Illustrator in 60 Seconds: How to Use the Stroke Panel

Welcome to our Illustrator in 60 Seconds series, in which you can learn an Illustrator skill, feature, or technique in just a minute!

Illustrator in 60 Seconds: The Stroke Panel

Strokes can easily increase the value of your compositions when used properly.

The problem is that usually people that are just starting to use Illustrator can have a hard time grasping the Stroke panel and all its different options.

If that's the case, buckle in since in the following 60-second video I'll show you all that you need to know in order to master your Strokes.

How to Use the Stroke Panel in Illustrator

The Stroke panel is located on the right side tool bar and it only gives you one basic option for controlling the weight of your stroke. Access the rest of its hidden features by clicking on Show Options.

The first one is Cap, and it controls the way Illustrator handles the stroke end points. By default, it's a Butt Cap, but you can also use Round and Projecting Caps.

Next, we have Corners, which lets us control the look of paths joining together, giving us the option of choosing between Miter, Round, or Beveled.

The third option is Align Stroke, and it controls the alignment of our strokes weight, but only when dealing with closed paths.

Using the Stroke panel, we can easily create dashed lines and add arrowheads which can be individually scaled. Lastly, we can play with the Width Profile of our stroke which results in some interesting line effects.

Want to see this in action? Check out the quick video above to see this lesson at work!

A Bit More Detail

Want to learn more about Adobe Illustrator's vast tools and settings? Check out these tutorials below:

• 
  Roundups
  The A to Z of Adobe Illustrator
  Mary Winkler
• 
  Illustration
  Quick Tip: Comprehensive Overview of Illustrator's Stroke Panel
  Cheryl Graham
• 
  Graphic Design
  10 Illustrator Tools Every Designer Should Be Using
  Andrei Stefan
• 
  Icon Design
  Quick Tip: Exporting Icons Using Slices in Adobe Illustrator
  Andrei Stefan

60 Seconds?!

This is part of a series of quick video tutorials on Envato Tuts+ in which we introduce a range of subjects, all in 60 seconds—just enough to whet your appetite. Let us know in the comments what you thought of this video and what else you'd like to see explained in 60 seconds!