Transcript:
Welcome to an Adobe Books Illustrator Tutorial in this video. I give you an overview of the tools panel. When opening an illustrator document, the tools panel is located on the left side of the screen, it contains a section for the tools, the fill stroke and color options, drawing modes and screen modes by clicking on the double arrow found on the upper left part of the panel. You can toggle between double stack and single column. You can dismount the panel by clicking the grip area just above the tools and dragging it If you close the panel by clicking the X button, you can retrieve it by selecting window tools default to remount the panel click and drag it to the left edge of the document until you see the blue indicator, then release in illustrator, you use the tools in the tools panel to generate select and manipulate objects by hovering the mouse over a tool you can see its name and associated keyboard shortcut in the tools tip box to edit the keyboard shortcuts. Select edit keyboard shortcuts. Some of the tools have options that can be revealed by double-clicking a tool in the tools panel. The tools with the hidden triangle symbol at the bottom right of its icon, have other related tools hidden within them, which can be shown by holding the mouse over the tool. You can also click the arrow at the edge of the menu to dismount it to have quicker access to the tools going over. Every tool is beyond the scope of this video, But I will go over seven tools. You’ll probably use more often than the others, and they are the selection tool, direct selection, tool, pen tool, type tool, paint, brush tool rectangle, an ellipse tool and the shape builder tool. Oh, the selection tool selects individual objects by clicking on them or multiple objects by clicking and dragging the marquee over them. Additionally, you can transform selected objects by clicking and dragging a point on the bounding box hold shift to constrain proportions and alt to transform from the center. The direct selection tool directly selects objects within a group without disturbing the other grouped objects. Furthermore, it is used to select anchor points, which can be selected individually or together and corner points, which can also be selected individually or together. Oh, the pen tool should be a familiar tool. If you’re coming from Photoshop, it has a bit of a learning curve, so I’ve created a separate video for it, which can be found in the description, but what it essentially does is it creates custom lines and shapes. The type tool is used to add text to a document you can change the properties of the text in the control panel. Here you can change its character properties such as font and font size and paragraph properties, such as indention and alignment. Oh, the paintbrush tool is used to create freehand calligraphic lines and patterns. It is best used with the pen tablet, such as a Wacom Intuos Pro. I have the medium size. One and it works great. The patterns for the brush tool can be found in the brush panel, which can be accessed by selecting window brushes and clicking on the brush library menu icon at the bottom of the brush panel and selecting a brush set. The rectangle and ellipse tool is used for creating square and circular type shapes. If you single, click on the canvas with one of these shape tools, you can input the shapes measurements to precisely generate a shape. If you hold down shift when using the rectangle tool, you will create a perfect square and with the ellipse tool, you will create a perfect circle. Furthermore, by holding down Alt, you will generate a shape from its center Point O. The shape builder tool also has a bit of a learning curve, so check the description for that tutorial, but the gist of what it does is it unites and subtracts areas of overlapping objects to unite shapes, select two overlapping objects, then click and drag over them with the shape builder tool and to subtract an area again, select two overlapping objects, then with the shape builder tool. Hover your mouse over the area, You wish to subtract, then hold Alt and click more shape. Manipulating options can be found in the Pathfinder panel, which can be located by selecting window Pathfinder. Alright, moving down. The tools panel is the fill stroke and color options. Double clicking on either the fill or stroke icon opens up the color picker menu where you can choose a color clicking on the tiny fill and Stroke symbol sets the fill and Stroke to their default settings, which by default is a white fill and black stroke by clicking the double sided arrow. You swap the colors between the fill and the stroke for the color options. You have the choice between solid color gradient and none grading colors and options can be set through the gradient panel, which can be accessed by clicking window gradient. In addition, you can use illustrator’s. Preset gradients found in the swatche’s library, which can be accessed by selecting window swatches, then clicking on the library icon and selecting gradient. And from there you can choose a gradient set underneath the color options are the drawing modes. You have the option to choose between, draw normal draw behind and draw inside. You will mostly if not always be working in draw normal mode, you can think of draw normal mode as taking sheets of paper on top of each other, every object you create gets placed on top of the stack as shown in the layer’s panel, which can be accessed by selecting window layers, O draw behind is the exact opposite. When you create an object. It goes to the very bottom of the layer stack and draw inside allows you to create objects within the bounds of another object that is selected. If you’re familiar with clipping masks from Photoshop, it’s essentially the same thing it last, but not least the screen modes, which you can choose between normal screen mode, which is what it’s set to now full screen mode with bar menu and full screen mode, press the tab button on your keyboard to toggle between the last two selected screen modes and that wraps it up for this overview video as a final note, though take some time to explore the tools to see what illustrator has to offer. And when you’re doing so if you click on the perspective grid and find yourself getting frustrated because you don’t know how to turn it off, take a breath and simply click view perspective. Grid hide grid, you’re welcome, please follow me on social media and check out my website for some creative products. Thanks for watching and good luck. Dan out!