From the course: Illustrator CS5 One-on-One: Fundamentals
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Width tool tips and tricks - Illustrator Tutorial
From the course: Illustrator CS5 One-on-One: Fundamentals
Width tool tips and tricks
In this exercise I'm going to demonstrate a bunch of hidden tips and tricks associated with the Width tool here inside of Illustrator CS5. I have gone ahead and saved my progress as Variable-width strokes.ai, found inside the usual 07_fill_stroke folder, and let's say that the goal that I am ultimately working towards is to take the variable-width stroke that I have applied to this big, black, looping path in the background, and I want to be able to apply it to either open or closed paths alike, and that's a very important distinction because what it means is that you need to make sure that your endpoints have exactly the same stroke weight. So this endpoint here needs to exactly match this endpoint over there. Why is that so important? Well let me go ahead and show you. I am going to grab my Ellipse tool, or press the L key of course, and I will draw, let's say, a circle. So I'm pressing the Shift key as I draw this shape just so that we have a nice symmetrical shape to work with…
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Contents
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The Three S's of Illustrator1m 6s
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Making a new window into a document4m 56s
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Assigning colors to fill and stroke6m 29s
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The Document Color mode6m 20s
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The Hide and Show commands3m 9s
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Introducing the Stroke panel4m 46s
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Cap, Join, and Miter Limit6m 42s
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Saving and reverting multiple views4m 5s
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Filling open paths, None, and Swap6m 30s
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Lifting a color and creating a swatch5m 30s
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Managing color swatches4m 55s
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Assigning a swatch with the Eyedropper6m 12s
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Filling paths inside groups6m 24s
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Adjusting the stacking order7m 44s
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Paste in Front and Paste in Back3m 54s
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Working in the Group Isolation mode7m 29s
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Trapping colors with rich blacks7m 32s
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Combining multiple fills5m 29s
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Creating a tile pattern9m 2s
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Aligning dashes to endpoints and corners6m 22s
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Defining a two-stroke dot pattern3m 26s
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The new CS5 arrowheads5m 44s
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Creating a callout line7m 1s
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Varying line weight with the Width tool7m 36s
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Width tool tips and tricks8m 47s
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Saving a variable-width profile6m 23s
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