[ Music ]
>> Hello, and welcome to this video tutorial,
brought to you by tastytuts.com.
In this video, I'm going to cover 10 handy tips
in Adobe Illustrator that you should know and be up to speed
with before starting a project.
The things I'm going to cover in the next few minutes are things
that are going to improve your workflow,
and help you create your artwork.
To follow along with this tutorial, you will need
to open this document I have prepared especially
for this tutorial.
This can be found in the introduction folder
in the project folder.
Now, you can download this project folder for free.
The download link is in the description.
So, with the project folder open, click introduction,
handy tips, versions, and select the version
of illustrator you're using.
In my case, it's CC.
And, open the handy tips file.
And, you should have something that looks like this.
Along the way, I will be mentioning some useful shortcut
keys, which you can find in the description,
and in the shortcut key page in the project PDF,
which you can also download in the description.
We're going to be covering a lot in this video,
and in quite some depth.
If you wish to skip ahead or back at any time,
you can do so quite simply.
The topics covered in this video are listed in the description,
along with their times.
So, be sure to check that out.
Okay. So, let's get into it.
Tip number 1, zooming.
So, the first tip is zooming in and out.
Getting a good grip of this tool can really help speed things up.
The shortcut key for the zoom tool is zed.
Press the zed key on the keyboard,
and you will notice the mouse changed
to a magnifying glass with a plus on it.
This will allow us to click and zoom in, like so.
To zoom out, simply press and hold alt on the keyboard,
and notice the plus changed to a minus.
Then, simply click again a few times to zoom out.
With the zoom tool active, you can click and drag
to select an area to zoom in to.
So, be sure to practice these zoom techniques.
Another handy shortcut is command zero.
This will snap the current canvas doc
to your workspace area.
So, let's say we are zoomed in quite a lot on the canvas area.
Pressing command zero will zoom
out to show the document fully on the page, like so.
Another handy zoom shortcut is command 1.
This will snap the current canvas doc to 100%.
So, let's say we zoomed in quite a lot on the canvas area.
Pressing command 1 will zoom
out to show the document art board at 100%.
Tip number 2, maneuvering.
Another cool tip is to use the space bar.
No matter what tool you have active, if you press
and hold the space bar, you will notice the cursor change
to a little hand symbol.
With the spacebar held down, I'm going to click and drag
around the canvas, maneuvering around my area, like so.
I can zoom out, and press the space bar to move around.
Zoom back in.
Hold the space bar to move around again, like so.
This is a really useful tip to maneuver around your artwork.
Tip number 3, duplicating your vector objects.
Let's say you have a vector object on your canvas area,
like this square here.
If I want to quickly duplicate this object, I can simply press
and hold alt on the keyboard,
click and drag the object across, like so,
and upon release, a clone of that object will be made.
I could do this several times,
until I have many squares on my canvas area.
Tip number 4, select multiple objects.
With the selection tool active, I can drag an area
over all the objects, like so.
And, upon release, I will have all objects selected.
This will enable me to move them
around as one, like so, as a group.
Though, if for any reason, I want to select a couple --
if I click off to deselect them, by holding shift
on the keyboard, I can simply select multiple objects one
at a time.
If, for example, you want to deselect one of the objects,
then with the shift still held down, you can simply click again
on an object, and this will deselect that object.
So, by holding shift, you can select multiple objects
and deselect objects.
Tip number 5, aligning.
If I want to align these objects,
I can do so quite simply.
With a selection tool active, I'm going to click and drag
over all the squares to select them.
With them all selected, I'm going to come
to the top control panel, across the top of my interface,
and you should notice some alignment buttons here.
If you don't see these buttons for any reason, you can come
to Window and open your align panel.
I'm going to go ahead and click
on the horizontal alignment center.
And, upon click, you can see them all align
to the center, like so.
Now, as you can see, they are oddly spaced out.
If I want to align them with equal spacing between,
I can simply click
on the vertical distribute center button,
and now they are perfectly spaced out.
Excellent.
So, keep in mind, you can also align in other ways,
using the other alignment icons.
Tip number 6, rulers and guides.
To demonstrate this, I'm going to come
over to the next art board.
Now, this is a function that can allow you to create margins
in a document, and accurately place and align your objects,
in relation to each other, on your canvas area.
A useful shortcut for this is command R. And, as you can see,
if you look around the edge of my document area,
as I press command R repeatedly,
you can see the rulers become visible and hide again.
Okay. So, I'm going to press this until I can see my rulers.
Now, I'm going to move my mouse over the vertical ruler
and click and drag out and over to the right, like so.
And, as you do this, notice a gray line appear.
This is your new guide you're
about to drop onto the canvas area.
So, I'm going to drag this over to the right and place it next
to my circle, like so.
