flare effect, like the one that you're
| | 00:16 | seeing on screen right now.
| | 00:18 | Now on the plus side the Flare tool results
in a dynamic flare object that you can edit
| | 00:23 | anytime you like, either by dragging inside the
document window or by adjusting some numerical values.
| | 00:29 | On the minus side it produces kind of a
gimmicky effects, so I'm not sure how often you're
| | 00:33 | going to use it, you'll have
to judge that for yourself.
| | 00:36 | I'm going to switchover to this
document called Flare me.ai, very simple file.
| | 00:42 | If I twirl open the night layer here inside
the Layers panel, you can see that all we
| | 00:45 | have is a black rectangle on the background
and a white star shape, and that's it, and
| | 00:50 | I'll tell you that the Flare tool works
best against dark backgrounds just like this.
| | 00:56 | To get to the tool you click and
hold on the last shape tool you use.
| | 01:00 | In my case it's the Polygon tool, and then
you go ahead and select the final tool in
| | 01:04 | the list, which of course is the Flare tool.
| | 01:06 | Here is how I use the tool.
| | 01:08 | I'm going to start by dragging from the center
of the star outward, like so, and you'll see
| | 01:15 | two things where this preview is concerned,
you'll see all these lines coming outward
| | 01:20 | and those are the rays, and then we have
these two concentric circles which represent the
| | 01:25 | science of the Halo.
| | 01:27 | Now you can modify the behavior of this
tool on a fly by pressing a few keys.
| | 01:32 | First of all, you can press the Shift key
and that'll go ahead and lock the rays down
| | 01:36 | so that their angle doesn't change, you can
also press the spacebar in order to relocate
| | 01:41 | the effect, so right now I have
both the Shift and spacebar keys down.
| | 01:46 | If I were to release the Shift key as I drag
the effect to a different location, so I still
| | 01:50 | have the spacebar down, why then the
angle the race is going to change on you.
| | 01:55 | If you want to change the number of rays then
you press the Up arrow key, and you can also
| | 02:00 | hold the Up arrow key down if you like,
in order to add more rays more quickly.
| | 02:05 | If you want to reduce the number of rays,
you press the Down arrow key and again you
| | 02:08 | can press and hold that key if you like.
| | 02:11 | To change the size of the Halo, you press
and hold the Ctrl key or the Command key on
| | 02:16 | a Mac, with that key down if you drag outwards,
you're going to increase the size of the Halo.
| | 02:20 | If you drag inward, you're going
to decrease the size of the Halo.
| | 02:24 | And again, throughout pressing all of
these keys, I have the mouse button down.
| | 02:29 | So, when you get an affect that you think
you like, and don't stress over it too much,
| | 02:33 | because you can change everything about this
effect just go ahead and release, and you'll
| | 02:39 | end up seeing what the effect looks like.
| | 02:42 | It's hard to tell what's going on when we
have all these anchor points and the segments,
| | 02:46 | but you can hide all that
selection stuff if you like.
| | 02:49 | By going up to the View menu and choosing
the Hide Edges command, which has a keyboard
| | 02:53 | shortcut of Ctrl+H, or Command+H on a Mac,
so I'll go ahead and choose that command,
| | 02:59 | and you can see all the selection stuff disappears,
which gives us a clear idea of what the effect looks like.
| | 03:05 | Notice over here in the Layers panel that
this flare object is still selected, because
| | 03:09 | its meatball is highlighted, and we
have a little selection square next-door.
| | 03:14 | So again, we're just hiding the selection
interface, we're not deselecting the object.
| | 03:20 | At this point we have all these halos and
rays coming off of the star, but we don't
| | 03:25 | have the actual lens flare, that is the rings of
light that are bouncing inside the camera lens.
| | 03:31 | To position those, you just go ahead and
click someplace inside the document window while
| | 03:37 | the object is still selected.
| | 03:39 | Now after you've drawn the object, and I stress,
once again, the object remains selected, if
| | 03:44 | you wanted to see the selection edges, you
could just press Ctrl+H, or Command+H once
| | 03:49 | again, I'm going to press that keyboard
shortcut to make those edges disappear.
| | 03:53 | You may now modify this object by dragging
in one of two places with the Flare tool.
| | 03:59 | If you look very closely at my curs, or it
appears as a cross with some dots coming off of it.
| | 04:05 | If I move over to the end of the flare effect
right there, you can see tiny little arrows
| | 04:11 | at the outside of the cross and that tells
you that you can actually drag the end of
| | 04:16 | the effect to a new location.
| | 04:18 | So I'll go ahead and do so.
| | 04:20 | You may also drag the beginning of the effect,
so once you see those little arrows, try dragging
| | 04:25 | the effect, like so, and you'll modify the
point from which the flare effect emanate.
| | 04:29 | Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and
place that point back inside the star.
| | 04:35 | If you want to enter your flare effect by
the numbers, then double-click on the Flare
| | 04:39 | tool icon here inside the toolbox and that'll bring up
this big complicated Flare tool Options dialog box.
| | 04:47 | Now I'm not going to walk you through what
everything means but I will tell you the center
| | 04:51 | options affect the
central portion of the effect.
| | 04:54 | The halo affects that region around there,
that main ring around the effect, then the
| | 05:02 | rays of course, the rays of light emanating
from the effect, you can turn those off, by
| | 05:06 | the way, if you don't want to have any rays,
then turn on the Preview check box, so you
| | 05:09 | can see what kind of
difference that's going to make.
| | 05:12 | This preview isn't necessarily 100% accurate,
I'm just warning you, sometimes when you click
| | 05:16 | OK, you'll see a different effect, but
it'll give you sense of what's going on.
| | 05:20 | I'm going to turn those rays back on, you
can see that I can change the number of rays
| | 05:25 | if I want to, and then I will see those
rays added out here inside the Illustration.
| | 05:31 | You also have the option turning off the rings,
which are those bits of reflective light that
| | 05:36 | are going into the camera lens, or you can
turn them back on at least that gives you
| | 05:40 | a sense of what ring even means
where a flare object is concerned.
| | 05:44 | I can also change the number of rings if I
like, by clicking inside this number value
| | 05:50 | and pressing, in this case the Up
arrow key in order to raise that value.
| | 05:54 | Once you get something you think you might
like, then just go ahead and click the OK
| | 05:57 | key in order to accept that modification,
it doesn't end up coming out exactly the way
| | 06:02 | you wanted to, again, you can drag the end
of that effect, you can drag the beginning
| | 06:07 | of the fact and so forth.
| | 06:09 | You just want to be careful that you're
seeing the right cursor, because otherwise if you
| | 06:14 | drag with a tool, then you're going to create
a New Flare Object, and that folks, for better
| | 06:20 | or for worse is how the Flare
tool works inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the top-secret tilde key trick| 00:00 | I am going wrap things up by showing you what
might be the wackiest trick in all of Illustrator.
| | 00:05 | Essentially, by pressing a key you
can repeat an object as you draw it.
| | 00:12 | And you may find it useful and maybe not.
| | 00:14 | Let me show you how it works? And I'm going to go ahead
and zoom out so that we have plenty of room to work.
| | 00:19 | And I'm going to switch to the Line tool--now this
trick works with any of the Line or Shape tools.
| | 00:23 | We'll start with Line tool.
| | 00:26 | And I'm also going to change
the fill and stroke attributes.
| | 00:30 | So I will click on the Strokes swatch up here
on the Control panel and change it to White.
| | 00:34 | And then I'll click on the Fill swatch, and
I'll change it to None so that we're just
| | 00:40 | drawing a bunch of white lines.
| | 00:42 | So now if I were to draw from the center of the
star outwards, so you can see then I create a line.
| | 00:48 | And of course as I drag back and forth, I am
changing the angle and the length of line,
| | 00:52 | but if I press and hold the tilde key once
again on American keyboard that's the key
| | 00:58 | below the Escape key, above the
Tab key in the upper left corner.
| | 01:03 | Then as I drag, I'll go ahead and create
multiple repetitions of that line so we have all these
| | 01:09 | lines coming out from the star.
| | 01:11 | And then presumably, I wouldn't want them
to be that opaque, so I go ahead and reduce
| | 01:16 | the Opacity value up here in the Control
panel to something like, let's say 20%.
| | 01:21 | And press the Enter key or the Return key
on the Mac, in order to create that pretty
| | 01:26 | interesting effect right there.
| | 01:28 | To reduce a little bit of clutter, notice
over here if I twirl open the Night layer
| | 01:33 | here inside the Layers panel, I've got just tons
and tons of paths now that I drew in one fell swoop.
| | 01:40 | To reduce the clutter, I will go up to the
Object menu and choose a Group command, or
| | 01:44 | I can press Ctrl+G, or Command+G on the Mac,
and then I have one group of these lines.
| | 01:48 | And I will just go ahead
and rename this guy, lines.
| | 01:50 | And I press the Enter key or
the Return key on the Mac.
| | 01:53 | You can also try your hand at
this effect using a Shape tool.
| | 01:56 | So notice I have gone ahead and reset Shape
tool to the Rectangle tool, I'll click and
| | 02:00 | hold on it, and let's say
I will choose a Star tool.
| | 02:03 | And in my case, the Star tool is still set
up to create in eight pointed star that is
| | 02:09 | every bit is pointy as the
star I already have here.
| | 02:12 | So I'll go ahead and kind of to move it into
alignment just so that we are starting from a good location.
| | 02:19 | And if I were now release the spacebar and
press and hold the tilde key and drag then
| | 02:25 | I would get the sequence of stars, like so,
perhaps to be more effective if I add more stars.
| | 02:30 | I'll go ahead and undo that, by
pressing the Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z on the Mac.
| | 02:34 | Back out a little by pressing Ctrl+
Minus, or Command+Minus on the Mac.
| | 02:38 | And let's try to get this guy more or less in to
alignment which is little hard this far away.
| | 02:43 | But this should be good enough, and then I'll
press and hold that Tilde key and drag very
| | 02:46 | quickly at first, and then all over the place.
| | 02:49 | I invoked this huge auto scroll.
| | 02:52 | So I'll press Ctrl+0, or Command+0
on the Mac, to center of my view.
| | 02:55 | And I will once again reduce the Opacity
value to 20%, and I'll press Ctrl+G, or Command+G
| | 03:01 | on the Mac, in order to group those stars
together, I will even call them stars, and
| | 03:06 | then press the Enter key or
the Return key on the Mac.
| | 03:10 | And we end up with this amazing effect here.
| | 03:13 | Now bear in mind that when we are not
seeing the Selection edges in my case, because I
| | 03:17 | press Ctrl+H, or Command+H in the previous
movie, if I press that shortcut again then
| | 03:23 | I will see those Selection edges.
| | 03:25 | And the reason this becomes important is because
hiding or showing the Selection edges is persistent.
| | 03:31 | In other words Illustrator goes ahead and
keeps those Selection edges hidden or shown
| | 03:36 | until the next time you change your mind.
| | 03:39 | Anyway I'm going to out to the Select and
choose the Deselect command which notice has
| | 03:43 | a keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+Shift+A,
or Command+Shift+A on the Mac.
| | 03:48 | And that is my final effect, I can't say
it's necessarily the best illustration, I have
| | 03:52 | ever created, but I'm not sure it
goes so far to say it's the worst.
| | 03:56 | So you decide, but do bear in mind, if you
want to be able to draw many-many paths anywhere
| | 04:01 | from hundreds of thousands of stars or lines
or what have you in a single operation, then
| | 04:08 | just press the tilde key as you draw.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Tracing an ImageAuto-tracing in Illustrator| 00:00 | Illustrator offers an
Automatic Tracing feature.
| | 00:03 | Among other things, it can trace scan line
art, meaning that you can draw an image using
| | 00:09 | traditional tools like a pen and a piece of
paper, for example, and then scan the image
| | 00:14 | and turn it into an automatic
vector drawing in Illustrator.
| | 00:19 | In this chapter, we'll take a half butterfly
that I drew using a sharpie, and then we'll
| | 00:24 | trace it in Illustrator, clean it up, and
then flip it, color it, and scale it to 8
| | 00:31 | feet wide by 6 feet tall.
| | 00:33 | The final result looks great in a way that
your original image would have never looked
| | 00:39 | had you scaled it optically or
with the help of, say, Photoshop.
| | 00:43 | Here, let me show you exactly how it works.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Opening an image to embed it| 00:00 | Now there are two ways to bring a
pixel-based image file into Illustrator.
| | 00:04 | One is to just open the image using the Open
command, and the other is to place the image
| | 00:09 | using the Place command, and both commands
are available under the File menu incidentally.
| | 00:15 | Now placing is generally preferable, and
I'll show you why, but I want you to understand
| | 00:19 | how both operations work.
| | 00:21 | Now I'm starting here in Photoshop, you don't
have to, not even if you're working along with me.
| | 00:25 | I'm just doing this so you can see the piece
of scanned line art that we're going to be
| | 00:28 | working with here, but this could just as
easily be a logo or anything else you can
| | 00:33 | scan or photograph and bring
in to Photoshop, for example.
| | 00:37 | Now what I did was I drew this half a
butterfly using a sharpie, and I did so on a piece of
| | 00:44 | standard bond paper that I took out of the
printer, so nothing special going on here.
| | 00:49 | And all I do have a butterfly because we're
going to turn it into a full butterfly before
| | 00:53 | this chapter is out, inside the Illustrator.
| | 00:56 | I'm going to press Ctrl+1, or Command+1 on
the Mac, to zoom into the 100% View size.
| | 01:02 | At this size we see one image pixel for
every screen pixel, so it's very accurate view.
| | 01:06 | I want you to notice, in addition to the actual
sharpie lines, I've got all of this junk going on here.
| | 01:13 | What I call snivels and that could be dust,
it could be scratches, it could be hair, it
| | 01:18 | could be gook on the surface of the scanner,
it could be noise, paper texture and so forth.
| | 01:25 | You can get rid of this kind of artifacting,
as we also call it inside of Photoshop, before
| | 01:30 | you bring the file into
Illustrator, so you can clean it up first.
| | 01:34 | But you don't necessarily have to, because the
Illustrator's tracing engine is so sophisticated,
| | 01:38 | it can deal with all this garbage.
| | 01:40 | All right, I'm going to switch over to
Illustrator, then I'll go up to the File menu and choose
| | 01:45 | the Open Command, and if you're working along
with, you can go to the 06_trace folder, in
| | 01:51 | which among other files,
including more files, and you see here.
| | 01:55 | You'll see one called Half butterfly.tif
and that is the image file just go ahead and
| | 02:00 | open it on up, and there we have it, that's
all there is to it, but there is a caveat.
| | 02:06 | I'll go ahead and click on this image using
my Black Arrow tool, so it's an independent
| | 02:10 | object I can drag it to a different location
here on the artboard and the Illustrator handling
| | 02:14 | makes the artboard exactly the same
size as the image, as you can see.
| | 02:18 | Anyway, I'll go ahead and press Ctrl+Z,
or Command+Z in the Mac to undo that move.
| | 02:23 | I want you to notice up here in the Control
panel the word Embedded, and if I hover over
| | 02:27 | that word, it says, No file
associated with this image.
| | 02:31 | What in the word does that mean? Obviously there
was a file, because we just got done opening it.
| | 02:37 | Well, the two vocabulary words to be
aware of here are Embed versus Link.
| | 02:43 | So when you embed an image you actually place the
entirety of the image file into the illustration,
| | 02:50 | into the document file, and that means that
you don't have any stray files, so you don't
| | 02:55 | have to worry about where
the image file is on disk.
| | 02:58 | However, by the same token, you don't have
any link to it either, so if you make some
| | 03:03 | modification in the future to this image
inside Photoshop, for example, then you will not
| | 03:08 | see those modifications
reflected inside of Illustrator.
| | 03:12 | So this is a static image file that lives
in Illustrator only, now that we opened it.
| | 03:18 | The other thing to bear in mind is that
it's going to result in a bigger file when you
| | 03:22 | go up to the File menu and choose Save As.
| | 03:26 | And that's because Illustrator is not terribly
adept at dealing with pixels, it's not nearly
| | 03:31 | so efficient, as it is
when dealing with vectors.
| | 03:34 | So, again, you're going to end up with the
bigger file on disk, which is why to my way
| | 03:38 | of thinking, even though this is a very simple
operation, you're better off placing the image
| | 03:43 | file into a new document, and I will show
you exactly how that works in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Placing an image to create a dynamic link| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you how to place an
image file into Illustrator in order to create
| | 00:05 | a dynamic link to the image file on disk.
| | 00:08 | Just for the sake of comparison.
| | 00:10 | Now if you already have an Illustrator document in
progress then you can place an image into that document.
| | 00:16 | I don't however, I need
to create a new document.
| | 00:18 | So I'll go up to the File menu and choose
the New Command, and I'll go ahead and call
| | 00:23 | this document Butterfly.
| | 00:25 | I have a specific document size in mind.
| | 00:29 | And just for the sake of simplicity here,
I'm going to switch my units from points to
| | 00:32 | inches, and then I'll dial in a Width value
of 9.5 inches and a Height value of 7 inches,
| | 00:40 | and then I'll go ahead and click OK
in order to create that new document.
| | 00:45 | The next step is to go up to the
File menu and choose the Place command.
| | 00:48 | And if you're working along with me,
navigate your way to the 06_trace folder and locate
| | 00:53 | that image file Half butterfly.tif, and then
go ahead and click the Place button in order
| | 00:57 | to add the image to the new document.
| | 01:00 | Now notice that one advantage to this
approach is that my art board isn't exactly the same
| | 01:06 | size as the image.
| | 01:07 | And I want a larger artboard after all,
because in the end I'm going to be turning this half
| | 01:12 | butterfly into a full butterfly.
| | 01:14 | But of course where I am working inside of
the image file that I opened I could always
| | 01:19 | resize the artboard, so it's
not a big advantage there.
| | 01:23 | The advantage that is the big advantage if
I switch back to my documental progress is
| | 01:28 | indicated up here in the Control panel.
| | 01:29 | Notice I see the words Half butterfly.tif.
| | 01:31 | If I go ahead and hover over that file name,
I see the entire path to the image file once
| | 01:37 | again on disk showing me that I have a
dynamic link so that if I make any changes to this
| | 01:44 | image inside say Photoshop, those changes will be
represented immediately here inside Illustrator.
| | 01:50 | Also notice if you click on this file name
which is itself a hot link that brings up a menu.
| | 01:56 | I have a few options to choose from,
I can re-link to another image.
| | 01:59 | I could do that with an
embedded image as well, by the way.
| | 02:02 | I can go to the link, which would be useful
if I were working with a bunch of artboards,
| | 02:06 | and I wasn't sure where
this image file was located.
| | 02:09 | I could update the link, meaning I could update the
document to represent any changes made to the image.
| | 02:15 | However, that is something that
happens automatically in Illustrator.
| | 02:19 | I could access the Link Information, so if I
choose this final command here, notice that
| | 02:23 | I can see the dates when the image was
created and modified, I can see the location of the
| | 02:28 | file, I'll be truncated in this case.
| | 02:30 | I can see the size of the
file on disk and so forth.
| | 02:33 | I'll go and click OK to
dismiss this dialog box.
| | 02:37 | Here is potentially the best option, I'll go
ahead and click on that file name once again.
| | 02:41 | If I choose Edit Original, I'll go ahead and
open that image file inside the Photoshop,
| | 02:47 | so again, I can make any modifications I want
here, and those changes where I had to save
| | 02:51 | the modifications would be represented
immediately inside of the Illustrator document.
| | 02:58 | Another advantage I should mention is that
you're going to end up with smaller document sizes.
| | 03:03 | So if I go ahead and switch back to
Illustrator here, and I were to go up to the File menu
| | 03:08 | and choose the Save command, that document
that I create is going to be in the case of
| | 03:15 | this demonstration, about a megabyte
smaller than the Embedded image.ai file.
| | 03:21 | So this file Embedded image.ai is about 3MB
on disk, so it's not enormous, but still 50%
| | 03:27 | bigger, than the file with the link in it
which will only be 2MB, once I get done saving.
| | 03:33 | So if you want to embed the image into your
document use the Open command, if you want
| | 03:37 | to create a dynamic link to the image file
on disk, use the Place command to import your
| | 03:42 | pixel-based images.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Auto-tracing and resolution| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to
automatically trace an image inside Illustrator, and we'll
| | 00:05 | also see the significant impact of
resolution on the quality of the final trace Artwork.
| | 00:11 | And by the way, what I'm about to show you
works just the same whether you embedded the
| | 00:17 | image using the Open Command, or you're
linking to the image via the Place Command so that
| | 00:22 | part doesn't matter.
| | 00:23 | I'll go ahead and click on the image with
a Black Arrow tool in order to select it.
| | 00:27 | And for the sake of demonstration here, I
go up to the Edit menu and choose the Copy
| | 00:31 | Command because I want to have a copy of
the image come back to in just a moment.
| | 00:35 | I'll go up to the Control panel and notice
this button right there Image Trace all you've
| | 00:39 | to do is click on it, it really is that
simple where tracing line art is concerned.
| | 00:45 | In my case however, I end up getting this
alert message that says tracing may proceed
| | 00:49 | slowly with this large image file.
| | 00:52 | Would you like to continue? And now why is
it calling it a large image file, does look
| | 00:56 | that big on screen.
| | 00:58 | And we're seeing the document at 116%, at
least the screen is probably at higher zoom
| | 01:03 | ratio on your screen, so it
really isn't all of that large.
| | 01:06 | Well, here to do his notice the Resolution
value appear in the Control panel we're seeing
| | 01:11 | that this is a Grayscale image, by the way, it doesn't
contain any color and the PPI pixels per inch is 600.
| | 01:18 | That's a 600 pixel per inch image
that is a very high Resolution File.
| | 01:23 | We need those Pixels? Now you don't
necessarily need 600 pixels per inch, but you do want
| | 01:28 | 300 pixels branch a better to get a good trace
especially when you're working with line art,
| | 01:34 | I'll show you the difference in just a moment.
| | 01:36 | Then offers this helpful advice which, by the
way is very bad advice, and I'll demonstrate
| | 01:40 | that but it says, to reduce the image size,
rasterized to a lower resolution using essentially
| | 01:46 | the Rasterize Command under the Object menu.
| | 01:49 | Well, this a little bit misleading.
| | 01:52 | rasterized means convert to pixels this
image is already made of pixels so by definition
| | 01:58 | it is a raster files so we don't need rasterized
it where you can do using the Rasterized Command
| | 02:02 | under the Object menu is reduce the
resolution so essentially re-rasterized a file.
| | 02:08 | When you might want to do Is Say Don't Show
Again because you never want to do this however
| | 02:13 | I'm just going to click OK in
order to Trace File latency.
| | 02:16 | Now you can see we get a lot of progress bars
so it does take a little bit of time to trace
| | 02:20 | that image but goodness we get good results.
| | 02:24 | We've got a little bit of noise, and I'll
show you how to trace that shortly, but the
| | 02:27 | quality is just great.
| | 02:30 | Now compare that to what would happen if we
followed Illustrators of advice, and I really
| | 02:34 | want you to see the difference here.
| | 02:36 | So that you have a sense of what kind of
difference resolution makes when you tracing in important
| | 02:42 | image so I am going to up go to the Edit menu
and choose Paste In Front in order to pasta
| | 02:48 | that image in front of itself.
| | 02:49 | So here's the original image once again,
and we can see the trace version of the image
| | 02:53 | in the background and go and press Control+Z,
or Command+Z on a Mac, to undo that move.
| | 02:59 | Then the following Illustrates advise once
again, we'll go up to the Object menu, and
| | 03:03 | I'll choose the Rasterized Command.
| | 03:05 | By default, the Color model CMYK we really
that this is a Grayscale Image so we don't
| | 03:10 | need to add a bunch of color to file, that
will just make the final document size much
| | 03:15 | more massive and that will actually slow
down the tracing process as well so I am going
| | 03:19 | to select Grayscale.
| | 03:20 | And in Resolution High would be 300 ppi well
let's go ahead and make things as effortless
| | 03:26 | as possible for Illustrator by reducing
the Resolution to screen which is 72 ppi.
| | 03:32 | And there was a day were Adobe use to
officially recommend that this is where you work.
| | 03:37 | And we don't need to worry about the other
options, so I'll just go ahead and click
| | 03:40 | OK in order to reduce the number of pixels
or what's known as downsample that image.
| | 03:46 | And you can see that it's looking a
lot more choppy if I zoom in here.
| | 03:50 | I'll go up to this Image Trace button, and
I'll go ahead and click on it, this time we
| | 03:54 | don't get a warning we not get any
progress bars we get a trace lickety-split.
| | 03:59 | Problem is it doesn't look nearly as good
as see saw a moment ago so just for the sake
| | 04:05 | of demonstration, I am going
to go ahead and zoom in here.
| | 04:08 | So that we can see the half of head of
the insect and the wings and so forth.
| | 04:12 | I'll go ahead and twirl open, this tiny
layer here inside the Layers panel and so I have
| | 04:16 | got an Image Tracing on top.
| | 04:18 | I'll go head and rename that guy 72 PPI, and
then an image tracing a bottom I'll go ahead
| | 04:23 | and rename this one 600 PPI.
| | 04:26 | And now, I will turn off 72 PPI,
so you can see the difference.
| | 04:29 | This one the 600 PPI tracing has
so much detail associated with it.
| | 04:35 | Yes it has some noise but it doesn't look
like a tracing at all, it has all this wonderful
| | 04:41 | natural detail that's essentially maintaining
sort of the organic nature of my line drawing.
| | 04:48 | So it looks like an actual line drawn the
advantages I am going to be able to scale
| | 04:52 | it and do all kinds of stuff to
it as we'll see in future movies.
| | 04:56 | Whereas, if I go and turn on the 72 PPI version,
this looks like so, old-school tracing from
| | 05:03 | the late '80s early 1990s, and
this stuff is just give away.
| | 05:07 | When people see this anymore I think they
automatically recognize it as being badly traced vector.
| | 05:14 | And it also, by the way, doesn't reflect well
on you because it shows that you machine traced
| | 05:19 | your Artwork which isn't really very accurate
because you created presumably this original
| | 05:24 | Illustration, so you worked really hard on
this line drawing, and just brought it into
| | 05:27 | Illustrator to do a good
job of the Vector Trace.
| | 05:30 | So what it comes down to is
Illustrator's Vector Tracing Function is awesome.
| | 05:36 | This new Image Trace Function in
Illustrator CS6, fantastic feature.
| | 05:40 | However, it'll always give you better
results when you work with high-resolution images
| | 05:45 | meaning 300 pixels per inch or better.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting layer previews| 00:00 | This movie is frankly an aside.
| | 00:02 | It doesn't have anything specifically to
do with tracing images inside Illustrator.
| | 00:07 | But it does have everything to do with
managing your documents inside the program.
| | 00:11 | Specifically I am going to show you how to change the
size of the Thumbnails here inside the Layers panel.
| | 00:17 | So notice by default I am seeing these tiny
little Thumbnails both for the Contents of
| | 00:21 | the layer and for the specific items inside
the layer, provided that the layer is twirled
| | 00:26 | open, as it is in my case.
| | 00:28 | If you want to change the size of those
Thumbnails, go to the layer panel flyout menu icon in
| | 00:33 | the upper right-hand corner of the Layers panel,
click on it and choose the Final Command, panel Options.
| | 00:39 | Believe it or not, these very small Thumbnails are
what Illustrator says to be Medium-size thumbnails.
| | 00:45 | If you don't want any thumbnails at all, you
can go ahead and switch to Small, which would
| | 00:50 | just show the names of the layers and the
Objects and so forth, which might be very
| | 00:54 | useful if you work with lots and lots
of layers or Objects inside your File.
| | 00:59 | However, I'm kind of a visual guy, and I
like to be able to see those thumbnails.
| | 01:04 | So what I do is I bypass Large, which
really isn't that big, and I go ahead and select
| | 01:08 | Other, and I recommended if you want to be
able to see those things, that you work with
| | 01:12 | 50 pixels or bigger.
| | 01:14 | Now for my part, I typically work at 70
pixels generally speaking, but of course, you can
| | 01:19 | adjust the value to taste.
| | 01:21 | If you don't want to be able to twirl your
layers open, you don't need to see the contents
| | 01:25 | of the layers, you just see the layers themselves,
then you can turn on this check box, Show layers Only.
| | 01:29 | That will not only turn off the thumbnails, that will
make it so that you can't even twirl open the layer.
| | 01:35 | I'll show you what I mean.
| | 01:36 | By clicking OK, and notice, now I have this
inside of layer 1, which I'll go ahead and
| | 01:40 | rename butterfly, but I can't twirl it
open, so I can't find the Objects here.
| | 01:45 | Again, not the way I like to
work, but it's a matter of taste.
| | 01:48 | I am going to go ahead and click on a
flyout menu icon again and choose panel Options,
| | 01:52 | and it turns Show layers Only Off.
| | 01:55 | Notice down here, you also have the option
of controlling what items get thumbnails,
| | 01:59 | so you can decide whether you want to see
the thumbnails associate with the layers.
| | 02:02 | And you can't create Sub layers as
we'll see inside of Illustrator.
| | 02:06 | And so if you turn on Top Level Only, you
won't see the thumbnails for the Sub layers.
| | 02:10 | Then groups are treated independently, so
you can either see their thumbnails or not,
| | 02:14 | and then Objects that is everything that's
anything else, including these tracing objects
| | 02:19 | here and path outlines and so forth.
| | 02:21 | You can decide whether you
see thumbnails for them or not.
| | 02:24 | I am going to leave those three check boxes
On, and Top-Level Only Off as by default.
| | 02:29 | So I'll go and click OK, so I can once again
see Large thumbnails associated with, both
| | 02:33 | the layer and all the Objects inside the layer.
| | 02:36 | Now something to bear in mind here
is this is a Document Level Settings.
| | 02:41 | So in other words, when I got to save this file,
it will save with these Large layer Previews.
| | 02:46 | The next I created New File,
it'll have Small Previews again.
| | 02:50 | So this is not a global setting the way it
is in, say, Photoshop and other programs.
| | 02:54 | This is a document by documents setting and
that friends is how you change the size of
| | 02:59 | your layer Previews, here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Cleaning up with the Threshold option| 00:00 | Back to the topic at hand.
| | 00:02 | In this movie I'll show you how to refine
the quality of your traced artwork, using
| | 00:07 | the Threshold function which is
found inside the Image Trace panel.
| | 00:11 | If I go ahead and scroll to let's say the
bottom left corner of this tracing, you can
| | 00:16 | see that Illustrator has traced a
lot of what I was calling the snivels.
| | 00:20 | So while it seemed fit to ignore most of the
artifacts, it has gone ahead and singled out
| | 00:25 | either the largest ones or the
ones that include the most contrast.
| | 00:29 | Obviously, we need to get rid of them, but
we don't want to our cleanup to come at the
| | 00:33 | expense of the fine details such as
this line is cutting through the wing.
| | 00:37 | So we need to exercise a little bit of care.
| | 00:40 | Well, fortunately we can change the tracing
any time we like because Illustrator is always
| | 00:46 | referencing the original pixel based image.
| | 00:49 | Let me show you what I mean.
| | 00:49 | I am going to go ahead and click on this traced
artboard in order to select it with the black arrow tool.
| | 00:54 | Then notice up here in the Control panel that
we've got this icon that says Image Trace panel.
| | 00:59 | When I go ahead and click on it and sure
enough that brings up the Image Trace panel which
| | 01:03 | is also, by the way, available from
the Window menu just so you know.
| | 01:07 | Now I want to go ahead and move this panel
out of the way, but I don't want to drop it
| | 01:11 | in with the rest my workspace.
| | 01:12 | So I'm going to drag from the far left side
of the Title bar, like so, so I avoid this
| | 01:18 | number, where I dropped the panel in with
either the expanded panels or the collapsed
| | 01:23 | ones that are represented by icons.
| | 01:24 | Now I'll go ahead move this panel right
up out there, so it remains free-floating.
| | 01:27 | Notice this View setting, it says Tracing Result,
meaning I can see the results of the auto tracing.
| | 01:34 | However, if I want to see the artwork in a
different light then I can go ahead and click
| | 01:38 | on Tracing Result.
| | 01:39 | And, for example, I can select the
Source Image to see the image file itself.
| | 01:44 | And usually that won't make any difference
because the Preview check box is turned off.
| | 01:48 | If you want to see your changes as you apply
them, then you either need to click on the
| | 01:53 | Trace button or turn on the Preview check
box, and I am just going to turn on Preview
| | 01:57 | and sure enough there is my
original pixel based image.
| | 02:01 | So I want you to see that is there all
the time and that remains a linked file.
| | 02:06 | Meaning that if I make some changes to the
original file on disc inside of Photoshop
| | 02:11 | or any other program, and save those changes
that will be automatically reflected inside
| | 02:16 | of Illustrator, and Illustrator
will retrace my artwork accordingly.
| | 02:21 | Again, linking is really the way to go.
| | 02:23 | Anyway, I am going to switch
my View back to Tracing Result.
| | 02:27 | Notice that mode by default is set to Black and
White which is exactly what we're looking for.
| | 02:31 | The Threshold value allows us to
decide what black and white are.
| | 02:35 | So essentially what's happening is Illustrator
is on the fly converting this grayscale image,
| | 02:41 | which we saw just a moment ago.
| | 02:43 | So notice, I switch back Source Image.
| | 02:45 | The original image is a bunch of grays.
| | 02:46 | There is no such thing, and
this image is absolute black.
| | 02:50 | And there is no such thing as absolute white,
which is pretty typical of scanned artwork.
| | 02:55 | That's kind of actually what you want from
your scanner because otherwise you are going
| | 02:59 | to be clipping details,
and you don't want that.
| | 03:01 | However, what Illustrator has to do before
it can trace these black and white details
| | 03:06 | is go ahead and convert the
artwork to absolutely Black and White.
| | 03:10 | And that's what this
Threshold function does here.
| | 03:13 | So I will go ahead and switch
the view back to Tracing Result.
| | 03:16 | What Threshold is doing is saying, okay, who
gets to be black that would be the less stuff
| | 03:22 | and who gets to be white
that would be the more stuff.
| | 03:25 | And the Threshold is the
distinction between the two.
| | 03:29 | Now to fully understand what's going on with
Threshold, I am going to turn off the Preview check box.
| | 03:34 | You need to understand what Black
and White are in the world of imaging.
| | 03:38 | I'll go ahead and move this scrollbar all
the way to the left until the value reads 1.
| | 03:44 | A value of 0 if such a thing were possible
here in this panel, a value of 0 is black.
| | 03:51 | So when you enter a value of 1
you're saying 1 and 0 that's it.
| | 03:55 | They are black and nothing else, which means
very little about this artwork would be black
| | 04:02 | and just about everything else
would be interpreted as white.
| | 04:04 | And in fact if I go and turn on the Preview
check box in order to see the results of this
| | 04:08 | change, sure enough, the entire artwork goes
white, which obviously is not what we want.
| | 04:13 | However, if I were to crank this value all
the way up to its maximum 255 which believe
| | 04:19 | it or not is the definition of white in a
digital image, then I'm saying everything
| | 04:25 | that's 255 or darker which is the entire image,
by the way, that's going to be black, and
| | 04:31 | then nothing is going to be white.
| | 04:33 | So if I go ahead and release I was holding
this scroll button for a moment, then the
| | 04:37 | entire image turns black,
obviously, also not what we want.
| | 04:41 | By default, this value
right in the middle i.e.,
| | 04:44 | it's 128, which is basically medium gray.
| | 04:48 | And what we're saying here at this setting
is anything that's darker than medium gray,
| | 04:51 | convert that to black and go ahead and trace
it with black, anything that's brighter than
| | 04:55 | medium gray, convert that to
white and trace it with white.
| | 05:00 | So what's the upshot of all this theory? Well,
if you want to restore fine details inside
| | 05:05 | of your image, if you are losing details then
you want to go ahead and increase this value.
| | 05:09 | So notice if I take this value you up to 200,
I'm saying anything that's 200 or brighter
| | 05:15 | that's going to be white and anything
200 or darker that's going to be black.
| | 05:19 | And if I press the Enter key, or the Return
key on the Mac, in order to accept that value
| | 05:22 | then you can see not only am I thickening
up my line art but I'm also introducing a
| | 05:28 | lot more of those snivels
into the Traced artwork.
| | 05:31 | If I want to get rid of the artifacts at
the expense of the fine details of my artwork
| | 05:36 | potentially, then I would reduce a value.
| | 05:38 | For example, if I take the value down to 40,
I'm saying anything 40 or brighter is going
| | 05:43 | to be white and only that stuff
that's 40 or darker is going to be black.
| | 05:47 | And now I will press the Enter key or the
Return key on the Mac, in order to accept
| | 05:50 | that change and sure enough I go ahead and
get rid of every single one of those dots
| | 05:57 | at least here inside this portion of the
artwork but notice that I am also reducing the width
| | 06:03 | of this line right here.
| | 06:05 | So I'm potentially losing some of the
real detail inside of this artwork.
| | 06:09 | Now I eventually decided through trial on
there, that the best Threshold Setting for
| | 06:14 | this specific image is 70.
| | 06:16 | So, I'll go ahead and enter that value in
there, and then I press the Enter key or the
| | 06:20 | Return key on the Mac, to apply it.
| | 06:22 | And notice that, that does bring back
some of that line just a little bit.
| | 06:26 | So it strengthens the detail inside of the
artwork, but we do still have well at least
| | 06:31 | one dust particle.
| | 06:33 | Fortunately, Threshold is out only
option for cleaning up the artwork.
| | 06:37 | We also have this function called Noise, and
I'll explain how that works in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| More clean-up with the Noise option| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to remove these
last remaining artifacts using the Noise function.
| | 00:06 | I am going to press Shift+Tab in order to
hide my right side panels for a moment, and
| | 00:09 | I am going to zoom in by pressing Ctrl along
with spacebar, and this is Command+spacebar
| | 00:13 | in a Mac, and I'll drag around this area.
| | 00:16 | So that you can better see,
what I am talking about.
| | 00:18 | We have a big blob over here this is in
the far bottom left corner of the image.
| | 00:24 | And we have a smaller little guy right there.
| | 00:27 | And in all we have a total of six
snivels inside of this traced artwork.
| | 00:33 | Now my guess is some of you are just plain
wishing I'd stop saying that word, but others
| | 00:38 | might be thinking how in the world can you
possibly know that there are six of them?
| | 00:41 | Well, here is how.
| | 00:42 | I'll press Shift+Tab to bring back my right
side panels, and I'll move the Image Trace
| | 00:47 | panel over for a moment here.
| | 00:49 | Notice this Paths value says 137.
