Overview of the Tools

Quick reference

• 00:04 In this class, we're gonna be talking about some of the basic tools that we
• 00:07 have available to us in Illustrator.
• 00:09 So the first thing I'm gonna do is back here from the Start workspace,
• 00:13 is open up the GoSkills Illustrator dock that we created in the previous lesson.
• 00:18 Now this is just a blank document, so there's really not much here, but
• 00:21 you can see that it appears on our list of recent files.
• 00:24 And if I click this thumbnail, you'll see it's basically just a blank document.
• 00:29 So I'm gonna go ahead and open this up, and
• 00:31 you'll see that we still have our three art boards that we created from before.
• 00:35 And now we're gonna take a look at some of these tools here that we have
• 00:38 available to us.
• 00:38 So, Initially you'll have this toolbar over here on the left, and
• 00:42 my default workspace here is set to Essentials,
• 00:45 which you can see from up here in the upper right.
• 00:48 But if you don't have Essentials selected,
• 00:50 maybe you have Layout or Typography or one of these other workspaces,
• 00:56 you can change it either from going up here to this menu and choosing Essentials.
• 00:59 Or you can also go up to the Window menu and choose Workspace and
• 01:03 select Essentials from here.
• 01:05 So, you also have the availability to Reset Essentials or
• 01:09 manage your workspaces and so forth.
• 01:12 But for now, we're gonna leave it set to Essentials.
• 01:15 So, as far as the toolbars go, I just wanted to show you guys really quick that
• 01:19 you have these arrows up here on the top, that allow you to either
• 01:23 use basically a one column view for your tools, or a two column view.
• 01:29 Now I kinda prefer the two column view myself.
• 01:31 Because it shows everything, including the colors that you have selected, and
• 01:35 your gradience and everything like that, but feel to toggle that however you life.
• 01:40 Now one other thing that I wanted to point out here is that you also have the ability
• 01:43 to undock your toolbar.
• 01:46 And to do that, you can just click on it and drag up here, and
• 01:49 then as soon as I let go, you'll see that I now just have this floating toolbar,
• 01:54 which I can position anywhere in my workspace.
• 01:57 And if at anytime I wanna put it back, all you have to do is move it over here and
• 02:00 you'll see that blue line that appears, and then you just release and
• 02:04 it will basically go back to its default position.
• 02:08 Now from here, our tools can kinda be broken down into a couple of categories.
• 02:13 The first couple of tools that we're looking at here are used for selections,
• 02:17 and you'll see we have a Selection Tool, our Direct Selection Tool,
• 02:22 a Magic Wand Tool, and a Lasso tool.
• 02:25 Now for each of these four tools, you'll see as I hover over them,
• 02:28 it tells you not only the name of the tool, but also the keyboard equivalent.
• 02:33 So as I do that, you'll see you have the Lasso Tool, which is Q, Magic Wand Tool,
• 02:37 which is Y, the Selection Tool is V, and the Direct Selection Tool is A.
• 02:41 So, as you start to use these things, it'll become really useful and
• 02:45 a great time saver for you guys,
• 02:46 once you start to get used to using these keyboard shortcuts.
• 02:50 Especially if you need to jump back and
• 02:52 forth between different tools while you're working on something.
• 02:56 So aside from the selection tools, now we have this other kind of area here,
• 03:00 which is basically tools that you can use to get more creative.
• 03:04 So, for example, we have a Pen Tool, a Curvature Tool,
• 03:09 a Type Tool, a Line Segment Tool, Paintbrush Tool,
• 03:13 a Rectangle Tool, Shaper Tool and the Eraser Tool.
• 03:17 Now one other thing that I should point out here as we make our way
• 03:20 through the tools, is that for
• 03:22 many of these you'll see a tiny little arrow on the bottom right.
• 03:25 And that just means that there are other tools here.
