Different Tools to Get the Job Done

Quick reference

• 00:04 In this lesson I would like to talk you guys about some of the basic selection
• 00:08 tools that we can use in Adobe Illustrator.
• 00:10 So since we've taken a look at our layers palette in the previous lesson,
• 00:14 let's just go ahead and open it up now.
• 00:17 If it isn't already here, again, you can click on this icon.
• 00:20 On the bottom of the palette that look like two squares on top of each other, or
• 00:24 by coming up to the window menu and choosing layers from there.
• 00:27 So, all I'm going to do, very basic,
• 00:30 is just press the M key on the keyboard to make a square.
• 00:34 Okay, and then, let's go ahead and make another square.
• 00:38 Now, by default, you can drag this anywhere you want, but
• 00:41 I'm holding down the shift key to make sure that it stays perfectly square.
• 00:46 We're gonna create just a few of these shapes here.
• 00:48 Put them on top of each other, or next to each other, just so
• 00:52 that I can kind of demonstrate how some of these selection tools work.
• 00:56 Okay.
• 00:57 By default,
• 00:58 you should have your selection tool selected which is just this black arrow.
• 01:04 But you can also get that by pressing V on the keyboard, and
• 01:06 you'll see if I hover over it it shows you the V in parenthesis.
• 01:10 So that is our very basic selection tool which we can use to click and drag around
• 01:14 a shape or a group of shapes, in order to move them around on our canvas.
• 01:19 Let's say I had another square but
• 01:21 this time instead of making it black let's say it's just white with a black stroke.
• 01:26 So I did that by pressing d on the keyboard or
• 01:29 by clicking default film stroke.
• 01:32 And let's make a few of these as well and
• 01:35 it's okay if they're on top of each other, next to each other, doesn't really matter.
• 01:40 Okay so I can take these squares.
• 01:43 And then what I can do is click and drag around them with my selection tool.
• 01:47 And I can press either command or Ctrl+X to cut them, or
• 01:51 you can come up to the edit menu and choose cut from here.
• 01:55 And then we're going to create a new layer, all right?
• 01:58 So layer two and now we're just going to paste these by pressing command or Ctrl+V.
• 02:04 Or coming up to edit and choosing paste, okay?
• 02:09 So far, we have layer two containing our white squares and
• 02:12 we have layer one with our black squares.
• 02:15 So I'm just going to click layer one and call it black squares, and
• 02:20 double click on layer two to rename it white squares.
• 02:24 Pretty straightforward, right?
• 02:26 From there, what I wanna show you guys is our second selection tool and
• 02:30 that is the magic wand tool.
• 02:32 Now this is a very handy tool because let's say that you have
• 02:36 a bunch of similar objects in a file that you wanna select at the same time.
• 02:41 If I go ahead and click this on these black squares,
• 02:44 it's gonna select everything that has the same fill color.
• 02:47 Notice how if I click on one of this boxes, even if it's not overlapping,
• 02:51 it'll select all of the other shapes that have that same fill color but
• 02:55 it's not selecting any of these on our second layer.
• 02:58 Now if instead if I click on of these white squares, it's going to select
• 03:03 all of the white squares that have a black stroke and none of these.
• 03:08 So the magic wand tool can be a very useful tool if you wanna select things
• 03:11 that have the same color or the same outline color or anything like that, okay?
• 03:18 The next tool that I wanna show you guys is the direct selection tool.
• 03:23 Now this a little bit different from our basic selection tool.
• 03:26 And in order to get that, you can either click up here on the white arrow or
• 03:30 press A on the keyboard.
• 03:32 And one of the main differences with this tool is that,
• 03:36 yes you can use it to click and drag things around.
• 03:39 But you'll see that if I have my regular selection tool and
• 03:42 I click inside, or if I move over to any of these corners for example,
• 03:47 all I can really do is resize it or move it around.
• 03:51 But with my direct selection tool if I click on one of this corners,
• 03:55 it actually gives me control over the points that make up this shape.
• 04:00 So the direct selection tool allows you to modify points and transform them.
• 04:07 Which, if I had my regular selection tool, that's something that I can't do.
• 04:12 So the direct selection tool is a way to directly manipulate
• 04:16 any of the points in a shape, but you can also move them around.
• 04:21 Now if I zoom in a little bit, I wanna show you guys something.
• 04:24 If I grab my direct selection tool and
• 04:27 I click on this corner in the top right of this box.
• 04:30 I don't know if you can tell, but
• 04:32 there's a tiny square there that's filled with blue.
• 04:36 Now, notice how the other corners,
• 04:38 it looks like it's just filled with white still.
• 04:41 Maybe there's a tiny blue outline, but it doesn't look like this corner.
• 04:45 And that's just indicating that I have this one point selected and
• 04:48 not the others.
• 04:49 So if I click and drag, that's the only point that I'm modifying.
• 04:53 But, if I click on that top right corner and then hold down the shift key and
• 04:58 select another point, now I can modify both of those at the same time.
• 05:05 So you're able to select one or several points at once using the direct
• 05:09 selection tool and move them around or transform them.
• 05:15 So that's one of the distinct advantage or differences rather
• 05:19 between the regular selection tool and the direct selection tool.
• 05:24 And again, you've also seen how the magic wand works.
• 05:26 You can select things with similar fill in strokes.
• 05:30 And lastly, we have our lasso tool, which you can get by pressing Q on the keyboard,
• 05:34 or by clicking on this thing that looks like a little rope with the arrow on top.
• 05:38 Now, the way that the lasso tool works is that you can click and
• 05:42 drag around a shape.
• 05:44 And it pretty much gives you more freedom, it's very fluid,
• 05:47 you can just kind of move around throughout a document, select as many, or
• 05:52 as few shapes as you want to select at the same time.
• 05:56 So you'll see there I've selected both of these black squares and
• 05:59 this one white square over here.
• 06:01 Okay, but another thing is that let's say you wanted to select just this shape, but
• 06:06 it's overlapping this square.
• 06:08 Well if I try to come through the center and
• 06:10 drag my lasso tool it's going to select both of them at the same time, but
• 06:15 if I just drag the lasso around a piece of this shape it'll grab the whole shape.
• 06:21 But again, you'll notice how if I zoom in here,
• 06:24 you see the blue square in the upper right corner?
• 06:27 But not these other corners?
• 06:29 That's just telling me that I only really grabbed this one area here.
• 06:34 So if I selected that with the lasso tool, and then pressed V to get my regular
• 06:38 selection tool I can now move the shape away from the other shapes.
• 06:43 But if I use my lasso tool, drag around this corner,
• 06:46 and then instead of my regular selection tool I use my
• 06:50 direct selection tool which is A on the keyboard or the white arrow.
• 06:54 Now I can modify that point or that corner that I've selected.
• 07:00 All right, so these are the basic selection tools that you have available
• 07:03 to you in Illustrator and again, you'll notice how they're kind of separated from
• 07:07 these other tools by this thin line up here.
• 07:10 So this first grouping of the tools are very important for
• 07:13 making selections in this program.

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