2.6 Selection Tools

I know I'm still excited about the pen tool, too, but we have to move on. [LAUGH] Let's create a new document, and we're gonna call this Direct Select. Direct Select is like the bad ass version of regular select, and I'll show you in a second. First, let's grab our pen tool, let's get right back on pen tool bandwagon. And we're going to make just a wavy path. So click here and then i'm going to select my next point and drag, and i'm just going to select the next one and just tap that. Then im going to come over here and drag again, and then ill pick another. Well, that's all well and good. But what if one of these points doesn't work for me. What if I want this wave here closer together? Well there's a couple of things I can do. With our select tool, all I can do is move around this whole object. I can move it up and down. I can even grab one of the points here on a side and squish. Well, that's pretty cool, but it's a little short. Put it back. I can make it taller, too. And that's cool. You can even grab a corner and shrink it up, down, left, and right. But if something is one particular way, remember shift? We'll keep it the exact same ratio, only make it bigger or smaller, and you guessed it. If I use option or alt, it does it from both sides, so grabbing a corner you can see all sorts of fun transformations, but that's just the select tool. Finally, the last thing that the select tool can do is when I hover outside of an object, you can see it becomes this little arrow with a curve. Well, what is that? That's rotate! This is why I said I don't really use scale and I don't really use the rotate tools, because why bother? The direct select and the select tool can do both, so I'm gonna take it here and grab it, and there I am. I can rotate it. I can rotate it a little bit. Undo that, so I'll go to Edit > Undo. I can hold down Shift and when I rotate it keeps it at an exact angle so I can go straight up and down, grab this point here, rotate it back. So that's huge, but it doesn't help us solve our problem of just one point. What if I just wanna edit a piece of this? That's where Direct Select tool comes in, and Direct Selection is even more. Direct Selection can take the points on a path, that's what this whole line here is called, a path, and edit them. So I can't even see these points right now. How am I supposed to do anything about it? Well, you can just click and drag a box and try and blind select a piece or you can zoom in and watch what the direct selection tool does. When you hover over this path, it says the little word path here It shows you the line. Right? And then when I get to a point with a point. It shows it. It highlights it. It becomes a square. So now I can click that point. And I can just pull it. I can move it around. You can see it's doing a little bit of funky stuff with the path but it's basically, I can remake the shape in a totally different way. Well direct select also does some other things. Now this is straight, right? And that's no good. So, if I bring it up like this, I want it to continue to be curved. Well, curves create these angles, these little curve handles, and you can grab a handle of a curve with the direct select. You can see the dot out here. Pull that too, and change a curve that you've made. So if you don't get the right curve the first time, never fear, the direct select tool is here. Finally, direct select tool can edit a bunch of pieces. So if I pull this point here, then I can select this point here. By holding down Shift and selecting it, it'll give me both. Then I can click and move them like they're together. Another way to do that is if I know that one point is here, and one point's over here. I can just simply drag a box around them, and that'll give me the same thing. Likewise, the direct select tool can select entire lines. Well, what do I mean? So, let's make a square. We'll use our rectangle tool. We'll hold down Shift and make a square. Now I can use the direct select tool to grab a corner. That's cool, but what if I wanna grab a whole side? Well direct select tool, when I click on a side, will let me drag out just that side. It keeps those two points together, right? Anything attached to the side stays and then you can make some even more funky stuff. So direct select, select, and the pen tool, and your shape tools is how you're going to make every single shape or object in Illustrator. It's the foundation of everything. All of these things you're going to need to know in your everyday life and there's even more where that came from but You're starting to get it now. These things are one object. They're made of paths. You can edit these paths. You can move them, rotate them, and you can create any shape path you want. That is Illustrator. That's basically the basics. Now that's seven lessons and the next lesson you can check out or not. But it's about tweaking your settings. So, check it out if you get a chance. If it's not that important to you, your settings, then move on. But, it's pretty cool anyway so. I'll see you guys in week two, or I'll see you guys in the next video, whichever you like. Have a good one.