• 03:27 So if I click and hold my mouse,
• 03:29 you'll see this dialog box appears, and it basically tells us that we have
• 03:34 all of these other options in here to choose from as well.
• 03:37 And if I wanted to select one of these, I would just let go of the mouse while I
• 03:41 hover over it, and that will then be my primary tool.
• 03:44 So you can see the same thing here for the Paintbrush Tool,
• 03:47 for the Type Tool, and for
• 03:51 a lot of these other tools as well, that you have several options available to you.
• 03:54 It's not just this one primary tool.
• 03:58 So, the next thing that we have down here are these kind of transform tools.
• 04:01 So, these are things like Rotate, Scale, Free Transform,
• 04:06 the Width Tool, a Shape Builder Tool, and the Perspective Grid Tool.
• 04:11 Now we're gonna be covering all of these things a little bit later on, but
• 04:14 this is just kind of a general overview and breakdown of these tools.
• 04:18 Now this next section here is kinda for blending and gradients, and
• 04:21 things like that.
• 04:22 And we have what is called the Mesh Tool, the Basic Gradient Tool,
• 04:26 the Blend Tool, and the Eyedropper Tool.
• 04:29 Now from here, we come down and we've got just a few more,
• 04:34 a Symbol Sprayer Tool, as well as a Column Graph Tool.
• 04:39 I don't use these that often, but they can come in handy for certain projects.
• 04:43 And again, just like before, if I click and
• 04:45 hold, you'll see that you've got a bunch of options here, all right?
• 04:49 And then our last kind of group of tools down here, we have for
• 04:53 kinda moving around and navigating and things like that.
• 04:55 So we have basically our Artboard Tool,
• 04:57 which you guys have already seen a little bit.
• 05:00 The Slice Tool, which is mainly used for
• 05:02 slicing images if you wanted to export it for web.
• 05:05 You have the Hand Tool, which I've shown you guys you can also do by just pressing
• 05:10 the spacebar and dragging around the canvas freely.
• 05:12 And then you have the Zoom Tool, which can be used to click and
• 05:17 drag into or out of a document.
• 05:19 And I also told you guys about the keyboard shortcut for that,
• 05:22 which is just Cmd or Ctrl and the + and- keys.
• 05:26 Now below all these tools, you'll see that you have some colors.
• 05:29 We've got our Fill color and a Stroke color,
• 05:31 which I'm gonna talk to you guys a little bit more about.
• 05:34 But you can see here that if I hover my cursor over this little arrow,
• 05:37 that I have the ability to swap the Fill and Stroke colors.
• 05:41 Or, I can use the key bonchuri curve, which is Shift+X on the keyboard.
• 05:46 And just below that, you'll see that you can choose from a Fill color,
• 05:50 a Gradient, and this None.
• 05:53 So all that means is that, if I don't want any fill color at all, I can choose None.
• 05:58 And if I wanna toggle that, I now have a black fill.
• 06:03 And if I set that to None, then I'll basically just have a no stroke and
• 06:07 no fill for any of this.
• 06:09 But if at any time I wanted to go back to my default black and
• 06:12 white, I can either press D on the keyboard or click down here, okay?
• 06:17 And lastly, we just have these few things down here for
• 06:20 drawing inside, behind, and a normal draw to switch modes.
• 06:26 And that is something that we're gonna maybe take a look at a little bit more,
• 06:30 as well as the Change Screen mode.
• 06:31 Or you can press F on the keyboard to go from Full Screen with the Menu Bar,
• 06:37 like that, or totally full screen without a menu bar at all.
• 06:42 Now if you ever find that you're kinda stuck in this screen here,
• 06:45 just remember that all you have to do is press F on the keyboard.
• 06:48 So that is a basic overview of the tool bar over here, and
• 06:51 we're gonna be getting familiar with a lot more of these tools as we progress.
• 06:55 But I just wanted to give you guys a brief introduction into some of these tools and
• 06:58 what they are used for.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.