From the course: Illustrator 2020 Essential Training

The Selection tool - Illustrator Tutorial

From the course: Illustrator 2020 Essential Training

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The Selection tool

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- [Instructor] The line at the top of this document is something that is very dear to me, because it addresses the number one user error in Illustrator, and as I've told many people before, and as many people have experienced, at one of the places I worked in London, this was actually along the top of the wall, because of people that would say "No, it's not working for me." And I'd just say, "Is it selected?" They'd look at their screen and go "No." And they knew their own answer, so let's make sure you're not part of that less-than-elite group. Of course, we all make mistakes while we're leaning, so I'm just being a bit tongue-in-cheek here. So what we're going to do is simply drag across the artwork on this layer, and we can see that it selected. To deselect it, just click away, although there is a command to deselect in the menu as well, and you see there Shift + Command + A on the Macintosh, Shift + Control + A on the PC. You can toggle selection using the Shift key, when you're selecting more than one object, so if I click here on the star, and then hold down the Shift key, and click on the heart, then I have those two things selected. If I don't want to have the star as part of that selection, I can hold down Shift and click on that. And now if I want the red arrow with Shift held down I can click on that, and I now decided I do want the star, so with Shift down I'll click on that. But I don't want the heart, so with Shift held down, I'll click on that. And I'm sure you get the picture. So let's try and not select the shark, but we want to select the whole lot here, so what we'll do is drag across, all of those things. Hold down the Shift key. And click to deselect the shark. If you want to test if that was 100% good, all you need to do is hit the Delete key on your keyboard. There you go, just a shark left. And then Undo, Command + Z or Control + Z on Windows. And selection really is that easy, but you'll be surprised throughout your illustrator career, how many times you'll actually have a "D'oh!" moment when you realize it didn't work, because you didn't select it. And you have to select it, if you want to effect it.

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