In this video, we'll get you started with Adobe Illustrator. We'll show you the basics of creating and navigating files, using basic drawing tools, and setting preferences.
Video Transcription
Let me get you started with Illustrator by showing you the basics of creating and navigating files using basic drawing tools and setting a few preferences. To start, we have to create a file. I can create a new file by clicking the Create New button here or going to File > New.
There are a variety of different presets to choose from depending on what you're doing. If you're creating web designs or things for on screen, you have various presets for that as well. You can also customize your preferred system of measurements, such as picas, millimeters, or inches, and type in whatever custom size you want. You can also change your orientation from upright portrait page to a wide landscape page.
When we open up Illustrator, the workspace is controlled here in the Window Workspace menu. There are a variety of different workspaces that we can use. These workspaces control which panels you're going to see and the amount of tools you see in the toolbar.
Illustrator actually has a basic toolbar and an advanced toolbar, and the idea is that there's a lot of tools in Illustrator and Adobe tried to simplify it with the basic toolbar. The only problem is if you're ever watching tutorials and somebody's using the full toolbar, which has all the tools, and that's called the advanced toolbar. Don't worry, it's not harder to use - it just shows you more tools.
The default Essentials workspace kind of simplifies the interface and doesn't show you all the tools. I actually prefer the Essentials Classic workspace, which shows the control panel at the top of the screen, more panels on the right, and all the tools in your toolbar. This workspace can be two columns or one column. I prefer it as one, and there's a double arrow at the top left to click to open or collapse it. If I've been working in this workspace in the past and not leaving it tidy, I can reset this workspace by going to Window > Workspace and resetting the Essentials Classic workspace.
For the basic drawing tools, we have groups of tools in the toolbar, and some of them are hidden behind the triangle in the bottom right corner of a tool. I'm going to be using the Rectangle tool, and I can come out here and draw a rectangle, then draw another one. As I'm doing that, we can see that it's an empty rectangle here with a black border, which is the default appearance. I can use my selection tool (sometimes called the black arrow) to move these shapes, resize them, and select objects.
If I want to change their appearance, I can do that in a variety of different ways. One of the ways is using this control panel up here. I can see that there is a fill color and a stroke color that I can change. The stroke might be very thin, so I can make it thicker. I can also delete a shape by clicking on it and hitting delete on the keyboard. In Illustrator, I have unlimited undos over everything in the program. Unlike Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign do not have a history panel.
If I use the selection tool, I can resize the shape and move its corner points. To manipulate individual points, I can use the direct selection tool. I can click on a path and move the corner points or anchor points individually. To make the anchor points easier to see, I can go to Illustrator Preferences (on Mac) or Edit > Preferences (on Windows). Under Selection & Anchor Display, I can adjust the size of the anchor points. Another preference that's useful is real-time drawing and editing. It's not turned on by default, but if my computer supports it, I can turn it on for a smoother drawing experience.
It's possible you might get little display glitches, but for the most part, you can see what you do in real time as you move instead of just seeing an outline. Before, I only saw an outline, but now when I go to my Direct Selection Tool and move one of the points, I can actually see the shape changing right in front of me without having to release and then preview. That delayed preview is not as nice, even when drawing a shape, as you get to see the shape as you're drawing it. It's a great preference to turn on if your computer is supported for real-time drawing and editing.
Any of these shapes we draw are made up of anchor points. To change the stroke color, we need to switch to the Direct Selection Tool. When the points are solid blue, we can move them around. If the points are white, they are deselected. The blue solid anchor point is selected. The path outlines the shape and the anchor points hold the line in a specific place.
When you first come in with the regular selection tool, it selects the whole shape so you can move it. To draw from the center, hold the Option key (Mac) or Alt key (Windows). Holding Shift makes it a perfect circle or square. To draw a rounded rectangle, use the Rounded Rectangle Tool, and you can use the regular Rectangle Tool to make a rounded rectangle as well. The corners are resize handles, and the circles are grab points that change the roundness.
Let me delete that there instead of dragging out a shape. Whatever shape that is, you can click to create a precise shape. So, for example, you can type in exactly how big you want something. In this case, it's a rounded rectangle. I also have the corner radius or the amount of rounding; the higher that amount is, the more rounded something will be. So, if I click over here again, I can keep the same size but make it a lot more rounded. In this case, it's actually even a circle practically. Let's go somewhere in between, like a quarter inch, and let's then do another one that's a half an inch just so you can see the different amounts of rounding.
If you want to be precise, you can click with your shape tools; that's for any of the shape tools. So, if I want to go back to the ellipse, I can click to make an ellipse and I can type in exactly how big I want that to be. Maybe I want it to be one by one, and then I've got a one by one circle. I'm going to use my selection tool to drag a selection over this and hit delete on my keyboard.
Continuing on with some additional tools, the polygon tool I can drag out a polygon. How do you change the amount of sides on the polygon? Well, one way is to click and type out the amount of sides. So, I could type in both the size and the number of sides. So, let's say I want a two-inch triangle. I create three sides, and I've got a three-sided triangle there. The tool is going to remember the last thing that you did, so it'll keep creating triangles because that's the last setting I did. If I click, and I say make something five sides, then it's going to create a five-sided polygon and now it'll stay stuck on creating five-sided polygons.