So in all, Illustrator has traced 137 Paths.
| | 00:55 | I'll go ahead and turn on that 72 ppi version of the
tracing, and I'll meatball it, in order to select it.
| | 01:02 | And notice that it says 131.
| | 01:04 | Now I know that this low resolution version
of the trace has no artifacts whatsoever.
| | 01:10 | So 137-131, that's six problems
that we need to take care of.
| | 01:15 | And as soon as we get the number of paths down to 131,
we'll know that we have a clean piece of artwork.
| | 01:21 | So I'll go ahead and turn off that 72 ppi
version of the trace, I'll go ahead and meatball
| | 01:25 | the 600 ppi version.
| | 01:27 | And notice this Advanced function right there,
I am going to click on this triangle to expand
| | 01:32 | the Advanced settings, most of which
you can safely ignore at this point.
| | 01:37 | We'll investigate them in a future course
when we look at this feature in more detail.
| | 01:40 | But right there is the Noise value.
| | 01:43 | Now notice when I hover over it, it tells
me that we're going to ignore areas of the
| | 01:46 | specified pixel size,
higher values mean less noise.
| | 01:50 | And of course by that it means if we increase that value
we're going to get rid of the noise inside the image.
| | 01:56 | So you may recall, I was telling you that
these little artifacts here are a function
| | 02:01 | of contrast which we address with a Threshold
setting and size which we're going to address with Noise.
| | 02:08 | So with this tracing selected as it is I will
go ahead and increase that value from 25 pixels
| | 02:13 | which is the default to 50 pixels.
| | 02:16 | And that will go ahead
and regenerate the tracing.
| | 02:18 | If it doesn't in your case as it hasn't in
mine, then go ahead and turn that Preview
| | 02:22 | check box back on.
| | 02:24 | And then you'll see the progress bars that are
telling you that Illustrator is doing its thing.
| | 02:28 | And sure enough we've gotten
the number of Paths down to 131.
| | 02:31 | Then I am going to zoom out from my image
by pressing Ctrl+Minus, or Command+Minus on
| | 02:36 | the Mac, and then I'll go ahead and scroll
over to that fragile detail inside the wing,
| | 02:41 | and it's still hanging in there,
in fact it looks quite good.
| | 02:44 | So this combination of Noise along with Threshold has
done a great job of cleaning up the traced artwork.
| | 02:50 | My only remaining problem is the number of
Colors too, and so what Illustrator is doing
| | 02:55 | by default is tracing both the
black areas and the white areas.
| | 02:59 | If you want it to just focus on the black areas
then you can turn on this check box Ignore White.
| | 03:05 | And notice, as soon as I turn on the check
box that brings up the progress bars again,
| | 03:10 | generates a new trace, and we can see the
number of Colors has now dropped down to one.
| | 03:14 | Just in case, you're wondering this final
bit of information Anchors, that's the number
| | 03:18 | of anchor points that Illustrator
has generated inside of this artwork.
| | 03:22 | So that's it that takes care of
Illustrator's automatic tracing function.
| | 03:26 | So I can go ahead and
Close the Image Trace panel.
| | 03:29 | In the next movie, I'll show you how to
convert this tracing to editable path outlines.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Expanding and simplifying traced paths| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you how to convert
your traced artwork into editable path outlines,
| | 00:06 | and then I will show you
how to simplify the results.
| | 00:09 | Notice that the 600 ppi version of
the scan is selected at the moment.
| | 00:13 | As soon as I convert the scan to path outlines, I
lose the image and the auto-scan and everything
| | 00:19 | else associated with it.
| | 00:20 | I don't want to lose that information, so I
am going to make a duplicate of this item
| | 00:24 | by clicking on it here inside the Layers panel.
| | 00:27 | So you'll have to have
your layer expanded, as I do.
| | 00:30 | Then go to the Layers panel flyout menu and choose
Duplicate "600 ppi" in order to create a copy of it.
| | 00:36 | Then you can go ahead and hide the
original just so that it's kept safely aside.
| | 00:40 | Then I am going to press Ctrl+0, or Command+0
on the Mac, in order to back out for my image.
| | 00:46 | To convert the trace to path outlines, you
go out to the Control panel once again, and
| | 00:50 | you click on this button, Expand.
| | 00:52 | And as you will learn over the course of these
movies, Expand is Illustrator's word for converting
| | 00:58 | just about anything to path outlines.
| | 01:00 | So I'll go ahead and click on
the button, and there we have it.
| | 01:04 | However, notice that we have a lot of stuff
going on, including this big rectangle around
| | 01:08 | the entire butterfly.
| | 01:10 | To get to the bottom of this we have to figure
out what it is we're looking at, and you can
| | 01:14 | get a sense of what's selected at any given
moment in time by taking a look at this first
| | 01:20 | item, the very first word in the
Control panel over on the left-hand side.
| | 01:23 | So, for example, if I were to turn the
Trace back on and meatball it, then I would see
| | 01:28 | that I have an image tracing.
| | 01:31 | If I were to turn that on and back off, and
then meatball this new thing, which is called
| | 01:35 | 600 ppi, I'll go ahead and rename it paths,
then I'll see that it is a Group, which means
| | 01:42 | to gain access to those path
outlines I need to ungroup this thing.
| | 01:46 | So I'll go up to the Object menu, and I'll
choose the Ungroup command, which has a keyboard
| | 01:50 | shortcut of Ctrl+Shift+G, or Command+Shift+G
on the Mac, and now notice that I have just
| | 01:55 | a ton of paths here inside of my Layers panel,
most of which are showing up as hollow, meaning
| | 02:03 | that they're blank, they don't have
any fill or stroke associated with them.
| | 02:06 | Then we have a couple of black blobs down
here toward the bottom, and then one version
| | 02:11 | of the butterfly itself.
| | 02:13 | I am going to click off the path outlines
to deselect them, and then I need to find
| | 02:17 | that outermost path, which means I need to
kind of hunt around with my arrow cursor.
| | 02:22 | Notice as I move the cursor around, every
once in a while I see a black square next
| | 02:26 | to it, and that tells me that
there's something under the cursor.
| | 02:30 | So if I don't see a black square, there's
nothing to select there, if I do see a black
| | 02:34 | square, there is something to select.
| | 02:36 | So this location, something is going on, so
I will click on it, and sure enough, that's
| | 02:41 | that blank rectangle that's surrounding the
entire butterfly, and tracing around it as well.
| | 02:47 | Notice it has no fill and no stroke, you
can see that up here in the Control panel.
| | 02:52 | So what I want to do is select all the other blank
paths as well, and I can do that using this icon.
| | 02:57 | It says Select Similar Objects.
| | 02:59 | And just to make sure it's selecting the right
kind of similar objects, click on the down-pointing
| | 03:03 | arrowhead next to it and
confirm that all is selected.
| | 03:07 | Assuming that it is you can go
ahead and click on it if you want to.
| | 03:10 | Then you click on that icon, and Illustrator
goes ahead and selects all of the path outlines
| | 03:15 | that have no fill and no stroke.
| | 03:18 | Now you can press the Backspace key or the
Delete key on the Mac, to get rid of them.
| | 03:22 | And notice that cleans up our Layers panel quite a
bit, but we do still have two blobs someplace here.
| | 03:27 | We don't want them.
| | 03:28 | So I'm going to meatball one of them,
and then Shift-meatball the other one.
| | 03:33 | So we must have some little artifacts up
here in the upper-right corner of the butterfly
| | 03:37 | and down left as well.
| | 03:39 | Now that I have selected both of them, I'll
go ahead and press the Backspace key or the
| | 03:43 | Delete key on the Mac, to get rid of them as
well, and we're left with one big compound
| | 03:48 | path, in other words, there is a big tracing
around the outside of the butterfly, and then
| | 03:53 | there's all the sub-paths inside
the butterfly that are cutting holes.
| | 03:57 | I am going to rename this path butterfly,
because after all that's what it is.
| | 04:01 | And then I'll click on the butterfly, and
I'll drag it over here to the left-hand side,
| | 04:05 | and I am pressing the Shift key--by the way--
as I drag in order to constrain the angle of
| | 04:09 | my drag to exactly horizontal.
| | 04:11 | Now, you can see that we have
an awful lot of anchor points.
| | 04:16 | You can further simplify this path if you
want to, using a command known as Simplify.
| | 04:21 | But before we choose it, I am going to press
Ctrl+H, or Command+H on the Mac, to hide my
| | 04:26 | selection edges, and then I am going to go
ahead and zoom in on that most fragile detail
| | 04:31 | inside the wings so that
I can keep track of it.
| | 04:34 | And I'll go up to the Object menu,
choose Path, and choose Simplify.
| | 04:40 | What this command does is it reduces the
number of anchor points inside the selected paths
| | 04:45 | based on a couple of criteria.
| | 04:47 | So when I choose the command, I bring up
the Simplify dialog box, as you can see.
| | 04:51 | If you want to get a quick sense of how much
simplification is happening, then go ahead
| | 04:56 | and turn on the Preview check box, and you
can now see that the Original version of this
| | 05:00 | path, before it shows the
command, had 2040 anchor points.
| | 05:05 | The Simplify command has reduced
the number of anchor points to 242.
| | 05:09 | That's great news! We have a much simpler
path, which means it will be easier to edit,
| | 05:14 | it will print more quickly and so forth.
| | 05:16 | However, it looks like garbage,
we're losing so much detail here.
| | 05:21 | Notice the difference, if I turn off the
Preview check box, and then I turn it back on, this
| | 05:26 | simplification is coming at the
expense of an awful lot of detail.
| | 05:30 | The first thing you want to do
is change the Angle Threshold.
| | 05:32 | By default, it's 0 degrees, meaning that
Illustrator is trying to round off everything.
| | 05:38 | So the first thing to do is
modify the Angle Threshold value.
| | 05:41 | It represents which corners are getting
rounded away, and at 0 degrees you're essentially
| | 05:46 | saying everything, every corner inside of these
paths should be rounded, and that's not what we want.
| | 05:53 | You can take that value as high as 180 degrees, which
tells Illustrator to round away no corners whatsoever.
| | 06:00 | My recommendation, however, based on
experience is to set this value to 135 degrees, that
| | 06:05 | tends to give you good results.
| | 06:07 | In our case, it still looks rotten, as you
can see, but we have gained a few anchor points
| | 06:12 | back, we're up to 289.
| | 06:14 | The next thing you do is you take that Curve
Precision value, which is set to 50% by default,
| | 06:19 | which is way too low, you never want to leave
it that low, you want to raise it to its maximum
| | 06:23 | value of 100%, meaning, maintain as many curves as
possible, maintain the original forms of the paths.
| | 06:32 | And notice now that boosts those anchor
points way up to 1656, but we're still nearly 400
| | 06:38 | anchor points down from the original.
| | 06:39 | So this is quite a
simplification at this point.
| | 06:43 | Then you click inside this value, and you
press the Down arrow key, and you keep an
| | 06:47 | eye on what's going on inside of the
illustration, and notice that 97%, even this high, we're
| | 06:54 | starting to lose definition.
| | 06:55 | I'll turn off the Preview check box.
| | 06:57 | This is the way the trace looked
before, and this is the way it looks now.
| | 07:01 | So we're losing a lot of definition, not only in
that fragile detail, but throughout the path outlines.
| | 07:05 | I found where this particular path is
concerned that I needed to take the value up to 99%
| | 07:11 | in order to keep things looking good.
| | 07:13 | So I'll turn off Preview check box, this is
the original path outline, and if I turn it
| | 07:17 | back on, this is the way it looks now, and yet,
meanwhile, we have paired down the number
| | 07:21 | of anchor points, from 2040 to 1460.
| | 07:25 | So we've peeled away 600 in all.
| | 07:28 | And just FYI, I find that a value
between 95% and 100% ends up working best.
| | 07:35 | Click OK in order to accept that change.
| | 07:38 | Now I will press Ctrl+0,
Command+0 on the Mac, to back out.
| | 07:42 | That folks is how you go about
expanding and simplifying your traced artwork.
| | 07:46 | In the next movie we'll transform
our half a butterfly into a full one.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Flipping and fusing shapes| 00:01 | In this movie, I'll show you how to
duplicate the left half of the butterfly, flip it to
| | 00:04 | create a right half, and then fuse the left
and right halves together using a tool known
| | 00:09 | as the Shape Builder.
| | 00:11 | Now the first step, of course is to select
the butterfly, but when I click on it, I don't
| | 00:15 | see the selection edges and that's because
I hit them, so I need to press Ctrl+H, or
| | 00:20 | Command+H on the Mac, to bring them back.
| | 00:23 | Now I could go ahead and use the copy and
paste in front commands to make a duplicate
| | 00:27 | of this butterfly or here's a simpler approach.
| | 00:30 | Assuming your butterfly layer is expanded
as it is in my case, click on the butterfly
| | 00:35 | item right there which is a selected path,
and then go to the Layers panel flyout menu
| | 00:40 | and choose Duplicate "butterfly" which
creates a copy directly on top of the original.
| | 00:46 | Next, I'll go up to the Transform panel by
clicking on Transform in the Control panel
| | 00:51 | at the top of the screen, and I'll select
the rightmost reference point in this tiny
| | 00:56 | little matrix right there.
| | 00:58 | I'll click the Transform panel flyout menu,
and I'll choose Flip Horizontal in order to
| | 01:03 | achieve the butterfly's right half.
| | 01:05 | All right, we have a little bit of a problem
here if I zoom in, you can see by virtue of
| | 01:10 | the fact that my line art had sort of a
ragged edge on the inside of the butterfly, we've
| | 01:16 | got a gap between the two shapes.
| | 01:18 | So I need to nudge the selected path to the left,
and I can do that by pressing the Left arrow key.
| | 01:24 | So if you're working along with me, I
want you to check one thing before we start.
| | 01:28 | Press Ctrl+K, or Command+K on the Mac, in
order to bring up the Preferences dialog box
| | 01:34 | and the keyboard increment should be set to
1 point, but we're working in inches, so who
| | 01:39 | knows if that decimal
value translates to 1 point.
| | 01:42 | I'll just go ahead and enter 1pt, and then
press the Tab key and sure enough that's what
| | 01:48 | it was in the first place.
| | 01:50 | 0.0139 inches is I guess the same thing as 1 point,
and that is the default setting, by the way.
| | 01:55 | Go ahead and click OK in order to accept
that potential change, and then I'll press the
| | 02:00 | Left arrow key 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 times in order to
completely seal up the gap between the two halves.
| | 02:10 | Now I'm going to zoom in a little bit
further here, and I'm going to select both halves
| | 02:14 | of the butterfly by partially marqueeing around them,
like so, using the black arrow tool, of course.
| | 02:20 | Now we need to fuse them together, and you
might think you could do that using the Join
| | 02:24 | Command, because that's what we've
been doing in previous chapters.
| | 02:27 | However, the Join command is designed to
accommodate open path outlines, these are closed shapes,
| | 02:33 | in other words, the path outline goes around
the entire shape of the butterfly and inside
| | 02:38 | these interior areas as well.
| | 02:40 | So, we need to use a different tool and
ostensibly, the easiest one to work with is the Shape
| | 02:45 | Builder which is located right there.
| | 02:48 | Now I'm working with a double column toolbox,
so you may have a hard time finding this tool,
| | 02:52 | I'll go ahead and switch to the single column,
and I'll show you it's located about midway down.
| | 02:57 | So the sky that looks like an arrow with two
circles, and it has a keyboard shortcut of
| | 03:01 | Shift+M for what that's worth.
| | 03:04 | I'm going to go ahead and
click on the tool to select it.
| | 03:07 | And use the tool by dragging
through the selected shapes.
| | 03:10 | So it confuses many shapes together as
you like, but they have to be selected.
| | 03:16 | I'm going to start things off by dragging
through the top of the head of the butterfly
| | 03:21 | and that goes ahead and fuses that top
area, but it leaves some gaps in the body.
| | 03:25 | So I'll go ahead and drag through the body
as well and that fuses the body, as you can
| | 03:29 | see, but we have some
problems down toward the bottom.
| | 03:32 | So, I'm just going to click in this right-
hand scroll bar a few times in order to scroll
| | 03:36 | to the bottom of the butterfly, and you can
see we have two little problem areas there.
| | 03:40 | I'll go ahead and drag through one, and then
I'll drag through the other, and we now have
| | 03:45 | a single fused shape or
at least so it would seem.
| | 03:49 | But if I take a look at my Layers panel, I've
got this compound path here which is the entire
| | 03:55 | butterfly, and I'm going to go ahead and name it
full so that I know that that is the full shape.
| | 04:00 | Then I've got these other two shapes, one
of which is going to the preview looks like
| | 04:04 | half a butterfly and the
other looks like a little blob.
| | 04:07 | This half a butterfly preview is wrong and
force the Illustrator to regenerate a preview,
| | 04:12 | here is what you do.
| | 04:14 | I'll go ahead and meatball that path right
there, and I'll press the Backspace key on
| | 04:17 | the PC or the Delete key on the Mac, to get
rid of it, and then I'll press Ctrl+Z, or
| | 04:22 | Command+Z on the Mac, to bring it
back and sure enough, it's another blob.
| | 04:26 | So, we've got two weird blobs here.
| | 04:29 | Press Ctrl+0, or Command+0 on a Mac, in
order to back away from my image, and then I'll
| | 04:33 | Shift-click the meatball for the other blob
shape here and they appear at the top of the
| | 04:40 | wings over here on the left-hand side and
the right-hand side and the only reason I
| | 04:43 | can tell that's a case is because I'm
seeing those little blue anchor points.
| | 04:47 | Anyway, I don't want them.
| | 04:48 | So I'll press the Backspace key or the Delete
key on the Mac, to get rid of them for good.
| | 04:53 | Now I'm going to switch back to my black
arrow tool and what I want to do at this point is
| | 04:57 | center the butterfly on the artboard.
| | 04:59 | So I'm going to go ahead and click on the
butterfly to select it, and then I'll go up
| | 05:03 | to the Align icon in the Control
panel at the top of the screen.
| | 05:06 | I'll click on it, and I'll switch to Align to
Artboard and that gives me my six align icons.
| | 05:12 | I want to take advantage of the center icon,
so I'll start by clicking on Horizontal Align
| | 05:17 | Center, which is the second icon in, and
then I'll click on Vertical Align Center, which
| | 05:21 | is the second to last icon, and last one
doesn't make much of a difference, but now, I know
| | 05:26 | for certain that the
butterfly is exactly center.
| | 05:29 | Now I'll go ahead and click off
the shape in order to deselect it.
| | 05:33 | Now the result quite astoundingly is this
smooth vector-based version of my original
| | 05:40 | sharpie drawing, which means that among other
things, I can fill it, I can stroke it, and
| | 05:46 | I can resize it to any degree I like, and
I'll show you exactly how that works in the
| | 05:51 | next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Scaling resolution-independent vectors| 00:00 | Now that we have a vector-based version of
the full butterfly, we can bring to bear all
| | 00:05 | the weight of the Illustrator.
| | 00:07 | So, for example, we can fill the shape, we
can stroke it, and we can scale it to any
| | 00:12 | size we like, as I'll show you in this movie.
| | 00:14 | I have saved my progress as Full butterfly.ai
and the first thing I am going to do is click
| | 00:20 | on the butterfly to select it with my Black
Arrow tool, and then I'll press Ctrl+H, or
| | 00:23 | Command+H on the Mac, in order to hide the
selection edges, and I'll zoom in a little bit as well.
| | 00:29 | Let's say I want to take these fragile
details here and bolster them slightly.
| | 00:34 | All I'd have to do is go up to the Stroke
option, which is currently blank, because,
| | 00:37 | as you can see, we've got a black fill and
no stroke, as witnessed by these first two
| | 00:42 | swatches in the Control panel.
| | 00:44 | I'll click inside that Stroke value, and I'll
change it to 1 so that we have a 1-point line
| | 00:49 | weight and that goes ahead and bolsters the
thickness of the butterfly, all the way around.
| | 00:55 | But that's just the beginning.
| | 00:56 | Let's say you want to change
the color of this artwork.
| | 00:59 | You can go up to the Fill swatch, click on
it and in my case, I am going to go ahead
| | 01:03 | and select this green which is C=85, M=10, Y=100,
and K=10--and those, by the way, are the CMYK values.
| | 01:11 | I'll just click on it, and we end
up filling the butterfly with green.
| | 01:15 | Now the black stroke doesn't really look right.
| | 01:17 | So I'll click on the Stroke swatch here.
| | 01:20 | I'll switch it to the next shade of green,
which is C=90, M=30, Y=95, K=30 and that ends
| | 01:27 | up giving us something of a bright
green fill with a darker green stroke.
| | 01:32 | Now I was telling you, you can scale the
shape and that is the best thing about vectors is
| | 01:37 | it doesn't matter how big you want to make
them, they always print impeccably smoothly.
| | 01:42 | So, I'll press Ctrl+0
again, Command+0 on a Mac.
| | 01:45 | For purposes of this demonstration here, let's
say I just want to increase the size of this
| | 01:49 | artwork to something ridiculous.
| | 01:52 | Like, for example, I wanted to measure
something like 8x6 feet just humongous.
| | 01:58 | Well, in that case I'd get rid of my
original tracings here, and so I'll turn 72 ppi and
| | 02:04 | 600 ppi on, meatball one, Shift-meatball the
other so that they're both selected so that
| | 02:10 | they're both selected, and I'll press the
Backspace key or the Delete key on the Mac,
| | 02:14 | in order to get rid of them.
| | 02:16 | And of course, I would then turn around
and save this file under a different name.
| | 02:20 | So I choose the Save As command.
| | 02:22 | That way I am not permanently
getting rid of my auto-tracings.
| | 02:25 | Anyway, I'll skip that stuff for now.
| | 02:28 | Let's expand the size of the artboard for
starters by switching to the Artboard tool,
| | 02:33 | which for me is located way down here at the
bottom of my single column toolbox, and I'll
| | 02:38 | go ahead and make sure that the center Reference
Point is selected, and I'll increase the Width
| | 02:43 | value from 9.5 inches to 9.5 inches times
10, so Asterisk ten right there, and that
| | 02:50 | will multiply that value to 95 inches as soon
as I press the Tab key, and then I'll do the
| | 02:55 | same thing for the Height value.
| | 02:56 | I'll enter an *10 after the existing value
of 7 inches, which when I press the Enter
| | 03:01 | key or the Return key on the
Mac, takes it up to 70 inches.
| | 03:04 | So those values 95 inches and 70
inches translate to roughly 8x6 feet.
| | 03:11 | This is an artboard that is
as tall as most of you are.
| | 03:15 | So I'll go ahead and press Ctrl+0,
or Command+0 on a Mac, to zoom out.
| | 03:19 | Now I'll press the Escape key to return to
the Black Arrow tool, and I'll click on my
| | 03:23 | green butterfly to select it.
| | 03:24 | I am not seeing the selection edges, because
they are turned off, so I'll press Ctrl+H,
| | 03:28 | or Command+H on the Mac, to bring them back up,
and then I'll click on Transform to bring
| | 03:32 | up the Transform panel, and I'll make sure that
Constrain Width and Height Proportions is turned on.
| | 03:38 | So go ahead and click on that chain to make it
active, and then I'll also switch the Reference
| | 03:42 | Point to the center here.
| | 03:43 | So I'll click right there in the center of
that icon, and now I'll click on the W to
| | 03:47 | select the Width value, and I'll change
this value to 1000%, so you can actually enter
| | 03:53 | 1000% into that field and that will increase
the size of the butterfly by a factor of 10,
| | 03:58 | as soon as I press the Enter
key or the Return key on the Mac.
| | 04:02 | And if you click off the butterfly now, and
you take a look at these details just go ahead
| | 04:06 | and zoom on in, you'll see that they are
absolutely super smooth even if I zoom in so far as 100%.
| | 04:14 | You can see that we have these strange
little details every once in a while, but I don't
| | 04:18 | think that that's going to detract
from the overall quality of the piece.
| | 04:21 | All right! I'll go ahead and zoom out a
little bit, maybe press Ctrl+0, Command+0 on the
| | 04:25 | Mac, and then zoom back in a little bit by
pressing Ctrl+Plus, or Command+Plus on the Mac.
| | 04:30 | Now that we have this one-point stroke, which
did not get scaled in this case, it's looking
| | 04:36 | awfully thin by comparison
to this ginormous butterfly.
| | 04:40 | So I think I'll increase it not by a factor
of 10, I think I'll just take it up to about
| | 04:43 | 5 points, and press the Enter key or the Return
key on the Mac, and then in order to see that
| | 04:48 | stroke, I am going to have to
zoom in just a little bit farther.
| | 04:50 | I might scroll a little bit too so that we
can see the top of this head and that is the
| | 04:55 | final version of what I dare say might be
the biggest butterfly you've ever created.
| | 05:01 | Thanks to your ability to convert pixel-based
line art into scalable, resolution independent
| | 05:06 | vector-based outlines, here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
7. Scaling and RotatingThe realm of transformations| 00:00 | In Illustrator a transformation is anything
that modifies the selected shape but leaves
| | 00:05 | it ultimately recognizable as that shape.
| | 00:09 | Take a Star, for example.
| | 00:11 | If you duplicate it, it's a star in a new
location, if you scale it, it's a star of
| | 00:15 | a different size, if you rotate it, it's
star at a different angle, if you snip away all
| | 00:21 | its point, it's not a star anymore, which is
why snipping away points is not a transformation,
| | 00:27 | but Duplicating, Scaling, and Rotating are.
| | 00:30 | Illustrator provides many ways to transform
a selection, but by far, the best ways are
| | 00:35 | the oldest ones, the Arrow tool,
the Scale tool, and the Rotate tool.
| | 00:40 | Why are they so great? Because
they satisfy the core mission.
| | 00:45 | In Illustrator, everybody draws, Arrow tool,
Scale tool, Rotate tool they all have their
| | 00:50 | different functions, but on the fly at any
moment in time, you can draw with them by
| | 00:55 | making new shapes from existing ones.
| | 00:58 | In this chapter, we'll start by
drawing a square tile pitched 45 degrees.
| | 01:03 | Then we will make more tiles by power
duplicating the first one with a black arrow tool.
| | 01:08 | We will draw in smaller titles with the Scale
tool, and we will fill out the Perimeter tiles
| | 01:13 | using the Rotate tool.
| | 01:15 | I think this is one of the reasons
Illustrator ended up winning the day.
| | 01:19 | Everybody draws, including
you starting in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a tracing template| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to place
a photographic image into Illustrator, and
| | 00:04 | then converted into a tracing template, and
there are three advantages to a tracing template.
| | 00:09 | First, it's lockdown, so you don't end up
moving the images as you're trying to trace it.
| | 00:15 | Second, it's dimmed or faded, so you can
tell the difference between the photograph and
| | 00:19 | the stuff you're drawing
and third it's persistent.
| | 00:22 | So there are times you can see through
your drawing to the photograph below.
| | 00:27 | The photographing question is this one here,
I've got it open in Photoshop, I'll go ahead
| | 00:31 | and zoom in, so we can see some of the details.
| | 00:33 | We're going to take these tiles, and we're
going to trace them to create this final vector
| | 00:37 | based Illustration open inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:41 | And this is the kind of thing you're only
going to achieve by manually tracing an image.
| | 00:44 | In other words, you're not going to get these
kinds of results from the Image Trace feature.
| | 00:48 | Now it may look a little daunting at first,
but the good news is it's not that hard.
| | 00:53 | Even if you're new, not only to Illustrator,
but to graphic arts in general, you're going
| | 00:57 | to be able to pull this off, and we're to
be drawing this thing from scratch over the
| | 01:01 | course of this chapter and the next and
believe it or not, it's going to be a lot of fun.
| | 01:06 | So we're going to start of inside of this
file called Just guides.ai and sure enough
| | 01:11 | all we have is a single layer called guides,
and it just contains a few guidelines.
| | 01:16 | To create a tracing template you have to
place an image on an independent layer.
| | 01:21 | So we have to start things off by creating a
new layer, and you do that by dropping down
| | 01:25 | to this little page icon at the bottom
of the Layers panel and clicking on it.
| | 01:30 | When you just click on the page,
Illustrator automatically names the new layer.
| | 01:34 | In this case, it's calling the layer, layer 2--
it's not necessarily what I want it to be called.
| | 01:38 | So I'll double-click on the layer name, and
I'm going to change this one to drawing, because
| | 01:42 | we will need a layer on which to draw,
so it might as well be that one.
| | 01:47 | Then I'm going to click on the Guides layer to make
it active, here's another way to create a new layer.
| | 01:52 | If you want to name the layer as you make
it then you press the Alt key or the Option
| | 01:56 | key on the Mac, and click on that little page
icon and that forces to display of the layer
| | 02:01 | Options dialog box, and then I can go
ahead and call this new layer, image.
| | 02:05 | I can also assign it a color.
| | 02:07 | The color is just intended so that you can
identify which objects are on what layer.
| | 02:12 | So, for example, if I were to leave the color
as green then any selected anchor points and
| | 02:18 | segments and so forth would appear as green
on this layer, and then they would appear
| | 02:22 | as red on the Drawing layer and so forth.
| | 02:25 | But I'm going to change
the color to medium blue.
| | 02:28 | That's just a personal choice, you can go
your own way, and then I'll click OK in order
| | 02:32 | to create that layer.
| | 02:33 | Well, let's go ahead and place the
photograph on that layer, and I'll do so by going to
| | 02:37 | the File menu and choosing the Place Command.
| | 02:40 | If you're working along with me, go ahead
and navigate your way to the 07_transform
| | 02:44 | folder, you'll probably see a bunch of
files, but among them will be Tile photo.jpg.
| | 02:49 | You can go ahead and select it and click
the Place button, and we've placed our image.
| | 02:55 | Now I need it to be moved slightly,
you'll just have to trust me on this one.
| | 02:59 | We need this image just in a very slightly
different position in order for the guidelines
| | 03:04 | to work and to move an image numerically,
you can double-click on the black arrow tool
| | 03:09 | icon here in the toolbox that's one option
or when the black arrow tool is selected,
| | 03:14 | you can just press the Enter
key or the Return key on the Mac.
| | 03:17 | And again, if you're working along with me, I
want you to change the Horizontal value to 0.
| | 03:22 | 4 points and the vertical value to just 1
point, like so so that you end up with this
| | 03:28 | very small movement, but that does move the
image into the proper position, then click OK.
| | 03:35 | And again that's just to align
the image properly with the guides.
| | 03:39 | Now to convert the entire layer into a
tracing template, what you do is you double-click
| | 03:44 | on the Image layer, not on the name, you just
double-click on an empty area or if you prefer,
| | 03:49 | you can double-click on the thumbnail.
| | 03:51 | In order to bring up the layer Options dialog
box once again, and you turn on this Template
| | 03:57 | check box right there.
| | 03:59 | And notice that goes ahead and locks the
layer automatically, it's going to show the layer
| | 04:03 | at all times, we're going to see a
preview of everything that's going on.
| | 04:07 | It's not going to print automatically as well.
| | 04:09 | So all these options are dimmed here,
however some are turned on and of course, Print is
| | 04:14 | turned off, and then you have the option of
dimming the images on this layer and of course
| | 04:19 | I recommend you do so that you can tell the
difference between the image itself and your drawing.
| | 04:24 | And you can dim the image to any extent
you like, 50% is going to work fine for us.
| | 04:30 | So just go ahead and click OK, and we get a 50%
dimmed image, like so, and that's all there is to.
| | 04:36 | We now have a lot tracing template right here, we
can't draw on that layer obviously, because it's locked.
| | 04:42 | So go ahead and click on the Drawing layer
to make it active, and we are now ready to
| | 04:46 | begin tracing the photograph in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Drawing a diamond with the Polygon tool| 00:00 | In this movie, we'll draw a single base tile
that we will duplicate to create every other
| | 00:05 | tile in the illustration.
| | 00:08 | And I am going to go ahead
and zoom in on my tiles here.
| | 00:12 | Now the tile I am really interested in
creating is this top beige tile right there, because
| | 00:16 | it's going to serve as the corner
stone for our other transformations.
| | 00:20 | However, it's a little difficult to trace
this tile because it's interrupted by an even
| | 00:26 | superior green tile.
| | 00:28 | So instead I recommend that we trace the next
tile down, which is why I've established some
| | 00:32 | guidelines right there in
the center of that tile.
| | 00:34 | Now each tile is a perfect square, so you
might naturally assume that we'll begin tracing
| | 00:39 | them using the Rectangle tool.
| | 00:41 | The problem is if I draw a square with a
Rectangle tool, it'll appear upright, and then I'd have
| | 00:45 | to rotate it and scale it into place,
which would be kind of a pain in the neck.
| | 00:50 | Whereas, if I switch over to the Polygon tool,
and I draw a four-sided shape with it, then
| | 00:56 | I can rotate that four-sided shape--otherwise
known as a square--into any position I like.
| | 01:02 | So I'm going to go ahead and position my
cursor at the intersection of these two guidelines
| | 01:06 | right there, and notice that I have Smart
Guides turned on. If you don't, then you can press
| | 01:10 | Ctrl+U, or Command+U on the Mac,
to activate the Smart Guides.
| | 01:14 | Then I'll begin dragging out from that intersection,
and by default I will create a hexagon.
| | 01:20 | As you can see here, that's not what I want.
| | 01:22 | So I'll press the down arrow key a couple of
times in order to take the shape down to a square.
| | 01:27 | So if were to position the shape
upright, it would be of course a square.
| | 01:32 | If I were to move it 45 degrees here, then
it turns into a diamond, and all I need to
| | 01:36 | do is drag straight down to the other guide
intersection--and these guides, by the way,
| | 01:42 | mark the exact center of the artboard--and then I
will release and I have myself a perfect diamond.
| | 01:48 | It's not the right color of course, but
I've created some colors in advance for you.
| | 01:52 | And you can get to them by going up to the
Control panel, clicking on the first swatch
| | 01:56 | to change the fill color, and notice that
I have big swatches inside of this panel.
| | 02:01 | If you want large swatches as well, then click on the
flyout menu icon and choose Large Thumbnail View.
| | 02:07 | The swatch I'm interested in is this
beige color, which is called Tile.
| | 02:10 | So just go ahead and click on it
if you're working along with me.
| | 02:13 | Next I am going to click on the down
pointing arrowhead next to the Line Weight.
| | 02:17 | And I am going to change that Line Weight to
3 pt, which is a better match for the grout,
| | 02:22 | of course it's a wrong color so I'll click
on the second color swatch and change that
| | 02:26 | stroke color to Gray.
| | 02:28 | You might look at these colors and say, well,
they are not really a very good match for
| | 02:32 | the photograph in the background.
| | 02:33 | Well, here's the thing, the photograph is dimmed.
| | 02:37 | So all of its colors are appearing lighter,
slightly faded in the words, and if the photograph
| | 02:42 | weren't dimmed, you'd see that
those colors are pretty accurate.
| | 02:46 | Now let's go ahead and move this
tile into the proper position.
| | 02:49 | I will go and switch back to the Black Arrow tool,
which I can get by pressing the V key of course.
| | 02:54 | Notice that my bounding box is not turned on.
