Transcript:
Let’s round some corners here inside of illustrator, a couple of panels that might help you out the transform and properties panels. You can find those at the bottom of the window menu and the options running across the top of illustrator. If you’re not seeing those window control will bring those up for you. I’m using the main tool. The selection tool, also known as the Black Arrow Tool. And I’m just going to select this little square just here. We see a blue dot show up in each corner. If I click drag and release any one of those dots, you can see it nicely. Rounds the corners across the entire shape. Now, for many of you, that might be enough, but for the rest of us, let’s take a bit of a deeper dive. Now, remember. I promised you the transform panel might help us out. It’s not doing much at the moment That’s because it’s in this semi-minimized state, which is how you’ll often see it by default. Go to the menu in the upper right corner and choose show options, and now we can see a bunch of cool extra stuff, including these corner options, just down here, So if, for example via the canvas, I was to change that corner size again. You can see that number. Update here within the transform panel, holding down the alt or the option key. If I click on the dots within a shape, I can cycle between the different corner types available to us. I can also access those on a per corner basis via these little. Drop downs just here. So if, for example, I change the upper left corner to this inverted round shape. Just here you can see that change just here and also obviously on the canvas just here now. If I click inside of one of these radius fields just here, I’m just going to use my up and down arrow keys to make a change. You can see when I change one value. They all change. That’s because of this chain link icon just here. If I break the chain, they now operate individually, and if for example, I was to change the upper right radius. You can see only it is now changing. The others have been left alone. Okay, let’s press on to our next shape, but this time I’m going to go and grab the direct selection tool. Now, remember? The direct selection tool goes after individual anchor points, whereas the selection tool goes after shapes as a whole, so we’ve got the direct selection tool selected and I’m going to select just this one corner on this shape Just here now just a single corner becomes active. I’m going to change. Its radius like so very nice. Now you can see that value is changing here inside of the transform panel for the upper left corner just here, but what’s interesting is with just a single corner in play with the direct selection tool. I’ve now got options for corners showing up here at the top of illustrator and also here in the properties panel. Just down here so you can see the radius just there. If I click on the word corners, I can change the corner time and I can also click inside of here and actually dial in a very specific corner radius. Should I need it, okay. Let’s go back to choosing our selection tool and I’m going to select this star just down here now. We don’t see any blue dots showing up so your initial reaction might be. Oh, okay well. We can’t round the corners, but watch what happens if I immediately switch to the direct selection tool. Suddenly all of those dots show up and I can easily round the corners like so. So what was a sharp intimidating star is now a much friendlier star with rounded corners. Okay, back to our selection tool and I’m going to select this wacky shape. I’ve drawn just over here. Okay, we don’t see any corner points showing up, so let’s do the little trick. I just showed you go and click on the direct selection tool and okay. This is interesting, we’re seeing blue dots on some corners, but not others what’s going on well? If we look very closely, I’m just going to select this one single sharp point just here, so it is just that a sharp point. It has a blue dot where we can change the corner. But if I select this guy just over here, which is a very smooth point. We’ve got no corner dot available to us. So that’s takeaway? Just there guys sharp points. You can change the radius very easily, but these smooth ones with handles. We don’t have that option available to us. Okay, so with my direct selection tool, Let’s just go and select those ones that I can change and just make a nice change like so, but let’s say I want to make that kind of change to these other anchor points just over here. How can I do that well? I need to convert these smooth anchor points to sharp anchor points and I can do that in a couple of different ways. The first method underneath the pen tool You’re looking for this option Just here. The anchor point tool this tool allows us to convert between sharp and smooth anchor points. So if you have a smooth anchor point if you click and release on that point, you convert it into a sharp anchor point. If you have a sharp anchor point, if you click drag and release you drag out, these handles giving you a now smooth anchor point, so we want a sharp one, so let’s just click and release and the other way is via the properties panel. Now I’m going to go and grab the direct selection tool and select this anchor point just down here, with some rather large handles on it properties panel. You can see, there’s a convert section just down here that allows us these two buttons that is allow us to convert between the sharp and the smooth, So if I click on the sharp anchor point, it’s now a sharp anchor point and just to prove the point. I could make that smooth by clicking this other button. Just here, let’s make that sharp. I’m going to select the last remaining anchor point. That’s not sharp, make it sharp again with my direct selection tool. Let’s select all three of these points and now let’s drag out a corner radius like so very nice well. I might wrap things up at this point. Just here, guys. I hope that helps you with your rounding of corners inside of illustrator. Catch you later.