Adobe Illustrator CS6 Part H

This is the 8th installment in my blog post series on using Adobe Illustrator CS6 based on what I learn doing the video training course by Infinite Skills on this software. In this post I am first going to look at the pen tool that has been a feature of this program since the earliest days of this software. If you hold the left mouse button and hover over the pen tool there is a flyout with various tools on it. Among these is add and delete an anchor point. An anchor point lets you adjust the curvature of a line at that point. Caps lock pressed whilst in pen mode gives you exact mode signified by an x cursor. Control gives you select mode which when a shape is selected lets you move it around the workspace. The shift key gives straight line mode which lets you select a co ordinate and then a straight line is drawn. In select mode you can select part of a shape and it will all be selected. If you click the left mouse button on an anchor point and hold it until - is displayed you can delete. You click and drag out from an anchor point to change a lines characteristics. When you are working with anchor points a comprehensive toolbar is displayed near the top of the screen. Spacebar lets you adjust one anchor point in relation to another. We are know looking at the type tool. There are 2 major types of text with in Illustrator which are container text and point text. Point text is similar to text found in word processors. You have to manually edit point text but with container text some of the editing is automated. With container text you create a container and the text stays with in it. Setting up this container is as simple as choosing and drawing a shape that becomes the container. The text adapts if the size of the container is adjusted and always stays however the container is changed. Point text on the other hand lets you angle text. To choose point or container text just choose the relevant button. You can go into the edit menu and choose, cut, copy and paste pretty much like you can with a lot of software. There are shortcuts for these which are cut - control + x, copy - control + c & paste - control + v.