That's very important for this operation to work.
| | 02:59 | I want to be able to drag his bottom anchor
point and snap it to the top anchor point,
| | 03:03 | and I can't do that with a bounding box.
| | 03:06 | So if you are seeing a bounding box that is
a big square with handles surrounding the
| | 03:10 | diamond, then go up to the View menu and choose Hide
Bounding Box, which will appear at this location.
| | 03:17 | Next, with the bounding box off, of course, I
am going to go ahead and drag that bottom
| | 03:20 | anchor point--and you can even see the word
Anchor if you have your Smart Guides turned on--
| | 03:24 | and go ahead and drag it upward until you
snap into alignment with the top anchor point
| | 03:29 | and that will go ahead and position
that top tile at the proper location.
| | 03:33 | So you don't need to duplicate the tile,
you just need to move it, and the job is done.
| | 03:38 | We now have a base tile that we can
duplicate over and over again to create the other 16
| | 03:45 | beige tiles, and you'll see we'll use it to create
the green tiles as well in the upcoming movies.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Dragging and duplicating| 00:00 | In this movie, we are going to take that
tile that we created in the previous movie, and
| | 00:04 | we are going to move and duplicate it
to create the other 15 beige tiles.
| | 00:09 | And armed with the Black Arrow tool which
allows you to move and duplicate objects,
| | 00:14 | and is in fact your first and foremost
transformation tool in the Illustrator.
| | 00:18 | I'm going to drag this left-hand anchor
point right there, and I'm going to go ahead and
| | 00:23 | move that anchor point so that it snaps into alignment
with the bottom point in the diamond as you see here.
| | 00:30 | As soon as you get to that point, go ahead,
don't release your mouse button, because if
| | 00:34 | you do you will just move this
tile to a different location.
| | 00:37 | Instead, what I need you to do is to drag
that point where it needs to be, and then
| | 00:43 | press and hold the Alt key ,or the Option key on
the Mac, and notice the appearance of that cursor.
| | 00:48 | The fact that the central arrowhead is hollow
means that we have a snap, so we are snapping
| | 00:53 | one anchor point to the other,
which is exactly what we want.
| | 00:56 | And the fact that it has a little ghost in
the background means that we are going to
| | 00:59 | create a clone of this tile.
| | 01:02 | So keep that Alt or Option key down, then
release the mouse button, and then you can
| | 01:07 | go ahead and release the Alt or Option key,
and you will create a duplicate of the tile.
| | 01:11 | Now I am going to zoom out so that we can
see more of the illustration at a time.
| | 01:16 | And what I want to do is
repeat that duplication.
| | 01:18 | As opposed to re-duplicating the tile
manually, let's do it automatically.
| | 01:24 | And you can do so by going to the Object menu,
choosing Transform, and then choosing Transform
| | 01:29 | again, or you can just press the very handy
keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+D, or Command+D on the Mac.
| | 01:35 | D stands for duplicate, and notice that it
just goes ahead and creates another duplicate
| | 01:39 | of the tile that matches your last duplication.
| | 01:43 | So now I will press Ctrl+D, or Command+D again,
and I repeat the duplication a third time.
| | 01:48 | Now I want to select all the
tiles I have created so far.
| | 01:52 | All four of the tiles exist independently of
the rest of the illustration on this drawing
| | 01:57 | layer, and you can select all objects on a single
layer by clicking on this little corner marker.
| | 02:03 | See that little wedge up
there in the upper right corner?
| | 02:06 | If you hover over it, it's going to tell you
that you will select all of the artwork on
| | 02:09 | a layer, and so all you have to do is
click on it to select all four tiles.
| | 02:14 | I'm going to drag from any of these anchor
points along the right-hand edge, and I'll
| | 02:18 | drag to the opposing corner
so that I see the snap cursor.
| | 02:21 | You see how my cursor is hollow white, and
then I will press and hold the Alt key or
| | 02:26 | the Option key on the Mac, then I'll release
the mouse button, and then I'll release the
| | 02:31 | key, and that goes ahead and creates
a clone of all four of those tiles.
| | 02:35 | Now all we have to do is press Ctrl+
D, or Command+D on the Mac, twice.
| | 02:39 | So once, twice, and we are done.
| | 02:42 | We now have all 16 beige
tiles right, ready to go.
| | 02:46 | So very little drawing going on so far, just
one central tile and a bunch of what's called
| | 02:51 | power duplication in order
to create all of the others.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Scale tool| 00:00 | In this movie, I am going to introduce you
to the Scale tool, which is by far the best
| | 00:05 | means of resizing
objects inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:09 | I am going to press Ctrl+0, or Command+0 on
the Mac, to back out from my document, and
| | 00:13 | then I am going to right-click inside the
artboard and choose Hide Guides in order to
| | 00:18 | get the Guides out of the way.
| | 00:19 | Then I am going to select all the beige
tiles by clicking in the upper right-hand corner
| | 00:23 | of this Drawing layer here
inside the Layers panel.
| | 00:27 | Now you have several methods for
scaling inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:32 | For one thing you can click on the word
Transform up here in the Control panel.
| | 00:35 | And you can either enter absolute values
into the Width and Height fields or more likely
| | 00:41 | you would enter some sort of percentage
value, such as say 70% for the Width value.
| | 00:46 | You are only going to get so much done from
this panel, and you don't have a lot of control
| | 00:50 | over the Reference Point.
| | 00:51 | It's either going to be in the center or
one of the sides or corners and that's it.
| | 00:55 | And as you get into more complicated
illustrations, you'll find that you need more control.
| | 01:00 | So I am going to escape out of that panel
and press Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z on the Mac,
| | 01:03 | to undo that change.
| | 01:05 | Your other option, if you like simplicity is to
go the View menu and turn on Show Bounding Box.
| | 01:11 | And then you are going to have these
handles around the sides and corners.
| | 01:15 | But they don't necessarily
afford you the most control.
| | 01:17 | For example, when I drag the right-handle,
the opposing handle remains stationary.
| | 01:22 | So it's always the opposing
point that is your reference point.
| | 01:26 | In other words, you have no
control over that reference.
| | 01:29 | And again, as you get into more
complicated scenarios, you will want more control.
| | 01:34 | So I am going to press Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z
on the Mac, to undo that change, and then
| | 01:38 | I'll Hide the Bounding Box, which I can also do by
pressing Ctrl+Shift+B, or Command+Shift+B on the Mac.
| | 01:44 | Your best scaling option by far is the
oldest scaling option in the software, and that's
| | 01:49 | this guy right here, the Scale tool,
which you can get by pressing the S key.
| | 01:53 | So I am going to go ahead and
click on that tool to select it.
| | 01:56 | And here's how it out works. By default, the
reference point is right there in the center.
| | 02:01 | Now I call that the transformation origin,
because that is the point at which everything
| | 02:06 | will remain still.
| | 02:08 | That's your fixed point, and everything
else is going to scale around it.
| | 02:13 | Then you move your cursor away from that
reference point, and you either drag toward the reference
| | 02:18 | point in order to reduce the size of the selection, or you
drag away from it to increase the size of the selection.
| | 02:26 | Now the position at which you
begin dragging is very important.
| | 02:29 | If you start 45 degrees away, then you are
going to have control over both the width
| | 02:34 | and height of the selection.
| | 02:37 | I'll go ahead and undo that by
pressing Ctrl+Z, Command+Z on the Mac.
| | 02:41 | If you want to just squish the width of the
selection, then you'd move your cursor to
| | 02:45 | the right or left of the origin, and you drag
inward, like so. Or of course you could drag
| | 02:51 | outward to make it wider.
| | 02:53 | If you wanted to make it shorter, you
would start up at the top and drag down.
| | 02:57 | We could also start at the bottom and drag up.
| | 03:01 | If you want to make it taller then you would
start at the top and drag upward, or you would
| | 03:05 | start at the bottom and
drag downward of course.
| | 03:08 | At this point I've made
kind of a mess of things.
| | 03:11 | So I am just going to go to the File menu
and choose the Revert command, or I could
| | 03:14 | press F12, and then I will click the Revert
button in order to return to the original
| | 03:20 | version of those tiles.
| | 03:21 | And I want those guides out of the way, but
can't right click with this tool in order
| | 03:25 | to hide the guides.
| | 03:27 | So instead I'll use the keyboard shortcut,
which is Ctrl+Semicolon, or Command+Semicolon
| | 03:32 | on the Mac, in order to get
those guides out of there.
| | 03:35 | Now if you want to maintain the proportions
of your original selection, then you press
| | 03:40 | and hold the Shift key.
| | 03:42 | If while you are dragging you press and hold Shift,
then you're going to maintain the proportions
| | 03:47 | as you're seeing here either as you reduce
the size of the selection or increase the
| | 03:52 | size of the selection.
| | 03:54 | You need to keep the Shift key down the entire
time until after you release the mouse button.
| | 03:59 | If you want to affect just the height or the
width of the selection, then move your cursor
| | 04:04 | either to the right or the
left of that origin point.
| | 04:08 | I'll start at the left here
just for the sake of variety.
| | 04:12 | And drag inward, let's say, while pressing
the Shift key and that will decrease just the
| | 04:18 | width because I have the Shift key
down, it does not affect the height.
| | 04:21 | If I want to affect just the height, then
move your cursor above or below the origin, and
| | 04:27 | it could be anywhere above or below.
| | 04:28 | You don't have to start
exactly at the top or bottom.
| | 04:32 | And then you should drag, press the Shift key.
| | 04:34 | And notice, by the way, that heads up display.
| | 04:36 | It's showing me that the Width value is remaining
100% while the Height is going down to 38.56%.
| | 04:44 | So you get numerical feedback as
you are using this tool as well.
| | 04:47 | This whole time the center of
our selection has been fixed.
| | 04:52 | And we can see that origin point right there
in the center. It's that little blue target.
| | 04:56 | But you can change that if you want to. You can
set that origin point at any location you like.
| | 05:01 | So I, for example, could say, you know what?
I want to scale with respect to this anchor
| | 05:05 | point right there. Just click on it in
order to move the origin to that location.
| | 05:10 | And then you can drag in order to scale
with respect to that new origin point.
| | 05:16 | So you have this amazing control over your
reference point as you work with the Scale tool.
| | 05:22 | Just a couple of more things to know. If
you want numerical control you can bring up a
| | 05:26 | dialog box by double-clicking
on the Scale tool icon.
| | 05:30 | And you'll see that
displays the Scale dialog box.
| | 05:33 | But it also returns that reference point--that
transformation origin--to the very center of the selection.
| | 05:41 | If that's not what you want, if you want to
bring this dialog box up and keep the origin
| | 05:45 | point in a different location, then Cancel
out, and instead of double-clicking on the
| | 05:50 | tool, you press the Alt key
or the Option key on the Mac.
| | 05:53 | Notice that your cursor now has little dot-dot-dot next to it,
showing you that you are going to bring up a dialog box.
| | 05:59 | And let's say I Alt-click or Option-click on
this anchor point, then that not only brings
| | 06:05 | up the dialog box, but it also positions the
transformation origin at the Alt-click or
| | 06:11 | Option-click location.
| | 06:13 | And then I can specify either a
proportional scale by changing the Uniform value.
| | 06:18 | Let's say I change it to 140%, or you can enter
different values in the Horizontal and Vertical fields.
| | 06:24 | And then when you're done, you can either
click OK in order to scale the object or click
| | 06:29 | Copy in order to scale a copy of the selection.
| | 06:32 | In my case, I'll just go ahead and
click OK. And that's all there is to it.
| | 06:37 | So that one tool provides that much
functionality, and it's old as the hills. It's been with
| | 06:43 | us since Illustrator 1.0, possibly the best
scaling technology in any piece of software.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Scaling along a constraint axis| 00:00 | If you're a bit concerned that the
information in the previous movie was somewhat fast and
| | 00:06 | furious, then rest assured that we're going to be
seeing plenty of the Scale tool throughout this series.
| | 00:11 | Starting with this movie, in which I'll show you
how to scale along a rotated constraint axis.
| | 00:16 | I've gone ahead and restored the save version
of All beige tiles.ai, and what we are going
| | 00:21 | to do now is build out the green tiles
around the edge, and we're going to base them on
| | 00:26 | the existing beige tiles.
| | 00:28 | So I've switched back to the Black Arrow tool,
which you can get by pressing the V key.
| | 00:32 | Then I am going to click on this second
tile down over here on the left-hand side.
| | 00:37 | And I'm going to drag its top anchor point
so that it snaps into alignment with the left
| | 00:41 | anchor point, and I'll press the Alt key or
the Option key on the Mac, and then release
| | 00:47 | in order to create a copy of that tile.
| | 00:50 | Obviously it's the wrong color, so I'll go
up here to the Control panel, click on the
| | 00:54 | first color swatch and
select Deep olive from this list.
| | 00:58 | Then I'll press the Enter key or the
Return key on the Mac, to hide that panel.
| | 01:03 | Now what I want to do is reduce the Width
of this tile to exactly 50% of what it is
| | 01:08 | now, and I want that level of precision.
| | 01:12 | One option is to invoke the Bounding Box.
| | 01:15 | So if I press Ctrl+Shift+B, or Command+Shift+B
on a Mac, in order to display the eight handles
| | 01:21 | surrounding this diamond, then I can drag
this side handle inward, and I'll get roughly
| | 01:26 | the effect I am looking for.
| | 01:28 | The problem is I'm not getting the feedback
I want, so I don't know if I'm reducing the
| | 01:32 | width to exactly 50% or not. I'm
having of course to just eyeball things.
| | 01:39 | And that may be satisfactory in
many cases, but it's not in this case.
| | 01:43 | So I'll press Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z on the Mac,
to undo that change, and I'll press Ctrl+Shift+B,
| | 01:48 | or Command+Shift+B on the Mac, in
order to hide the Bounding Box.
| | 01:52 | Now I've been such a booster for the Scale
tool so far that you would think you could
| | 01:56 | achieve the exact effect we're
looking for using that tool.
| | 01:59 | So I could go ahead and grab the Scale tool,
for example, which I can get by pressing the
| | 02:03 | S key, and then I would click over on this
upper right-hand side in order to establish
| | 02:09 | the location of the reference
point so that this edge does not move.
| | 02:14 | And then I would move my cursor let's say
down into the left, and I would drag inward,
| | 02:19 | but that doesn't work.
| | 02:20 | I end up reducing both the
Height and the Width of the diamond.
| | 02:23 | So what's the solution? Well, I'll
press Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z on the Mac.
| | 02:27 | The solution is to modify the constraint axis.
| | 02:31 | So you may recall from a couple of chapters
back that the constraint axis changes the
| | 02:36 | angle at which you edit paths, it also
changes the angle at which you draw rectangles and
| | 02:41 | ellipses and create text and so forth, and
it changes the behavior of the Scale tool.
| | 02:47 | So to rotate the constraint axis, press Ctrl+K, or Command
+K on the Mac, to bring up the Preferences dialog box.
| | 02:54 | Then go ahead and tab to the second value,
Constraint Angle, and change it to 45 degrees
| | 02:59 | which is what we want, because we want to
be able to move this edge 45 degrees upward,
| | 03:05 | and then click OK.
| | 03:07 | You could go ahead and drag with the tool
in order to create this effect here, but I'm
| | 03:11 | having problems really
controlling what's happening here.
| | 03:16 | And so that's not what I want.
| | 03:18 | And besides, I want the path to be
exactly 50% as wide as it is now.
| | 03:23 | So I'll press Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z on a Mac.
| | 03:26 | Instead I want to bring up the dialog box.
| | 03:28 | So I'll Alt-click or Option-click right there
on the upper right side of the shape in order
| | 03:34 | to bring up the Scale dialog box.
| | 03:37 | And I'll tab down to the Non-Uniform values.
| | 03:41 | And in this case I'll change the Horizontal
value to 50%, and I'll change the Vertical
| | 03:45 | value to 100%, and I end up
getting exactly the effect I want.
| | 03:50 | Now I'll click OK.
| | 03:51 | Now we need to create a
couple of duplicates of this tile.
| | 03:54 | So I'll return to my Selection tool, which
I can get by pressing the V key, and I'll
| | 03:58 | go ahead and drag this corner handle, snap
it into position, press the Alt or Option key,
| | 04:02 | and then go ahead and
release to create a second tile.
| | 04:05 | And now I'll press Ctrl+D, or Command+
D on a Mac, to duplicate a third tile.
| | 04:11 | Problem with this third tile is it's now too
wide, I guess, or too tall, depending on your
| | 04:17 | frame of reference.
| | 04:19 | So we need to scale it,
using once again the Scale tool.
| | 04:23 | And it's going to work out great, because our
constraint axis is still set to 45 degrees.
| | 04:28 | So I'll switch to the Scale tool Alt-click
or Option-click along this upper left side.
| | 04:33 | That brings up the Scale dialog box.
| | 04:35 | Our last values are exactly the
opposite of what we need now.
| | 04:39 | That is to say, the Horizontal values
should be 100% and the Vertical values should be
| | 04:43 | 50%, and we'll end up achieving
this tile right there, then click OK.
| | 04:49 | Switch back to the Black Arrow tool, and
then drag from the bottom point in this tile.
| | 04:55 | Go ahead and snap it into alignment with the
top left point in the upper left green tile
| | 05:01 | and press and hold the Alt key, or the
Option key on the Mac, to create a duplicate.
| | 05:06 | One more thing. Let's go ahead and create this
green tile right there, but I don't need to
| | 05:10 | resort to scaling. I can just
duplicate this left-hand beige tile.
| | 05:14 | So I'll go and click on
it in order to select it.
| | 05:17 | And then I need to grab it by its bottom point,
so I'll drag the bottom point, like so, and
| | 05:22 | I'll move it over to the left until it snaps
into alignment with the left-hand point of
| | 05:27 | that small green tile, and then I'll press
and hold the Alt key or the Option key on
| | 05:31 | the Mac, and I'll release in
order to create a duplicate.
| | 05:34 | Then finally, I'll change its color by clicking
on the left-hand swatch up here in the Control
| | 05:39 | panel, and I'll change it to green.
It's a lighter shade of green.
| | 05:43 | And actually we're going our
own way on the design here.
| | 05:45 | So I went with dark tiles for the edge
and then light tiles for the corners.
| | 05:51 | So I'll press the Enter key or the
Return on a Mac, to hide that panel.
| | 05:55 | This green tile does belong in front, by
the way, so we'll leave it where it is.
| | 05:58 | Of course, we need to create more copies of
these tiles, of both these big green tile
| | 06:04 | and the smaller olive tiles.
| | 06:06 | And we'll do exactly that using
the Rotate tool in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Rotate tool| 00:00 | Obviously, we need to take the green tiles
we have created so far and duplicate them
| | 00:04 | around the perimeter of the
design, and that means rotating.
| | 00:08 | In this movie, I am going to show you two
ways to rotate inside of Illustrator: the
| | 00:12 | bounding box, which is the easy way, and the
Rotate tool, which is the more powerful way.
| | 00:18 | I have saved my progress
as Row of green tiles.ai.
| | 00:21 | I am going to right-click using my Black Arrow
tool here inside the document, and I am going
| | 00:26 | to choose Hide Guides to
get rid of them for a moment.
| | 00:28 | I'm also going to turn off my image just to
sort of clean up the screen, and you do that
| | 00:34 | by clicking on this little rectangle,
as opposed to the eyeball.
| | 00:37 | It serves the same purpose, by the way,
it goes ahead and turns the image off.
| | 00:42 | Then I'll go ahead and click in the upper
right corner of the Drawing layer in order
| | 00:46 | to select the contents of that layer.
| | 00:48 | If I were using the bounding box--and that
would mean of course pressing Ctrl+Shift+B,
| | 00:53 | or Command+Shift+B on the Mac, in order
to bring that bounding box up on-screen--
| | 00:56 | it's pretty obvious that these handles
right there allow you to scale, but how in the
| | 01:02 | world do you rotate? Well, you move your
cursor slightly beyond anyone of those handles, and
| | 01:08 | then you drag, and that's all there is to it,
and you can see that you're always rotating
| | 01:13 | around the center of the selection, by the
way, when you're using the bounding box.
| | 01:18 | Also notice that we've got this little heads-up
display, that gray box that's telling us that
| | 01:22 | in my case I've rotated the
selection -107 degrees and some change.
| | 01:28 | If you want to constrain the angle of your
rotation to 45 degrees--some multiple of 45
| | 01:34 | degrees that is--then you press and hold the
Shift key, and as long as you have the Shift
| | 01:39 | key down, you are going to constrain the
angle of that rotation as you see me doing here.
| | 01:45 | The problem with using the bounding box is A:
you have to get so close to the handle--I
| | 01:50 | am not a big fan of that--so it's kind of
hard to get your cursor in the right location,
| | 01:54 | and B: you can't control the transformation
origin ,that is the Reference Point.
| | 02:00 | What if you want to rotate, for example,
around this anchor point right there? Well, in that
| | 02:04 | case, you need to switch to the Rotate tool.
| | 02:07 | I am going to press Ctrl+Shift+B, or Command+
Shift+B on the Mac, to turn off the bounding box,
| | 02:13 | and then I'll switch to the Rotate tool.
| | 02:15 | It's located right here.
| | 02:16 | You can also get to it by pressing the R key.
| | 02:19 | You can see by default that Reference Point--
that little sort of cyan target there--is located
| | 02:25 | in the center of the selection.
| | 02:27 | So if I begin dragging, I have the exact same
experience as I do when using the bounding box.
| | 02:32 | And sure enough, I can even press the
Shift key as I drag to constrain the angle
| | 02:37 | of my rotation to a multiple of 45 degrees.
| | 02:41 | If you want to set a specific transformation
origin, that is you want to change the location
| | 02:45 | of the reference point, then you click at
a location, like so. So I just moved that
| | 02:50 | target to that anchor point right there, and
then when you begin dragging, you will rotate
| | 02:56 | around that point, which is very useful, and
we'll see it's absolutely essential for the
| | 03:01 | operation that we'll be trying
to pull off in the next movie.
| | 03:05 | Another very important point to keep in mind
when you're using this tool, if you drag close
| | 03:10 | to the origin point, like I am here--so my
cursor is just a pica away from it or so--
| | 03:17 | then you're going to rotate very, very quickly.
| | 03:20 | If you want to perform a more nuanced rotation,
then just move your cursor very far away--
| | 03:25 | as far away as possible--from that origin point,
and you are going to gain a lot more control.
| | 03:31 | And basically, these little tricks work
across all of the transformation tools.
| | 03:34 | So anything that works with the Scale tool is
going to work with the Rotate tool as well.
| | 03:38 | For example, if I want to rotate numerically,
then I double-click on the Rotate tool here
| | 03:43 | inside the toolbox.
| | 03:45 | That brings up the Rotate dialog box, and
I can specify an angle, such as 15 degrees
| | 03:50 | let's say, bearing in mind of course that
positive values such as--I'll enter 60 degrees--are
| | 03:56 | going to rotate the selection
in a counterclockwise direction.
| | 04:00 | If you want to rotate in a clockwise
direction, then you want to enter a negative value.
| | 04:04 | It's just the way things work.
| | 04:07 | More importantly, I think here is that when
you double-click on a tool, that resets the
| | 04:12 | Reference Point to the
very center of the selection.
| | 04:15 | So I am going to go ahead
and cancel out of here.
| | 04:17 | What if you want to specify a Reference Point? Then
you press the Alt key or the Option key on a Mac.
| | 04:22 | That gives you a little dot-dot-dot after
the cursor, as you can see here, and then
| | 04:27 | you click, for example, on this anchor point.
| | 04:29 | Although it doesn't have to be an anchor point,
you can Alt-click for Option-click anywhere
| | 04:33 | you like, and notice when you do, you go ahead
and set the Reference Point at that Alt-click
| | 04:39 | or Option-click location, and you bring up the
Rotate dialog box, and then you can specify an angle.
| | 04:44 | For example, I'll go ahead and rotate the
selection 80 degrees, and you can either click
| | 04:50 | the Copy button to create a copy of your
selection, or you can just click OK in order to rotate
| | 04:56 | the selection itself.
| | 04:58 | So those are your options for rotating
all sorts of objects inside of Illustrator.
| | 05:03 | In the next movie, we'll
put the Rotate tool to work.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Rotating and duplicating| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you two different
ways to use the Rotate tool to duplicate the
| | 00:04 | green tiles around the perimeter of the design.
| | 00:08 | I've gone ahead and restore the
save version of Row of green tiles.ai.
| | 00:13 | And first thing we need to
do is select the green tiles.
| | 00:15 | So I'll go ahead and switch back to the black
arrow tool, and I'll click on any one of the
| | 00:19 | dark green tiles to select it.
| | 00:22 | Now I want to select all the
other dark green tiles as well.
| | 00:25 | So I'll go up to this Final option in the
Control panel, and the first thing I'll do
| | 00:29 | is click the down pointing arrow
ahead and make sure that it's set to All.
| | 00:32 | So in another words, I matching all attributes--
that is Fill and Stroke attributes--and then
| | 00:37 | I'll go ahead and click on this icon that
says Select Similar Objects in order to select
| | 00:42 | all four of those dark green tiles.
| | 00:45 | And now I'll just go ahead and Shift-click
on a light green tile to select it as well.
| | 00:48 | Now I'll switch to the Rotate tool, which
of course, I can get by pressing the R key.
| | 00:53 | And I want to set the transformation origin
right there at the intersection of those two
| | 00:59 | guidelines that indicate
the center of the artboard.
| | 01:02 | So I'll go ahead and just click at that
location, and we now have the reference point right
| | 01:06 | there--it's hard to see.
| | 01:08 | So I'll press Ctrl+Semicolon, or Command+
Semicolon on the Mac, so that you can see
| | 01:13 | that little sign target right there.
| | 01:15 | Then I'll begin dragging my tiles, and I'm
going to create the ones down into the right
| | 01:20 | first, because that's a positive rotation.
| | 01:22 | It'll just make a little more sense when I
show you the next way to rotate these tiles.
| | 01:27 | And obviously, I want to constrain
the angle to exactly 90 degrees.
| | 01:31 | So I'll press and hold the Shift key, and
now you can see that the heads-up display
| | 01:35 | right there which I can point to now says
90 degrees and that's because once again,
| | 01:40 | I have the Shift key down.
| | 01:42 | You have to keep that Shift key down
until after you release the mouse button.
| | 01:46 | I also want to create a duplicate of these
tiles, so I'll add the Alt key or the Option
| | 01:51 | key on the Mac, and notice that
changes my cursor to a double arrowhead.
| | 01:56 | So I have the little phantom white arrowhead
in the background indicating that I am about
| | 01:59 | to create a clone.
| | 02:01 | If you're working along with me, and you're
on the PC, you need to have the Shift and
| | 02:04 | Alt keys down, on the Mac, you need to
have the Shift and Option keys down.
| | 02:08 | Then release the mouse button,
and then release the keys.
| | 02:11 | Now we have a little problem, notice that the
green tile is in back of the beige tile here.
| | 02:17 | We'll address that problem in the next
movie, but for now let's just keep rotating.
| | 02:22 | Now at this point, I could just press Ctrl+D,
or Command+D on the Mac, a couple of times
| | 02:27 | in order to finish off all the green tiles,
but I want to show you the other method first.
| | 02:33 | So I'm going to press Ctrl+Z a couple of times,
Command+Z on the Mac, in order to get back
| | 02:36 | to this point here.
| | 02:38 | The other method is to press the Alt key or
the Option key on the Mac, and click on that
| | 02:43 | same target point right there in order to
bring up the Rotate dialog box. And notice
| | 02:48 | it's telling me the angle of my last rotation,
which was exactly 90 degrees, and if I have
| | 02:54 | the Preview check box turn on, I can see what
that means, and I can confirm that yes, that
| | 02:58 | is the angle of rotation I'm looking for.
And then of course, rather than clicking OK--
| | 03:03 | which will move those tiles into the new
position--I want to click Copy so that we duplicate
| | 03:08 | the tiles, and then I'll finish things off
by pressing Ctrl+D, or Command+D on a Mac.
| | 03:14 | Come to think of it, we are missing a tile,
there is this little tile at the outside here
| | 03:18 | that I didn't bother to create. Might as
well create all four of them right now using a
| | 03:22 | combination of scale and rotate.
| | 03:25 | So I'll switch back to my black arrow tool,
and I'll click off the shapes to deselect
| | 03:29 | them, click on this little green tile here--
the dark green one--and I'll drag it by its
| | 03:34 | anchor point, like so, until it snaps into
alignment on the left side of that light green
| | 03:40 | tile, and then I'll press the Alt key or the
Option key on the Mac, in order to create a copy.
| | 03:45 | And notice, by the way,
I've Smart Guides turned on.
| | 03:48 | So I have absolute certainty that
I've snapped that tile into place.
| | 03:52 | And at this point, I would go ahead and grab
the Scale tool. And let's say I want to scale
| | 03:56 | with respect to this right-hand
anchor point, which of course I do.
| | 04:00 | So I hit Alt-click or Option-click on the Mac,
in order to bring up the Scale dialog box.
| | 04:04 | But look at that. The last scaling I applied
was non-proportional, and I'm squishing the
| | 04:10 | shape at a 45-degree angle, and that's because I
forgot to reset the angle of the constrain axis.
| | 04:16 | So I need to do that first.
| | 04:17 | I'll go ahead and cancel out, and then I'll
press Ctrl+K, or Command+K on the Mac, to
| | 04:22 | bring up the Preferences dialog box, and
I'll change that constrain angle to 0 degrees,
| | 04:27 | and then I'll click OK.
| | 04:29 | All right, now we're ready to scale for real.
| | 04:32 | So I'll Alt-click or Option-click
once again at this location.
| | 04:35 | Now we get a completely different
and, of course, wrong effect.
| | 04:38 | I'm going to change the Uniform value to 50%
and then press the Tab key, and we end up
| | 04:44 | getting this effect here, which is what I'm
looking for, and I'll click OK in order to
| | 04:49 | create that new tile.
| | 04:51 | Let's rotate that tile to
create the other ones here.
| | 04:53 | So, I'll press Ctrl+Semicolon, or Command+
Semicolon on the Mac, in order to bring back
| | 04:58 | up my guides, and I'll go ahead and grab my
Rotate tool, and I'll Alt-click or Option-click
| | 05:05 | at the intersection of those two center
guides. And as you can see here, it's telling me
| | 05:10 | the angle of my last rotation, 90
degrees, which is exactly what I want.
| | 05:14 | So I'll click on the Copy button, and then
I'll press Ctrl+D, or Command+D on the Mac,
| | 05:19 | twice in a row in order to
create the last of the green tiles.
| | 05:23 | We still have one slight problem here,
and it's actually a pretty hefty problem.
| | 05:28 | Not only is this beige tile in front of his
green tile, which shouldn't be the case, but if
| | 05:33 | I were to twirl open the Drawing layer, you
can see that we've got two beige tiles at
| | 05:36 | the top, and then a bunch of green tiles,
and then there's another beige tile, and then
| | 05:40 | another green tile.
| | 05:42 | So the stacking order, that is the way the
objects are stacked on top of each other, is
| | 05:46 | a complete mess, and so I'll show you a
great way to tidy things up in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Group, stack, and organize| 00:00 | So as I mentioned at the end of the previous
movie, we've got something of a mess where
| | 00:05 | the stacking order of the paths are concerned.
| | 00:07 | In other words how one path
is stacked on top of another.
| | 00:10 | We've got green paths on top of
beige path on top of a green path.
| | 00:14 | What we ought to do is go ahead and group
all the beige paths together, then group all
| | 00:18 | the green paths together,
then stack them accordingly.
| | 00:21 | And then what we'll have is a
much more organized illustration.
| | 00:25 | I've saved my progress as Green tile perimeter.ai,
and I am going to switch back to my Black Arrow tool.
| | 00:31 | And the easiest way to work is to just click
inside of one of the beige tiles to select
| | 00:36 | it, and then go over to that final icon in
the Control panel, Select Similar Objects
| | 00:41 | and click on it, and then that
will select all the beige tiles.
| | 00:45 | Then go up to the Object menu and choose the
Group command--or press Ctrl+G on the PC, or
| | 00:51 | Command+G on a Mac--and that goes ahead and
groups all the beige tiles in front of all
| | 00:56 | the green tiles, which of course is not what we
want, but we'll take care of that in a moment.
| | 01:00 | Then we'll take advantage of
this really great Select command.
| | 01:04 | If you go up to the Select menu, notice
there is this command called Inverse.
| | 01:08 | Well, what it does is it deselects everything
that is selected, and it selects everything
| | 01:12 | that's not selected.
| | 01:14 | Fortunately, in our case the only thing
that's not selected are the green tiles, and the
| | 01:19 | image in the background, but the Image layer is
locked, so we don't run any risk of selecting it.
| | 01:24 | Go ahead and choose that Inverse command, and
then we'll have all the green tiles selected.
| | 01:29 | Now go up to the Object menu and
choose a Group command once again.
| | 01:33 | Now I've got all the green tiles grouped
together and all the beige tiles grouped together.
| | 01:37 | The green tiles need to be in front.
| | 01:39 | Two ways to do that, you can just grab them
here in the Layers panel and drag them on
| | 01:43 | top of the beige tiles. Or if you don't
fancy that method--I'll press Ctrl+Z or Comand+Z
| | 01:49 | on a Mac--then you can right-click on those
tiles, choose Arrange, and then choose Bring
| | 01:55 | to Front, which will move them to
the front of the stack as well.
| | 01:59 | Either way is of course just perfectly fine.
| | 02:02 | Now I am going to click off
the tiles to deselect them.
| | 02:05 | One final organizational chore if you like.
| | 02:08 | If you were to switch over to my Final
version of this mosaic, you will see all of these
| | 02:13 | various ornamental elements that we are
going to draw in the very next chapter.
| | 02:17 | And it might look very daunting, but see how many
of these elements are repeated over and over again?
| | 02:22 | You can imagine we are going to be to be
rotating and flipping, and it's going to save us an
| | 02:27 | awful lot of time.
| | 02:28 | So it's all very doable, believe me.
| | 02:31 | But I've found that it was easier to draw
these new elements, if we were to take the
| | 02:35 | tiles and relegate them to
their own independent layer.
| | 02:38 | So I am going to go
ahead and do that right now.
| | 02:40 | So I'll return my illustration in progress,
I will go ahead and select all the objects
| | 02:44 | on this Drawing layer by clicking in the top
right corner of the layer, like so. And now
| | 02:49 | notice that we have these red
squares indicating selected objects.
| | 02:53 | I need to create a new
layer, though, to put them on.
| | 02:56 | I am going to create this layer underneath
the Active layer. And you do that--in case
| | 03:01 | you are interested in yet another trick--you
press the Ctrl+Alt keys or the Command+Option
| | 03:07 | keys on the Mac, and you click on
that little page icon right there.
| | 03:11 | And notice that pops a new
layer underneath the Drawing layer.
| | 03:15 | So that's a Ctrl+Alt-click, or
Command+Option-click on the Mac.
| | 03:19 | It also handily brings up
the layer Options dialog box.
| | 03:22 | I will go ahead and call this layer Tiles, I
will go ahead and change the color to yellow,
| | 03:27 | you could change it to anything
you like, and then I'll click OK.
| | 03:31 | Now I need to move this
selection to the new layer.
| | 03:33 | You want to go ahead and grab that top red
square, because if you drag one of these other
| | 03:39 | red squares, you'll move just that one group.
| | 03:41 | We want to move all of the selected objects,
so drag that top red square down into the
| | 03:47 | Tiles layer and drop it, and we've now
relegated the tiles to their own independent layer.
| | 03:52 | And now just to keep everything safe, go ahead and
lock it down by clicking in that second column.
| | 03:58 | And then click on the Drawing layer to make it
active, and we are ready to draw the ornaments
| | 04:03 | on the tiles in the very next chapter.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
8. Painting Freeform ShapesThe best tools for painting| 00:00 | Now let's say you just want to start painting
in Illustrator, not squares or circles, you
| | 00:05 | want to go totally free-form.
| | 00:07 | Well, you might naturally gravitate toward
the Pencil or the Paintbrush, but while those
| | 00:12 | tools have their uses,
they aren't what you want.
| | 00:15 | What you want--and you are going to have to trust
me on this--is something called the Blob brush.
| | 00:20 | Yes, that's really its name,
and yet it's a great tool.
| | 00:24 | The Blob brush always paints closed path
outlines, so it's easy to modify the results.
| | 00:30 | And each time one brush stroke matches
another, Illustrator globs them together.
| | 00:35 | Then you have another tool, the
Eraser, which paints in holes and gaps.
| | 00:39 | The Blob brush adds, the Eraser subtracts.
| | 00:42 | One minute you're roughing in simple shapes, the
next, you are turning them in the complex art.
| | 00:47 | For example, you can start by painting this
and then with a few minutes of work, turn
| | 00:53 | it into this or better yet, take the tiles
we made in the previous chapter and turn them
| | 00:59 | into this fully realized design.
| | 01:02 | This chapter is about the Blob brush, the
Eraser, and a third tool called the Shape
| | 01:07 | Builder, all designed to work together.
| | 01:10 | Here is how.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Painting closed path outlines| 00:00 | In this movie I'll introduce you to what
I consider to be the preeminent tool for
| | 00:05 | paining shapes inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:07 | It does have an unfortunate name, however.
