in today's video I'm going to share with you five automated tasks that you want
to add into your workflow when using illustrator heading into 2020 and before
we start remember if you want to excel as a graphic designer
do subscribe to this channel for weekly a graphic design content now briefly
what are automated actions in a Davila straighter essentially we can record a
process or a function and then simply play it every single time we want to
perform that process in the future this is gonna save heaps of time in the long
run and if you still don't understand what automated functions are simply
follow along today and I'm sure you understand
after the video now you can find the actions panel under window and actions
and as you can see I already have a new folder set for my 20/20 workflow now to
create a new set of actions simply click here you'll also notice that we have
some preset default actions that adobe has made for us and some of these are
pretty handy such as the Pathfinder functions and also the file format saves
but to go ahead and create one of your varium actions simply come up here and
then click new action now I'm first going to show you how we can scale any
designer object with just one single click so the first action will be scale
up by 50% now since I've made a new action illustrator is now recording
every single move I make so if I come over here and then click the scale
button I can type in 150% which will increase the object by 50% if I type say
100 percent I will keep it exactly the same
now that the scaling has been complete I can click the stop button here in the
actions window and then illustrator will save this process I've just conducted
now if you click here you can see each of the steps within the process I was
just saved and clicking play well the circle anything is selected will
actually automatically increase the size of the shape by 50% however in the
actions panel there is a column here next to the ticket column
if you click this then illustrator were not skipped by each step and that's
going to allow you to change details so for example if I don't want to increase
the size by 50% I can change the size of the scale accordingly so that is the
rundown of the basics of the action panel but let's go ahead and make some
more actions that are going to be very helpful for your graphic design workflow
so now we're gonna make a complex action that's going to allow us to take a
design say for example a Lego and then cheap allocates it to different scales
so we can test the design at different sizes Noli straight is recording my
actions and I'm gonna copy this shape with command or control C and then
duplicate it over the top of the command or control F now illustrators keeping
tabs all my actions in the actions panel as you can see I will then come up to
object transform and then move I will use 0 as the angle to keep it on the
same plane and then move it over to the right by 200 pixels
finally for this action let's double-click the scale window again and
I will this time scale down the shape by 60% and then click stop to save the
action now because the size of the shape or your design becomes less and less
we're going to want to edit the amounts that we move it to the right so let's
click that second column like we did before so we can make changes as we go
it's also handy to know that you can come into the playback options here and
if you choose a step by step illustrator will allow you to make those changes but
if you choose accelerated it's just going to breeze buy them all so let's go
ahead and use our actions on the smaller design here and choose a lesser amount
of the movement 150 pixels should be a good number for the second action and
I'm gonna keep performing this function over and over like I said this is great
for things like logo designing as it's always wise to test your logos are
various different scales and with this action you can easily and quickly
achieve this precise scaling
so let's move on to the third action from Illustrator workflow of 2020 this
one is quick but it's an asset to my workflow and I think it's really ideal
so I have two shapes here and I'm gonna need a Pathfinder window open this
action is going to be a keyboard shortcuts for making compound shapes and
if you didn't have a single clue about compound shapes I suggest you watch my
video links down description box below after this one but this time in the
actions panel I'm gonna make a keyboard shortcuts of command + f6
illustrators again recording my moves I'm actions so I'm gonna go ahead and
make the compound shape here in the Pathfinder fly down menu so now I have a
compound shape and as expected the group selection tool will allow me to move
around the individual shapes so reverting back to the two shapes I can
select them and press the keyboard shortcut of command + f6 and this
results in a compound shape so I can do this at any time with a selection within
my workflow I just need to press command f6 I do use compound shapes quite often
so this is really really neat now the penultimate action in today's video is
one that you cannot find in the default actions but I feel it should be there
and that is saving your designs as PDFs so let's make the action and go ahead
and save the PDF
the settings you use for your PDF will be used again so make sure to set them
to what you want to have
we can click the second column if you remember which will ensure that
illustrator goes through the process step by step and this will allow us to
make changes to the PDF settings one thing you might want to change would be
the file location or you know the print document settings but yeah this is a
handy action to have at the ready and I'm going to add into my 2020 workflow
finally another action that is based around transforming a shape or a design
and that is the rotation now I'm going to be making a new action as a keyboard
shortcut as we did earlier but this time I'm going to use command + f7 now to
rotate your design or your object simply come up to object transform and then
rotate I have big mansions for 90 degrees but as I mentioned you can check
the second column in the actions panel and this will allow you to edit the
rotational values whenever you want to perform this action it's handy to be
able to make these actions as keyboard shortcuts and I hope you can see how
this will save you time and later down the line in your workflow so now you
know how to make actions and you've heard about my five for my workflow in
2020 do you make sure to check out the video at the end of this one to learn
more crucial skills in a day bill astray - also make sure to like and share my
content on social media if you do and help out the channel and subscribe a
weekly graphic design content I hope you guys have a very positive end to the
year and of course until next time design your future today peace