Hi, this is Anne from Graphic Design How To, and today I want to give you a few ways to
really improve your workflow with Adobe Illustrator.
But I especially want to show you a really cool trick I learned about grabbing all the
colors in something you're working on and creating a global swatch palette out of that...
makes it really easy to change colors if you want to in the future.
Okay, so let's get started.
Okay, so first off, I want to change this graphic.
My client wants a black background on it.
So I'm going to go ahead and click this background and change it to black.
And a fast way to do this is to hit the letter D. And then we've got a white fill in a black
background, and I will switch those by using SHIFT X. Okay, and then to clear that white
outline, you can just hit the question mark.
Okay, so we have just a black fill now, and I'm going to lock that with CMD 2, and now
I'm going to grab my text which is over here.
Okay, and I've got it all.
Now to make the text white, all you have to do is the same thing, hit D. Now we've got
a white fill and a black outline.
Hitting D will always give you a white fill and a black outline.
And to clear that black outline, which is in front over here in the swatches area, you
just hit the question mark.
And that's it.
So that's the first quick tip I want to tell you.
You can, of course, always go over here to color.
It just takes longer.
I know it seems like it wouldn't take as long to just go up there.
But when you're working really fast and using these key commands, it really saves a lot
of time.
Okay, so that's tip number one.
The second thing I want to show you, a lot of times I'll grab these icon sets off the
internet and they won't be set up quite right.
I want just this first icon with the shadow.
So I'll take it with my V tool and drag it, but they're all grouped.
This is a problem I see a lot with online vectors.
They're not built quite the way, the best way that you want.
So first, let's get our G tool.
And you can set this up in keyboard shortcuts.
It's a group selection tool, and G is usually...is your gradient.
But I don't use that one as often.
So group selection is G for me, you can set it here.
Just click and choose a different key command and then say, "Okay."
Alright, so with my G tool, I'm going to select just the background, and I'm going to delete
that.
When you're doing that, just check to make sure the graphic doesn't change.
If it does, you might want to figure out a different thing to do, maybe just lock it.
Now, I'm going to draw a box around this first icon.
And then I want to create a new action.
So I'm going to create a new set.
We'll call it "tutorial."
And now we'll put a new action inside.
This is going to be called "cut, paste, group and hide" because those are the four things
I want it to do.
So we'll record now.
I'm going to set a function key first.
F3, that's SHIFT CMD F3 and we'll record this.
Okay, now the action is recording and you can tell that by this little red button is
grayed out.
Okay, so I am going to CMD X, Paste in front.
And you can see over here it's recorded those two actions.
Now I'm going to group.
Paste in front was CMD F, and then CMD G for group and then CMD 3 for hide.
And that is all I want to do.
And I just want to repeat it for all of these other things.
So I'm going to stop the action now.
And now we'll see how it plays out.
So same thing with the G tool.
If I use the V tool here, it's going to select everything.
So with the G tool, it'll just select what I want.
Now we'll hit SHIFT F3.
I'm going to change this to just CMD F3.
Okay, so CMD F3, there we go.
It's just running through that action every time.
So I'm going to show you what it's like.
Just really speeds up your process.
I'm not gonna do the rest of them, but I'll do
OPT CMD 3, which brings everything that's hidden, back.
Now I can select one with my V tool, and use them as they should be used.
They're not all grouped in a weird way.
Anything that you can do that's repetitive like that, set up an action.
This is just for productivity really, and using Illustrator as fast as you can.
All right, let's move on to the next one.
This one is the Move tool - using the Move tool to isolate different parts of a graphic
that you want to work on.
The first thing I do is... let's say I just want to work on these two flowers here.
So we'll zoom in with the Z tool.
And now I'm going to take my Lasso tool, the Q tool, and just kind of draw...make sure
I am touching all the parts that I want.
Okay, that's good enough.
Now, you'll notice that some of these dots are filled in and some are white.
This one is white, this one's filled in.
I don't know if you can see that very well.
But what that means is, the filled in ones are selected and the white ones are not.