And, once I'm happy, I'm simply going to release,
and my guide will be placed.
Now, if for some reason you do not see your guide,
you can press command colon.
This is the shortcut to hide and reveal guides.
Or, you can simply come up to view, come down to guides,
and then come across to show guides.
Okay. So, what if I want to edit these current guides?
For example, I want to move this guide
to the other side of the circle.
Well, this is easy.
All you have to do is select the guide with a selection tool.
Though, you must first make sure that you can edit guides.
If we come back to view, and scroll down to guides,
we have an option here, called lock guides.
To edit guides, we need to make sure this is unchecked.
And, then we can simply click a guide on the canvas area,
unclick, and drag it around, like so.
Tip number 7, smart guides.
Another thing to keep in mind is smart guides.
Again, if we come to view, and come down,
we can see smart guides.
This is pretty useful.
So, you will want this checked.
With smart guides active --
activated, Illustrator will give you useful prompts, for example,
if I select the current guide and drag in slightly
to the middle of my circle here, you will see it snap
to the center of the circle.
If I click and drag again, but this time to the outside
of the circle, notice how it snaps
to the outside of the circle.
Smart guides also help when positioning objects
in relation to each other.
For example, if I take a square that I created earlier
and attempt to move it around another object,
you will see the green smart guide help me align to the top,
middle, bottom of a neighboring object.
So, this can be pretty useful.
So, now I'm going to drag a few more guides
into the canvas area around my circle.
And, now I have very quickly and easily marked
out the middle horizontal
and middle vertical point of my circle.
Now, remember, we are still using smart guides.
So, what I can do now is select the ellipse tool.
If I move my mouse pointer to the top left of my guides,
you will notice the mouse pointer snap to the corner.
If I click and drag to draw an ellipse, by holding shift,
this will scale this nicely.
And, I can create a circle half the size of my outer circle.
Now, if I select this new circle, I can easily click
and drag this into the middle, and notice how it snaps
to the middle, like so.
Perfect. Tip number 8, scale stroke and effects.
Another thing to keep in mind when new
to Illustrator is the scale, stroke, and effects feature.
For example, I'm going to select my two circles here.
And, I'm going to push up the stroke on them both, like so.
Then, I'm going to select the scale tool
from the menu on the left.
And, I'm going to make my circle smaller.
Now, notice that the stroke size is the same,
even when the circles are smaller.
This time, let's make the circles larger.
And, we can see that the stroke size is still the same.
If you're new to Illustrator,
chances are that this will happen when you attempt
to scale objects up and down.
But, if you want to scale, stroke, and effects,
you can do this simply by coming to the top menu
and finding the preferences option.
On a Mac, we come to Illustrator and click on preferences.
I'm going to click on general, and up will pop a menu.
If you look closely, about halfway
down on the right-hand side, you should see a checkbox
with the title scale, strokes, and effects.
If we make sure this is checked, and click okay, when we select
and scale down our objects, so too will the effects applied
to the vector, such as the stroke.
Excellent.
Tip number 9, full screen and toggle panels.
This is a really simple tip, but kind of useful if you want
to remove all the interface panels and take a look
at your artwork nice and clear on the screen.
First, if you press tab on the keyboard, this is going
to remove all the panels in the interface.
And, if I press tab again, this will bring them back.
If I press F on the keyboard once,
this will remove the panels from view.
And, if I press F again, this will go into full screen mode.
Simple, yet useful.
Tip number 10, grids.
For the last tip, I'm going to show you grids.
The shortcut to show your grids is command apostrophe,
or you could simply come to view and show grids.
If you're creating an intricate piece of artwork and need
to use a grid, you will find this useful.
If you wish to customize your grid, you can come
to preferences, scroll down, and select guides and grid.
And, in the pop-up menu, you can change the grid properties,
such as the color, style, grid line, quantity, and subdivision.
As you can see here, I have mine set
for a gridline every 40 millimeters,
with a subdivision of five.
Below this, you can also specify
if you want your grids always set in the background.
And, if you want Illustrator
to show a pixel grid above 600% zoom.
With your grid open, you also have the ability
to snap to grid.
If I come to view and scroll down to snap to grid,
then make sure this is checked.
I'm going to come over to one
of the squares I created earlier and zoom in a little.
And, if I move this around,
you can see the object snapping to the grid, like so.
And, if I had enough of my grid, or simply want to continue
to create artwork without the grid, again,
I can press command apostrophe to turn that off.
So, that's a few handy tips in Adobe Illustrator
to help you work with your workflow.
In the next video, we are going to move
into the essential practice section of this course.
In this video, we are going to be focusing on shape vectors.
We are going to be using the shape tool
to create a range of vector shapes.
See you in the next video.