It is this guy right there, it's called Blob
| | 00:12 | brush tool, which implies that all it
does is paint blobs, and that's not true.
| | 00:17 | It doesn't do anything of the kind.
| | 00:20 | What it does is it paints closed shape outlines,
and it does a great job of smoothing out your
| | 00:25 | paint strokes as well.
| | 00:26 | And it is "The" tool we will be using in order
to create to this fairly sophisticated design.
| | 00:32 | Let me show you how it works.
| | 00:33 | I've got this new document here,
just 8 & 1/2 inches wide by 6 inches tall.
| | 00:38 | And what I would like you do--if you're
trying this is tool out along with me--
| | 00:41 | I'd like for you to go down to the Blob brush tool
icon and double-click on it in order to bring
| | 00:46 | up this Massive dialog box of Options,
most of which you don't need to worry about.
| | 00:50 | What I'd like you to do, though, is
turn on the Keep Selected check box.
| | 00:55 | In that way each path outline will remain
selected after you get done painting it, and
| | 00:59 | you'll have a better sense for what's going on.
| | 01:02 | Go a head and click OK, and then I'm just going
to draw kind of this big sort of circular path.
| | 01:07 | Now I am drawing with a mouse, I'm not
using a drawing tablet or anything like that.
| | 01:12 | So my results are not all that smooth.
| | 01:14 | But notice as soon as I release,
Illustrator does two things.
| | 01:18 | First of all, it smoothes out my paint stroke,
which is great, and then secondly, it goes
| | 01:23 | ahead and creates a closed path outline.
| | 01:26 | So this is a shape filled with black, as
opposed to an outline stroked with black.
| | 01:32 | And if you go over to the Layers panel and
twirl open the layer, you'll see that's called
| | 01:36 | Compound, because it is a Compound Path.
| | 01:39 | We have an outer outline that's filled with black,
and then an inner outline that's cutting a hole.
| | 01:44 | Now I'll just go ahead and paint in a few
more details like, I will give this guy a
| | 01:48 | mouth, because he is a person.
| | 01:50 | In case you didn't know where I was going
with this, and I'll go ahead and give him
| | 01:53 | a couple of eyes as well.
| | 01:55 | He needs some pupils.
| | 01:57 | Let's say I just go ahead and paint the hollow
pupil like this, and it looks pretty garbagy.
| | 02:02 | I'm going to go head and zoom in on it.
| | 02:05 | And notice that it's got a hole in it as well.
Well, I could feel in that hole if I want to.
| | 02:09 | I could just paint away the hole.
| | 02:12 | What was formerly a compound path, changes
to just path here inside the Layers panel,
| | 02:17 | because it no longer has a hole inside of it.
| | 02:19 | Then I could try to even out the edges a
little bit if I wanted to, and I'll go ahead and
| | 02:24 | paint in another pupil as well over here.
| | 02:27 | On the right-hand side may be paint a nose
as well, and notice as soon as I paint this
| | 02:32 | nose next to his eye, the two path outlines
join together into a single outline, and that's
| | 02:39 | way the tool is designed to work.
| | 02:41 | As long as you're painting with a consistent
color--in my case black--Illustrator is going
| | 02:45 | to go ahead and join all those paths together.
| | 02:48 | If you don't want them to join together,
one option is to change your fill color.
| | 02:53 | Just to make sure I'm not
affecting the selected path.
| | 02:56 | I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A, or Command+
Shift+A on a Mac, to deselect it.
| | 03:00 | And then I'll up here to the Control panel
and click on that first swatch, and I'll switch
| | 03:04 | to this sort of light beige color.
| | 03:07 | Then I could go ahead and paint in his flesh,
let's say. But I would like to get a little
| | 03:12 | more work done more quickly than
having to scrub around in here like this.
| | 03:15 | So I want to increase the size of my brush,
and I can do that on the fly using the square
| | 03:21 | bracket keys, and these are the keys over
that are to the right of the P as in Paul
| | 03:25 | key on an American keyboard.
| | 03:28 | So if you press the right bracket key you'll
increase the size of the brush, and I'm pressing
| | 03:33 | the key many times here.
| | 03:34 | If you press the left bracket key
you'll decrease the size of the brush.
| | 03:38 | If you really want to go nuts then you can
present hold the right bracket key, and it'll
| | 03:42 | grow continuously.
| | 03:44 | If you want to reduce the size of the brush
continuously, then you press and hold left
| | 03:48 | bracket key, and so that looks pretty good.
| | 03:50 | I'll just go ahead and paint round inside
the guys flesh, and you can see that the beige
| | 03:54 | paths are now joining together, but
we're not joining to the black paths at all.
| | 04:01 | And you may be a little disturbed by what
I'm doing here, because I am painting these
| | 04:06 | flesh tones over the guy's eyes and
head and all these other outlines.
| | 04:10 | But then we can put 'em
behind in just a moment.
| | 04:13 | But for the present I just want to make sure
that I am paining things in relatively well.
| | 04:18 | We can always go back and change
these things later on down the line.
| | 04:22 | All right, once I get his flesh painted in
just beautifully, as you can see here, I
| | 04:27 | can right-click inside the flesh, choose
Arrange, and then choose Send To Back, and it goes
| | 04:33 | to the back of the stack.
| | 04:34 | I am going to press the V key to switchback
to my Black Arrow tool, and then click on
| | 04:39 | an empty portion of the document
to deselect that path outline.
| | 04:42 | And I want to stress, even though you may
not like what I've come up with so far, every
| | 04:47 | single one of these items is
an independent path outline.
| | 04:50 | So I can click on his pupil, for example,
and maybe move it to a different location
| | 04:54 | if I don't feel like this guy is
looking at me exactly the way I want him to.
| | 04:59 | And I have complete control. I could grab this guys
head, for example, partially marquee everything.
| | 05:05 | And I could go over to the Scale tool, and
I could drag in order make his face bigger,
| | 05:10 | I could drag inward to make his face smaller.
| | 05:13 | I could come in from the side while pressing
the Shift key if I wanted to make his face
| | 05:17 | a little skinnier, for example.
| | 05:19 | So even though this is a pretty basic
painting tool, it does result in vector-based path
| | 05:25 | outlines that you can
modify to any extent you like.
| | 05:28 | Looking at this you may say, well, Deke,
you've a got a few problems here. You painted the
| | 05:32 | flesh outside of the face down.
| | 05:33 | In the lower left corner we've got some
flesh in the eyes, his eyes are a little lumpy.
| | 05:39 | That's were the Blob brush's partner in crime comes in,
and it's located directly below--that's the Eraser tool.
| | 05:45 | And I'll show you how that
tool works in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Erasing and painting selected paths| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you the Eraser tool
which allows you to clean up mistakes that
| | 00:04 | you make with the Blob brush and also show you how
to use the two tools in concert with each other.
| | 00:10 | I've saved my drawing such as it is a Very
Bad boy.ai found inside the 08_painting folder.
| | 00:16 | I am going to switch to my Black Arrow tool,
and I am going to click on this right-hand
| | 00:21 | eye and Shift-click on the pupil in
order to select both of these paths.
| | 00:26 | And then I'm going to switch to the Eraser tool
which is located directly below the Blob brush.
| | 00:31 | And I'm going to increase the size of my curser
a little bit, like so, and I am going to paint
| | 00:35 | in a highlight right there at that location.
| | 00:37 | And then I'll reduce the size of my cursor
and try to even up some of that badness down
| | 00:42 | there at the bottom of the eye, like so.
You end up just erasing into the path outline.
| | 00:47 | Illustrator goes ahead and, again, smoothes out
your brush strokes and of course revises the path.
| | 00:52 | But it only works with
the selected path outline.
| | 00:56 | So notice if I want to paint a highlight over
here in the left eye, it looks like everything
| | 01:00 | is working out great, but
when I release nothing happens.
| | 01:04 | And that's because the Eraser tool only affects
the selected path, which is really a great thing.
| | 01:10 | But I want you to come to terms with the
keyboard trick that is going to allow you to work much
| | 01:15 | more quickly with both the Blob brush and
the Eraser tool, and that's the Ctrl key.
| | 01:20 | If you press the Ctrl key on the PC or the
Command key on a Mac, you will switch to the
| | 01:25 | last used Arrow tool on the fly.
| | 01:27 | So in my case it's the Black Arrow, and so
if I Ctrl-click, or Command-click on this
| | 01:33 | left-hand pupil, I'll go ahead and selected it.
| | 01:35 | As soon as I release the Ctrl key or the
Command key, I return to the Eraser tool.
| | 01:41 | And that Ctrl or Command key trick works when
you're using just about any tool inside of Illustrator.
| | 01:47 | I'm going to go ahead and paint in
a little bit of a highlight there.
| | 01:50 | Now I need to fix the face coloring.
| | 01:53 | So I'll press the Ctrl key or the Command
key on a Mac, and click on that little sliver
| | 01:57 | of beige there in order to
select this big beige shape.
| | 02:00 | And I'll paint away some of that, I'll paint
away some of this stuff up here, I'll paint
| | 02:05 | down in this region.
| | 02:07 | Notice I can paint all over the pupil, it
doesn't matter because it's not selected,
| | 02:10 | only affect this selection and nothing more.
| | 02:13 | Than I'm going to increase the size of my
cursor by pressing the right bracket key a
| | 02:16 | few times, I'll paint away this
stuff, I'll paint away there as we'll.
| | 02:21 | All right, now at this point let's say
I want to give this guy some eyelids.
| | 02:24 | I am going to switch back to my Blob brush,
and I am going to reduce the size of my cursor
| | 02:29 | by pressing left bracket key a few times,
and I'm going to go ahead and paint over that.
| | 02:35 | And that is actually a mistake, because after
all I'd changed my field color to beige when
| | 02:39 | I went and selected this background shape.
| | 02:41 | So I'll press Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z
on a Mac, to undo that change.
| | 02:45 | And then I'll press the Ctrl key or the Command
key on a Mac, and click on any old black shape
| | 02:49 | in order to select it.
| | 02:51 | That automatically changes my fill color to
black, as you can see, up here in the Control
| | 02:54 | panel, and now I can go ahead and paint eyelids
onto the eyes, like so, and Illustrator automatically
| | 03:00 | joins the shapes together.
| | 03:03 | Now what if I want to go ahead and fill in
those eyelids with beige, because after all
| | 03:06 | they would be skin tones.
| | 03:08 | Then I could press the Ctrl key or the
Command key on a Mac, and click on that beige shape
| | 03:13 | in the background.
| | 03:14 | That changes my fill color to beige, as you
can see, in the upper left corner of the screen.
| | 03:18 | I'll increase the size of my cursor quite a
bit, and then I'll paint over the eyelid.
| | 03:22 | And it looks like I am getting the results
I want, but as soon as I release, I painted
| | 03:27 | a new beige shape and that's because the
other beige shape is way in the background, and
| | 03:32 | essentially the Blob brush tool can't reach it.
| | 03:36 | You can change that behavior.
| | 03:38 | I'll press Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z on a Mac, in
order to undo that brushstroke, I'll double-click
| | 03:42 | on the Blob brush icon here in the toolbox,
and I'll turn on this check box, Merge Only
| | 03:47 | with Selection, which gives you way
more control over what's going on.
| | 03:51 | Now I'll click OK.
| | 03:53 | So now we have a Blob brush
that's behaving like the Eraser tool.
| | 03:57 | In other words, it only
affects a selected shape.
| | 03:59 | The big beige shape is selected, so now if I
paint over the Eyelids, I affect the beige
| | 04:05 | shape, and it remains in the background,
which is absolutely awesome, so it doesn't jump to
| | 04:10 | the foreground--which of course
would be unfortunate. We don't want that.
| | 04:14 | Now I am going to give this guy a ball cap,
and there is a method to my madness.
| | 04:17 | I'm not just doing this to goof around.
| | 04:19 | I am going to press the Ctrl key or the
Command key on a Mac, and I'll click on the mouth
| | 04:23 | once again to select it.
| | 04:24 | And what that does is that
changes the fill color to black.
| | 04:27 | I'll reduce the size my cursor
by pressing the left bracket key.
| | 04:31 | And I'll paint a cap onto his head, like so,
And I've gone a little bit too far with it
| | 04:36 | probably, that's okay I can
erase that in just a moment.
| | 04:39 | I'll go ahead and give it some lines,
notice I'm only affecting the selected shape.
| | 04:43 | Even though the mouth remains selected down
here, I am not joining the ball cap to the
| | 04:47 | mouth in any way, shape or form.
| | 04:49 | Now I'll switch over to the Eraser tool,
and I'll paint away some of this garbage over
| | 04:54 | here because I don't want it.
| | 04:55 | Let's say I want the cap to
be at more of a jaunty angle.
| | 04:59 | I'll just go ahead and press Ctrl+Shift+A, or
Command+Shift+A on a Mac, to deselect everything,
| | 05:04 | so I don't affect the mouth.
| | 05:05 | And then I'll press the Ctrl key or the Command key
on a Mac, and click on the cap in order to select it.
| | 05:10 | I'll switch to the next tool down--which is
the Rotate tool--click right about here, let's
| | 05:16 | say, to set a reference point.
| | 05:18 | And then drag the cap down to
more of a--you know jaunty angle.
| | 05:22 | Go ahead and use the arrow keys. I am pressing
the up and right arrow keys in order to nudge
| | 05:27 | that selected into a different position.
| | 05:30 | Now what I want to do is erase his head, because I don't
want the cap to seem like it's transparent or something.
| | 05:37 | So what I could do is Ctrl-click, for example,
on the flesh shape in order to select it,
| | 05:43 | and then I could grab the Eraser tool.
| | 05:45 | I'll increase the size of my cursor quite a
bit and paint away that area, but I'd only
| | 05:52 | affect the flesh shape and nothing more.
| | 05:54 | What if you want to affect multiple shapes
at the same time, because you don't want to
| | 05:57 | have to sit there and erase each and every
single shape? Well, I'll go ahead and press
| | 06:01 | Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z on a Mac, in order to
undo that change, and then I'll press and
| | 06:06 | hold the Ctrl key in order to get my Black Arrow
tool--that would be the Command key on a Mac.
| | 06:11 | And I'll marquee over all of
these shapes except for the cap.
| | 06:15 | And now if I brush over this area, even
though it looks like I'm erasing the cap as well
| | 06:20 | of course with the Eraser tool, I just
affect the selected shapes and nothing more.
| | 06:26 | All right, now I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A, or Command+
Shift+A on the Mac, in order to accept that result.
| | 06:32 | Now I am going to press the V key in
order to switch back to the Black Arrow tool.
| | 06:36 | So here's the thing. We're going be using
the Blob brush and the Eraser tools in order
| | 06:42 | to create this complex design, and you'll
see it's actually not hard work at all.
| | 06:47 | But just so that you and I are on the same
page, if you're doing this along with me,
| | 06:52 | make sure that the Blob brush--I'll go ahead
and double-click on its icon here--make sure
| | 06:56 | that you have both of these check boxes turned on
inside the Blob brush tool options dialog box,
| | 07:02 | and that way you will get absolutely the
best result possible out of this tool.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reassigning keyboard shortcuts| 00:00 | You can see I've done a little more work here,
and this is all Blob brush and Eraser working
| | 00:06 | in tandem with each other, so you can get a
lot of work done by these tools quite easily,
| | 00:11 | and I saved this
illustration as Such a good boy.ai.
| | 00:13 | There is no reason for you to
open it, it's just background art.
| | 00:17 | For this movie in which I'm going to
suggest that we change a few keyboard shortcuts.
| | 00:23 | You can do it or not, it's totally up to you, and
you can always go back to the old keyboard shortcuts.
| | 00:28 | So, we're not making any
sort of long-term commitment.
| | 00:32 | This is the thing though.
| | 00:33 | I'm going to using the Blob Bush and the
Eraser together back and forth over and over again.
| | 00:40 | So it would be great if they had better
shortcuts than Shift+B and Shift+E. It would be better,
| | 00:45 | for example, if they were B and E instead.
After all, B is assigned to the Paint Brush
| | 00:50 | tool, which is a tool that you will be using
in Illustrator but not nearly as often, and
| | 00:56 | then E is assigned to the Free Transform tool.
| | 01:00 | Meanwhile, we're also to be taking advantage of
the Shape Builder quite a bit, and its keyboard
| | 01:05 | shortcut doesn't make any sense, and I'd like to
give it a single letter keyboard shortcut as well.
| | 01:10 | If you are with me, here's what you do.
| | 01:12 | You go up to the Edit menu, and you
choose to Keyboard Shortcuts command.
| | 01:17 | Right away, you should see the shortcuts for
the tools. If you don't, if you see menu Commands
| | 01:22 | instead just go ahead and switch to tools.
| | 01:24 | And then we have got to do
a little bit of work here.
| | 01:26 | Go ahead and scroll down this long list of
tools until you come to the Shape Builder
| | 01:32 | right there, click on its keyboard shortcut.
| | 01:34 | Now here on the PC you are going to have to
click on that shortcut twice to really make
| | 01:38 | it active, and then I want you to press the L key in
order to change your shortcut for this tool to L.
| | 01:44 | Then Illustrator is going to tell you, hey,
that's already in use by the Ellipse tool,
| | 01:48 | that tool will no longer have
that keyboard shortcut and so forth.
| | 01:52 | Well, what you should do is go to the conflict,
in other words switchback to the Ellipse
| | 01:57 | tool--and I'm going to scroll up a little
bit here, so there you can the Rectangle tool
| | 02:01 | has a keyboard shortcut of M.
| | 02:03 | So it makes all the sense in the world that
the Ellipse tool should have a keyboard shortcut
| | 02:07 | of Shift+M, since it's the
next most popular Shape tool.
| | 02:12 | And that, by the way is a keyboard shortcut
that is by default assigned to the Shape Builders,
| | 02:16 | so we are just trading the two.
| | 02:18 | Then I'll go ahead and scroll down little
bit, and you'll see the Blob brush, click
| | 02:22 | on its keyboard shortcut twice if necessary
to make it active, and then press B key, and
| | 02:28 | then you are going to be told there is a
conflict here as well, go to the conflict, which is
| | 02:32 | the Paint Brush right there, click on its
keyboard shortcut and press Shift+B for it,
| | 02:38 | since it's the least
popular of the two in my opinion.
| | 02:42 | Now I'll go ahead and click on the Eraser
tool's keyboard shortcut--I need to click
| | 02:46 | on it twice to make sure it's active--press
the E key to change its shortcut to E, then
| | 02:51 | go to the conflict by clicking on the Go To
Conflict button. That's the Free Transform
| | 02:55 | tool--which between you and me I never use,
I just never, ever use it, but if you think
| | 03:00 | there is a chance that you might, then just
go ahead and give it the keyboard shortcut
| | 03:04 | of Shift+E, and you actually press Shift and E
on the keyboard, by the way, for that.
| | 03:09 | Now you can just go ahead and click the OK
button, at which point Illustrator is going
| | 03:13 | to ask you to Save the Keysets. In other words,
it wants you to name your custom keyboard
| | 03:18 | shortcuts, and I'm going to call mine dekeKeys,
which is what I always call my shortcuts,
| | 03:23 | but you can call yours anything you want,
and then I'll go ahead and click OK.
| | 03:27 | That means that if I go over to the Blob brush,
it has the keyboard to B, the Eraser tool
| | 03:32 | has keyboard shortcut of E, and the Shape
Builder, which we will be using quite a bit
| | 03:36 | in this chapter has a keyboard shortcut of L,
and those less frequently used tools have
| | 03:42 | keyboard shortcuts that include the Shift key.
| | 03:44 | If ever you feel uncomfortable with that,
and you want to go back, then you go up to
| | 03:48 | the Edit menu, and you choose a Keyboard
Shortcuts Command, and you change the set from dekeKeys
| | 03:54 | in this case, back to Illustrator Defaults,
and you essentially wipe the slate clean,
| | 03:59 | you are back to the default keyboard shortcuts.
| | 04:01 | And then of course, if you change your mind
after that, and you want to come back to dekeKeys
| | 04:04 | or whatever you called yours,
you can select them as well.
| | 04:07 | So it will always be there,
ready and waiting for you.
| | 04:10 | All right, I'm going to go ahead
and click OK to accept that change.
| | 04:13 | All right, we have managed to change our
keyboard shortcuts for some of the most popular tools
| | 04:18 | and the software, in the next exercise, we
will set about drawing the shapes inside of
| | 04:22 | this tiled design.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Painting in the Outline mode| 00:00 | In this movie we are going to create the blue
cross that's at the center of the final design,
| | 00:04 | and we are going to do so using a combination
of the Blob brush along with the Eraser tool.
| | 00:09 | But first, I want you to have a sense
of how these objects are put together.
| | 00:13 | So I am going to go ahead and zoom on in,
and this will help you understand sort of
| | 00:18 | the method to my madness
as we work through this.
| | 00:22 | I have opened a file called Final mosaic.ai,
it's found inside the 08_painting folder,
| | 00:27 | and I am going to go ahead and twirl open the
drawing lawyer here inside the Layers panel.
| | 00:33 | And I am going to turn off all of the objects
by just dragging along this column of eyeballs,
| | 00:39 | and there are five objects in all inside of
this layer, go ahead and try to center it here.
| | 00:43 | We have got the cross in the background.
| | 00:46 | Now the cross can look any old way you like,
because we are going to be covering it up
| | 00:50 | with other objects.
| | 00:52 | So it needs to actually be bigger than the blue
cross inside of the image that we are tracing.
| | 00:58 | Then we've got these green shapes in front, and
you can see how, they are a lot more intricate,
| | 01:03 | and they end up covering up areas of the
blue cross and adding detail to it as well.
| | 01:09 | Then I'll go up a couple of items here.
| | 01:10 | We've got these flowers that we will be drawing
and they are all the exact same flower pattern
| | 01:15 | repeated over and over
throughout the illustration.
| | 01:18 | We also have these sort of green curlicues--
the layer is called olive because they are
| | 01:23 | sort of olive colored--and in back of that
we have got some brown filler shapes, and
| | 01:28 | then if I zoom out a little bit, we will be
able to see that I have these outer flower
| | 01:33 | patterns as well, again, they are
based on the exact same flower patterns.
| | 01:36 | In other words, you don't have to be that
careful when you're painting the cross shape.
| | 01:42 | So I will go and switch over to my starter
file which is called Forty tiles.ai, also
| | 01:47 | found inside the 08_painting folder.
| | 01:50 | We can't really trace the image with the tiles
in a way, so I am going to go ahead and turn
| | 01:53 | off the tiles by clicking on the eyeball, in front
of the tiles layer, here inside the Layers panel.
| | 01:59 | And then I am going to zoom on into the
cross and scroll down a little bit as well.
| | 02:04 | Now I will grab the Blob brush which has a
keyboard shortcut of B now, if you followed
| | 02:09 | along with the previous movie,
making it a lot easier to access.
| | 02:13 | My cursor is way too big, so I am going to
go ahead and reduce the size of the brush
| | 02:17 | by pressing the left bracket key a few times,
and then I will just go ahead and paint at
| | 02:21 | least as large as that cross shape, but then
you want to come down even with it down here
| | 02:27 | toward the bottom, and then I will go ahead
and fill it in, like so. So we are painting
| | 02:32 | just an eighth of the cross,
| | 02:35 | just the area inside this region here, because
then we will duplicate it in order to create
| | 02:39 | the other portions.
| | 02:41 | So just go ahead and fill in along the
guidelines, and I will paint a few different times here
| | 02:46 | in order to make sure that I have got
everything painted the way I want it.
| | 02:50 | Now I can't see through to the cross.
| | 02:53 | It is kind of that problem.
| | 02:54 | So I don't know if I am
going too far, or what have you.
| | 02:59 | In which case, I can switch to
this thing called the Outline mode.
| | 03:02 | If you go up to the View menu, you will see
this command right at the top that says Outline,
| | 03:07 | and it has a keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+Y,
Command+Y on the Mac. It's a really great
| | 03:12 | shortcut to remember.
| | 03:14 | What it does is it switches you
between the Outline and Preview modes.
| | 03:18 | So when you chose Outline, you only see the
outline of your path. You no longer see the
| | 03:22 | fill or stroke attributes or anything else.
| | 03:25 | But you can still continue to work on
this path outline as much as you like.
| | 03:29 | So I could go ahead and paint in like that
in order to add a little bit of detail right
| | 03:34 | there. And again, I am painting beyond the
cross, because we are going to be covering
| | 03:37 | it up with this green shape to the side here.
| | 03:41 | Now I will switch over to Eraser tool, which
I can now get by pressing the E key, and I
| | 03:46 | will reduce the size of my cursor once again by
pressing and holding the left bracket key,
| | 03:50 | and then I will paint away, like so. And you can
just have fun with this to any extent you like.
| | 03:56 | You can create any kind of sort of filigreed
little cusps in there, as long as you're not
| | 04:01 | going too far into the region that
actually is occupied by the cross.
| | 04:06 | And the only reason you would do this, by the way,
there isn't any real practical reason at this point.
| | 04:12 | It is just so that you come up with
an appealing shape once we're done.
| | 04:16 | In other words, I want you to add a sense
of accomplishment, have a little bit of fun
| | 04:20 | with the tools as well.
| | 04:21 | I am going to press the B key to switch back
to my Blob brush, reduce the size of the cursor
| | 04:26 | a little bit, maybe add a few other filigree
details here, like so, just again just goofing
| | 04:33 | off at this point.
| | 04:34 | I will switch back to the Preview mode by
going up to the View menu and choosing the
| | 04:38 | first command, which now reads Preview, same
keyboard shortcut, Ctrl+Y, Command+Y on the
| | 04:44 | Mac, and let's go ahead and assign
some Fill and Stroke attributes.
| | 04:47 | I will click on the Fill swatch up here in
the Control panel, and I will select blue
| | 04:52 | as my fill color, so I have created
some swatches in advance for you.
| | 04:56 | And then I will click on this down pointing
arrow head to the right of the word Stroke,
| | 05:00 | and I will change the Line Weight to 3 points.
| | 05:04 | Now let's go ahead and flip this shape in
order to create the left half of it, and we
| | 05:08 | will be doing that using yet
another Transformation tool.
| | 05:13 | This one is available from the Rotate tool
so you click and hold on the Rotate tool,
| | 05:17 | and you choose the Reflect tool.
| | 05:19 | We saw it briefly in the previous chapter.
| | 05:21 | And I want to go ahead and flip the shape by
way of a dialog box, so I am going to align
| | 05:25 | my cursor with this vertical guideline, then
I will press the Alt key or the Option key
| | 05:30 | on the Mac, and click to
bring up the Reflect dialog box.
| | 05:34 | Now my Preview check box happens to off, so
I will turn it on, and you can see by virtue
| | 05:39 | of the fact that I have set Axis to Vertical,
which you should do as well, that I'm flipping
| | 05:43 | the shape across the vertical axis
which means I'm flipping it horizontally.
| | 05:48 | I don't want to flip the shape, I want to
flip a copy of the shape, so I will go ahead
| | 05:51 | and click on the Copy button, and now we
have two halves of the shape to work with.
| | 05:56 | So as a result we have the lower arm of the
cross, but we need to fuse it together, and
| | 06:01 | then complete the cross, and we will
do exactly that in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Shape Builder tool| 00:00 | In this movie we'll fuse the two halves of
this bottom portion of the cross together
| | 00:04 | using the Shape Builder tool.
| | 00:06 | And I will give you a
clearer sense of how it works.
| | 00:09 | And then we'll build out the entire cross.
| | 00:12 | I have saved my progress as The cross begins.ai,
and I'm going to switch back over to my Selection
| | 00:18 | tool and marquee these two
shapes in order to select them.
| | 00:23 | Then I'll drop down to the Shape Builder tool,
which allows me to fuse shapes together and
| | 00:28 | as you'll see later, you can also
subtract one shape from another.
| | 00:32 | Couple of movies ago I gave it a keyboard
Shortcut key L so that we can get to it more easily.
| | 00:37 | I will select the tool, and notice as you
hover over your selected shapes--they have to be
| | 00:43 | selected, by the way, for this tool to work--
| | 00:45 | you can see the intersecting areas. And the intersecting
areas are indicated by this regular dot pattern here.
| | 00:53 | You use the tool by dragging across
the shapes that you want to fuse.
| | 00:56 | So, for example, if I just wanted to
diffuse this left portion of the cross along with
| | 01:01 | the middle, I would just drag to the middle,
and now that shape is independent of this
| | 01:07 | shape on the right.
| | 01:09 | If I were to press the V key to switch back
to the black arrow tool and click off the
| | 01:12 | shapes to deselect them and then drag one
of the shapes to a different location, you
| | 01:17 | can see that we now have two different paths.
| | 01:21 | One of which has the intersection fused to it,
and the other of which has the intersection
| | 01:24 | subtracted from it.
| | 01:26 | Obviously, that's not what we want, but I want
you to have a clear sense of how this tool works.
| | 01:32 | So I will press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on the
Mac, a couple of times in order to restore
| | 01:36 | the original shapes.
| | 01:37 | And I will press the L key in order to
switch over to the Shape Builder tool, and then I
| | 01:42 | will go ahead and drag over all three intersecting
areas in order to fuse the whole thing together.
| | 01:48 | Now at this point you want to make sure the Shape
Builder tool is doing what you hope it would do.
| | 01:54 | To check on that--because there can always
be little fragments that it left behind--twirl
| | 01:59 | open that Drawing layer at the top of the
Layers panel. And sure enough, notice that
| | 02:03 | we have a total of 3 paths, where
ideally, we'd only want to have one.
| | 02:08 | To get rid of the extra paths, because we
just don't need them in this case, press the
| | 02:12 | Shift key, and then click on the meatball
that little circle there, to the right of
| | 02:17 | the obvious blue path, the one we want to keep.
| | 02:19 | And then you'll see some leftovers down here
at the bottom, at least in my case, that's
| | 02:24 | where they appear, they
might appear anywhere for you.
| | 02:26 | And then just go ahead and press the Backspace
key or the Delete key on the Mac, to get rid
| | 02:31 | of those leftovers, and we
have just the one blue path.
| | 02:35 | Now let's go ahead and zoom out a little
bit so that we can take in the entire cross.
| | 02:39 | I will press Ctrl key or the Command key on
the Mac, in order to temporarily access my
| | 02:45 | black arrow tool, and I will
click on the shape to select it.
| | 02:49 | Then I'll release the Ctrl key or the
Command key on the Mac, and we need to rotate the
| | 02:53 | cross into the other regions there. Click
and hold on to Reflect tool, if you've been
| | 02:58 | following along with me, and switch to the
Rotate tool and then press the Alt key or
| | 03:03 | the Option key on the Mac, and click at the
intersection of those two central guidelines
| | 03:08 | in order to bring up the Rotate dialog box.
| | 03:11 | Change the Angle value to 90 degrees, and
then click on the Copy button in order to
| | 03:16 | create a copy of that shape.
| | 03:18 | Now we want to fuse these two shapes together
right now, before we create any more copies.
| | 03:24 | Go ahead and press the Ctrl key or the
Command key on the Mac, in order to get the Black
| | 03:28 | arrow tool on the fly.
| | 03:30 | Add the Shift key, so you should have the Ctrl and
Shift keys down--that would be Command and Shift on the
| | 03:36 | Mac--and click on the bottom
blue shape in order to select it.
| | 03:40 | Now we have both shapes selected. You can
go ahead and release the keys, switch back
| | 03:44 | to the Shape Builder tool.
| | 03:46 | And notice that we now have few intersecting
areas going on, little more than we had before.
| | 03:51 | I am going to zoom on in, because we have,
in my case--again, your results are going
| | 03:55 | to be different--but in my case I
have these little slivers right there.
| | 04:00 | I'll start by dragging diagonally across the
three central areas of intersection, and that's
| | 04:06 | going to leave a couple of wedges behind.
| | 04:09 | At this point I have to decide whether I
want to keep them or not. Let's say I do.
| | 04:12 | I will just go ahead and drag, like so,
inside that little guy to add it, and then I will
| | 04:18 | drag inside this little one to add it as well.
| | 04:21 | And now I have just 1 path, as is evident here inside
the Layers panel. That's exactly what I want of course.
| | 04:27 | Now I will press the R key to switch back
to the Rotate tool, and I'll press the Alt
| | 04:32 | key or the Option key on the Mac and click
at the intersection of those guidelines again.
| | 04:38 | This time I will enter an Angle value of 180
degrees, because I want to Rotate the cross
| | 04:42 | shapes all the way, like so. And I was able
to preview that affect, because Preview is
| | 04:47 | turned on, and I press the
Tab key to accept the value.
| | 04:50 | Then click in the Copy button
in order to copy those shapes.
| | 04:54 | Now I'll press the Ctrl and Shift keys again--
that would be Command+Shift on the Mac--and
| | 05:00 | click in that other blue shape, the one
that's deselected, in order to select everything.
| | 05:06 | Now we are going to go back to the Shape
Builder tool, and I want you to drag, like so--
| | 05:10 | notice we've got a lot of intersections, again.