The tool kind of remembers what you last did and just keeps doing the same of that previous thing. But there is another way to change the amount of sides on the polygon tool, other than clicking. There's a more visual interactive way of doing this, and this actually relates to some of the other tools, like the rounded rectangle, where there might be settings you want to change. So, when you are in a tool that you want to customize, such as the amount of rounding or the amount of sides, as you're dragging, before you let go (because you can't let go to do this; once you let go, it's done), you can use your up arrow key or down arrow key while you're drawing.
The down arrow key in this case makes it less rounded until it's not rounded at all; the up arrow key will make it more rounded. Now, whether you move your cursor or not actually makes a difference while you're doing that. If I drag out a rectangle here and keep the mouse still, the up and down arrow keys do make a change, but they're very subtle, slowly increasing or decreasing that value. So, it's very slow. If I wiggle just a little bit, if I move the cursor while I do it, it goes much quicker. So, if you don't want to go fast, plant your cursor there, keep it still, and you'll get fine-tuned little increments as you're doing this. But if you want to go a little faster, just move your cursor just a little bit while you do it.
That can be done with the polygon tool, so as I'm drawing, the up arrow or down arrow adds or reduces the number of sides. Again, if I hold the arrow, it goes a little slow. As I do this, if I move the cursor, you'll get a lot of sides, which if I have such a big stroke, that's probably not going to look very good. So, let me just actually get rid of the stroke. I can do that by either making the stroke weight zero or going into the color and saying none. Either one of those would work, and so here, I just have the fill color and that's it. As I drag, I get a lot of those points. So, the up arrow or down arrow: up arrow adds a bunch of points, down arrow removes a bunch of points. Don't move your cursor if you want to do it more slowly; move your cursor if you want to crank it into high gear and make it go quick.
Now, with stars, there's an extra thing that I'd like to customize and that's not just the number of points; it's actually how pointy they are. As I'm drawing, you can't let go because once you let go, the shape is done. You can't customize the settings afterwards. You can use your up and down arrow keys to change the number of points. Like we've just been doing, the up and down arrow keys, you can also use the left and right arrow keys just the up and down. So, I can use my up and down arrow to change the number of points. Again, if I move you're going to get a lot of points. If I have such a big stroke that's probably not going to look very good.
When I drag this, I can use Command on the Mac or Control on Windows to interactively change how pointy the points are. Normally, when I drag, I'm sizing the shape; it's just scaling it up and down. But if I hold Command (Mac) or Control (Windows), I'm changing just one of the set of points, so the inner points stay the same and just the outer ones can go out or I could bring them even further in if I want to. I can also customize how pointy they are using the number points. To get really spiky points, I hold Command (Mac) or Control (Windows) and then let go. To get fine-tuned star points, I make the shape small. To get a sticker-like zigzag edge, I make the points shallow and have a ton of them. The difference in size between the inner and outer radiuses determines the shallowness of the points. To reset the settings, I use the down arrows to reduce the number of points.
To navigate the file and zoom in/out, I use the Zoom Tool (magnifying glass) to drag left and right on the screen. I can also use the View menu and Command/Control + Plus/Minus keyboard shortcuts to zoom in/out. Once I have zoomed in on an element, I can move around.
The scroll bars in Illustrator are especially bad because they scroll through the entire workspace, not just the document. To avoid using the scroll bars, I use the hand tool instead. To get the hand tool, hold the spacebar and you can drag around in any direction. You can keep drawing by holding the spacebar and moving to a different area. To see the whole thing again, you can use the selection tool with select all and delete all.
The other tool I'd like to introduce is the pencil tool, which is hidden under the shaper tool. With the pencil tool, you can draw freeform shapes like you would with a real life pencil. Double clicking on the pencil tool will give you the pencil tool options so you can make the tool more accurate or smoother. When you draw with the pencil tool, if you come back to the beginning point you will see a circle on your cursor. That means it is going to complete the shape, which can be filled. If you don't come back to the beginning point, it will just be a line.
You can go closer to your path and when the asterisk goes away, you are in an editing mode. You can continue to refine the shape you've drawn by going back over and tracing certain parts of it. You can make an open-ended loop that completely changes the end or you can connect from one point to another and it will redraw that section as long as you're close enough. You must select the shape before using the pencil tool.
Some companion tools that go really nicely with it are the smooth tool, which can be used to draw over an area and smooth it out. You also have the path eraser tool which can erase midpoints, ends, and any shape, not just things created with the pencil tool. When using the smooth tool, you must drag and release multiple times to get multiple amounts of smoothing. You can also create straight lines with the pencil tool by holding Option (mac) or Alt (Windows). If you want to draw straight line to straight line, you must let go and then hold it again right away.
So, that is an introduction to the fundamental basic drawing tools and navigating your documents. I hope this has helped you to get started with the fundamentals of Illustrator.
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