Transcript:
[MUSIC] This is an illustrator tutorial for beginners and we’re going to talk about the selection tool, the main selection tool here in illustrator so to start with this is a shortcut key. You’ve got to remember and lock in. It’s going to be the one you use the most in illustrator. The shortcut key for the selection tool is V and the selection tool in your tool panel is up here. It’s the very first one at the top and what it does is essentially selects objects and text out in your document. So just by clicking with this tool selected, you can select groups of objects, single objects or shapes or also text. Now the selection tool actually selects the entire object, so for instance, no matter which object I click on here in this group, It selects the whole group, not that single object and no matter which anchor point I click on of a shape, it’s going to select the whole shape and not just that single anchor point the other thing that you can do is click and drag to select either multiple objects or groups and text and objects on your artboard that’s called the marquee selection, it’s kind of like, clicking and dragging making a selection and just selecting everything that’s within that the other thing that you can do, for instance in a group is you can double click on that group and look up here. We have a new navigation We’ve actually gone inside of that group we’re in an isolation mode and there’s lots of different isolation modes within that group, for instance, it’s kind of like the movie inception. If you’ve ever seen that if you have a group within a group, you can keep double clicking to drill down to that very bottom most layer of your group as isolated as it gets in this case, we just have all these objects in one single group, So now that I’m inside of that group, Everything else is grayed out and I can actually click on each of these, and I can move them around and work with them without accidentally messing with anything else to get out of that. You can either Click back on this layer 1 or you can double Click outside of any of the objects in your group now. One other super important function of the selection tool and it’s a modifier shortcut key. You’re going to want to learn and use is how to duplicate objects. You can actually hold the option key on your keyboard. If you’re on a mac or if you’re on a PC, it’s going to be the alt key, and when I hold that and have an object already selected, see the little double arrow that pops up. That’s signifying that we’re going to be duplicating this object if I click and drag it so once I click and drag, I’m actually duplicating that object all while having the selection tool selected up here in my toolbar. So now if I click and drag without that modifier key, I’m just moving the object hold that modifier, key, click and drag, and you’re actually moving and duplicating another version of that object. The other thing that you can do is hold shift when you’re moving things around and shift is going to keep your object lined up. See how we have these smart guides on just a quick little tutorial on smart guides up in the view. Drop down, you’ll see Smart Guides is check Mark. That’s all these little pink lines, helping you line up different parts that are important of your objects, so like the center point or an edge or the center here, any part of your path, two other points that illustrate your deems significant in your document, so as you move your object around, the smart guides are lining it up to different areas. So if I wanted to line the center of this square to the top of this path, I can just drag it. Close and illustrator is going to find that point. Now, back to holding shift holding shift is going to keep it lined up. So if I don’t hold shift, I can sort of move this around freely. If I hold shift, it’s going to sort of lock it into up and down or horizontal movement or even diagonal movement, but it really locks it into a certain movement. So if you wanted to move an object straight across your document, I would hold shift to help. Keep it lined up and then turning those smart guides on is going to help. You also keep it lined up and see that you’re staying in the same line up down left. Right, diagonal doesn’t matter. Now, another thing you can do with that selection tool is work with your objects. So once you have your object selected, you can sort of hover over the different parts of your object here. So if my corner widget is showing up, I can actually round corners with this selection tool. If I get this double ended arrow here, I can scale my shape up notice how it’s sort of scaling and skewing at the same time. If I hold shift shift is sort of, like, always keeping things in line, always keeping things proportional, so that’s how you can proportionally scale. I can hold over just the top, and I even if I go left and right, it doesn’t change my shape because I only held that top path, so that’s just going to go up and down. The other thing you can do is when you get. This rounded double ended area. You can actually rotate your object and then holding shift once again proportional in line, right, it’s going to do every 45 degrees, so of course, with the selection tool, you can select objects using that shortcut key V to go back to it all the time when you’re working with other tools, you just go back to that selection tool. Move some things around. You can duplicate by holding option or Alt. If you’re on windows, you can also move or edit your objects just by clicking on different paths. You can rotate it just looking for those double ended arrows as you’re hovering over the different sections of your object by turning smart guides on you can keep things lined up and also line up to other objects. You can double click into groups. There’s a lot that you can actually do with the selection tool, but as a beginner, I’m sure that you don’t really know all these things. I remember when I started in illustrator first off, I thought it was going to be a drawing program, and I was going to be like using the stylus or something and drawing in there turned out to be a whole different program than I thought it was, but when I started, I just didn’t even know what I was doing so. I hope this helped you kind of understand. The selection tool I’ll put more videos as I release them in the description of this one where we go over the direct selection tool we go over grouping objects. We go over a lot of different beginner topics and make sure you subscribe to this channel for more beginner illustrator tutorials. My name is spencer. This is pixel and bracket ill. See you guys next time. So you can select objects with that shortcut key V on your tool. See the little double ended arrow that pops up. It’s not a double and you’re actually moving and duplicating another. Uh, cool, all right.