Locked lesson.
About this lesson
Once setting up a document we will take a look at the basic tools that you will want to know about and how to navigate the toolbar interface.
Quick reference
Overview of the Tools
Once setting up a document we will take a look at the basic tools that you will want to know about and how to navigate the toolbar interface.
When to use
The tools are used constantly when working in Adobe Illustrator. Learning which tools to use for the job and where to find them will become second nature to you as you spend more time in the program. As you begin to learn some of the shortcuts for the tools you will also be able to speed up your workflow.
Instructions
- Launch Adobe Illustrator
- Choose ‘New…’ from the Start Workspace
- In your New Document experiment with the one and two column toolbar view, along with docking and undocking it from the panel.
- Click and hold on a few of the different tools to see what other options are available for things like the Pen Tool and the Eraser Tool.
Hints & tips
- If you want to quickly access the Selection Tool press 'V' on the keyboard. This is the main selection tool in Illustrator and is a good shortcut to learn right from the start.
- Many of the tools have keyboard shortcuts. If you want to quickly view a list of all of the shortcuts or to create a new shortcut, go to the Edit menu and choose 'Keyboard Shortcuts.' From here you can toggle between the shortcuts for tools as well as the shortcuts for different menu options.
- 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.
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