We've got this little one right there, this little
| | 05:15 | one, this one down here, this one down here.
| | 05:18 | So couple of different ways we could work,
one is you can just go ahead and drag across
| | 05:24 | like I showed you, but you are going to
leave some fragments behind, which you might not
| | 05:28 | want to do, because that's going
to involve a bunch more dragging.
| | 05:31 | Or I will press Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z
on the Mac, to undo that modification.
| | 05:36 | You can press and hold the Shift key and
just kind of marquee around everything that you
| | 05:41 | want to include, like so, this is a really
great technique associated with this tool.
| | 05:46 | And that will go ahead and
join everything at once.
| | 05:49 | And again, I can see that I have just one
path outline, which is what I'm looking for
| | 05:54 | here inside the Layers panel.
| | 05:56 | Now I will go ahead and
zoom out--maybe not that far.
| | 05:59 | And I will press Ctrl+Shift+A, or Command+Shift+A
on the Mac, in order to deselect artwork,
| | 06:04 | and you can see that we have this
wonderfully intricate, symmetrical cross shape.
| | 06:08 | In the next exercise, we will begin
building out this green shape right here, which is
| | 06:13 | going to help to define the cross.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Subtracting with the Shape Builder| 00:00 | In this movie, we will design part of one of
these green shapes that surrounds the flowers
| | 00:05 | and so forth, and along the way I will show
you how to subtract one shape from another
| | 00:09 | using the Shape Builder tool.
| | 00:10 | I have saved my progress as Full blue cross.ai.
| | 00:14 | I am going to zoom in, in this upper-right-
hand region, and I'll also twirl open the Drawing
| | 00:20 | layer just so that I can see my cross, and I
will go ahead and rename it cross, and then
| | 00:25 | I'll turn it off, so I can
better see what I am doing.
| | 00:28 | We are going to be designing just an eighth
of this thing, just this region right here,
| | 00:34 | because otherwise we can flip and rotate to
create the rest of the design, but we are
| | 00:39 | going to have to be a little
more careful this time around.
| | 00:42 | So here is how I recommend you work.
Go ahead and get the Blob brush.
| | 00:46 | Then I'll increase the size of my cursor quite
a bit here so that I can basically draw around
| | 00:53 | here to draw that kind of rounded shape, and
I'm cutting through the center of this black
| | 00:59 | that's here, because the black
will be represented by a stroke.
| | 01:03 | Now I am going to reduce the size of my
cursor and paint up beyond this diagonal edge so
| | 01:08 | that we can eventually repeat
whatever we draw on the other side.
| | 01:12 | Now I am going to reduce the size of my
cursor further and sort of paint down like that,
| | 01:17 | and then in and over into this area.
| | 01:21 | Now I'll go ahead and switch to my Eraser
tool--and you may remember that I changed
| | 01:25 | the keyboard shortcut to E a few movies back--
and I will just go ahead and click right there
| | 01:30 | at this location with a larger cursor however, in
order to just kind of cut around area out of there.
| | 01:36 | All right! I might cut a little bit out of
this as well and then press the B key to
| | 01:42 | switch back to the Blob
Brush and paint in like this.
| | 01:46 | And so I am just kind of painting incrementally
and trying to be a little bit careful as I
| | 01:50 | go so that I can preserve some of
these interesting details here.
| | 01:54 | You don't have to slavishly
trace away, by the way.
| | 01:57 | You can make your own decisions.
| | 01:59 | Press the E key to switch back to the Eraser
tool and paint that part away, like so.
| | 02:04 | Maybe paint it actually even farther in,
because that is going to be stroked.
| | 02:10 | Then I will switch back by pressing the B
key--I'll switch back to the Blob brush--and
| | 02:14 | in this case I am just going to kind of paint
over this area, because we are going to subtract
| | 02:17 | an ellipse out of that region
in order to complete that shape.
| | 02:21 | I will paint up beyond the halfway mark right
there, and then I will paint down and around
| | 02:27 | and make sure that I've
painted in that entire gloop.
| | 02:30 | Now I need to be able to see the imagery below.
| | 02:33 | So I am going to go up to the View menu and
switch to the Outline mode again, keyboard
| | 02:37 | shortcut Ctrl+Y, Command+Y on the Mac.
| | 02:39 | A point I want to make here is even though
we are switching to the Outline mode and our
| | 02:43 | paths are appearing as outlines--and if I
were to bring back the Tiles layer by clicking
| | 02:48 | in front of it, notice it's got a hollow eye now,
indicating that we're seeing the layer in the Outline mode--
| | 02:55 | we can still see the image, and that's because
we converted it to a tracing template in the
| | 03:00 | previous chapter. And that's what I meant
about a tracing template being persistent.
| | 03:04 | You can always see it, even
in this Outline mode here.
| | 03:08 | Now I want to draw an ellipse.
| | 03:09 | So I am going to go ahead and switch to the
Ellipse tool, so I click and hold on the current
| | 03:15 | shape tool occupant there, and then
select the Ellipse tool from the flyout menu.
| | 03:19 | Now, I don't really have anything to align to
inside of the illustration at this location anyway.
| | 03:24 | I am going to go ahead and turn on my Smart
Guides by going to the View menu and choosing
| | 03:29 | the Smart Guides command or pressing Ctrl+U,
or Command+U on the Mac, and I should be able
| | 03:35 | to find a center point.
| | 03:37 | So I should be able to align my cursor
so I see this green vertical line.
| | 03:40 | I am aligned to the center of something anyway.
| | 03:43 | Let me go ahead and move my cursor
back in to position and see what it is.
| | 03:46 | So it's telling me that I'm aligned to these
anchor points, I suppose, or more likely to
| | 03:52 | the center of the tile, which is
good news. That's exactly what I want.
| | 03:56 | I'll go ahead and move my cursor to about
this location, so I'm in the center of this
| | 04:01 | elliptical area, and I will begin dragging,
and then I will press the Alt key or the Option
| | 04:05 | key on the Mac, in order to draw
the ellipse from the center outward.
| | 04:09 | You don't want to press the spacebar in order
to modify the alignment, because if you do,
| | 04:13 | I will show you what will happen
if you can't get this guy centered.
| | 04:16 | If you end up drawing the shape in an un-centered
position like this, what you will have to do
| | 04:21 | to recenter it is switch back to the Black
Arrow tool and drag the center point up until
| | 04:27 | it snaps into alignment, like so,
with the intersection of those tiles.
| | 04:32 | And then you can drag it back into position
while pressing the Shift key in order to properly
| | 04:37 | align it so that it's exactly
centered where it needs to be.
| | 04:40 | Now I am going to switch to the White Arrow
tool, which I can get by pressing the A key.
| | 04:44 | I'll click off the shape, and then I will
click on that bottom anchor point right there
| | 04:47 | to select it, and I'm going to drag that guy
up while pressing the Shift key, just to kind
| | 04:53 | of deform the ellipse so that I
get a little bit of lift out of it.
| | 04:58 | Now I want to subtract this
shape from the larger shape.
| | 05:02 | So, I'll switch back to the Black Arrow tool,
and I'll marquee the two shapes or at least
| | 05:06 | partially marquee them, so they are both
selected, and then I will grab my Shape Builder tool
| | 05:11 | and as you know, if you drag over these
shapes, you are going to fuse them together.
| | 05:14 | That's not what I want,
I want to subtract them.
| | 05:16 | So I'm going to press and hold the Alt key
or the Option key on a Mac, and notice when
| | 05:20 | I do, the plus sign that we normally see
with this cursor changes to a minus sign.
| | 05:26 | With the Alt or Option key down, just go ahead
and drag into those first intersecting areas,
| | 05:31 | like so, in order to subtract that area away.
| | 05:35 | And then if you want to, you can add a little
bit more filigree using the likes of the Blob
| | 05:38 | brush and Eraser, for example.
| | 05:40 | So I'll reduce the size of my cursor, and
just kind of drag up like that into that region,
| | 05:46 | and then I might switch to the Eraser tool
by pressing the E key and possibly just click
| | 05:52 | right about there with a cursor of the
proper size, maybe drag up a little bit as well.
| | 05:57 | I just want to make sure we have as much
sculpting as possible around these areas, because that's
| | 06:03 | going to make for a better looking effect.
| | 06:05 | And then I'll increase the size of my cursor
and click about there as well, and you should
| | 06:11 | see a shape that looks
something along these lines.
| | 06:15 | Again, as always let your creative passions guide
you. You don't have to do exactly what I'm doing.
| | 06:20 | Now I am going to go back to the View menu
and switch to the Preview mode so that I can
| | 06:26 | see what I've come up with so far.
| | 06:28 | I want to go ahead and assign
some Fill and Stroke attributes.
| | 06:31 | So click on this first swatch here in the
Control panel and select green as the fill
| | 06:35 | color, and then I will click on this down
pointing arrowhead to the right of the word
| | 06:39 | Stroke and change it to 2 points.
| | 06:42 | And then finally, I want to
get rid of these harsh corners.
| | 06:44 | So, I am going to click on the word Stroke.
| | 06:46 | That will bring up this pop-up panel here.
| | 06:48 | Notice this Corner option, I want you to
change it to Round Join, and then I will just go
| | 06:54 | ahead and click off to hide that panel.
| | 06:57 | So far so good! We have got ourselves
one-eighth of this blobby thing drawn.
| | 07:01 | In the next movie, we will flip and rotate the shape
in order to create something fairly extraordinary.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Assigning colors with the Shape Builder| 00:00 | In this movie we're going to take this one-eighth
of the green design, and we're going
| | 00:04 | to reflect it and rotate it and fuse the whole
thing together in order to complete the shape.
| | 00:10 | But before we do, I thought we would add an
additional element here just to make things
| | 00:13 | even more interesting, and that'll give me
a chance to show you how to control colors
| | 00:18 | when you're using a Shape Builder tool.
| | 00:20 | So I'll save my progress as One green blob.ai,
and I am going to press Ctrl+Y, or Command+Y
| | 00:26 | on a Mac, to switch to the Outline mode.
| | 00:28 | You can also choose Outline
from the View menu if you prefer.
| | 00:32 | And then I'm going to switch to the White
Arrow tool, and I am going to click on this
| | 00:35 | anchor point right there, and I am
just going to drag it in a little bit.
| | 00:40 | And I am going to move this Handle outward,
and this is one of those control handles that
| | 00:45 | I demonstrated way back
in the Line Art chapter.
| | 00:48 | Now let's say I want to add something that's
not part of the original image, but I want
| | 00:52 | to add a little sort of hook
coming out from this location.
| | 00:56 | So I'll go ahead and click off the path
outline to deselect it, and then I'll switch to the
| | 01:01 | Blob tool, which I can
get by pressing B key now.
| | 01:04 | And I am just going press the D key in
order to establish the default colors.
| | 01:10 | So D for Default, will switch you to a white
fill and a black stroke, and the Blob tool will
| | 01:16 | go for that stroke, by the way, it'll
create something black as we'll see.
| | 01:20 | So I'm just going to pain sort of a slim line
like this coming out from this location, and
| | 01:26 | I'm taking a couple of steps
here and painting back and forth.
| | 01:31 | This actually looks pretty darn good.
| | 01:33 | I managed to create something right away that
I like, but if I wanted to cut some more out
| | 01:37 | of it, I could switch to the Eraser
tool by pressing my shortcut of the E key.
| | 01:42 | And then I can click-right about there to sculpt
a little more out with this very large brush.
| | 01:48 | Now let's say I want to
join these guys together.
| | 01:49 | I will switch back to the Black Arrow tool,
and I'll press Ctrl+Y, or Command+Y on a Mac,
| | 01:55 | in order to switch to the Preview mode.
| | 01:57 | And you can see that we've got two
different color schemes going on.
| | 02:01 | I have got one shape with
the black fill no stroke.
| | 02:04 | I have got another shape that's
got a black stroke and a green fill.
| | 02:08 | What happens when I join the two together
using Shape Builder tool? I'll go ahead and
| | 02:12 | grab that tool, and then I'll drag down, like so,
and the entire thing ends up turning black,
| | 02:19 | which is of course a big disappointment.
| | 02:22 | Here's what's happening. The Shape Builder
tool by default is always going after the
| | 02:26 | Active swatch, and let me
show you how to address that.
| | 02:29 | I'll press Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z
on a Mac, to undo that change.
| | 02:33 | One thing you can do is double-click on
Shape Builder icon here in the toolbox, and then
| | 02:37 | you can see that it's picking
colors from the Color Swatches.
| | 02:40 | So you can turn on the Cursor Swatch Preview
if you like, that way you can control what
| | 02:45 | swatch you are working with, then click OK.
| | 02:48 | And now I see those tiny
little swatches above the cursor.
| | 02:52 | If I press the Right arrow key, I
can eventually advance to green.
| | 02:56 | And now, if I drag let's say I start at the
bottom here and drag up, then I'll keep the
| | 03:01 | green fill, but I lost the stroke.
| | 03:04 | Well, there's a better way to work, so I'll
go ahead press Ctrl+Z Command+Z on a Mac,
| | 03:08 | in order to undo that change.
| | 03:10 | Again, double-click on the Shape Builder icon
here in the toolbox, and rather than picking
| | 03:15 | colors from the Color Swatches--which is also
a bad idea if you don't really have all your
| | 03:20 | colors set up with swatches--
| | 03:22 | then go ahead and lift the color from the
Artwork, and then click OK, and now notice,
| | 03:28 | if I drag from this black shape in, I will
change everything the black with no stroke.
| | 03:34 | However, obviously, that's not what I want.
| | 03:36 | So I'll press Ctrl+Z, Command+Z on the Mac.
| | 03:39 | If you drag from the green shape with a
black stroke out, like so, you'll keep the green
| | 03:45 | fill on the black stroke, so it's all
determined by where you start the drag.
| | 03:50 | Now let's do the Reflecting and Rotating.
| | 03:52 | I'll go ahead and zoom out a bit here, and
I am going to press Ctrl+Y, or Command+Y on
| | 03:57 | a Mac, to switch back to the Outline mode.
| | 04:00 | And I am going to click and hold on Rotate
tool and select the Reflect tool instead,
| | 04:05 | which has a keyboard shortcut of O, which is of
course, the most symmetrical letter there is.
| | 04:09 | And then I'll Alt-click or Option-click
right there at the intersection of these tiles.
| | 04:14 | In order to display the Reflect dialog box,
I want a Vertical axis so I will go ahead
| | 04:18 | and select Vertical that Reflects the
shape Horizontally, and I'll click Copy.
| | 04:24 | Now we want to grab both of the shapes, so
I am going to press the Ctrl key or the
| | 04:28 | Command key on a Mac, and partially marquee
through them, like so. And that will go ahead
| | 04:32 | and select both of them by virtue of the fact
that the Control or Command key goes ahead
| | 04:37 | and gets you the last
chose Arrow tool on the fly.
| | 04:40 | And when I release the Command or
Ctrl key, I'm back to the Reflect tool.
| | 04:44 | So once again, Alt-click or Option-click at the
very same location, and this time I'll select
| | 04:50 | a Horizontal axis--so I flip the shapes upward--
and I click the Copy button in order to create
| | 04:56 | a total of four copies of the shape now.
| | 04:59 | Then finally, I'll press the Ctrl key or the
Command key on a match in order to temporarily
| | 05:04 | access that Black Arrow tool.
| | 05:05 | I'll marquee through the shapes again just
partially, in order to select all of them.
| | 05:11 | And this time I need the Rotate tool, so I'll
click and hold on the Reflect tool icon, switch
| | 05:15 | back to the Rotate tool, or I
could have pressed the R key.
| | 05:19 | Notice that that Reference Point target
appears exactly in the center of the shapes, which
| | 05:23 | is exactly what we want.
| | 05:25 | So this time all I have to do is double-click
on the Rotate tool icon in the toolbox, set
| | 05:30 | the angle to 90 degrees, and then click on the Copy
button, and we've created all the shapes we need.
| | 05:37 | One more thing to do here, I'll go and press
Ctrl+Y, or Command+Y on a Mac, to switch back
| | 05:42 | to the Preview mode.
| | 05:44 | And as opposed to marqueeing with a Black
Arrow tool, which actually I don't need to
| | 05:48 | do, all I have to do is go up to the select
Similar Objects icon in the Control panel
| | 05:52 | and click on it, and that
will select all of the shapes.
| | 05:55 | And now, we will fuse them together by
grabbing the Shape Builder tool, and then I want you
| | 06:00 | to press the Shift key and go ahead and
marquee through the central portion of the shapes,
| | 06:05 | like so, and that should
give you one unified shape.
| | 06:09 | Let's go ahead and make sure that's the case
by twirling up in this Drawing layer, and sure
| | 06:13 | enough I have this one and only one path.
| | 06:17 | And I am going to go ahead and name it green,
because after all it is the green shape.
| | 06:21 | Now I will turn on the cross so that we can
see it as well, and I will back out--perhaps
| | 06:26 | not that far--and I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A,
or Command+Shift+A on the Mac, in order to
| | 06:31 | deselect the Illustration.
| | 06:33 | It occurs to me that I made a mistake, this
cross should not have a three-point stroke,
| | 06:38 | I want to change it to a two-point stroke.
| | 06:41 | So I'll Ctrl-click on it, or Command-click
on it in order to select it, and then notice
| | 06:46 | I have completely the wrong
information up here in the Control panel.
| | 06:49 | It's telling me I have a green fill
and the stroke is already 2 points.
| | 06:53 | I'm showing you this deliberately, because
that's another problem with the Shape Builder
| | 06:57 | tool, it doesn't show you what's been applied
to the selected shape, it shows you what the
| | 07:03 | tool will apply to that shape.
| | 07:05 | If you want to change the fill or stroke,
you have to switch back to some other tools,
| | 07:09 | such as the Black Arrow tool, then
you'll see a blue fill and a three-point stroke.
| | 07:14 | Let's go ahead and reduce the Line Weight to two
points and then click off the shape to deselect it.
| | 07:19 | And we have our most complicated shapes, folks. The
big green wacky shape there, the big blue cross.
| | 07:26 | In the next movie, we will
begin work on the flower ornament.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reflecting across an angled axis| 00:00 | In this movie, we will draw one of these
flower ornaments, and that will give me a chance
| | 00:04 | among other things to show you how to
reflect paths across an angled axis.
| | 00:09 | In other words, an axis that is neither
horizontal nor vertical. And this is a heck of a trick.
| | 00:14 | All right, I have saved my progress as
Complete green shape.ai, and I am going to go ahead
| | 00:20 | and zoom in on this lower right region of
this big green shape, and then I'll press
| | 00:25 | Ctrl+Y, or Command+Y on the Mac, to switch to the
outline mode so that we can better trace this flower.
| | 00:31 | Now we are going to start with a
rearmost shapes then work out way forward.
| | 00:34 | All right I'm going to start by selecting
the Blob brush, and notice this brown sort
| | 00:39 | of gird to the flower ornament, and then
we have this little bit of green over here.
| | 00:42 | Well, I don't want to add the green.
I want it all to be part of one shape.
| | 00:46 | So I am going to begin by dragging out here,
like so, and then drag past the diagonal line,
| | 00:52 | but we don't need to drag too far past it
because we want this to be a symmetrical shape,
| | 00:57 | and then I'll drag from this location here,
and then down and around, like so, and then
| | 01:03 | cut back up, and then go ahead and
finish off this particular shape.
| | 01:07 | And if I wanted to add a little bit of heft
to it, I could press the E key, my keyboard
| | 01:12 | shortcut for the Eraser tool.
| | 01:14 | And I could increase the size of the cursor
and paint like so, in order to give it just
| | 01:19 | a little bit of sort of extra sway.
| | 01:21 | All right, now I will press Ctrl+Shift+A, or
Command+Shift+A on the Mac, to deselect that path.
| | 01:27 | Press the B key--again my keyboard shortcut--
to switch back to the Blob brush, and I will
| | 01:32 | paint in this guy. He's pretty easy actually.
| | 01:35 | So just have to paint a couple of brushstrokes,
and then paint it on, and the rest will be
| | 01:40 | covered up by the flower, and
this blue thing and so forth.
| | 01:43 | Then press Ctrl+Shift+A, Command+Shift+A on the
Mac, to deselect that path and start painting
| | 01:48 | in this guy. I have gone way too high.
So I am going to try again.
| | 01:52 | I will press Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z on a Mac,
and then paint inward, like so, and then I
| | 01:56 | can paint into the flower
shape, because that'll cover it up.
| | 01:59 | And I will paint down and that's looks
pretty good. It comes a little high, but again,
| | 02:04 | we don't have to slavishly trace everything.
| | 02:07 | This time I'm going to kind of plough into
this region, like so, and I'll back it off
| | 02:12 | a little bit with the Eraser in just a moment.
| | 02:14 | And then I'll paint in like so, in order
to fill in these details, and I'll increase
| | 02:19 | the size of my cursor and then paint around
past the line--the diagonal line that is--reduce
| | 02:26 | the size of my cursor, and then paint that area away.
| | 02:29 | All right now, I am going to press E key to
switch to the Eraser tool, reduce the size
| | 02:33 | of my cursor so it fits right inside of there,
and just click and sort of drag my way out
| | 02:39 | and see what I come up with.
| | 02:40 | And I kind of like that. That will work.
| | 02:42 | Aright press Ctrl+Shift+A, or Command+Shift+
A on the Mac, to deselect, then press the B
| | 02:46 | key to switch back to the Blob tool, increase
the size of the cursor, just click there and
| | 02:51 | then click and drag a little bit there in
order to flesh out that flower shape, and
| | 02:57 | then I'll paint down into this region, then
up like so, and that looks like that will
| | 03:03 | be just the dandiest flower ever.
| | 03:05 | Press Ctrl+Shift+A, or Command+Shift+A to
deselect, reduce the size of the cursor, and
| | 03:10 | paint straight across for
that central yellow thing.
| | 03:14 | All right, now we need to
assign some fills and strokes.
| | 03:16 | So I will press Ctrl+Y, or Command+Y on a
Mac, to switch back to the Preview mode.
| | 03:20 | I will press the V key to switch to the Black
Arrow tool, and I'll click on this shape that
| | 03:26 | thing that I was calling the skirt, and I'll
Shift-click on this one, which is the flower
| | 03:31 | outline, as they both have the same fill.
| | 03:33 | Then I will go to Fill icon, here in the
Control panel, click on it, and switch to Brown.
| | 03:38 | Aright next, as long as I am here I will go
ahead and click and the first click, by the
| | 03:42 | way, will just hide the panel, the second
click will actually go ahead and select the
| | 03:47 | object--in this case the center in the flower.
| | 03:49 | Then I will click on the Fill icon up there
in the Control panel and switch it to yellow,
| | 03:54 | click off to hide the panel, click on this
guy, he wants to be blue, and so I'll click
| | 03:58 | in the Fill swatch and then click on Blue.
| | 04:01 | In order to change the color, click off, click
again on this thing that I want to be dark blue.
| | 04:06 | Click on the Fill swatch up here in the Control
panel and select Deep Blue from this Swatch list.
| | 04:11 | All right, that takes care just
about everything except the strokes.
| | 04:15 | Everybody needs a stroke so I will press Ctrl+Y,
Command+Y in a Mac, to switch back to the Outline mode.
| | 04:20 | And the reason I'm doing is because I want
to be able to marquee these shapes, like so.
| | 04:24 | So I am going to select them all by
just marqueeing partially around them.
| | 04:28 | I don't want to select the big
green path. That would be a mistake.
| | 04:31 | All right now I will press Ctrl+Y to switch
back to the Preview mode. And see, the thing
| | 04:35 | is I couldn't marquee these shapes unless I
was in the Outline mode, because if I tried,
| | 04:40 | I would have gone selected the big green
shape and dragged it to a new location.
| | 04:44 | All right now, I will click the down-
pointing arrowhead next to Stroke and change and
| | 04:48 | change the Line away to 1 pt.
| | 04:50 | Alright, now to reflect these flower shapes,
I am going to zoom out a little bit here,
| | 04:54 | scroll down, press Ctrl+Y, or Command+Y on the Mac,
so I can see the intersection of those tiles.
| | 04:59 | Click and hold on your Rotate tool
icon and select the Reflect tool instead.
| | 05:04 | You can Alt-click or Option-click anywhere
along this diagonal line, and when you do that
| | 05:08 | will bring up the Reflect dialog box.
| | 05:10 | Now in my case, Illustrator wants to go
ahead and reflect these shapes across a vertical
| | 05:14 | axis, meaning it is going to
perform a Horizontal flip.
| | 05:18 | That's not what I want at all.
| | 05:19 | I want to reflect across this diagonal axis.
| | 05:21 | Well, what is the angle of that axis? You can
see I have an Angle value, but the question
| | 05:25 | is what is it? Well, horizontal is 0 degrees.
| | 05:30 | Now I was telling you positive angle
values go in a counter-clockwise direction.
| | 05:34 | So this diagonal line would be 45
degrees, this diagonal line is -45 degrees.
| | 05:41 | So just go ahead and change the Angle value
to -45 and press the Tab key, and if you have
| | 05:46 | Preview turned on, you'll see those
shapes flip in exactly the right direction.
| | 05:51 | And that's why Illustrator talks to us in
terms of the axis, because you can change the
| | 05:57 | angle of the reflect axis to anything you want.
| | 06:00 | Then click the Copy button in
order to copy those shapes.
| | 06:03 | All right, now let's
zoom back in on these guys.
| | 06:06 | Now we need to start combining these
shapes using the Shape Builder tool.
| | 06:09 | And this is going to get pretty gnarly.
| | 06:10 | We are going to end up with a lot of fragments.
| | 06:12 | So I'll go ahead and twirl open my Drawing
layer, you can see that we have an awful lot
| | 06:16 | of shapes that we will need to work with.
| | 06:18 | And I'll show you exactly how we are
going to address them in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Cleaning up Shape Builder leftovers| 00:00 | In this movie we are going to fuse the halves
of the flowers together using the Shape Builder
| | 00:04 | tool, and that's going to leave a bunch of
fragments behind every single time we do it.
| | 00:09 | So I'm going try to give you some guidance
on how to deal with that, because it can get
| | 00:13 | a little bit confusing.
| | 00:14 | I've saved my changes as Half flower shapes.ai,
and note here in the Layers panel I've twirled
| | 00:20 | open the Drawing layer, and we basically
have all of our new flip shapes, the duplicates
| | 00:25 | on top, and then all of
the originals down below.
| | 00:29 | What we need is for the pairs to be together.
| | 00:33 | So I'm going to go ahead and drag this path
that represents the center and move it up
| | 00:37 | to the other yellow path, and then I will grab
this brown path right there, which represents
| | 00:43 | this half of the flower--go ahead and click
off the shape to deselect them--and then click
| | 00:47 | on this guy, and you can see, there it is.
| | 00:49 | It needs to be under its similar blob right
there at the other half of the flower, and
| | 00:55 | then the dark blue shape should be
under the other dark blue shape.
| | 00:58 | The two light blue shapes should be together,
although that's not quite as important, and
| | 01:02 | then these two sort of brown skirt shapes
should be together as well, and that's just
| | 01:07 | going to save us all a lot of frustration.
Let's start at the top.
| | 01:11 | I will just meatball, because it's easier to
see what's going on here inside the layers
| | 01:15 | panel than out here in the illustration.
| | 01:17 | I will click on the meatball for this yellow
path, and then Shift-click on the meatball
| | 01:21 | for the other yellow path,
so they're both selected.
| | 01:24 | Then I'll go ahead and grab my Shape Builder
tool, and I will drag across them, like so.
| | 01:30 | And that goes ahead and leaves a couple of
fragments down below, and we can see those
| | 01:33 | fragments very easily now
here inside the Layers panel.
| | 01:37 | Had we not taken a moment to organize these
objects ahead of time, they'd be all over the place.
| | 01:41 | So now we know these two need to
go, but this one needs to stay.
| | 01:45 | So I'll Shift-click on its
meatball to deselect it.
| | 01:48 | These two bad paths remain selected, so I
will press the Backspace key on the PC or
| | 01:53 | the Delete key on the Mac, to get rid of them.
| | 01:55 | Let's meatball this shape, and then Shift+
meatball this one so they're both selected.
| | 01:59 | I still have my Shape Builder tool selected,
I will just drag across them, like so. Does
| | 02:04 | that leave any fragments this time? It doesn't.
| | 02:07 | Yay! Go ahead and click on this meatball to
select it and Shift-click on the meatball
| | 02:11 | for the other blue path, so both dark blue
paths are selected and drag across them with
| | 02:16 | the Shape Builder tool to fuse them together.
| | 02:18 | That does leave some garbage.
| | 02:20 | So I'll Shift-click on the meatball for the
blue shape, obviously that's the one we want
| | 02:24 | to keep, these two remain selected, press
the Backspace key or the Delete key on the
| | 02:28 | Mac, to get rid of them.
| | 02:29 | Now, these light blue shapes don't need to
be fused together, because they're far apart
| | 02:32 | from each other, but these guys do.
| | 02:35 | So meatball this one, Shift-meatball this
one in order to select the two, and then drag
| | 02:40 | across, like so, in order to unite them. That
leaves a lot a garbage in its wake, four paths,
| | 02:48 | so Shift-click on the meatball for the good
path, and then press the Backspace key or
| | 02:53 | the Delete key on the Mac,
to get rid of the bad ones.
| | 02:57 | All right, that takes care of it.
| | 02:58 | We now should have just six paths
representing the flower, the brown path at the bottom,
| | 03:03 | the two light blue paths on either side,
we've got the dark blue path, we've got the big
| | 03:08 | brown path that represents the flower itself,
and then the yellow path which represents
| | 03:11 | the inside of the flower.
| | 03:13 | I am now going to switch back to the Black
Arrow tool, and I am going to partially marquee
| | 03:17 | around these shapes, like so, taking care
to avoid either the big green path or that
| | 03:22 | big cross path either.
| | 03:24 | So you should see all six of these paths
with active meatballs and of course red squares
| | 03:28 | next to them as well, and both the path called
green and the one called cross should not be selected.
| | 03:34 | Now, go up to the Object menu and choose the
Group command or press Ctrl+G and Command+G
| | 03:38 | on the Mac, to group
those flower shapes together.
| | 03:42 | Double-click on the name of the Group, and let's
just call it flower so we know what's up here.
| | 03:46 | All right! Now, we could set in rotating
and create the other flowers, but we're going
| | 03:51 | to save ourselves some time if we go ahead
and create this guy first, a sort of loop de loop,
| | 03:54 | and we can do that of course
using the Blob brush.
| | 03:57 | So I will click off the shapes to deselect
them, I will select the Blob brush tool here
| | 04:01 | inside the toolbox, I will increase the size
of my cursor a little bit and just click right
| | 04:05 | there to begin the shape, and then I will
reduce the size of my cursor and drag around,
| | 04:10 | like so, in order to trace that shape,
about to that point right there.
| | 04:15 | Now, I am tracing obviously too far--we'll
deal with that problem in just a moment.
| | 04:19 | Let's go ahead and switch to the Reflect tool
once again, Alt-click or Option-click on that
| | 04:24 | horizontal guideline to
bring up the Reflect dialog box.
| | 04:27 | I am going to change the Angle of the Axis
to Horizontal, because this is a horizontal
| | 04:31 | axis, and then I will go ahead and click
Copy in order to create a copy of that shape.
| | 04:36 | Now, switch to the Black Arrow tool and Shift-
click on the first shape, like so, so that they're
| | 04:41 | both selected, switch to the Shape Builder
tool now, and let's go ahead and drag up,
| | 04:46 | like so, taking care not to get
those front two shapes right there.
| | 04:49 | We don't want them. These guys are out.
| | 04:52 | And note, we've got this path and two others.
| | 04:55 | Go ahead and Shift-click on the meatball
for the good path, which leaves the other two
| | 04:59 | selected, press the Backspace key or the
Delete key on the Mac, to get rid of them.
| | 05:02 | All right! Press Ctrl+Y, or Command+Y on the
Mac, in order to switch to the Preview mode.
| | 05:07 | Go ahead and switch back to the Black Arrow
tool, click on this path to select it--the
| | 05:12 | one we just created--let's change its fill
by clicking on the Fill swatch up here in
| | 05:16 | the Control panel, and I am going to switch
the fill to Deep olive, and then I am going
| | 05:20 | to click on the down-pointing arrowhead next
to Stroke, and I am going to change the Line
| | 05:25 | Weight to 1 point.
| | 05:27 | All righty then! Let's go ahead and zoom out
all the way and then zoom back in a little
| | 05:31 | bit so that we can take
in the entire green shape.
| | 05:36 | And I want to rotate these
guys around inside this region.
| | 05:39 | So I will press Ctrl+Y, or Command+Y on
the Mac, to switch to the Outline mode.
| | 05:43 | I will Shift-click on any one of the flower
shapes to select all of them, because they're
| | 05:46 | all part of a group.
| | 05:48 | Then I'll switch back to the Rotate tool.
| | 05:51 | So click and hold on the Reflect tool,
select the Rotate tool, Alt-click or Option-click
| | 05:55 | at the intersection of those tiles, like so.
I want to set the Angle value to 90 degrees,
| | 06:01 | press the Tab key.
| | 06:02 | That will indeed move the flowers and that
sort of curlicue guide to the right location.
| | 06:07 | Click on the Copy button.
| | 06:09 | And now at this point we can switch back to
the Preview mode, again, by pressing Ctrl+Y,
| | 06:13 | or Command+Y on the Mac, because we no longer need to
locate the exact center point. It's already there.
| | 06:17 | I will just press Ctrl+D a couple of times
here--that would be Command+D a couple of
| | 06:22 | times--in order to complete the design.
| | 06:26 | All right! Just one more thing. We've got
to put the brown shape in the middle, right
| | 06:30 | here, and if I press Ctrl+Y, or Command+Y
on the Mac, to switch back to the Outline
| | 06:36 | mode--this is the kind of stuff you do all
the time inside of Illustrator, if you haven't
| | 06:41 | already gotten that sense.
| | 06:42 | I will go ahead and zoom in here.
| | 06:44 | This thing is kind of an octagon actually and
can be represented quite nicely as an octagon.
| | 06:51 | So rather than messing around with the Blob
brush and the Eraser tool and all that jazz,
| | 06:55 | I am going to click and hold on the Shape
tool occupant here and switch to the Polygon
| | 06:59 | tool, and then I'll begin dragging outward
from this point, and in my case I am creating
| | 07:05 | a hexagon as by default.
| | 07:06 | So I will press the Up arrow key a couple of
times in order to switch it to an octagon,
| | 07:13 | and right about here is what I want.
| | 07:14 | So you can see that I'm
intersecting with the horizontal guideline.
| | 07:18 | I'm just dragging along that guideline
| | 07:20 | in order to create the shape. Let's go ahead
and press Ctrl+Y, or Command+Y on the Mac,
| | 07:25 | once again to switch back to the Preview mode,
and I will go ahead and switch back to the
| | 07:29 | Black Arrow tool here.
| | 07:31 | I need to change the fill for
this shape from Olive to Brown.
| | 07:37 | And then it needs to go behind these paths.
| | 07:40 | So I am going to press Ctrl+X, or Command+X
on a Mac, to cut that object to the clipboard,
| | 07:46 | and then I will just go ahead and click on
the outline of the big green shape, and I
| | 07:51 | will press Ctrl+F, or Command+F on the Mac,
to paste that new shape in front of it, and
| | 07:56 | then I will click off in
order to deselect the artwork.
| | 08:00 | And there we have it, folks.
| | 08:01 | We have the one object created here with
all the flowers, and the green curlicues and
| | 08:07 | the brown stuff in the middle.
| | 08:09 | All right! That takes care of the drawing.
