Transcript:
I was hard at work on my latest t-shirt design when this happened. I’ll just delete this point and, hey, busy good morning. Michael, how could I help well? I’ve got this question Mark that I’ve outlined into a shape. I want to make the arm a bit thicker over here, but there’s so many anchor points. It’s gonna take me forever to get it, just right. Michael, you are in luck. I have just the solution to speed up. Your vector editing workflow. Let’s have a look at that original shape. Then we can figure out from as usual. Bizzy came through for me. I’m so thankful that I’m now going to share his solution with you. This is what we’re gonna learn. We’re going to work smarter and decrease the amount of anchor points on your shapes using the simplified path command. I’ll also show you how to use the add and delete Anchor Point tools. And I’ll also share with you. The brand new shortcut that is a game changer for designers and illustrators. If you want to follow along with me, there’s a link to the exercise file in the description, make sure to open it up in Adobe Illustrator CC 2020 and here we go, Okay, Here’s the shape that I started with. I like this, but I want to make a little adjustment over here on the arm of the question, Mark. I want to thicken it up, But if I click on it, you can see here. There are so many points over here that in order to be able to do what I want with it. I’d have to make my way around here and it’s just it would just be a pain to get through this. Let me undo those changes, and fortunately, there’s a command that allows you to remove all those unnecessary points called simplify paths. If you go up to the object menu paths, simplify you. Get this cute little slider down here. It’s already started to adjust the shape. It’s really simple to increase the number of points. You slide it to the right to decrease you. Slide it to the left. And that’s definitely not what we want. There’s also this. Auto simplified button here, which gives us Adobe’s recommended setting. Thank you for the suggestion, Adobe, But I think I’ll use my own powers of perception, lets. Check out this more options button and here is everything that we had in the previous menu with a couple extra settings right here. You set the threshold for which the simplified command chooses points that are more sharp or more smooth play with that to get it to a setting that you’re happy with this checkbox right here essentially converts all of your smooth points into sharp corner points. I don’t really have a good use for this, but you might find one, but this checkbox right here for the meticulous detail-oriented designer. Is your safety blanket? Allowing you to see the original path? You began with right on top of the simplified version when you’re happy with the results in my case. I’m going from sixty points to now only nine. You can click OK and that my friends is how you simplify a path now. I can come in here and make the adjustments that I was hoping for. And there we go now. Sometimes you’ll need to adjust just a portion of your artwork like in this exclamation point. I want to be able to move this top part over to make this easier. We once again need to reduce the number of points that we have, but simplify path will be a little too extreme for something like this. In this case, we will use the delete. Anchor Point tool, which can be found in the pen tool menu or you can use the shortcut, which is the minus key in previous versions of Illustrator. When you are trying to delete anchor points, you would click on it and get this undesirable result, sending a pulse of anxiety throughout your whole body. Then you’d have to come in, and maybe, like adjusting these other handles and to do that a small little section like this might not be too bad, but if you’re working with more complex artwork that can get very old very quickly, so let’s undo those changes. I just made now. I want to show you a shortcut. That is new to the Adobe Illustrator CC 2020 version. And what you do is when you still have the delete Anchor Point tool selected, hold down the shift key and click on that same point and look at that it retains the shape of that curve that we want it now. I can more easily adjust the top. This shape did your life just get about 20 clicks? Easier, okay, lastly. I’m going to show you the add. Anchor Point tool, mostly when I’m adding anchor points, It’s because I need a change in direction on my path. Let me show you what I mean. Let’s say you have a triangle like this, but you want to create a lightning bolt. We can accomplish this by enabling the add. Anchor Point Tool found by clicking in the pen tool menu. And there it is also you could use the shortcut, which is the plus key. Select the object and we’ll just add two points right here, and then we’ll add another two points down here now. I’ll go to my direct selection tool. I’ll grab one of these points and move it over here and like I was saying, we have an anchor point here. We added one here because we had a change of direction and then once again, we have another change of direction here so now. I’m going to do the same thing by grabbing this and moving it up to write about. Say there and drag this down a little bit and drag this one over, not a half-bad lightning bolt at all. So there you go three tools that will drastically speed up your vector editing workflow and give you more control over complex shapes. Please click the thumbs up button. If you liked this video, click subscribe to join my tribe and remember that a daydreamer questions, everything and stops at nothing.