From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

948 Another way to unlock stuff in Illustrator

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

948 Another way to unlock stuff in Illustrator

- [Instructor] In this movie, I'll show you another new way to unlock objects here inside the most recent version of Illustrator. And so notice, if I drag in the sky inside this particular document, I do not select it, and that's because I've locked it in advance. And you can confirm that's the case by right-clicking on that sky, choosing unlock, and then you can see that we have the sky object in the sub-menu. And the reason it's called sky, as opposed to rectangle or path or what have you, is because I went ahead and named that object inside the layers panel. And so notice, I'll go ahead and make the panel wider so that we can see this layer right here, which I've called backdrop, if I twirl it open, I have an object that I've called sky that is locked. And to name objects, all you do is double-click on 'em and enter a different name. In any event, that's the only thing that's currently locked. And so let's say I decided to lock a few more objects. I'll click off those objects to de-select them. And then I'll click on the white sign, I'll shift-click on the word, California, and I'll shift-click on the word, surf. So I've selected three objects at this point, at which point I'll go up to the object menu, choose lock, and then choose selection, or you have that very ancient keyboard shortcut of Control + 2 here on a PC. And now let's say I right-click on the word California right there and choose unlock, I'll see California, which is a text layer, I'll see this group, which is the big white sign, and I'll see the sky as well. But there's another way to unlock objects using an icon. Now, if you don't see that icon just by clicking on an object, like so, notice, in my case, I've just selected this big red path, then what you want to do is bring up your preferences. And the easiest way to do that is to press Control + K here on the PC or Command + K on the Mac, and then click on this second item over here in the left-hand list and turn on this check box right here, Select and Unlock objects on canvas. Then click okay. And now notice, if I were to click on the word surf right there, with any luck, I'm going to see a little lock icon. If for some reason you don't, then what you need to do is just go ahead and marquee a bunch of objects with the black arrow tool, the one that Illustrator calls the selection tool, and then notice that I've selected a bunch of locked and unlocked objects. And the ones that are locked are identified by little lock icons. If you click on a lock, you will de-select that object. And that is another way to unlock objects selectively here inside the most recent version of Adobe Illustrator.

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