All that's required now is that we go ahead
| | 08:13 | and duplicate these flowers.
| | 08:15 | And if we take a look at the final version
of the illustration, you will see that we
| | 08:18 | need flowers inside of the beige tiles, we
also need to fill out the flowers inside of
| | 08:22 | the light green tile, and we also of course
need to replicate all of these objects in
| | 08:29 | order to complete the symmetrical design, and
we will be doing all of that in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working in the Group Isolation mode| 00:00 | In this movie, we are going to complete our
design, which as you will see requires quite
| | 00:05 | a bit of transformation, as well as a
somewhat disciplined approach, and I will also show
| | 00:10 | you one last way to use the Shape Builder.
| | 00:12 | Now I have gone ahead and saved our progress
so far as Symmetrical flowers.ai, but we are
| | 00:17 | missing some elements.
| | 00:18 | If I switch over to the final version of the
document, which does look different, because
| | 00:23 | after all I created it independently, every time you
do this project, it's going to look somewhat different.
| | 00:28 | And I have gone ahead and turned off the grout
layer for a moment so we can see the design elements.
| | 00:33 | Notice that we still need to add a couple
of flowers to the beige tiles, and we also
| | 00:38 | need to add this collection of four flowers
to the green corner tile, and then we need
| | 00:43 | to duplicate every thing three
times in order to complete the design.
| | 00:48 | So let's get started.
| | 00:50 | I am going to zoom in on my document of
progress here, and armed with the Black Arrow tool,
| | 00:55 | I will go ahead and click on this upper right flower.
And because it's grouped, that selects the whole thing.
| | 01:01 | I will go and drag it up to this region,
doesn't really matter exactly where, and then I will
| | 01:05 | press the Alt key or the Option key
on the Mac, and drop it into place.
| | 01:09 | Now we need to rotate that flower 45 degrees,
so I will double-click on the Rotate tool,
| | 01:15 | enter an Angle value of 45 degrees, make sure the
Preview check box is turned on, looks great, click OK.
| | 01:21 | Now obviously it's not aligned properly, so
I will need my smart guides for this. I will
| | 01:25 | go up to the View menu and choose the
Smart Guides command and turn them on.
| | 01:30 | And then I will zoom in, and notice that there
is this anchor point right there, dead center
| | 01:35 | at the top of the flower.
| | 01:36 | I will press the V key to switch to the Black
Arrow tool, and I will drag this anchor point
| | 01:40 | upward until it snaps into alignment.
| | 01:43 | I should be able to see the word Intersect
and both the horizontal and vertical green
| | 01:48 | line, which is telling me I have moved this
point to the intersection of these tiles,
| | 01:53 | which is exactly what I want.
| | 01:54 | I will go and zoom back out, and I will press
Shift+ Down arrow twice, and then I will press
| | 01:59 | the down arrow key twice more.
| | 02:01 | And it really doesn't matter.
You can put this flower anywhere you want it.
| | 02:04 | This just happens to be
where I am putting mine.
| | 02:06 | All right, I will press Ctrl+Y, Command+Y on
the Mac, and of course, the flower doesn't
| | 02:10 | match the actual element in the photograph.
| | 02:13 | Of course, if you feel a burning desire to
draw that element, you can, but I feel like
| | 02:18 | the flower is a great substitute.
| | 02:19 | It's a lot easier to create as
well, since it's already done.
| | 02:22 | All right, now I will grab the Rotate tool
which I can get by press the R key of course,
| | 02:27 | and I will Alt-click at the intersection of
these tiles down here inside of the octagon,
| | 02:33 | and when I do, that will bring up the Rotate
dialog box. I want to change the Angle value
| | 02:37 | to -90, because I'm rotating in a clockwise
direction, therefore I need a negative value.
| | 02:43 | Turn the Preview check box on, looks great!
Click the Copy button this time in order to
| | 02:47 | create a copy of that flower.
| | 02:49 | All right now we need to move the
flowers over into the corner tiles.
| | 02:52 | Again, the corner tiles in the photograph do not
contain flowers, ours will however contain flowers.
| | 02:59 | So I'll switch back to the Black Arrow tool,
I will go ahead and grab this flower here,
| | 03:04 | and then drag it and press the Alt key or the
Option key on a Mac, and drop it into place.
| | 03:09 | That way I create a copy.
| | 03:11 | Now I will zoom in on this tile, and I will
go ahead and drag this top point once again,
| | 03:17 | at the top of the flower
anyway, sideways right now.
| | 03:20 | That I will drag it until it snaps into
alignment with the intersection of these tiles, and
| | 03:25 | then I will press Shift+Left arrow and maybe
the left arrow a couple more times in order
| | 03:30 | to nudge that flower into the desired location.
| | 03:33 | Now, I will go ahead and press
Ctrl+Y, or Command+Y on the Mac.
| | 03:36 | The problem is that this skirt here of the
flower leaks out too far, and these flowers
| | 03:42 | are actually really tight.
| | 03:44 | So if I start rotating them, they're going
to overlap each other, and I don't want that.
| | 03:49 | So instead, actually I think I will move this guy
one more click over by pressing the left arrow key.
| | 03:55 | Instead what we want to do is
shape build inside of this group.
| | 04:00 | So I am going to take advantage of something
known as the Group Isolation mode, and here
| | 04:04 | is how you get to it.
| | 04:06 | Using your Black Arrow tool, you double-click
on any one of these paths, and then you are
| | 04:11 | now isolated inside of this group, and you
can't modify anything outside the group, which
| | 04:16 | makes for a much less confusing
experience for this next operation.
| | 04:21 | All right now I am going to go over here to
my Shape tools and click and hold and then
| | 04:25 | select the Ellipse tool from the flyout menu,
and starting from this horizontal guideline,
| | 04:31 | I will press the Alt key or the Option key
on the Mac, and drag outward like so until
| | 04:37 | I surround about this region, looks actually
pretty good, and I will go ahead and release,
| | 04:42 | and I might nudge that over just a
little bit by pressing the right arrow key.
| | 04:46 | All right, so let's go ahead and send that guide
to back by right clicking on the shape and
| | 04:51 | then choosing Arrange and then choosing
Send to back, and that will just send it to the
| | 04:55 | back of the group, not to the back of the illustration,
because again, we are isolated inside this group.
| | 05:00 | All right, now I will go ahead and switch back
to the Black Arrow tool, and I will Shift-click
| | 05:05 | on this skirt shape right there to select it,
and then finally we will go to the Shape
| | 05:09 | Builder tool, and instead of dragging or Alt-
dragging or Option-dragging or any of that stuff, I
| | 05:15 | am just going to click inside of this
intersection right there just click. That's it.
| | 05:20 | Now in my case you will notice that that
central shape remains brown, if it turns white on
| | 05:25 | you, I will tell you how to
solve that problem in just a moment.
| | 05:28 | But in any case, that breaks everything apart.
| | 05:31 | All right, now I will twirl open this flower
item here inside the Layers panel, and I will
| | 05:36 | go ahead and scroll down, and you can see
we have got a bunch of selected paths here.
| | 05:41 | This guy, the middle one is
the only one we care about.
| | 05:43 | So Shift-click on it's meatball to deselect it,
that leaves the other one selected, press
| | 05:48 | the Backspace key or the Delete on the
Mac, in order to get rid of the excess.
| | 05:54 | Now we are going to fade
over to the Mac for a moment.
| | 05:56 | Because on this platform we encountered a different
experience, and let me show you what that looks like.
| | 06:01 | Right after I created the ellipse, Sent to
back, and selected both shapes, then I switch
| | 06:06 | over to the Shape Builder tool, and I click
inside that overlapping area, and it ends
| | 06:11 | up turning white on me, which is a pain in the neck,
but let me show you how to solve the problem.
| | 06:16 | You would still go ahead and twirl open the
flower inside the Layers panel, and then you
| | 06:21 | want to go ahead and scroll to the bottom,
you will Shift-meatball that central path,
| | 06:25 | the one that's white in this case.
| | 06:27 | Press the Delete key here on the Mac, or the
Backspace key on the PC--because you might
| | 06:31 | encounter this problem on the PC--in
order to get rid of the extra shapes.
| | 06:35 | The way you might figure you solve this problem
is you press the Command key here on the Mac,
| | 06:39 | or the Ctrl key on the PC and click on that
path in order to select it, and then you
| | 06:44 | go up here to the Control panel, and you click on the
fill, and you would switch it to Brown and nothing happens.
| | 06:51 | You even see the fill color changed to brown.
| | 06:53 | Well, that's just a function of the
way that Shape Builder tool works.
| | 06:57 | What you have to do is switch to some other tool, and
I recommend you switch back to the Black Arrow tool.
| | 07:03 | Then notice we see the
right fill color this time.
| | 07:06 | Go ahead and click on it and choose Brown,
and now you've changed the fill back to Brown
| | 07:11 | as it's supposed to be.
| | 07:12 | In which case press Command+Shift+A, or Ctrl+Shift+A
on the PC, in order to deselect your drawing.
| | 07:18 | All right at this point we are done.
| | 07:20 | To leave the Group Isolation mode, you just
press the Escape key. That's all you have
| | 07:25 | to do, and you are back to the
full version of the Illustration.
| | 07:29 | All right, I am going to switch back to my
Black Arrow tool, click anywhere on the flower
| | 07:33 | to select the entire thing, back out just a
little bit, press Ctrl+Y, or Command+Y on
| | 07:38 | the Mac, to enter the Outline mode, press
the R key to switch to the Rotate tool, press
| | 07:44 | the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac,
and click right there on that anchor point,
| | 07:50 | which represents the center of the tile.
| | 07:53 | And the last Angle value I had was -90 degrees.
| | 07:55 | That's just fine actually, so I will click
the Copy button in order to create the first
| | 08:00 | copy of the flower.
| | 08:01 | Now I will press Ctrl+Y, or Command+Y on the
Mac, so I can see the flowers in the Preview
| | 08:04 | mode, and I will press Ctrl+D twice in a row, that
would be Command+D twice on the row on the Mac.
| | 08:11 | All right, you know there is
one more item I want to add.
| | 08:13 | There was an interesting little sort of
element here in the center. I will press Ctrl+Y, or
| | 08:17 | Command+Y on the Mac, in order to see it here
inside of the image, and it looks like a kind
| | 08:23 | of star, and that's exactly what I
am going to use to create that shape.
| | 08:26 | So I will go ahead and switch from the
Ellipse tool to the Star tool, and I will drag from
| | 08:31 | the anchor point right there outward, like so,
create a five-point star by default anyway,
| | 08:36 | press the down arrow key to reduce the number
of points to four, and then I am just going
| | 08:40 | to drag along this horizontal guideline until I
create something that looks to be about the right size.
| | 08:44 | It's not the right angle, but I can't really
constrain it to the right angle at this moment,
| | 08:48 | so I will rotate it into place
after I release my mouse button.
| | 08:51 | And let's go ahead and give this guy a yellow
fill this time around, and then I will double-click
| | 08:57 | on the Rotate tool in order to bring up the
Rotate dialog box. I'll enter a value of 45
| | 09:01 | degrees, that looks great, click OK,
and we have all of our base shapes.
| | 09:06 | I will press Ctrl+Y, or Command+Y on
the Mac, in order to see them all.
| | 09:10 | Let's go ahead and back off here and make sure
that everybody is present and accounted for.
| | 09:15 | Now I promise we are going to finish off the
entire design, including the three duplicates
| | 09:20 | of all these stuff, but we are
running out of time in this movie.
| | 09:23 | So we will hit it in the next movie and also
show you how to group all of these items to
| | 09:26 | avoid as much chaos as possible.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Establishing hierarchy with groups| 00:00 | All right, gang! Now it's the moment of truth.
| | 00:03 | We're going to go ahead and collect all of
our objects into logical groups, and then
| | 00:07 | we're going to duplicate them in
order to finish off this design.
| | 00:10 | I have saved my work so far as Flowers everywhere.ai,
found as always inside the 08_painting folder.
| | 00:18 | And I'm going to press Ctrl+U, or Command+U
on a Mac, to turn off the Smart Guides so
| | 00:22 | we don't have a bunch of flashing onscreen.
| | 00:24 | First thing we need to get is all of these
green curlicue things, you need to bring them
| | 00:28 | to the top of the stack, so I'll select one,
and then I'll go up to this last icon in the
| | 00:33 | Control panel, Select Similar Objects,
click on it, that goes and selects all of these
| | 00:38 | dark green paths, and then I'll Shift-click
on the octagon in order to select it as well
| | 00:44 | and go up to the Object menu and choose to Group
command, or press Ctrl+G, or Command+G on a Mac.
| | 00:50 | Now why did I decide to Group these? Because
they belong together, and because they were
| | 00:54 | spread out all over the place
here inside the stacking order.
| | 01:00 | Next let's go ahead and grab these guys
over here, because the tile's layer is locked,
| | 01:04 | I don't have to worry about selecting anything
on that layer, so I'll just go ahead and marquee
| | 01:09 | these objects, and I'll press Ctrl+G, or
Command+G on the Mac, to group them as well.
| | 01:16 | And I'll name this group which is at the
top of the stack. I'll call it corner and
| | 01:19 | then press the Enter key or
the Return key on the Mac.
| | 01:22 | I could go ahead and name this other group
I just created as well, but it's not really
| | 01:25 | worth it, as we'll see.
| | 01:28 | Next we've got these two guys, this flower
and this one, and they have a certain logical
| | 01:32 | relationships to them, so I'm going to group
them together by pressing Ctrl+G, or Command+G
| | 01:37 | on the Mac, and then I'll double-click on
this group name here, and I'll rename them
| | 01:41 | extras, because they are extra flowers, and
I want to move them up the stack as well,
| | 01:46 | so they're not sitting there in the middle of
the other flowers, which one might reasonably
| | 01:51 | assume should be somehow grouped together.
| | 01:53 | So, I'll go ahead and click on one and Shift-
click on the other three, press Ctrl+G, or Command+G
| | 01:58 | on a Mac, in order to group them, and again,
I don't really feel like I need to name them.
| | 02:04 | Let's go ahead and Shift-click on the large
green path in order to add it to the selection,
| | 02:09 | Shift-click on one of these dark
green curlicues to select that group.
| | 02:14 | And then Shift-click on one of these flowers
out in the beige area to select them as well,
| | 02:19 | and let's go ahead and throw them into a group
by pressing Ctrl+G, or Command+G on the Mac.
| | 02:25 | And notice now, we have a new group, I'm
going to go ahead and call this one Quadrant, but
| | 02:30 | the larger point here is we've got groups
inside of groups inside of groups, and that's
| | 02:35 | a great idea when you're
working inside of Illustrator.
| | 02:39 | The more you can subdivide the pieces of a
complex Illustration, the easier it's going
| | 02:44 | to be to work with.
| | 02:45 | So, notice I can twirl open this quadrant
group, and now I'll just see four groups inside
| | 02:50 | of it, and then if I was wondering, gosh,
what's inside this item right there, I could
| | 02:55 | twirl it open, and I see there are two
flowers in this extra subgroup inside the quadrant
| | 03:00 | group, which is on the Drawing layer.
| | 03:02 | So, in other words, we have a
hierarchy associated with our artwork.
| | 03:05 | All right, I'll go ahead and twirl that item
closed, I'm going to press Ctrl+0, or Command+0
| | 03:11 | on a Mac, to zoom all the way out, then Ctrl+Plus, or
Command+Plus on the Mac, to zoom a little bit back in.
| | 03:16 | Shift-click on these flowers, so I've got
flowers over here on the right, which are
| | 03:20 | the corner flowers, and I also have the
quadrant group selected. Everything but the cross
| | 03:25 | should be selected however, and now we are
ready to replicate these objects. And the easiest
| | 03:31 | way to do that is to use the Rotate tool.
| | 03:34 | So I'll go ahead and select the Rotate tool
from the toolbox here, and then I'll Alt-click
| | 03:37 | at the intersection of the center guides,
and I want to make sure you get that cursor
| | 03:41 | exactly in place, then I'll Alt-click or Option-
click in order to display the Rotate dialog box.
| | 03:48 | The angle I'm looking for is 90 degrees. That
looks great, I'll click the Copy button, and
| | 03:54 | I create my first copy, and then I'll press
Ctrl+D, or Command+D on the Mac, twice in
| | 03:59 | a row in order to complete that design.
| | 04:02 | Now I'll switch back to my Black Arrow tool and
click off of the objects in order to deselect them.
| | 04:08 | And the result is a great looking symmetrical pattern
that we have managed to draw absolutely from scratch.
| | 04:15 | The only thing remaining--and I'm going to go
ahead and right-click inside of the document
| | 04:20 | window and choose Hide Guides in order to get rid
of them so we have a clear view of our artwork.
| | 04:25 | The only thing remaining--if you take a look
at the final version of the artwork, which
| | 04:29 | of course is a little bit different--is this
network of beveled edges that's showing up
| | 04:34 | both around the green portion of the design,
as well as around the individual tiles, and
| | 04:40 | I'll begin to show you how
that works in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Simulating beveled edges| 00:00 | Now frankly, these last two movies
go beyond the scope of this chapter.
| | 00:05 | However, they will give you sense not only for
the amazing amount of power that's available
| | 00:10 | to you inside of Illustrator, but also for the
kinds of the facts that we will be creating
| | 00:14 | in future courses.
| | 00:16 | So we are going to take our progress so far
which I have called Drawing complete.ai, and
| | 00:20 | we are going to turn it into this
final version of the Illustration.
| | 00:26 | So I went ahead and finalized the artwork I
have been creating in front of you, and if
| | 00:29 | I go ahead and zoom in here, you can see that
we have beveling around the green ornamental
| | 00:35 | elements, and I will show you have to do
that in this movie, and then we have highlights
| | 00:39 | and shadows around each one of the tiles, and
I'll show you how that works in the next movie.
| | 00:45 | I will go ahead and switch to our
progress file here, and I'm going to zoom in.
| | 00:49 | The thing about these green path
outlines is they are part of groups.
| | 00:54 | So if I already click on any one of them with
the Black Arrow tool, I would end up selecting
| | 00:58 | an entire group, and that's not what I want.
| | 01:00 | So I will press Ctrl+Shift+A, or Command+Shift+A
on the Mac, to deselect the item and instead
| | 01:06 | I will grab my White Arrow tool which I can
get by pressing the A key, and I will press
| | 01:11 | and hold the Alt key or the Option key on
the Mac, and then click on the outline of
| | 01:16 | any one of these green objects here and
what happens when you Alt-click or Option-click
| | 01:23 | with White Arrow tool is you select an path
outline inside of a group or other collection.
| | 01:30 | Then go up to the Control panel and click
on that final icon, Select Similar Objects,
| | 01:36 | to select all of the green path outlines.
| | 01:39 | Now I would like you to press Ctrl+H, or
Command+H on the Mac, to hide those selection edges
| | 01:44 | so we can see better what we are doing.
| | 01:46 | Go over to the Appearance panel by going up to the
Window menu and choosing the Appearance command.
| | 01:51 | And the Appearance panel is where you
collect things like fills and strokes and effects
| | 01:56 | and other attributes assigned to a path.
| | 01:59 | I want you to click on the Stroke item there
to make it active, and then drop down to this
| | 02:04 | icon in the bottom left
corner of the Appearance panel.
| | 02:08 | It says Add New Stroke. Go ahead and click
on it to add a second stroke to these paths,
| | 02:14 | which is entirely possible. You can add as
many fills and strokes as you want to your
| | 02:17 | paths inside Illustrator.
| | 02:20 | Then click on this stroke to make it active,
and click on its little Swatch icon right
| | 02:24 | there, and I want you to change the stroke
from black to white, and that will add just
| | 02:29 | this little bit of halo around each one of
the strokes, it's not actually going to print.
| | 02:34 | You are just seeing it very slightly on screen.
| | 02:37 | Here is where this gets interesting.
| | 02:39 | You want to make sure that stroke is selected,
I want you to go up to the Effect menu, choose
| | 02:44 | Distort & Transform, and then choose the
Transform command, and what that allows you to do is
| | 02:49 | move that stroke independently of any
other strokes assigned to the path.
| | 02:55 | And the first thing I want you to do inside
this dialog box is turn on the Preview check box,
| | 02:59 | so you can see what you are doing and click
on the word Horizontal below Move in order
| | 03:03 | to highlight the horizontal value and change
it to -1 point, and then press the Tab key,
| | 03:10 | and you'll see that we
get these highlight edges.
| | 03:12 | Then go ahead and click
OK to except that change.
| | 03:15 | Now that's a little bit over the top, so
click on the word Opacity below this Stroke, and
| | 03:21 | that will bring up the Opacity panel and
change the Opacity value to 50% in order to make
| | 03:27 | the strokes translucent.
| | 03:29 | Now let's go ahead and add one more.
| | 03:31 | Click on that stroke again to make it active--
the white stroke--and then instead of clicking
| | 03:36 | on the Add New Stroke icon down here in the
lower left corner, click on the little Page
| | 03:41 | icon in order to duplicate that
stroke and that will create a copy.
| | 03:46 | Now I want you to change the color of that
copy--so this stroke right here, the second
| | 03:50 | to top--I want you to click on
it's swatch and change it to brown.
| | 03:55 | Next, click on the word Transform in order
to redisplay the Transform panel, and we are
| | 04:01 | going to make some changes, turn on the
Preview check box, click on Horizontal to activate
| | 04:06 | that value and change the Horizontal value to 0,
then Tab to the Vertical value and change it to -1.
| | 04:14 | Press the Tab key, and we end up creating
this kind of brown edge here. Then click OK.
| | 04:19 | Now click on Opacity for the brown stroke,
and the first thing I want you to do is click
| | 04:26 | on the word Normal.
| | 04:28 | This brings up a list of Blend modes, and one
of the options is to burn the color into the
| | 04:33 | colors behind by switching that Blend mode to multiply,
and you'll see it darken things up quite nicely.
| | 04:40 | If you feel like you have gone a little too far
as I do, then back off the Opacity value to 35%.
| | 04:46 | Even though this produces this really cool
bevel effect, we have got a bit of a problem.
| | 04:52 | Notice that the white leaks out over the stroke
of the cross, and to me that doesn't look right.
| | 04:59 | So press Ctrl+H, or Command+H in the Mac to
bring back your selection edges, and then
| | 05:05 | press the V key in order to
switch to the Black Arrow tool.
| | 05:09 | Then press the Shift key so that you add to
the selection and click inside the blue cross
| | 05:15 | in order to select it as well.
| | 05:17 | So you have got all your green
shapes, and your blue cross selected.
| | 05:21 | Go up to the Edit menu and choose the Copy
command or press Ctrl+C, or Command+C on the Mac.
| | 05:28 | Now I want you to return to the Layers panel,
go ahead and twirl open the Drawing layer
| | 05:33 | and meatball the very top item, whatever it
is doesn't matter just go ahead and click
| | 05:38 | on its meatball to make it active and
from this vantage point, I can't see it.
| | 05:42 | It's located somewhere in the artwork.
| | 05:44 | As I say, it doesn't matter, go up to the
Edit menu and choose Paste in Front or press
| | 05:49 | Ctrl+F, or Command+F on the Mac, and that goes
ahead and pastes all those items on top of each other.
| | 05:55 | Now then what I want you to do is drop down
to the Shape Builder tool and select it, and
| | 06:01 | then just anywhere inside
the blue region of the cross.
| | 06:06 | Just click once and that's all we need.
| | 06:08 | Now you are going to have to sift through
your Layers panel here, scroll down the list
| | 06:12 | until you find the bottommost selected item which
looks like a skinny version of the blue cross.
| | 06:18 | It will be on top of that item that you
pasted everything in front of, and I want you to
| | 06:23 | Shift-click on its meatball to turn it off.
| | 06:27 | Then all this other stuff we want to
get rid of, everything else that's selected.
| | 06:30 | So just press the Backspace key or the
Delete key on the Mac, to make everything else go
| | 06:35 | away, if I press the V key in order to switch
back to my Black Arrow tool, and I click on
| | 06:40 | this Path right there, we now have this cross
shape that represents the portion of the blue
| | 06:45 | cross that was showing through
between all of the green elements.
| | 06:50 | Next I want you to go up to the Stroke panel--
and this is only to work if you have the Black
| | 06:53 | Arrow tool selected.
| | 06:54 | If you still have the Shape Builder tool
selected, then switch to the Black Arrow.
| | 06:59 | Click on the word Stroke up here in the
Ctrl panel and click that second corner option
| | 07:04 | Round Join, and that will go ahead and round
off those corners, and we now have the effect
| | 07:09 | we are looking for.
| | 07:10 | If I click off the shape, you can see it no
longer have those weird highlights leaking
| | 07:14 | into the cross shape.
| | 07:16 | So I will press Ctrl+0 in order to back out,
and then Ctrl+Plus a couple of times in order
| | 07:21 | to zoom back in. And that, friends, is how you create
the bevels around those green ornamental elements.
| | 07:27 | In the next and last movie, we will create
the highlights and shadows around the tiles.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a network of interlocking paths| 00:00 | In this final movie, I'll show you how to
create the highlights and shadows around each
| | 00:04 | and every one of the tiles.
| | 00:06 | I've save my progress as Bevel simulation.ai,
and there is one little thing I forgot to
| | 00:12 | change here. I'm going to click on this central blue
cross. We want the bevels to show through this path.
| | 00:19 | So go up to the Control panel, click on the
a Fill swatch, and go ahead and change it to
| | 00:23 | None, and that way now if I click off the
shape to deselect it, you can see little beveled
| | 00:28 | edges and shadow details
inside of that blue cross as well.
| | 00:34 | If you have your Drawing layer twirl open
go ahead and twirl it close, so we have a
| | 00:37 | little more room to work, click on the Tiles
layer to make it active, and then go up to
| | 00:42 | Layers panel flyout menu and choose
Duplicate Tiles to make a copy of it.
| | 00:48 | Then drag that copy to the top of the stack, like
so, and unlock it by clicking on its lock icon.
| | 00:55 | Now I'm also going to double-click an empty
region of this layer in order to bring up
| | 00:59 | the layer Options dialog box, and I'm going
to rename this layer Grout, and then I'm going
| | 01:04 | to change its color from Yellow to Green.
| | 01:09 | Doesn't really matter, I just wanted to be
something different, then I'll click OK, and
| | 01:13 | I'm going to turn off these layers here
by dragging along the eyeball column.
| | 01:18 | So Drawing, Tiles and the Image layer are
now turned off, and I'll click in the upper
| | 01:23 | right-hand corner of this grout layer in
order to select all the paths on the layer.
| | 01:28 | Then go up to the Object menu and choose the
Ungroup command, because currently these tiles
| | 01:32 | are arranged in two groups and that's
not really serving our purposes at all.
| | 01:38 | Then go up to the Fill swatch which will
show a question mark because all the shapes are
| | 01:42 | filled with different colors, click on it and
switch it to None so that we get rid of those fills.
| | 01:49 | Now here's an interesting use for the shape
builder tool, I'm going to go ahead and select
| | 01:54 | the tool from the toolbox.
| | 01:56 | We don't want a grout line at this location
right there, because after all this entire
| | 02:01 | square is one tile.
| | 02:04 | So we need to get rid of this little line
segment, and you do that by pressing the Alt
| | 02:09 | key or the Option key on the Mac, and
clicking on that anchor point there.
| | 02:13 | Then do the same for this little right-hand
anchor point, so Alt-click or Option-click
| | 02:17 | on it do the same thing for this upper
anchor point, I'll go ahead and scroll up to it,
| | 02:23 | you Alt-click or Option-click on it, and
then I'll go ahead scroll down to this one and
| | 02:28 | Alt-click or Option-click on it as well.
| | 02:31 | And so that way--we'll go
ahead and zoom out a little bit--
| | 02:34 | we have corner tiles that are
uninterrupted by grout lines.
| | 02:39 | Now I'll press the V key to switch back to
the black arrow tool, and I'm going to press
| | 02:43 | Ctrl+0 to go ahead and center the art board.
| | 02:47 | At this point we want to go ahead and add
multiple strokes to these lines, but we don't
| | 02:51 | want the strokes to interrupt each other.
| | 02:53 | That means that we need illustrator to treat
all of these paths, all 40 of them as a single
| | 02:59 | path outline, and you do that by going up
to the Object menu, choosing Compound Path,
| | 03:05 | and choosing Make.
| | 03:07 | Now if I twirl open the Grout layer, you can
see that I just have one path. It will share
| | 03:12 | a common system of strokes, and that way
the strokes won't interrupt each other.
| | 03:16 | All right now I'm going to press Ctrl+H, or
Command+H on the Mac, in order to hide the
| | 03:20 | selection I chose, and I'm going to go ahead
and zoom it a little, and then I'll switch
| | 03:24 | over to the Appearance panel, which is next
to the layers, but you could also go up to
| | 03:28 | the Window menu and
choose the Appearance Command.
| | 03:31 | Go ahead and click on this 3-point gray stroke
and then drop down to the bottom left corner
| | 03:36 | of the Appearance panel and click on the Add
New Stroke icon, and then I want you to click
| | 03:41 | on the second stroke down and click on its
color swatch and change it to black, and then
| | 03:47 | click on the down point arrowhead next to
the lightweight and change it to 4 point,
| | 03:52 | and you can see that were now creating strokes
around all of the strokes. That's because we've
| | 03:57 | a black stroke that thick with a
thinner gray stroke in front of it.
| | 04:03 | We need two more strokes in order to pull
off this affect, so drop down to that Add
| | 04:07 | New Stroke icon and click on it again, and
we're going to slightly offset the stroke
| | 04:12 | using the transform affect, so click on this
bottommost black stroke, and then go up to
| | 04:18 | the Effect menu choose Distort &
Transform and choose the Transform command.
| | 04:23 | Turn on the Preview check box so you can see
what you're doing, then click on a word Vertical
| | 04:27 | below Move in order to highlight that vertical
value, and change the value to -1, and we end
| | 04:34 | up creating these shadows then
click OK in order to accept the effect.
| | 04:39 | Now I want to duplicate this entire stroke,
so drop down to the little page icon at the
| | 04:43 | bottom of the panel and click on it, and then
click on this bottommost stroke--we keep going
| | 04:49 | down and down here--and I want you to change
the color of this stroke to white, then click
| | 04:54 | off that panel to hide it, twirl open this
stroke so that you can get to the transform
| | 04:59 | effect, click on the word Transform, click on
Horizontal in order to highlight that value,
| | 05:05 | change the value to -1, then tab down to the
vertical value and change it to 0 and click OK.
| | 05:12 | And that results in highlights. The only problem
is we can't see the white highlights because
| | 05:17 | we're seeing the effect against the
white background, so let's fix that.
| | 05:21 | Returns to the Layers panel go ahead and
twirl close the Grout later, and then drag down
| | 05:26 | this eyeball column once again to turn all
the other layers on, and you can see that
| | 05:29 | we have these wonderful white highlights now.
| | 05:32 | The final thing I want you to do is to bring back
the photographic Image layer by double-clicking
| | 05:38 | on it, and inside the layer Options dialog
box just go ahead and turn off the Template
| | 05:43 | check box, and then click OK, because when
Template is turned on the image is not only
| | 05:48 | dimmed and it's persistent and all that good
jazz, but it doesn't print either, and at this
| | 05:54 | point, we would like to see this image turn
into a printing element of the artwork, so
| | 05:58 | click OK, and that'll go ahead and bring back
the photographic background and that is the
| | 06:04 | entire effect, folks.
| | 06:06 | You can press Ctrl+H, or Command+H to bring back
your selection edges, then press Ctrl+Shift+A,
| | 06:10 | or Command+Shift+A on a Mac, to
deselect the image, and we have done it.
| | 06:16 | We have managed to create a full-fledged
illustration absolutely from scratch inside Adobe Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
9. Working with TypeText formatting at its best| 00:00 | You have seen what a powerful drawing program
Illustrator is, but it's also insanely great
| | 00:06 | at creating and formatting text.
| | 00:09 | You can click with the Type tool and bang
out text that aligns to a point, or you can
| | 00:13 | import text and flow it into columns.
| | 00:16 | You can preview fonts and arrow your way
through all fonts installed in your system.
| | 00:21 | You can modify attributes such as Type Size
and Leading using keyboard tricks, and you
| | 00:26 | can locate fractions, accents, and other
hidden characters using the Glyphs panel.
| | 00:32 | In a future course, we will explore how to
create specialty text such as logos, but for
| | 00:37 | now we'll layout and format a basic three-page
document complete with custom paragraph styles.
| | 00:44 | Here, let's take a look.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating page margins| 00:00 | All right, gang! Here is the final version
of the document that we will be creating,
| | 00:04 | and it's a three-page document, incidentally
if I press Shift+Tab, you can see a little
| | 00:08 | bit of that third artboard
on the far right-hand side.
| | 00:11 | What we're going to be doing is placing and
formatting a limerick that I wrote, and it's
| | 00:17 | clean, by the way, a clean
limerick so that's good.
| | 00:19 | But we're going to bring it in as a completely
unformatted text-only document, and then assign
| | 00:24 | all of the formatting over
the course of this chapter.
| | 00:27 | But the first thing I want to do is
show you how to create Margin Guides.
| | 00:31 | Because if I right click inside of this first
artboard here and choose the Show Guides command,
| | 00:36 | you can see that I've got a vertical center
guide, a horizontal center guide. I've got
| | 00:39 | this extra vertical guide right there against
which my poem is placed, and that just helps
| | 00:44 | to weight the poem a little
bit more to the right.
| | 00:47 | Because this text is formatted flush left,
ragged right, that means that we do need a
| | 00:52 | little bit of extra balance.
| | 00:55 | It's just a standard design trick just to throw
the text a little bit over to the right-hand side.
| | 01:00 | But I also have this even margin guide around
all the text on each and every artboard, and
| | 01:06 | that is not something that
comes standard with Illustrator.
| | 01:10 | In other words, if you press Ctrl+N, or Command+N
on the Mac, to bring up the New Document dialog
| | 01:14 | box, there are no options here for creating
margins the way there are say in a page layout
| | 01:18 | program such as InDesign,
so you have to it manually.
| | 01:21 | And I am going to show you how to make your
custom margin guides in this movie, and in
| | 01:25 | next movie we'll begin placing the text.
| | 01:27 | So I'll go ahead and switch over to this document
called Three-page doc.ai found inside the 09_type folder.
| | 01:34 | If you switch to the Artboard tool, which is
way down at the bottom for me because I'm
| | 01:38 | working with a single column toolbox
that doesn't quite fit on my screen.
| | 01:42 | If I switch to the Artboard, I can see that
each Artboard has Width of 700 points and
| | 01:46 | a Height of 900 points.
| | 01:48 | Let's say, that I want 100-point
margin all the way around the page.
| | 01:53 | Then I would press the Escape key to switch
out the Artboard mode, and I'll select the
| | 01:57 | Rectangle tool, which I can get by pressing
the M key, and I'll just go ahead and Alt-click
| | 02:02 | or Option-click someplace close to the center, but
not exactly at the center of the Artboard there.
| | 02:08 | The pages are measuring 700x900 points.
| | 02:12 | If I want a 100-point margin all the way around,
then I need to subtract 200 from each of these
| | 02:17 | values, like so, and I'll just enter -200
after each value, and that gives me a rectangle
| | 02:22 | that's 500 points wide, 700 points tall.
