From the course: Learning the Adobe Pen Tool

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Four unrelated Shift key tricks

Four unrelated Shift key tricks

From the course: Learning the Adobe Pen Tool

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Four unrelated Shift key tricks

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- In this movie I'll share with you four totally unrelated Shift key tricks. Two of which, I'm willing to bet, you don't know about even if you're an advanced user. Now this first one is pretty common knowledge. If you Shift-click in a document with the Pen Tool you're going to create a new corner point at a 45-degree angle from the previous anchor point. In other words, the result is going to be a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal segment. So I'm going to start things off by pressing the "P" key to get the Pen Tool. There's no path active which is why I'm seeing the sparkling Create cursor. So I'll go ahead and light this guy up by clicking on an anchor point with the Resume cursor. And then, I'll create a few anchor points. Now at this point, let's say, I want the next segment to be exactly vertical. In which case, I go ahead and press the Shift key and click. And notice how far that anchor point is away from my cursor. So Illustrator is smart enough to know I want this segment to…

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