David Karlins shows you how to use selection and editing techniques in Adobe Illustrator CS4, including selecting paths and path segments, grouping paths, and aligning anchors.
Illustrator is all about paths. And so, appropriately, there are all kinds of ways to select and edit paths in Illustrator. You can select an entire path and reshape, rescale, rotate, skew, or distort it, and so on. Or, you can select a path segment—the section of the path between two anchors—select just some path segments, or select a set of anchors.
You can also group more than one path and edit the group as you would an individual object. Selecting objects within groups has always been a bit sticky in Illustrator, but CS4 has a group isolation feature that makes this process easier.
Illustrator CS4 also allows you to align anchors. This means, for example, that you can vertically align a group of selected anchors so they are all on a horizontal plane.
In this chapter, I'll show you how to use all these selection and editing techniques. I'll also provide a basic overview for how to use Illustrator's powerful Pathfinder tools, which combine and divide combinations of paths in just about every conceivable way.
Selecting Path Segments and Paths
Illustrator paths are made up of anchors with path segments connecting them. You can select and edit an entire path when you want to copy, move, or resize the path. You can select either an anchor or a path segment to reshape an object.
You can select path segments by clicking on (or within three pixels of) the segment with the Direct Selection tool.
You Can Copy and Paste into Flash CS4
You can copy Illustrator objects directly into Flash CS4. This is new to CS4 and makes it easy to design animation in Illustrator and move images to Flash for programming and animation.
NOTE
You can change the 3 pixel Tolerance setting by choosing Illustrator (Mac) or Edit (Windows) > Preferences > Selection & Anchor display and editing the Tolerance value.
After you select a path segment, you can reshape an object by moving that segment (Figure 31).
Figure 31 Moving a selected path to reshape a rectangle with the Direct Selection tool.
The Versatile Direct Selection Tool
- Shift-click with the Direct Selection tool to select additional path segments.
- Clicking on an object fill with the Direct Selection tool selects the whole object.
- If you want to select a set of anchors, you can use the Direct Selection tool for that as well—Shift-click on anchors to select them. Or, you can use the Lasso tool to select multiple anchors by drawing a marquee around a section of an object or objects.
The Selection tool is used for selecting entire paths and groups of objects. With the Direct Selection tool you can select individual anchor points, path segments, or entire objects. To select an object or group with the Selection tool, just click on the path. If the object has a fill, you can click on that as well.
The Group Selection tool in the Direction Selection tearoff appears as a white arrow with a plus sign. One click with the Group Selection tool selects an object, clicking again selects a group that the original object is part of, clicking a third time selects a larger group that the selected group is part of, and so on.
Select Everything . . . or Nothing
To quickly select all objects in an open file, press Command (Mac)/Control (Windows) + A. To quickly deselect everything, press Shift + Command (Mac)/Control (Windows) + A.
NOTE
If you prefer to select objects only by clicking the path (never the fill), you can edit that property of the Selection tool by choosing Illustrator (Mac) or Edit (Windows) > Preferences > Selection & Anchor Display, and then selecting the Object Selection by Path Only check box.
You can add objects to or remove objects from a selection set by holding down the Shift key as you click with the Selection tool. This works with path segments or anchors selected with the Direct Selection tool as well.
NOTE
When you have either the Selection or Direct Selection tool selected, you can quickly toggle between selection tools by holding down (or releasing) the Command (Mac)/Control (Windows) key.
Copying an Anchor
If you click and drag on an anchor with the Direct Selection tool, and then press the Option/Alt key, you duplicate the anchor at the new position while leaving the original anchor in place. The resulting new anchor will connect two new path segments, creating a new, open path object not connected to the original shape. You can also use this method to duplicate a line segment.
Defining, Selecting, and Isolating Groups
Because Illustrator documents can become overloaded with paths, it is often useful to group objects. Groups can be resized and rotated. You can edit the stroke and fill of groups. For example, if 30 objects are grouped and you change the fill color of the group, the fill color of every object within the group changes.
To group objects, select them using the Selection or Lasso tool and choose Object > Group. You can nest groups by combining several groups into another group. To ungroup objects, select the group and choose Object > Ungroup.
Grouping vs. Layers
Illustrator provides many levels of combining paths for editing purposes. The most powerful level of grouping objects is a layer. Layers are explored in detail in Chapter 6, "Working with Layers." Within a layer, groups provide an easy way to select and edit multiple objects.
Selecting and editing elements within a group has always been something of a hassle. Illustrator now makes that process a little more intuitive. With a group selected, click the Isolate Selected Group tool in the Control panel or double-click on the group in the artboard to select it.
With a group isolated, you are prevented from editing any other elements on the page, but you can select any element within the group the way you normally would using the various selection tools.
The "breadcrumbs" beneath the Illustrator tab bar indicate the level of isolation, and you can "back up" through the isolation process by selecting a broader grouping from the set of breadcrumbs (Figure 32).
Figure 32 Isolating a group within a group—the two breadcrumbs allow backward navigation to a larger group.
Isolation? Or Group Selection
Like many evolved elements of the Illustrator feature set, isolation mode overlaps older features. The Group Selection tool, discussed in #31, "Selecting Path Segments and Paths," allows you to "isolate" elements of a group, or groups within a group, without opening new isolation document windows. Which is a more useful technique? It really depends on what you are more comfortable with.
You can back out of an isolation mode step by step by using breadcrumbs, or you can immediately leave isolation mode by double-clicking outside the group or by pressing the Escape key.
TIP
You can also group objects by selecting them and pressing Command (Mac)/Control (Windows) + G. Ungroup objects by selecting a group and pressing Shift + Command (Mac)/Control (Windows) + G.
electing, Editing, and Aligning Anchors
You can select an anchor point and move it to reshape an object. For example, you can turn a circle into an oval by selecting an anchor point and dragging it (Figure 33a).
Figure 33a Moving a selected anchor.
To select an anchor point, move the Direct Selection tool over a path. As you do, the anchors will become visible (Figure 33b).
Figure 33b Identifying anchors in a path with the Direct Selection tool.
To select a single anchor, click on it. To select multiple anchors, you can:
Draw a marquee with the Direct Selection tool.
Shift-click to select more than one anchor.
Draw a marquee with the Lasso tool around the anchors (hold down the Shift key to draw additional Lasso tool marquees).
You can align anchors within a path. So, for example, if you've drawn a waveform and you want all the tops of the waves to align vertically, you can do that.
To align anchors, first select a set of (at least two) anchors. With the anchors selected, align them by using the alignment tools in the Control panel or by using a similar set of alignment tools in the Align panel.
Horizontal and vertical alignment lines up all selected anchors, either horizontally or vertically. Distribution creates even spacing between anchors. By default, anchors align along the bounding box—the rectangle that defines the selected group of anchors. So, for example, if you choose to align anchors vertical align top, they align along the top of the bounding box (even with the top selected anchor) (Figure 33c).
Figure 33c Aligning selected anchors vertical top using the Align panel.
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