I'll click OK in order to create that guide.
| | 02:28 | All right! Now, I'll go up to this alignment
icon, click on it up here in the Control
| | 02:32 | panel and switch it to Align to Artboard.
| | 02:34 | Next, I'll click on Vertical Align Center,
and that will go ahead and exactly center
| | 02:40 | that margin guide.
Now believe it or not, this is centered.
| | 02:44 | This guide right here is a little bit low
on the page and that's because I'm going to
| | 02:46 | add a little bit of extra top margin to this
rectangle, and I'm going to do that by switching
| | 02:51 | to the White Arrow tool, and I'll just marquee the
top segment, like so, to select it independently
| | 02:57 | of the rest of the shape.
| | 02:59 | Now I want to bring up the Move dialog box.
| | 03:02 | Now it's telling you, one way to move a
selection numerically is to double-click on the Black
| | 03:05 | Arrow tool that brings up the Move dialog box.
That's great if you want to move an entire path.
| | 03:11 | In this case though, we just want
to move the top selected segment.
| | 03:15 | So you double-click instead on the White
Arrow tool, which allows you to move the selected
| | 03:19 | anchor points, the
selected segments, what have you.
| | 03:22 | These settings here reflect
whatever my last move was.
| | 03:25 | I'm going to change the Horizontal value to 0,
and I'm going to change the Vertical value
| | 03:29 | to 0.25 inches, double-quote
there, and then I'll press Tab key.
| | 03:33 | That goes ahead and converts that Vertical value
to 18 points, moves the top of the rectangle down.
| | 03:39 | You can see now the center point is right there
along the center guideline, and I'll click OK.
| | 03:44 | All right! Now, I'm going to switch back to
my Black Arrow tool by pressing the V key,
| | 03:48 | and I'll click on the rectangle in
order to select the entire thing.
| | 03:52 | Notice it's appearing on the Text layer.
I want it to be on the Guides layer.
| | 03:54 | So I'll go ahead and drag this little
orange square down to the Guides layer, like so.
| | 03:59 | And I'm going to twirl open Guides, and I'm
going to go ahead and name this path margins,
| | 04:04 | and then I'll cut it by going up to the Edit
menu and choosing the Cut command, or I could
| | 04:09 | press Ctrl+X, or Command+X on the Mac.
| | 04:11 | Now I want to paste that shape on all of the
Artboards, so I'll go back to the Edit menu
| | 04:16 | and choose Paste on All Artboards, Ctrl+Shift+
Alt+V, or Command+Shift+Option+V on the Mac.
| | 04:21 | Now I want to take each one of these guides--
and by the way, the top item right there is
| | 04:26 | on the third Artboard.
| | 04:27 | This one is on the second Artboard, so I'll
go ahead and Shift-click on it, and then I'll
| | 04:31 | Shift-click on the lowest of the margins
items here, which is the rectangle on the first
| | 04:35 | Artboard, and I'm going to convert them all to
guides by going up to the View menu, choosing
| | 04:40 | Guides, and then choosing Make Guides--or I
could press Ctrl+5, or Command+5 on the Mac.
| | 04:47 | Now what I want to do is move each one of
these into the group of guides that it goes with.
| | 04:51 | So notice that all the page 1 guides are
grouped together as page 1 right there.
| | 04:56 | If I turn off page 1, you can see all of
those page 1 guides except for the margins that
| | 05:00 | we just created and the center horizontal
line which goes through all the Artboards,
| | 05:05 | all the other ones are
grouped together, however.
| | 05:06 | So, I'll turn that back on to bring it back.
| | 05:09 | This guide right there is a margin on page 1,
so I'll drag it down and drop it into page 1.
| | 05:14 | This guy is the margins for page 2, so I'll
drag it and drop it on the page 2, and this
| | 05:18 | final one at top is the margins for page 3,
so I will drag it and drop it onto page 3,
| | 05:23 | like so, and now everybody is
grouped together the way they should be.
| | 05:27 | If you want to confirm things, you can hide
page 1, for example, and everything but the
| | 05:31 | horizontal center guide should go away.
| | 05:34 | And same for page 2, that's going to get rid of
everything but the center horizontal guide as well.
| | 05:39 | All right! So everything is in good shape.
| | 05:41 | We have now created our margin guides.
| | 05:43 | I'm going to click on the Text
layer to make it active once again.
| | 05:46 | So you might think that's, you know, kind of a
pain in the neck to have to work that way
| | 05:50 | instead of just having automatic margin options;
however, even though it's a little bit of work,
| | 05:54 | that does mean that you have an infinite amount of
control over creating guides here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Placing and flowing text| 00:00 | In this movie we will place some text that
I've created in advance as a text-only file,
| | 00:04 | and this can be a great way to work.
| | 00:06 | You can of course, create text
directly inside Illustrator if you want to.
| | 00:10 | You just grab the Text tool, you click, if
you want create some Point Text, and I'll
| | 00:14 | show what that looks like shortly.
| | 00:16 | And then you type away,
and you've got your text.
| | 00:18 | However, if you are creating a longer document,
you may want to prepare your text in advance
| | 00:22 | in a Word Processor, such as Microsoft Word,
whatever. There is a billion out there.
| | 00:28 | And then go ahead and save it off as the .doc file,
if you want save the formatting, for example.
| | 00:33 | Or just the text-only file, if you want to
apply your formatting here inside the Illustrator.
| | 00:37 | So, we're going to go with the latter,
that is to say a text-only file.
| | 00:41 | I'll go up to the File menu and choose the Place Command,
and then if you are working along with me,
| | 00:46 | go ahead and navigate your way to 09-type folder,
and you'll find a file called Updated limerick.txt.
| | 00:53 | And as I say, text-only file,
no formatting whatsoever.
| | 00:56 | But you can see, if you look in this list
of Formats that Illustrator also supports
| | 01:00 | .doc files, .docx files, .rtf files, which are rich
text files--which contain formatting attributes.
| | 01:07 | Now we're just going to go
with this text document here.
| | 01:10 | And after you've selected it go ahead and
click on the Place button, and regardless of
| | 01:14 | what kind of text you're importing,
you'll get this Import Options dialog box.
| | 01:18 | Now it looks different
depending on the formatting.
| | 01:20 | If you're placing a word File, for example,
Illustrator will ask you if you want to bring
| | 01:24 | in footnotes and other extras.
| | 01:26 | However, when we are importing a text file,
it just wants to know the Platform Windows
| | 01:30 | or Mac, doesn't matter, by the
way, in the case of this file.
| | 01:34 | So whether you're working on the Mac, or
Windows just leave it alone, don't worry about it.
| | 01:38 | Characters Set should definitely set to ANSI,
as opposed to something like Cyrillic, because
| | 01:43 | this is an English language document.
| | 01:45 | The other options just don't
matter at all for our purposes.
| | 01:48 | So go ahead and click OK, and you'll see
this text just appear magically on the page.
| | 01:53 | Now you can see that it doesn't fit
inside of our margin, so that's a problem.
| | 01:57 | Also, I want it to be bigger, so I
can see it from this distance here.
| | 02:01 | So I am going to up to my Control panel, and
notice that I've got a Type Size value right there.
| | 02:06 | I'll go ahead and click on this down pointing
arrow head, and for the meantime we are not
| | 02:10 | going to leave it set this way, but I'll go
ahead and change the text 24 point just so
| | 02:14 | that we can see what's going on, on screen.
| | 02:16 | Now ideally, we would just go ahead and size this
textbox so that the text fits better on the artboard.
| | 02:24 | But I can't just begin dragging these points,
because is if I do, I'll just move the text around.
| | 02:29 | And that's because I have
the bounding box turned off.
| | 02:32 | So I'll go to View menu and choose Show
Bounding Box to turn it back on. I can also press
| | 02:36 | Ctrl+Shift+B, Command+Shift+B on the Mac.
| | 02:40 | And I'm going to go ahead and drag this handle
down, like so, in order to scale the textbox,
| | 02:46 | also known, by the way, as a textframe.
| | 02:49 | Now I want things to snap exactly in to place, so I'll
go to my View menu and turn my Smart Guides back on.
| | 02:55 | And then I'll go ahead and drag this
top handle tool to about here for now.
| | 02:59 | It doesn't matter exactly where you put it.
We don't want it all the way at the top of
| | 03:02 | the page because we want to leave some
room for the headline and the byline.
| | 03:06 | But you do want to go ahead and align your
text to this vertical guide right there, not
| | 03:11 | all the way out to the edge of the margin.
| | 03:14 | Then go ahead and take in the bottom right
corner, like so. Now notice this thing right
| | 03:19 | here, this red thing, it's actually a plus
sign. If you click off the text, you can kind
| | 03:23 | of see it's a plus, then click
back on the text to select it.
| | 03:27 | And what it's telling me, that red plus
tells me that I've got overflow text.
| | 03:32 | And so, if I click on the plus--you have to
make sure you click exactly on it--then you
| | 03:36 | load your cursor with some more text.
| | 03:39 | All right, I'm going to ahead and scroll
over by spacebar dragging, and there are a few
| | 03:44 | different ways I could go and
place this text onto the page.
| | 03:46 | You could just click, but it doesn't come in
the right size. It's almost the right width,
| | 03:52 | but is not the right height.
| | 03:53 | So I'll go and press Ctrl+Z,
or Command+Z on the Mac.
| | 03:55 | The great thing is not only do I Undo that
new frame that I created, I also reload my
| | 04:00 | cursor, which is awesome.
| | 04:02 | Another Option that's available to you is
you can drag, like so, in order to specify
| | 04:07 | the exact size of the frame.
| | 04:08 | And again, I'm starting at this vertical guide
and going all the way over to the right margin.
| | 04:13 | Or here's another thing that's available to you, go
ahead and press Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z on the Mac.
| | 04:17 | If you press and hold the Alt key or the
Option key on the Mac, and click, then you'll go
| | 04:23 | ahead and not only place the text incorrectly,
but you'll also reload your cursor which is
| | 04:28 | actually pretty handy.
| | 04:29 | So I'll just go over to a third artboard and
draw this one manually by dragging from one
| | 04:34 | corner to the other, that is from the
intersection of the vertical guide in the top margin, all
| | 04:39 | the way down to the bottom
right corner of the margin.
| | 04:42 | And then I'll return to Page 2
here, click on a text to select it.
| | 04:46 | It looks like the top left corner is in the
right place, but obviously the bottom right
| | 04:49 | corner isn't, so I will just
go ahead and drag it down.
| | 04:53 | And notice now, if I zoom out a bit here,
you can see these big orange lines here, these
| | 04:58 | are the text threads, they show how the
three text blocks are threaded together.
| | 05:03 | And as a result, the text
automatically flows from one text block to other.
| | 05:06 | So, for example, if I decided to make this
text block right here shorter, then the overflow
| | 05:12 | text--that text that is now appearing black
at the bottom of the page--will go ahead and
| | 05:16 | flow automatically into the third artboard.
| | 05:20 | So it's pretty handy the way that this works.
| | 05:22 | All right, I am going to go ahead and zoom in on
Page 1 here and click on it to make it active.
| | 05:27 | We've now managed to place our text from a text-only
document and flow it onto three separate artboards.
| | 05:33 | In the next exercise, we'll cut free the headline
and byline and place them in a separate Text Object.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Selecting words and lines of type| 00:00 | In this movie we're going to select a headline
and the second line of type which is the byline,
| | 00:04 | and we're going to cut them and
paste them into a separate text object.
| | 00:08 | But first we need to
select those lines of type.
| | 00:11 | And so I'm going to show you a variety of
different ways to select text here inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:15 | Now the first thing you want to do is switch
to the Type tool which you can get by just
| | 00:19 | clicking on the T here in the toolbox, or
you can press the keyboard shortcut which
| | 00:23 | is also a T, so that's handy.
| | 00:25 | Or you can go over to your text with the
Black Arrow tool here. Notice when I hover over
| | 00:30 | it as long as I've got my Smart Guides turned
on, I can see the baselines, and those orange
| | 00:35 | baselines are the invisible lines
essentially that the text sits on.
| | 00:40 | And if you double-click on one of the
baselines, then you not only switch over to the Type
| | 00:44 | tool automatically, but you also
position your blinking insertion marker.
| | 00:48 | All right, so few different ways to select
text. One, obviously you can drag over it.
| | 00:53 | Another way to select text is to click at one
location and Shift-click at another location,
| | 00:58 | and you select all the
text in-between those points.
| | 01:01 | If you double-click on a word you select the
entire word, if you triple-click on a line
| | 01:06 | you select the entire line.
| | 01:08 | If I had a multi-line paragraph I could
quadruple-click to select the entire paragraph.
| | 01:14 | You can also press Ctrl+A, or Command+A on
the Mac, when any text is active to select
| | 01:19 | all of the text, and this is all of
the text across all the artboards.
| | 01:25 | Now one of the things that's really tempting
when you're working with text is to try to
| | 01:29 | scroll by pressing spacebar, if you do that
to get the Hand tool, you'll just replace
| | 01:33 | all your selected text with spaces obviously.
| | 01:35 | You don't want to do that, so I'll
press Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z on the Mac.
| | 01:39 | That's why you want to get it in a habit of
taking advantage of the Scroll Wheel on your mouse.
| | 01:43 | If, for example, you're working on a PC, and
to scroll to the right like I just did, you'd
| | 01:48 | press the Ctrl key while scrolling downward, scroll to
the left, you press Ctrl key while scrolling upward.
| | 01:54 | Those of you on the Mac can do the double
finger swipe in order to scroll back and forth.
| | 01:59 | So just bear that in mind.
| | 02:01 | Anyway, I'm going to go
ahead and zoom back in here.
| | 02:04 | Now some other ways to select text that you
may or may not find helpful, if I click in
| | 02:10 | front of S in the word she, for example, and
I press Shift+Right arrow, then I'll select
| | 02:16 | S, and I can keep pressing Shift+Right arrow to
select more letters, or I can press Shift+Left
| | 02:23 | Arrow to deselect letters, and then
ultimately select in the other direction.
| | 02:27 | If you want to select an entire word at a time
I'll click in front of the word pouted there.
| | 02:32 | Then you press Ctrl+Shift+Right arrow, and
you can press a key multiple times to select
| | 02:36 | multiple words that would be Command+Shift+
Right arrow on the Mac. To deselect you'd press
| | 02:40 | Ctrl+Shift+Left arrow, and then
ultimately you'd select the other direction.
| | 02:45 | If you want to select down an entire line,
then you press Ctrl+Shift+Down arrow, and
| | 02:51 | that'd be Command+Shift+Down arrow on
the Mac to select additional lines.
| | 02:54 | And then of course you can go up as well or
deselect by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Up arrow,
| | 02:58 | or Command+Shift+Up arrow.
| | 03:00 | So bunch of different ways to work.
| | 03:02 | Here's what I am going to do.
| | 03:03 | To select these first two lines, I am going
to triple-click-drag, so 1, 2, 3 drag down,
| | 03:10 | like so. So on the third-click I dragged,
I'll go ahead and do that again just make
| | 03:14 | sure it's obvious when I am doing 1, 2, 3,
drag down to select those first two lines.
| | 03:20 | Then I'll go up to the Edit menu and choose
the Cut Command, or I could press Ctrl+X,
| | 03:24 | or Command+X on the Mac.
| | 03:26 | Now do accept your changes and return to the Black
Arrow tool, there is a couple of things that you can do.
| | 03:31 | One, of course you can just click on
the Black Arrow tool if you want to.
| | 03:34 | But if you want to switch from the keyboard,
you can either press Ctrl+Enter--that would
| | 03:38 | be Command+Return on the Mac,
which I think makes a lot of sense.
| | 03:42 | However, there is an easier way that I don't
think makes any sense at all, but you probably
| | 03:46 | want to know about it.
| | 03:47 | I'll go ahead and select some text here and
show you another way to escape out, and that's
| | 03:51 | just to press the Escape key.
| | 03:54 | Now the reason that doesn't make a lot of
sense to me is because I guess I'm used to
| | 03:58 | Photoshop where you press the Escape
key in other to abandon your changes.
| | 04:02 | In Illustrator when you press the Escape key
you keep your changes, and you switch back
| | 04:06 | to the Black Arrow tool.
| | 04:07 | So, if you want to make the text active and
edit it, you can just double-click on it with
| | 04:11 | the Black Arrow tool. To get back out after
you make your modifications, you press the
| | 04:15 | Escape key and that returns
you to the Black Arrow tool.
| | 04:17 | All right, I am going to click off my text
to deselect it, and then I'm going to bring
| | 04:22 | that other text back that I cut to the
Clipboard by going up to the Edit menu and choosing
| | 04:27 | the Paste Command, or I could
press Ctrl+V, or Command+V on the Mac.
| | 04:31 | Now this is a little bit confusing.
| | 04:34 | What we're seeing here is a completely
different animal than what we were working with before.
| | 04:38 | So this stuff right here is known as Area Text.
| | 04:42 | It occurs inside of--in this
case a rectangular textframe.
| | 04:46 | But it could be any shape
or size you want it to be.
| | 04:49 | You can put text inside circles and
all kinds of shapes in Illustrator.
| | 04:53 | But notice that is scalable.
| | 04:55 | So if I scale the frame, the text doesn't scale,
it just flows differently inside the frame.
| | 05:01 | Compare that to this stuff. This is what's known as
Point Text, because I just pasted it into place.
| | 05:08 | It's aligned to this anchor point right there.
| | 05:10 | And if I drag one of these corner handles
because I can still see my bounding box, then
| | 05:14 | I'm going to stretch the text, as you see
here, which is not what I want to do at all.
| | 05:19 | So I'll go ahead and press Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z
on the Mac, to undo that change, and then
| | 05:23 | I'll go up to the View menu, and I'll choose
Hide Bounding Box, or I'll press Ctrl+Shift+B,
| | 05:27 | or Command+Shift+B on the Mac, to get that bounding
box out of there so I can see the anchor point.
| | 05:33 | And everything in the case of Point
Text is linked to that anchor point.
| | 05:37 | So in other words, we have no
textframe or other constraint.
| | 05:41 | And we'll see what that means as I show you how
to work with point text in the very next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with point text| 00:00 | All right, I'm looking at the final version of my
document, which is Final formatted limerick.ai,
| | 00:05 | and if I click on the headline with the Black
Arrow tool, and I'm clicking on the base of
| | 00:09 | the text just to make sure I selected, although,
you have a lot of latitude when you're clicking
| | 00:13 | on text, it's very easy to select the stuff.
| | 00:15 | But notice that this is Point text so there is
no container for the text, which is unusual.
| | 00:21 | Most other programs
require some form of textframe.
| | 00:26 | Illustrator does allow you to work with
textframes if you want to, especially for body copy,
| | 00:30 | which is text that needs to
automatically wrap down to another line of type.
| | 00:34 | However, anytime you don't want automatic
wrapping, you want to control the wrapping--
| | 00:38 | which is great when working with headlines, specialty
type logos--then you want to start with Point Type.
| | 00:44 | And I'll go ahead and switch over to my document in
progress, which I'm calling Point text headline.ai.
| | 00:51 | I'm going to move this guy
out of the way for a moment.
| | 00:53 | And let me show you, if you're creating Type
from Scratch with the Type tool and you go
| | 00:57 | ahead and switch to the Type tool, and if you
want to create a textframe, you drag with a
| | 01:02 | tool like so, and then start typing into it.
| | 01:05 | Let's say that's not what you want.
| | 01:06 | I'll press the Escape key and then go ahead and
press the Backspace key to delete that text object.
| | 01:12 | If you want to create Point text like we
have here, then again you switch to your Type
| | 01:16 | tool and you just click, and you create this blinking
insertion marker. You go ahead and enter your type.
| | 01:21 | If I press Escape key, then you'll see
that I have type that aligns to a point.
| | 01:27 | All right, so what does that end up meeting?
I'm going to go ahead and delete that text.
| | 01:32 | And let's apply some sort of early
formatting to this text right here.
| | 01:36 | I'm going to change the size and what's known
as the leading, which is the distance between
| | 01:41 | the baselines, between
one baseline and the next.
| | 01:45 | It looks like the word if
you've never seen it before.
| | 01:47 | It's spelled L-E-A-D-I-N-G, so it looks like
the word leading, but it's actually leading,
| | 01:52 | because back in the hot-metal type days it
actually used rows of lead to space the text.
| | 01:58 | So how do we get to the Leading Controls?
Well, couple of different ways to get there.
| | 02:02 | You can see when text is selected like it is,
and then text can either be selected with
| | 02:06 | the Black Arrow tool if you want to affect
the entire text object, which is what I want,
| | 02:11 | or you can just select some
text using the Type tool.
| | 02:14 | And when text is selected, then you can see
some formatting controls up here in the Control
| | 02:18 | panel, including the Word
Character and the Word Paragraph.
| | 02:23 | Character brings up the Character panel, like
so, and what we're seeing here are character
| | 02:27 | level formatting attributes.
| | 02:29 | In other words, attributes that affect single
characters at a time. So if you want to format
| | 02:34 | just a selected character of Type or a selected
word, then these formatting controls are available
| | 02:39 | to you, but if I've got the entire thing selected,
then I'll apply my character level formatting
| | 02:43 | attributes to all of the selected text.
| | 02:47 | Paragraph brings up formatting attributes
that affect entire paragraphs of text at a
| | 02:52 | time, even if you just have a
single character of type selected.
| | 02:56 | But your main attributes are the character
attributes, so I'll go ahead and click on Character.
| | 03:00 | And notice there's my size value right there,
my type size value, and next door is my leading.
| | 03:05 | So if I click on this sort of growing T here,
that will select the type size value, and
| | 03:10 | let's say I'll go ahead and change
it to 58 point, something very large.
| | 03:14 | Leading will automatically change by default,
and when you're working with auto leading,
| | 03:18 | you can see the auto
leading value in parentheses.
| | 03:21 | And by the way, auto leading is 120% of the
type size, so if you were to multiply 58 times
| | 03:30 | 1.2, then you would get 69.6.
| | 03:33 | However, you can override that, you can
enter your own leading value, which of course is
| | 03:37 | again, going to control the distance
between the baselines, and I'm going to change my
| | 03:40 | leading to 62 and then press the Tab key,
and you can see that that goes ahead and moves
| | 03:45 | the lines closer together.
| | 03:47 | All right, now I'm going to hide the
Character panel just by pressing the Enter key or the
| | 03:51 | Return key on the Mac.
| | 03:53 | And you can see, if I were to scroll over a
little bit here that my text has no constraints
| | 03:59 | whatsoever. It's just going to
keep going as long as it wants to.
| | 04:03 | Meaning that it can flow over multiple artboards,
or it can flow into the pasteboard and so forth.
| | 04:08 | Obviously, we're not going to want that long-term,
but I just want you to know that that's the
| | 04:12 | way Point Text works,
completely unconstrained text.
| | 04:15 | All right, I want to format this headline on
to two lines of type, and so because there
| | 04:20 | is no auto wrapping, what we will have to
do is double-click at this location right
| | 04:24 | there in order to set my insertion
marker, right before the P in project.
| | 04:28 | And then I'll press the Backspace key or the
Delete key in the Mac to get rid of that space
| | 04:32 | character, and I'll press the Enter key here
on the PC, or the Return key on the Mac, in
| | 04:36 | order to knock that text
down onto the next line.
| | 04:40 | And then I'll press the Escape key in
order to switch back to the Black Arrow tool.
| | 04:43 | All right, so that gives you an idea of how to
work with Point Text inside of Illustrator,
| | 04:48 | in the next movie, I'll share with you a few
tips and tricks for previewing and assigning fonts.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Previewing and assigning fonts| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you a handful of
tricks for previewing and assigning fonts.
| | 00:05 | And this has become a much better experience
inside the most recent version of Illustrator,
| | 00:10 | both for Mac and PC
people for different reasons.
| | 00:14 | Now we will be working with a couple of
fonts that ship along with most versions of the
| | 00:18 | Creative Suite, not all of them, but the fonts
we'll be using are Adobe Caslon Pro and Trajan Pro.
| | 00:25 | Now if you don't have access to those fonts
on your system, then go ahead and try out
| | 00:29 | some different fonts, see
what kind of result you get.
| | 00:31 | I am going to click on my Point Text with
Black Arrow tool to select it once again.
| | 00:35 | And then notice up here in the Control panel,
you can select a font from this Font list
| | 00:40 | just by clicking on the
down pointing arrowhead.
| | 00:42 | And that will list all the fonts
that are installed on your system.
| | 00:45 | Your fonts and my fonts will definitely vary.
| | 00:48 | Problem is when you work this way you can't
see previews of the fonts, so you don't know
| | 00:51 | what they look like, you just see this list.
| | 00:54 | If you want to see the previews, go ahead
and press the Escape key and click on that
| | 00:57 | word Character there in the Control panel,
to bring up the Character panel, and then
| | 01:02 | click the down pointing arrowhead,
and now you'll see previews.
| | 01:05 | And this is remarkable for those of us working
on a PC, because we haven't had these previews
| | 01:10 | at this convenient location before.
| | 01:11 | You had to go to the Type menu, which was a
pain in the neck, but now it's much better.
| | 01:16 | You Macintosh people
already have these previews.
| | 01:18 | But still let's say you want to make them
larger so that you have a better idea of what
| | 01:23 | each one these fonts look like.
| | 01:25 | Then go ahead and Escape out and press Ctrl+K,
or Command+K on a Mac, in order to bring up
| | 01:29 | the Preferences dialog box, and then click on Type,
three items down over here in the left-hand list.
| | 01:35 | Notice this Font Preview check box is
turned on by default, which is a great thing.
| | 01:39 | If you want to make it larger, you
switch the size from Medium to Large.
| | 01:42 | That means you'll see fewer fonts on screen
at a time, but you'll have a better sense
| | 01:46 | of what they look like.
| | 01:48 | Illustrator also keeps track of the most
recently used fonts, which is great if you flip back
| | 01:52 | and forth between a group
of fonts on a regular basis.
| | 01:55 | If you want to track more Recent Fonts than five,
then you can switch it up to as many as 15.
| | 02:01 | I am going to switch it to 10.
| | 02:02 | All right, now I'll click OK in
order to accept those changes.
| | 02:07 | And now notice if I click on the word Character,
and then click the down pointing arrowhead
| | 02:10 | next to the Font name, I see bigger font
previews, and I could say, gosh, you know, Blackoak
| | 02:15 | Std looks great. That will make my
text even wider than it was before.
| | 02:19 | Still all of it goes off
to the second artboard.
| | 02:21 | Let's say you want to type
in a specific font name.
| | 02:24 | Well, you can just click on that font name,
like so, to select it, and then you type in
| | 02:29 | some other font like, I'll type in the first
few letters of the word Garamond, and then
| | 02:33 | press the Enter key or the Return key
on a Mac, in order to reformat my text.
| | 02:38 | But you can also highlight the font
name using a special keyboard shortcut.
| | 02:41 | And that shortcut is mash your fist F, that is
Ctrl+Shift+Alt+F on a PC, or Command+Shift+Option+F
| | 02:48 | on a Mac, and that's going to go ahead and
bring up the free standing Character panel,
| | 02:52 | which I have docked in this column of panel
icons, and it also highlights the font name,
| | 02:56 | as you can see, and then you
could type in a different font.
| | 02:59 | Like I know I want Trajan, so I'll just type
in T-R-A-J and that got me Trajan, and then
| | 03:04 | I could press the Tab key in order to apply
the Trajan font and highlight the style option,
| | 03:09 | which we'll come to in a moment.
| | 03:10 | And by the way, you also get font previews
with this option right here, so if you click
| | 03:15 | on the down pointing arrowhead, you will
see previews of all the fonts as well.
| | 03:18 | All right, I am going to press
the Escape key to hide that menu.
| | 03:21 | Here is another way to work: press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+F,
or Command+Shift+Option+F on the Mac, to go
| | 03:25 | ahead and highlight that font value.
| | 03:27 | And you can press the up arrow key in order
to go back through the various fonts installed
| | 03:32 | on your system, or you can press
the down arrow key to move forward.
| | 03:37 | And when I say back and forward,
I mean in alphabetical order.
| | 03:41 | And this is a major thing. You've been able
to do this on a PC for a while, but this is
| | 03:46 | the first version of the program in
which you can do it on the Mac as well.
| | 03:50 | And it may seem like why did it take Adobe 25
years in order to make this possible on the Mac.
| | 03:55 | The truth is they couldn't do it before,
the way the program was written, but they had
| | 03:58 | to rewrite the program in order to take
advantage of some OS and platform enhancements.
| | 04:03 | The program as a result runs way faster than
it used to in the past, and you can now arrow
| | 04:08 | your way through the fonts.
| | 04:09 | All right, but as I say, I want Trajan, so I will
just type in T-R-A-J and then press the Tab key.
| | 04:15 | Now, notice one of the things that's missing
from this Character panel--and you can make
| | 04:19 | it bigger, by the way.
| | 04:20 | If you want access to more options, you click
on that little up down arrowhead icon to the
| | 04:24 | left of word Character, and
that shows you more options.
| | 04:28 | Notice though, among these options there are
no like bold, and italic icons the way you
| | 04:33 | see in other software, and that's
because every font is different.
| | 04:37 | Some fonts have bold and
italic styles and others don't.
| | 04:40 | In the case of Trajan, for example, all we
have is Regular and Bold, those are your only
| | 04:44 | designer styles, so that's all you get.
| | 04:47 | Other fonts, if I were to go ahead and press
Ctrl+Shift+Alt+F, or Command+Shift+Option+F
| | 04:51 | on the Mac, to highlight that font name again,
and I were to type in the Adobe Cas for Adobe
| | 04:56 | Caslon, and then press the Tab key to
Advance to the Styles and click on this list, and
| | 05:02 | I'll see just a ton of
styles that are available to me.
| | 05:05 | So, Regular, Italic, Semibold, Semibold Italic,
Bold, and Bold Italic as well, and you can
| | 05:09 | arrow through those as well.
| | 05:11 | So if you highlight that Style option and
press the down arrow key, then you'll go ahead
| | 05:15 | and Advance through the Styles. You can
press the Up arrow key if you like as well.
| | 05:18 | All right, so I am going to press Shift+Tab
to go back to my Font field, and I'll just
| | 05:22 | type in T-R--actually that's
enough to get Trajan Pro for me.
| | 05:26 | And then I'll press Tab, and instead of Semibold,
which doesn't actually exist, let's go ahead
| | 05:30 | and press the Up arrow key to go back to
regular, and then the Down arrow key to go to bold,
| | 05:36 | which is the font style that
I'm interested in applying.
| | 05:38 | And then I'll press the Enter key on the PC, or the
Return key on a Mac, in order to apply that style.
| | 05:43 | To get rid of the Character panel, to get
it off screen, obviously you can just click
| | 05:47 | on that double arrow icon.
| | 05:49 | But you can also take advantage of the
keyboard shortcut for the Character panel which is
| | 05:53 | Ctrl+T as in type, or Command+T on the Mac.
| | 05:56 | And those, friends, are your various options
for previewing and applying fonts and font
| | 06:01 | styles here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Incrementally adjusting type size| 00:00 | In this movie, I will show you some really
handy tricks for changing the size of selected
| | 00:04 | text from the keyboard.