And to make all of it selected, you need to lock it (CMD 2) and unlock.
And now they're all filled in.
I'm going to zoom out with a CMD minus.
And now I want to send these pieces to the right about 10 inches.
So I'm going to hit V and return, and this brings up the Move tool.
So I'm going to say, well, I'm in pixels.
So we'll say 1000 pixels horizontal, but I don't want it to move down
at all.
So the vertical, we're going to put a zero and say okay, and now it's gone.
So if we move over here, now we have this that we can work on separately.
And I think I will first change this color to something else.
Something I could see.
All right.
So let's say I just don't like these little leaf
things here, and I want to fill them in.
I'm going to use the N tool to just kind of reshape this path.
There we go.
And these two, same thing, just sort of reshape manually.
Alright, so I'm done with this part.
And now I want to send it back.
So I'm going to highlight the whole thing.
Just with the G tool though, just G and V, hit return.
And then we're going to put a minus in front of this, and say okay, and now we've sent
it back to where it was with the Edit.
Now, you can do all this right in here, but a lot of times, it's all grouped together.
It can be a little bit weird, you don't know which part you're working on.
And to send it to the right really makes it easy to tell what's going on.
And I know you can use the Isolate tool, but if these aren't grouped in the correct way,
the Isolate tool won't work like it should.
So if you're having that trouble, just use the Q tool, which is the lasso, you know,
get it, lock it, unlock it, and then send it to the right, and that way you can work
on it off the screen.
All right, that was tip number three.
Let's move on to number four.
This is the one I was talking about in the intro.
I'm going to take the colors in here and create a Swatch Group here, but I'm going to clear
all my swatches right now.
So we'll create a new group here.
But you can highlight any vector graphic, and then come over here and choose this new
color group button in the swatch palette.
So when we do that, we'll get some options.
I usually do convert process to global.
And what that does, it makes your colors easily mergeable.
So you can merge them with other colors and easily change the colors really fast that
way, even if they're in gradients.
So let's say okay, all right, it's got a couple different colors of blue, which I didn't even
realized there were different colors of blue in here.
So I'm going to go ahead and merge those.
The first one that you choose like this is going to be the color that you end up with.
Now, the second one you choose is going to go to the first color, so now we'll merge
swatches.
And then we only have the three colors that we see.
All right, let's um, let's grab a few more.
I am going to add a new swatch.
Let's do, let's do a red.
All right.
I didn't have anything clicked so nothing changed to red.
And that's fine.
But I want to show you how to merge a global swatch.
This only works with global swatches, not process ones.
So first, we want all of the blue stuff to turn to red.
So red is the first color we choose.
Then you hold CMD and choose the second color, whatever you want it to change to, whatever
you want to go to red, and then right click here and merge swatches.
Not right click,click the fly down.
And now all of the blue stuff has changed to red.
Blue is no longer in the color group.
That is the fourth really awesome tip and trick to maximize your workflow.
I want to use this same graphic to show you the last tip that I have, which is taking
an entire graphic and distorting it with the Transform tool, which is this one here and
it's E. If you hit E, you'll go to that tool.
So this one's a little weird because you have to do it in the right order.
So first click on a corner...click and drag, but don't let off.
See how I've got it.
Next, while you're still holding it, hold down CMD.
And now you can see we get some weird warping going on.
Some pretty cool stuff.
This can be really helpful if you're trying to fit a shape or something like that.
So let's do it down here.
Click, drag, and then hold down CMD.
That's on a Mac... probably it's CTRL on a PC.
All right, let's bring these in.
This is starting to look kind of cool.
Hold, drag, and then hold CMD.
Same here.
Click, drag, hold CMD and then let off.
All right, well, it's a little too distorted now, but you kind of get my drift.
So those are my five ways to maximize your Illustrator workflow.
Please leave any comments or suggestions if there's part of the tutorial you didn't understand.
Please leave those in the comments section below.
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And I will see you next week on YouTube Thursday.
Thanks!!!
This is Anne for Graphic Design How To.