From the course: Illustrator 2021 Essential Training

Using the specific Transform tools - Illustrator Tutorial

From the course: Illustrator 2021 Essential Training

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Using the specific Transform tools

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- [Instructor] In this movie, we're going to take a look at Illustrator's specific transformation tools and we're going to start strangely enough with the selection tool, which has the ability to make a transformation. I wonder if you can guess what it is when I select this plane and go up and double-click on the selection tool. You can see that it's to actually move. So if you want to move something by a specific distance, this is exactly where you can do it. So for example, and I do do this by the way if I want to get something out of the way while I'm working in a similar area. I could tap zero here. No movement horizontally. Okay, vertically I want it to move by let's say 100 just here, 100 millimeters just there. And you can see it does that already. Now to go upwards, you have to enter a negative value. So if I do negative 100, you can see it now goes upwards. You could always set a distance as well. A specific distance if you wanted to, and an angle. It does the calculation for you. And you could also copy. Now that's something else I want you to see because it's common to all of the specific transformation tools. And rather than clicking copy if you want a copy, 'cause okay, you know you can hit return for that. I'm sure you do. But rather than clicking copy, all you need to do is add in the Alt or Option key and then hit Return, and you can make a copy like that, and it's worth bearing that in mind. Okay, I'm going to delete my copy just here and I'm going to go first of all, to the scale tool. So I'll tap S on my keyboard to get the scale tool and I'm actually going to long press on that in the toolbox. Okay, and bring that out like so. Now you may just about be able to see there is a small marker just there. That's the actual transformation point which is set by default to the center. So if I were to make movements with the cursor like so, then you can see I'm scaling. I'm just going to undo that. Hold down Shift and do that. And you can see it's uniform. I'll undo that again. What's really great about this is if you hit the Return key, you can enter your values numerically, okay. You can set other things like corner scaling and strokes and effects as well. So that's worth keeping in mind. I'll just cancel out of that because also in common with the other transformation tools, you can set that point and call for the dialogue at the same time. So if I go to the base of this flagpole just here. Hopefully you can see that. Okay, I'm going to hold down the Alt or Option key and click. That simultaneously sets the transformation point and also allows me to work inside the dialogue. You can see as I scale it's scaling down to that flagpole like so. There you go. I'll just hit Escape to cancel out of that. Shearing is where it bends to an angle, so if I go again and hit the Return key just here. Now it's not working from the same place of course, because I didn't Option + click there. But let's enter a shear angle. Probably not the right art for this, I think really, but there you go. I could go ahead and do vertical here. So there you are, it's the point of going into a roll there. I did manage to get it to work once where I thought actually that's still cool. So there we are. I'm just going to cancel out of that. Then I'm going to tap R on my keyboard. I'll get rid of those tools, which gets me the rotate tool and again, I will long press just there. Okay, to get that tool. And as you would expect, it allows you to rotate. And also as you would expect, if you Option + click or hit Return, the only difference with the Option + click or Alt + click is that you get the dialogue and set the transformation point, you can move that around a point like so. Finally here, for the specific transformations, I'm just going to undo that, is the reflect tool. Now this is very, very useful if you've drawn half of something that's symmetrical because you can select the half that you've drawn. Okay. Option + click on the extreme edge of that and then use the dialogue to create the reflected copy and join those together. So that's a good strategy in Illustrator. If you can, just draw half of the object. Again, I'm going to hold down the option key once I've selected it and by the way, O is the shortcut for that. Think about it. O's got several lines of symmetry just here. I'm going to go to this corner here. In fact, I'll go to the flag and Option + click. Okay, I'm going to do this vertically and then go to Option + Return. Now you might think, well, nothing's happened. Well, it has 'cause if I zoom out, I've now got a reflected copy. And if we take a quick look at the pilot's scarf just here, there it is blowing off to the left and if we move across here very quickly, you can now see it's blowing to the right. So it is indeed a reflection, and those are the specific transformation tools in Illustrator.

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