I will save my changes as Trajan type.ai.
| | 00:08 | Now, before we resize the text--and we are going to
be resizing this top line so it's a little bigger--
| | 00:14 | I want to go ahead and move my
text into a better location.
| | 00:17 | So I am going to go ahead and drag it by its
point, by that little sort of a anchor point,
| | 00:23 | that is the alignment point for the text,
until it snaps into alignment with the upper
| | 00:27 | left corner of the margin, and then I'll
press Shift+Down arrow five times in a row.
| | 00:33 | So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and then I'll press the Up
arrow key by itself in order to raise that
| | 00:38 | type just a little bit.
| | 00:39 | And this will end up looking exactly right,
once we get done changing the type size.
| | 00:45 | So now I am going to double-click inside of
my text in order to switch to the Type tool
| | 00:49 | and set the location of the blinking
insertion marker, and then I'll triple click on that
| | 00:53 | first line of type to select it.
| | 00:55 | Now here's how to change the size of the type.
| | 00:58 | Press Ctrl+Shift+Period that would be Command+Shift+
Period on the Mac, and that makes the Type get incrementally
| | 01:05 | bigger, as you can see here.
| | 01:06 | Now the reason is Ctrl+Shift+Period is because
that's the location of the greater than sign
| | 01:11 | on an American keyboard.
| | 01:13 | To make your text incrementally smaller, you
press Ctrl+Shift+Comma, or Command+Shift+Comma
| | 01:17 | on the Mac, and the key is also the location of
the less than symbol on an American keyboard.
| | 01:24 | So Ctrl+Shift+Period, or Command+Shift+Period, makes
it bigger, Ctrl+Shift+Comma, or Command+Shift+Comma
| | 01:29 | makes it smaller, and it does so in increments of
2 points by default, which I think is too much.
| | 01:37 | I prefer finer control than that, and if you
do as well, then you can change the increments
| | 01:42 | by pressing Ctrl+K, or Command+K on the Mac, to
once again bring up the Preferences dialog box.
| | 01:47 | And notice there are your increment values.
| | 01:50 | So if I would have to click on Size/Leading, I
would highlight that 2 pt value, and I could
| | 01:53 | change it to 0.5 pts, and you will see that
this is useful, because you can increase the
| | 01:59 | increment on the fly using a different
keyboard shortcut that I will show you in a moment.
| | 02:03 | The Tracking value allows you to track or
kern your text from the keyboard, which is
| | 02:07 | to say change the amount of horizontal space
between characters, and by default it's set
| | 02:12 | to 21,000ths of an em.
| | 02:15 | Now, an em is a Space that's as
wide as the Type Size is tall.
| | 02:20 | So in other words, if you are working with
24 pt Type then you do the math here 20,000ths
| | 02:26 | of 24 points is about a half a point, so
that's a big increment when you're trying to space
| | 02:32 | characters away from each other.
| | 02:34 | So I prefer to take that value down to 5,000ths.
| | 02:37 | And then Baseline Shift allows you to raise
and lower the text with respect to the baseline.
| | 02:41 | I recommend you take it down to 0.5 points
as well, and then click OK in order to make
| | 02:46 | those changes, and now notice up here in the
Control panel that the current Type Size is 64 points.
| | 02:51 | If I press Ctrl+Shift+Period in order to
increase the size of the Type, it goes to 64.5.
| | 02:57 | Let's say I want to move more quickly.
| | 02:59 | Well, I can add the Alt key
or the Option key on the Mac.
| | 03:02 | So it's basically mash your fist in other words,
Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Period, or Command+Shift+Option+Period
| | 03:06 | on the Mac, goes ahead and increases
their Type Size by a 5x increment.
| | 03:12 | So in our case we go from 0.5 to 2.5, and
now if I were to press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Comma,
| | 03:19 | or Command+Shift+Option+Comma on the Mac, I
would reduce that Type Size in 2.5 pt increments.
| | 03:25 | All right, I can see that my Type Size is
62, I am going to press Ctrl+Shift+Period,
| | 03:29 | or Command+Shift+Period on the Mac, two times,
in order to increase that Type Size value
| | 03:34 | to 63 points, because that's the Type Size I
ultimately arrived at for this particular headline.
| | 03:40 | Now it may not look quite right, because
the text looks so wide at this size, comma is
| | 03:45 | like hanging out of the margin quite a bit,
but that's because the text needs to be kerned
| | 03:49 | a little bit, that is we need to change the
horizontal space between the letters, and
| | 03:53 | we will get to that in the future movie.
| | 03:55 | Anyway, I am going to press the Escape key
in order to accept my changes and return to
| | 04:00 | the Black Arrow tool.
| | 04:01 | In the next movie we will format the byline,
and along the way I will show you how to
| | 04:05 | work with leading and the paragraph indent.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Leading and paragraph indent| 00:00 | In this movie, we'll format this third line
of Point Text here which is the byline, and
| | 00:05 | as we do, I'll show you how to adjust the
leading from the keyboard, and we'll also
| | 00:09 | assign a paragraph indent.
| | 00:11 | I have saved my progress
as 63-point headline.ai.
| | 00:14 | I am going to double-click inside that final
line of type there in order to switch to my
| | 00:19 | Type tool, and then I'll triple click
to select that entire line of type.
| | 00:22 | Now I'll press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+F, or Command+Shift+
Option+F in order to highlight the Font option here
| | 00:28 | in the Character panel, and I'll type in
just AD is all I need to type, but that ends up
| | 00:33 | giving me Adobe Caslon Pro, you may have to
type more letters in, or you may have to select
| | 00:39 | a different font if Adobe Caslon
Pro is not installed on your system.
| | 00:43 | And then I'll tab to the Style value and
just tap I in order to assign the Italic style,
| | 00:48 | and then I'll press the Tab key in order to
advance to the Type Size value, and I'll go
| | 00:53 | ahead and change this to 34 points, like so,
and then press the Enter key or the Return
| | 00:58 | key on the Mac, in order
to apply those changes.
| | 01:01 | You can adjust the leading, which is to say
the amount of space between this line and
| | 01:05 | line above it by clicking on a Leading value
in order to highlight that value here inside
| | 01:09 | the Character panel, and then you could
enter whatever value you want, or I'll go ahead
| | 01:14 | and press the Escape key.
| | 01:15 | You can adjust the leading from
the keyboard, and here is how.
| | 01:19 | If you press Alt+Up arrow, then you'll
reduce the Leading value, which is to say you'll
| | 01:25 | move the text upward and that would be Option+
Up arrow on the Mac, if you press Option+Down
| | 01:31 | Arrow--or here on the PC, Alt+Down arrow--
you'll increase the Leading value, which is to say,
| | 01:36 | you'll lower the text, because you're
increasing the amount of room between that line of text
| | 01:40 | and the text above it.
| | 01:42 | Notice we are doing so in increments of .5
| | 01:45 | because that's the increment that
I specified in the previous movie.
| | 01:49 | If you want to move five times as quickly,
then you add the Ctrl, or Command key.
| | 01:53 | So Ctrl+Alt+Down arrow will increase
the Leading value in increments of 2.5
| | 01:59 | in my case, that's five times 0.5.
| | 02:02 | On the Mac you would press Command+
Option+Down arrow to increase that leading.
| | 02:06 | If you want to reduce the leading, then you press
Ctrl+Alt+Up arrow, or Command+Option+Up arrow on a Mac.
| | 02:12 | Anyway, I am going to take
this down just a little bit here.
| | 02:15 | You can see that my Leading value is now 54.5,
| | 02:18 | and then I'll press Alt+Up arrow
or Option+Up arrow to reduce it to 54.
| | 02:23 | So ultimately I want a Type Size of 34
points and a Leading Value of 54 points.
| | 02:29 | Now, one word of advice where leading is
concerned, you can't apply it to just a selected word
| | 02:34 | or even a single character of type or even if
you just have your blinking insertion marker
| | 02:38 | in the line, but I'll go ahead and double-click
on a word, for example, and let's say I change
| | 02:43 | this Leading value to 60 points and press
the Enter key or the Return key on a Mac,
| | 02:48 | that's going to move that entire line down
even though if I double-click on the word
| | 02:52 | and, it's still set to a Leading of 54 points.
| | 02:54 | Essentially, the biggest Leading value in
the line wins, which is why you probably don't
| | 03:00 | want to mix your Leading values, you want to
go ahead and select an entire line of type,
| | 03:04 | and notice when I do, I have a blank Leading
value and that's because there are multiple
| | 03:09 | Leading values to work.
| | 03:10 | So I'll just go ahead and click on that value,
set it to 54 again, and press the Enter key
| | 03:14 | or the Return key on the Mac.
| | 03:15 | All right! Now, I'm going to hide
that Character panel for a moment.
| | 03:19 | Let's say I want to move this text to the
right, because I want it right-aligned with
| | 03:24 | the headline text above it.
| | 03:26 | Well, you might figure the way to
do that is to change your alignment.
| | 03:30 | Right now, if I go up to the far right side
of the Control panel, I can see that the Align
| | 03:34 | Left icon is active.
| | 03:36 | But I could switch it to Align Right.
| | 03:37 | Here is the problem.
| | 03:38 | If I was working inside of a the textframe,
that would work brilliantly, that would be
| | 03:43 | fine, but because I'm working with Point Text,
as soon as I click Align Right that goes ahead
| | 03:47 | and sends the text to the left of the anchor
point that's associated with the Point Text.
| | 03:52 | So in other words, you are
always aligning to the anchor point.
| | 03:55 | And I will mention in passing that each one
of these guys, Align Left, Align Center and
| | 03:59 | Align Right, they all have very easy to
remember keyboard shortcuts, it's just Ctrl+Shift,
| | 04:04 | or Command+Shift with the
letter that goes with the alignment.
| | 04:07 | So, for example, for center, it would be
Ctrl+Shift+C, or Command+Shift+C on the Mac.
| | 04:12 | For right it would be Ctrl+Shift+R, or Command+
Shift+R on a Mac, and for Align Left--which is what
| | 04:17 | we want--is Ctrl+Shift+L,
or Command+Shift+L on a Mac.
| | 04:21 | Instead, what we need to do is indent this
text to the right, and I'll do that by clicking
| | 04:27 | on a word Paragraph up here in the Control
panel to bring out the Paragraph panel and
| | 04:31 | notice that this very first
value is the Left indent value.
| | 04:34 | It's an indent that you add to the left side
of the text, and I just happen to know I want
| | 04:38 | that value to be set to 52 points and as
soon as I enter 52 and press the Tab key, then
| | 04:43 | I go ahead and indent that text to the right,
and that will, once we're done formatting
| | 04:48 | the headline, that will ensure that we have
a nice consistent right alignment between
| | 04:52 | the headline and that byline.
| | 04:54 | All right! So that's how you work with Leading
and Paragraph Indent here inside of Illustrator.
| | 04:58 | In the next movie, I'll show you how
to work with kerning and tracking.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Pair-kerning and tracking| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to kern and
track letters to change the amount of horizontal
| | 00:05 | spacing between characters of type.
| | 00:07 | I've saved my progress as Better byline.ai,
and I'm going to go ahead and zoom in on my
| | 00:12 | text here, and then I'll double-click in the
word POEM in order to switch to the Type tool,
| | 00:18 | and you can see that my text is too
wide of course to fit inside the margin.
| | 00:21 | I actually do want the Comma to hang off, I
want a little bit of what's known as Hanging
| | 00:26 | Punctuation, but I don't want the N hanging
out there like that, and you might figure,
| | 00:30 | well, the solution is to change the type size.
| | 00:33 | However, I've got some bigger fish
to fry where this text is selected.
| | 00:37 | Notice how randomly the
characters seem to be spaced.
| | 00:41 | We've got a ton of room between the P and the O
here, and then the E and the M are pretty tight.
| | 00:46 | The W and R are very loose, the R and the I are
relatively tight together as are the two Ts.
| | 00:52 | So what we need is more
consistent character spacing.
| | 00:56 | Now here is how character
spacing is measured just so you know.
| | 01:01 | Basically every letter has not only the
definition of the letter associated with it, but it has
| | 01:06 | what's known as Side Bearing.
| | 01:08 | So a little bit of space to the right and
to the left of the character. That is there
| | 01:13 | to ensure that the characters
aren't running into each other.
| | 01:17 | But not all pairs of
characters need to be treated the same.
| | 01:21 | For example, I'll go ahead and click right about
there and enter V-O, so capital V, little O.
| | 01:27 | Those two characters require just standard
spacing, standard side bearing spacing.
| | 01:32 | They have no special Kerning associated with
them where this particular font is concerned.
| | 01:38 | Now Kerning is a special spacing override
that's associated with specific pairs of characters
| | 01:44 | that are known as Kerning Pairs.
| | 01:46 | So every font has a table of Kerning pairs
built into it, and V-O is not one of them,
| | 01:52 | which is why if I press Ctrl+T, or Command+T
on the Mac, to bring up the Character panel,
| | 01:57 | and I take a look at my Kerning value, it's
zero, meaning that there's no special override.
| | 02:01 | However, if I were to change that O to an A,
you can see that the A is dipping into
| | 02:07 | the V's territory there, and that's because
if you click between the two, these guys are
| | 02:12 | a Kerning Pair that's built into the Trajan
Pro font definition, and as a result they
| | 02:17 | automatically get a Kerning value of -55,
thousandths of an em, that is to say thousands
| | 02:24 | of the current Type Size, which is 63 points.
| | 02:27 | So you would divide 63 by
1000, which takes you down to
| | 02:31 | 0.063 points, and then multiply that times -55.
| | 02:35 | And while that particular equation is not
important, what is is that this value is always
| | 02:40 | relative to the Type Size.
| | 02:42 | So -55 is going to work regardless of what type
size you're working with, at least that's the idea.
| | 02:48 | And so I chose V/A, by the way, because that
is one of the classic, so classic that V and
| | 02:53 | A are the icons for the Kerning value.
| | 02:57 | Now you can override that if you want to,
you could change it to anything you like,
| | 03:01 | however, you're probably not going to select
the value and change it because you have no
| | 03:04 | idea of what a better value would be.
| | 03:06 | Instead, the more reasonable solution is to
adjust the Kerning from the keyboard, and
| | 03:12 | you do that just as you do for leading.
| | 03:15 | So I was telling you, Alt or Option along
with the Up and Down arrows changes the Leading,
| | 03:20 | whereas Alt or Option along with the
Left or Right arrows changes Kerning.
| | 03:25 | So if I press Alt+Left arrow, for example,
a few times here I will go ahead and nudge
| | 03:30 | that A closer to the V, and I'm doing so
without having either the V or A selected.
| | 03:35 | You just set your blinking insertion marker
between the two of them, and then you take
| | 03:39 | advantage of that keyboard shortcut.
| | 03:41 | If you want to move the letters farther
apart, then you press Alt along with Right arrow,
| | 03:45 | this would be Option+Right arrow on the Mac.
| | 03:48 | Now notice at this point my
Kerning value happens to be -85.
| | 03:52 | If I press Alt+Right arrow or Option+Right
Arrow on the Mac, it's going to jump up to
| | 03:56 | -80, the reason being that I changed my
keyboard increment to five-thousandths of an em, a
| | 04:02 | couple of movies back.
| | 04:04 | If you want to move in larger increments, 5x
increments just like we did for leading, then
| | 04:10 | you press Ctrl+Alt along with
those Left or Right arrow keys.
| | 04:14 | That's Command+Option+Left
or Right arrow on the Mac.
| | 04:17 | So if I press Ctrl+Alt+Left arrow, for example,
I move those characters together 25 thousandths
| | 04:24 | of an em, so I changed that value from -80
to -105, and if I press Ctrl+Alt+Right arrow,
| | 04:31 | or Command+Option+Right arrow on the
Mac, I move them apart back to -80.
| | 04:35 | So again, a 25000ths of an em difference.
| | 04:38 | All right! We don't really want the V
and A in there, so let's get rid of them.
| | 04:42 | What I want to do is adjust the
pair Kerning for the entire headline.
| | 04:46 | So I'll triple-click-drag on that text to
select both lines of type, so that's a one,
| | 04:52 | two, three, and then drag in
order to select those lines.
| | 04:56 | And now notice that we're seeing that the
Kerning value is set to Auto, and what that
| | 05:00 | means is that we're using the
metrics that are built into the font.
| | 05:04 | But if you click on this down-pointing
arrowhead, you'll see that you have a couple of other
| | 05:07 | options available to you.
| | 05:08 | You can use the metrics for the Roman type
only, which is really only useful if you're
| | 05:12 | using a combination of Roman characters along
with say, Kanji or some other alphabet that
| | 05:19 | doesn't require Kerning,
or you can choose Optical.
| | 05:22 | And what Optical does is it puts
Illustrator in charge of the Kerning process.
| | 05:26 | Illustrator actually on the fly looks at the
letters and makes special Kerning decisions.
| | 05:33 | And so in our case, it's going to make the
text look a lot better, so we'll go ahead
| | 05:36 | and switch to Optical. We're no longer referencing
the Kerning Pair table that's built in the
| | 05:40 | font, instead Illustrator is overriding.
| | 05:43 | And now we get special Kerning values
between just about every letter combo.
| | 05:47 | Before if I clicked between the W and R, I would
have seen 0 for the Kerning value, now I see -26.
| | 05:54 | So Illustrator is making these intelligent
decisions on the fly. I should tell you, however,
| | 05:59 | if you're working with a standard font like
this one, everything is going to be great
| | 06:02 | even if it's a semi-nonstandard font like this
one where we have solid uppercase characters,
| | 06:07 | it's basically uppercase and
small caps built into this font.
| | 06:10 | There are no lowercase characters.
| | 06:12 | Optical Kerning still works great.
| | 06:14 | When you don't want to use it is when you're
working with a Script font, because when you're
| | 06:18 | working with Script font they are specially
hand-kerned to make sure that the characters
| | 06:22 | exactly align with each other,
and Optical Kerning will ruin it.
| | 06:26 | Anyway, it works great for my text.
| | 06:29 | Now I'm going to triple-click in the first
line up there in order to select it, and I
| | 06:33 | want to move these characters
together en masse using Tracking.
| | 06:38 | So next door to the Kerning values is Tracking
value, and it essentially is a Kerning override
| | 06:43 | that's applied to
multiple characters at a time.
| | 06:46 | So if you want to change the Kerning, you click
between two characters, if you want to change
| | 06:51 | the Tracking you select multiple characters,
and then the keyboard shortcut is the same.
| | 06:56 | Notice right now the Tracking value is 0.
| | 06:58 | If I press Alt+Left arrow twice in a row--
that would be Option+Left arrow twice in a
| | 07:03 | row on the Mac--I'll change that value to -10,
again thousandths of an em space, and
| | 07:09 | that goes ahead and moves
those characters closer together.
| | 07:11 | All right! I'm going to press the Escape key
for a moment, and then just go ahead and scroll
| | 07:15 | my text up so I can better see it
while the Character panel is on screen.
| | 07:18 | I like the fact that my Comma is hanging outside
of the margin, again, I was telling you, that's
| | 07:22 | called Hanging Punctuation.
| | 07:24 | That is a very common design choice, but I do
want to move it in a little bit closer to the end.
| | 07:29 | So I'll double-click right there at that location
to set the blinking insertion marker and switch
| | 07:33 | back to my Type tool.
| | 07:35 | And notice the value right now is -41. I'm
going to press Ctrl+Alt+Left arrow a couple
| | 07:40 | of times in a row there--that would be
Command+Option+Left arrow on the Mac.
| | 07:44 | That takes the value down to -91, and then
I'll press Alt+Left arrow two more times--
| | 07:49 | that's Option+Left arrow two more times on
the Mac--to take that value down to -101.
| | 07:53 | And we end up with this beautifully spaced
text, again, I'll press the Escape key in
| | 07:58 | order to switch back to the Black Arrow tool
and click off the text to deselect it, and
| | 08:03 | that is how you kern and track text, very
important skill here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Hanging indents and paragraph spacing| 00:00 | In this movie we are going to format
the body copy, which is the Poem itself.
| | 00:04 | And along the way, I'll show you how to
create a hanging indent in Illustrator, and I'll
| | 00:09 | also show you how to work
with paragraph spacing.
| | 00:11 | I have saved my changes as Optically kerned headline.ai,
and I am going to make some adjustments
| | 00:17 | here to my Text layer inside the layers
panel--just a little bit of organizational work.
| | 00:23 | Basically the text is kind of upside down.
| | 00:26 | So the first line is I once knew a lovely Israeli,
and that's actually the bottom column of type.
| | 00:32 | So I am going to drag it up.
| | 00:33 | And then the rest is this item is
actually the last column, so I'll move it down.
| | 00:38 | So we've got the story in order.
| | 00:40 | As I say just a little
bit of housekeeping there.
| | 00:43 | Now I am going to Shift+Tab away my panels
and press Ctrl+Alt+0, or Command+Option+0
| | 00:47 | on the Mac, to zoom out so that I
can see all three of artboards.
| | 00:51 | And I'll double-click anywhere inside the
poem with my Black Arrow tool to switch to
| | 00:55 | the Type tool and set the
blinking insertion marker.
| | 00:58 | And then I'll press Ctrl+A, or Command+A on the
Mac, to select all the type inside the story.
| | 01:03 | And a story, by the way is the common
name for a bunch of threaded text blocks.
| | 01:09 | So all the text in the poem is now selected.
| | 01:12 | So I'll go up to the word Character
here on the Control panel and click on it.
| | 01:16 | And that goes ahead and
highlights the font immediately.
| | 01:18 | I'll type in Adobe C in order to
switch the font to Adobe Caslon Pro.
| | 01:22 | Then I'll tab forward a couple of times,
because the font style of Regular is just fine.
| | 01:27 | That highlights the Type Size value, which
we'll change to 29 pts, and then I'll press
| | 01:32 | the Tab key and override the
Leading value by entering 40.
| | 01:36 | And then I'll go ahead and press Tab
again in order to apply that change.
| | 01:39 | All right, so far so good. I'll go ahead and
press the Escape key in order to hide that panel.
| | 01:44 | Now the problem we have at this point--if I
go ahead and click in the text so that we
| | 01:47 | could better see it here--
| | 01:49 | You can see that some of the layers don't
fit on a single line of type. A great example
| | 01:53 | is My chance came a week from next Sunday.
| | 01:55 | And Sunday is drifting off to the second line.
| | 01:58 | What I'd like to do is have the second line
indent, which is what's known as a hanging indent.
| | 02:04 | And so I'll go ahead and press Ctrl+A, or
Command+A on the Mac, again so that I'll get
| | 02:08 | all the text, because I might well apply
these changes to all of the text in the poem just
| | 02:12 | in case I am not seeing all the
lines that require hanging indents.
| | 02:16 | And then I'll click on paragraph, because this
is the paragraph level formatting attribute.
| | 02:20 | And notice these indent values, we have
Left indent, and we have Right indent.
| | 02:24 | I think those are pretty
self-evident how they work.
| | 02:26 | They are going to indent the left sides and
right sides of each and every paragraph and
| | 02:31 | each line is its own paragraph incidentally.
| | 02:33 | And then we've got this one that's called
First Line Left indent, which affects the
| | 02:38 | first line in the paragraph
independently of the other lines.
| | 02:41 | Here's how you create a hanging indent.
| | 02:43 | You change the first value, the
Left indent value, to whatever.
| | 02:47 | In my case I am going to
change that value to 36 pts.
| | 02:51 | And then you Tab forward by pressing the Tab
key a couple of times until you get to the
| | 02:55 | first line left indent value.
| | 02:57 | And notice, by the way, all lines of type right
now are indented inward inside of their textframes.
| | 03:02 | To take the first lines back out, you enter
that same value 36 pts that we entered as
| | 03:08 | a Left indent value, but you change it from
positive to negative, and then press the Tab
| | 03:12 | key and that goes ahead and un-indents the
first lines, and leaves the second lines indented.
| | 03:19 | So we have supple and Sunday remaining indented,
because they are the second lines of their
| | 03:23 | respective paragraphs.
| | 03:25 | All right, now I want to distinguish the
paragraphs from each other a little bit.
| | 03:28 | So we have a little bit of extra room between
supple and the next line and Sunday, and its next line.
| | 03:33 | So I'll change this value, the space before
paragraph value to 4 pt, and then press the
| | 03:39 | Tab key and that gives us a little bit of
extra spacing, which is going to make this
| | 03:43 | text a lot more readable.
| | 03:46 | The poem is organized into five line stanzas,
because after all it's a limerick, that's
| | 03:51 | the way limericks work.
| | 03:53 | And so notice this line right here, But she had
a boyfriend from Sweden, that's the beginning
| | 03:58 | of the second stanza.
| | 03:59 | So it needs some additional paragraph spacing.
| | 04:01 | So I'll just go ahead and click in that line.
| | 04:03 | You don't need to select the entire line,
because any time you are applying a paragraph
| | 04:07 | level formatting attribute it affects
the entire paragraph no matter what.
| | 04:11 | Then I'll click on the word
Paragraph up here in the Control panel.
| | 04:14 | I'll click on the space before paragraph
icon in order to highlight that value 4 pt, and
| | 04:19 | I will change it to 16 pt,
and then press the Tab key.
| | 04:22 | And you can see that we get some additional
paragraph spacing before the first line of
| | 04:27 | that second stanza.
| | 04:28 | Now that happens to knock the last line of the
stanza to the next page, we'll worry about that later.
| | 04:34 | But problem is we've got a bunch of first
lines of stanzas, Together they made quite
| | 04:38 | a couple, My chance came a week
from next Sunday and so forth.
| | 04:42 | It's kind of painful to have to apply this
formatting attribute even though it's a small
| | 04:45 | change to each and every one of these lines,
which is why we are going to automate the
| | 04:49 | formatting of those lines using
Paragraph Styles in the very next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating and applying paragraph styles| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to create
and apply Paragraph Styles which allow you
| | 00:04 | to assign a whole slew of
formatting attributes in a single click.
| | 00:09 | I have saved my progress as Caslon body copy.ai,
and the first thing I am going to do here
| | 00:14 | is move the text on the first page up a little
bit, because you can see that the final line
| | 00:18 | of the first stanza is
wrapping to the second artboard.
| | 00:21 | So I am going to go ahead and create a
guide for starters using the Line tool.
| | 00:26 | So I'll going ahead and drag the Line tool
across the top of the page, like so, and I'll
| | 00:30 | press the Shift key to constrain the
angle of that line to exactly horizontal.
| | 00:35 | Now the line should be the
exact width of the page.
| | 00:37 | We can confirm that by clicking on the word
Transform, up here in the Control panel and
| | 00:43 | notice it's telling me the line is 700
points wide which is the width of the artboard.
| | 00:47 | I am going to tab down to the Y value and
change it to 330 points, like so. Then I'll
| | 00:53 | go ahead and move the line
into the proper position.
| | 00:55 | I just happen to know that's
where I want that guideline to be.
| | 00:59 | Then I'll hide the Transform panel.
| | 01:00 | I'll go ahead and move this line to the
Guides layer by dragging that little orange square
| | 01:04 | that represents the selection down to the
Guides layer, and then I'll twirl guides open,
| | 01:09 | and I'll go ahead and rename that path H 330,
and now I'll convert it to a guideline by
| | 01:14 | pressing the V key to switch back to my Black
Arrow tool, and I'll right click in the artboard,
| | 01:19 | and I'll choose Make Guides.
| | 01:21 | Now I'll go ahead and
twirl close the Guides layer.
| | 01:23 | I'll click on that first text block to select it,
and I'll press Ctrl+Shift+B, or Command+Shift+B
| | 01:29 | on the Mac, in order to
invoke the bounding box.
| | 01:31 | I am not seeing the bounding box and what I
need to do is click off the text and reselect
| | 01:36 | it there, and now that I can see the bounding
box, I'll go ahead and drag that handle until
| | 01:40 | it snaps into alignment with the guideline.
| | 01:43 | And it helps that Smart
Guides are on, by the way.
| | 01:45 | Now let's create some paragraph styles.
| | 01:47 | I am going to start by double-clicking in
this second line of type right there in order
| | 01:52 | to switch to the Type tool and set my
blinking insertion marker in that line of type.
| | 01:56 | So the idea is this line is a representative
line. It contains all the formatting attributes
| | 02:01 | that I want to save to my paragraph style.
| | 02:04 | I can get to the Paragraph Style panel by
going to the Window menu and choosing Type,
| | 02:09 | way at the bottom, and then
choosing Paragraph Styles.
| | 02:12 | So you have both Paragraph
Styles and Character Styles.
| | 02:15 | The thing is Character Styles only save
character level formatting attributes, they are great
| | 02:19 | for styling single words here and there,
but Paragraph Styles save everything.
| | 02:23 | So, go ahead and choose Paragraph Styles.
That will bring up the Paragraph Styles panel,
| | 02:28 | which I've docked here in
this column of panel icons.
| | 02:31 | You can create a new style just by clicking
on this little page icon, but if you do that,
| | 02:36 | then you will create an unnamed style that you will
have to then double-click on in order to name it.
| | 02:40 | So I'll go ahead and call this one Large
standard, because this will be for the large standard
| | 02:45 | text inside the poem.
| | 02:46 | Now I am going to create another style for
this line right here, But she had a boyfriend
| | 02:51 | from Sweden, because that's the beginning
of the second stanza, it has more paragraph
| | 02:55 | spacing associated with it.
| | 02:57 | If you want to name the style at the same
time you create it, you press the Alt key
| | 03:00 | or the Option key on the Mac, and click on
that page icon and that brings up the Paragraph
| | 03:05 | Styles dialog box, and I'll go ahead and call
this Large first, because it's the first line
| | 03:10 | in the stanza, and notice all my
formatting attributes are represented here.
| | 03:13 | So I can see the Font, the Style, the
Type Size, the Leading and so forth.
| | 03:18 | Go ahead and click OK to create that new style.
| | 03:21 | All right! Now, I'm going to apply the styles
by pressing Ctrl+A, or Command+A on the Mac,
| | 03:27 | in order to select all the text inside of
the poem, and then I'll go ahead and click
| | 03:31 | on Large standard to assign that style.
| | 03:34 | Now notice that we are seeing a little Plus
sign. That's telling me that there are what
| | 03:37 | are known as local overrides
associated with this text.
| | 03:41 | Notice that Illustrator didn't change the
paragraph spacing of that first line of the
| | 03:46 | second stanza there.
| | 03:47 | So we still have additional spacing applied, even
though we're linking to a style that has less spacing.
| | 03:53 | If you want to get rid of those local
overrides and format all the text to exactly match the
| | 03:58 | style, you press the Alt key or the Option
key on a Mac, and then you click on that style,
| | 04:02 | like so. And I got rid of the extra paragraph
spacing associated with that first line there,
| | 04:07 | But she had a boyfriend from Sweden, that's
okay, however, because I'll just go ahead
| | 04:11 | and click in that line to make it active,
and then I'll select Large first, in order
| | 04:16 | to apply that style to it.
| | 04:18 | All right! So things are looking good.
| | 04:20 | I'll go ahead and press the Escape key in
order to switch back to the Black Arrow tool.
| | 04:24 | All of our text is just barely
fitting on the last artboard here.
| | 04:29 | So we don't have any overflow text so far,
but if I were to double-click inside this
| | 04:33 | line that says My chance came a week from
next Sunday, which is the beginning of yet
| | 04:37 | another stanza, and I switched it to Large
first, then we can see some of the text goes
| | 04:42 | off the page, so all of a
sudden we have overflow text.
| | 04:46 | We've also got a problem with this stanza
that starts with, I chanced by her flat with
| | 04:50 | a flower, which should be Large first as well,
but the problem is the stanza goes ahead and
| | 04:55 | breaks to the third page.
| | 04:57 | What we need to do is shrink the
text on the second and third pages.
| | 05:01 | So we need to come up with a different size
and leading combination, and we are going
| | 05:05 | to do so using a couple of additional
paragraph styles, and I'll show you what that looks
| | 05:09 | like in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Redefining paragraph styles| 00:00 | In this movie, we're going to create a couple
of new styles based on our existing ones that
| | 00:05 | is the ones that we
created in the previous movie.
| | 00:08 | And I'll show you how to redefine the styles
as well and how that ends up automatically
| | 00:12 | affecting the style text.
| | 00:13 | I've saved my progress as Styled paragraphs.ai.
| | 00:18 | So if you're working along with me, make
sure your Paragraph Styles panel is open.
| | 00:22 | Also go ahead and press the Escape key so
that you're back to the Black Arrow tool and
| | 00:26 | click off the text to make
sure it's all deselected.
| | 00:29 | We don't want anything selected in the artwork.
| | 00:32 | Then click on Large first and Shift-click on
Large standard so that they're both selected,
| | 00:37 | and then click on the flyout menu icon in
the upper right corner of the panel and choose
| | 00:41 | Duplicate Paragraph Style and that will
create duplicates of both of those styles.
| | 00:46 | And let's go ahead and rename them.
| | 00:47 | I'll call this one Small first, and I'll get
rid of the word copy, and I'll also move it
| | 00:52 | below the other one by dragging it downward.
| | 00:55 | And then I'll rename this guy Small standard,
and I'll get rid of the word copy as well.
| | 01:00 | All right let's go ahead and apply Small standard
to all of the text in the second and third pages.
| | 01:06 | So I need to click on the text in the third
artboard to select it, and then drag down
| | 01:10 | on the Bounding Box handle so
that we can see all of the text.
| | 01:15 | Then go ahead and double-click inside of
that line, Together they made quite a couple.
| | 01:20 | And I'm going to triple-click, and then
drag across all of the remaining text, like so,
| | 01:25 | so that all of the text once again, on
the second and third artboards is selected.
| | 01:31 | Then go ahead and click on Small standard.
| | 01:33 | Now, that won't necessarily do much.
| | 01:36 | We just got rid of the extra paragraph
spacing that were associated with the first lines
| | 01:40 | of their respective stanzas.
| | 01:41 | But now I can go ahead and redefine Small standard
and see the changes happen here inside the document.
| | 01:47 | So I'll press the Escape key in order to
switch back to the Black Arrow tool, click off the
| | 01:51 | text to make sure it's totally deselected,
| | 01:54 | then double-click on an empty portion of
Small standard, in other words, not on the name
| | 01:58 | but over in this region in order to
bring up the Paragraph Styles dialog box.
| | 02:03 | And I'm going to click on Basic Character
Formats and change the Size value to 26 points
| | 02:07 | and press the Tab key.
| | 02:09 | And assuming that the Preview check box is on,
you'll see the style text change in the background.
| | 02:14 | Then go ahead and click on the word Leading
to select that value, and let's change it
| | 02:18 | to 32 points and press the Tab key, and you'll
see the text tighten up in the background as well.
| | 02:24 | All right, now let's click OK
in order to apply those changes.
| | 02:28 | Now we need to style the first lines of the
stanzas, but the first line that we need to
| | 02:32 | style has wrapped back into the first artboard.
| | 02:35 | So I'll double-click on Together they made
quite a couple, and I'll change it to Small first.
| | 02:39 | Now it's not small, it's big because we
haven't made any modifications to that style.
| | 02:43 | It's the same as Large first,
the way things are right now.
| | 02:47 | And then I'll click in My chance came a week
from next Sunday, which is now all fitting
| | 02:50 | on a single line, which is great,
and I'll change it to Small first.
| | 02:55 | And that of course messes everything up.
| | 02:57 | We'll fix that problem in just a second.
| | 02:59 | I'll go ahead scroll over by pressing the
Ctrl key as I scroll down on my mouse wheel.
| | 03:04 | And now I'll click inside I
chanced by her flat with a flower.
| | 03:06 | So this stuff is a little tedious at this
point that we have to style every single first
| | 03:11 | line, but it's a lot better than having to
apply the formatting attributes manually.
| | 03:14 | I'll click in That morning on Facebook she
tweeted, change that to Small first, I'll
| | 03:18 | click in Well, now I sit here in my attick,
change that to Small first, and then we've
| | 03:23 | got one more line that we need to deal with
here, So thus now I close out my limerick,
| | 03:29 | and I'll change that to Small first.
| | 03:30 | All right, now let me show you a different
way to update a paragraph style, and that's
| | 03:35 | by styling the paragraph directly.
| | 03:37 | So I'll triple-click on this first line in the
final stanza in order to select the whole thing.
| | 03:42 | I'll click on the word Character to bring
up the Character panel, and let's go ahead
| | 03:45 | and change the Type Size to the
same thing we used before, 26 pt.
| | 03:49 | I'll Tab over to the Leading
value, change it to 32 pt.
| | 03:53 | Then I'll click on Paragraph in
order to bring up the Paragraph panel.
| | 03:56 | I'll click on the Space before a paragraph
icon and select its value, and I'll take it
| | 04:00 | down to 14 pt and press the Tab
key in order to update the text.
| | 04:04 | All right, now I'll go ahead and press the
Enter key or the Return key on the Mac, to
| | 04:07 | hide that Paragraph panel.
| | 04:09 | Notice that Small first has a little plus
sign in front of it, indicating that there
| | 04:12 | is some local override to work.
| | 04:15 | I want you to see both of these artboards
at the same time, because in just a moment
| | 04:18 | all of these first lines will change Together.
| | 04:22 | So keep an eye on them.
| | 04:23 | And I'll go over here and click on the flyout
menu icon and choose Redefine Paragraph Style
| | 04:28 | and that updates the first lines of
each and every one of those paragraphs.
| | 04:32 | So just like that, we're
able to style that text.
| | 04:36 | Again, requires a little bit of work,
because we have to select all those first lines.
| | 04:41 | But I can't stress to you how much easier
that is than applying one formatting attribute,
| | 04:46 | after another manually.
| | 04:48 | All right, now I'll press the Escape key to
switch back to my Black Arrow tool, and I'll
| | 04:52 | click on this final column of text to
select it independently of the rest.
| | 04:55 | And I'll go ahead and drag up the bottom
handle of the Bounding Box so that it aligns to the
| | 05:00 | bottom of the margin guide.
| | 05:02 | All right, one more
modification I want to make.
| | 05:05 | I'm going to press the Ctrl+spacebar keys
that's Command+spacebar on the Mac, to get
| | 05:08 | the Zoom tool, and then I'll
marquee around this area here.
| | 05:12 | Notice it says AI...
| | 05:14 | Well, I'm going to double-click in that region
in order to switch to my Type tool, and then
| | 05:19 | drag over AI... and then press Ctrl+Alt+Right
Arrow four times in a row, so one, two, three,
| | 05:28 | four, and that ends up
increasing the tracking of that text.
| | 05:32 | And so if I click on the word Character up
here in the Control panel, you can see that
| | 05:35 | the Tracking value is now set to 100.
| | 05:37 | Thanks to the fact I reduced the Tracking
increment to five thousandths of an em a few movies ago.
| | 05:43 | All right, THAT takes care that.
| | 05:44 | We just needed to give those Periods a little
more space, as well as the letters A, and I.
| | 05:49 | All right I'll press the Escape key once
again to switch back to the Black Arrow tool.
| | 05:52 | And I'll go ahead and press Ctrl+Alt+0, or
Command+Option+0 to zoom out from my artboards.
| | 05:58 | So now all the text is pretty
much styled the way I need it to be.
| | 06:01 | One thing missing are the
little ornaments that I created.
| | 06:04 | If I switch back to the final formatted
version of my limerick, you can see I've got these
| | 06:08 | little pineapple ornaments between each stanza.
| | 06:12 | And I'll show you how to create those
as characters of type in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| | Using the Glyphs panel |
|
