Hi everyone, this is Anne for Graphic Design How To, and today I'm going to tell you all
about guides in Illustrator and also the rulers.
So we'll start off with rulers, hit CMD R on your keyboard or CTRL R on a PC.
And that will toggle your rulers on and off, and you'll see them here and here.
If you want to change the unit type, you can CTRL click right on the ruler and choose for
instance, 'inches' if you want.
And if you don't want the edge of your artboard to be at 0,0, you want the rulers to start
somewhere else, you can grab this here, pull it down, and this will make that point your
0,0 point.
So that's rulers in a nutshell.
Let's switch over to guides, which is what this is really all about.
So to create a guide, all you have to do is click in the ruler and pull a guide down like
this.
So we'll pull one from both sides.
Now if your rulers are unlocked, you can move them around, you can pull them up and down
and pull them side by side.
I like to keep my rulers locked because I don't want to select them.
So to do that it's OPT CMD semicolon (;) or ALT CTRL semicolon (;) on a PC.
So now I can't select them.
As you can see, most of what I'm going to show you today will need them to be selected.
So I'm going to unlock doing the same thing, OPT CMD semicolon (;). And now we can select
them.
Okay, there are a lot of different things that you can do with guides, you can click
and drag and then hold the OPT to make a copy.
Or you can select two or more, drag and hold OPT to create a copy.
Again, you can also create a lot of different shapes
with your shape tool.
I'll just make a few different ones.
I'm going to select all of them - they don't have a fill or a stroke.
So I'm going to hit D to give them a white fill and a black outline.
So I've got all of these selected, I've got all my shapes selected, and these two guides.
I can click once more, I have to be right on the edge of the guide for this to work,
but I can click on it, and that sets it as a key object.
And then I can align all of my objects to that object.
You can also turn off the guides by hitting CMD semicolon (;) or CTRL semicolon (;) on
a PC.
Okay, let's bring them back by hitting the same thing.
If your guides are locked, you can SHIFT CMD and double click on one.
And this actually changes it into a live object.
It's no longer a guide.
That's a path now.
So if I wanted to give it an outline, I could just hit D. And that actually gives it a white
fill and black outline and it can become part of my artwork.
Then if you want to change it back into a guide, you can just hit CMD 5, or CTRL 5 on
a PC.
And the last thing I want to show you is kind of a variation of what I just showed you with
this one.
You can make any shape into a guide.
So we have this star here, you can hit CMD 5.
And now this is a guide, you can't select it unless you have it unlocked.
And then you can turn it back into a shape by holding SHIFT CMD and double clicking it.
And you can make it any color.
You can even make text into a guide, which is really helpful if you want to create templates
and have somebody see a note without being able to select it very easily.
So I'm going to create some text here.
We'll make it a little bit bigger.
And then I'm going to hit SHIFT CMD O. You do have to outline the text in order for this
to work, and then hit CMD 5, and now it's a guide.
If you want your guides to be a different color, maybe this is too light to read.
You can hit CMD K to get your preferences up, go to guides and grids and then you can
change the color of your guides.
We'll say OK, and so this is a little more readable, but it might conflict with what
you're working on.
So keep that in mind too.
All right, that's my video for this week.
If you liked it, please click on the Like button and I'll see you next week with another
graphic design tutorial.
Thank you!!!