Locked lesson.
About this lesson
Using the Scissor Tool and Knife Tool.
Quick reference
Cut it Out
Using the Scissor Tool and Knife Tool.
When to use
If you wanted to slice a shape or piece of outlined text to remove a section, the Knife Tool or Scissor Tool are the perfect choices for the job.
Instructions
- Begin by opening the after exercise file containing the peppers from the 'Following the Path' lesson.
- Change the middle pepper from a stroke to a solid black fill by first selecting the shape, then pressing Shift+X to swap the fill and stroke.
- Click and hold on the Eraser Tool in the toolbar to reveal the Knife Tool and the Scissor Tool.
- Undock the panel and move it onto the artboard, closer to your peppers.
- Select the pepper with a solid black fill using the Selection Tool (V).
- Grab the Knife Tool and create one or several slices through the shape.
- Switch to your regular Selection Tool (V) or the Direct Selection Tool (A) and select one of the segments before moving it away from the others.
- Try the same thing on one of the outlined peppers.
- Grab your Scissor Tool and then select one of the peppers.
- Notice that you are unable to slice through any of the shapes with the scissors the same way you can with the knife.
- Click anywhere along the path of the pepper while the Scissor Tool is selected, and then click a second time a bit further away.
- Now switch to either selection tool and select a part of the path between the two points where you clicked.
- You can now move or delete that segment of the line.
Hints
- The eraser, knife, and scissors are all ways of removing a shape or segment of a shape, but they each work in very different ways.
- If you create slices into a shape with the Knife Tool you can then change the color of any of the pieces without affecting the others.
- If you wanted to just remove a section of a path, the Scissor Tool would be the best option because it will give you more precision than the Eraser Tool.
- 00:04 In addition to just being able to use our eraser tool,
- 00:07 we actually have a few other ways that we can remove or edit some of these shapes.
- 00:12 So if I come back over here to where the eraser tool is kept and I click and
- 00:15 hold, you'll see that it reveals this pallet here where I can choose from
- 00:19 the scissor tool and the knife.
- 00:21 So I'm just gonna go ahead and grab the knife tool for a second.
- 00:24 And I'm just gonna use this middle pepper here as an example.
- 00:28 Now if I select this pepper and
- 00:29 then grab my knife tool, I can literally just come through and
- 00:33 slice it, kind of like a samurai sword, and then pull these pieces apart.
- 00:37 So, it's a way for
- 00:38 me to almost just easily slice any of these shapes that I have selected.
- 00:44 And you don't have to it just once, you can cut into it multiple times, or
- 00:49 as few or as many times as you like.
- 00:51 And then you'll be able to grab your direct selection tool and
- 00:54 just kind of remove pieces of it.
- 00:56 So it's actually kind of a cool way if you wanted to create kind
- 00:59 of an exploded effect or something.
- 01:01 If you were to slice this apart and
- 01:04 then make it look like these pieces were flying out or something like that.
- 01:08 So it creates these very hard edge kind of geometric cuts a lot of the time.
- 01:14 But you can also just kind of smoothly come across it like that.
- 01:18 But the nice thing about it is how quickly and easily you can just chop off a part.
- 01:24 If you were trying to draw this and you messed up a whole section,
- 01:27 you could easily just slice through it and retrace it.
- 01:31 And if I do this on an outline shape,
- 01:35 it may change the appearance of the shape a little bit but it's the same idea,
- 01:38 where I can remove a piece of it where I slice through.
- 01:42 Now, when it comes to using the scissor tool, it works a little bit differently.
- 01:46 I'm not able to just come through and slice it.
- 01:49 And as you can see, when I try to do that, I'll get this warning that says,
- 01:53 Please use the scissor tool on a segment or an anchor point but
- 01:56 not an endpoint of a path.
- 01:58 So instead, what I have to do is come in here, and
- 02:01 kind of use the scissor tool to click along a path or on a point.
- 02:06 But if I do that, and I just click a few times on different areas of the path,
- 02:10 I can remove that whole piece in between where I click.
- 02:13 And if I wanted to remove even more, I can just click there again.
- 02:18 Grab my direct selection tool and just delete it.
- 02:21 So the scissors work a little bit differently in that you have to click
- 02:24 along a segment or a path.
- 02:26 Whereas the knife tool, you can just grab it and cut through an image or
- 02:30 a part of an image.
- 02:32 So just a few other options and ways that you have to
- 02:36 remove certain parts of an illustration or a graphic besides using the eraser tool.
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