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Written by : Rod Alarie |
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hey guys what's going on this mule Patterson and welcome to a new video adobe illustrator and a lot of other products have amazing amounts of shortcuts and hotkeys for you to quickly do what you need to do like creating a logo or business card or just get the type tool out some of these are hard to remember and some of you guys may not know some of these hotkeys so I'm going to be showing you some of the most obvious hotkeys but also some of the hotkeys that you've never seen before in this video this is great for anyone who's just a beginner who's intermediate or advanced in Adobe Illustrator you will definitely learn something that you didn't know beforehand so here you go this video is brought to you by fresh books the first hotkey is command C which is copy now copy is very easy to do everyone should know this but the second one is command F now command F command V and command B or paste what you've just copied but in different ways command or control V paste s-- the actual selection of what you've just copied into the artboard somewhere where your cursor is but command F is called paste in front which will paste everything in front of what you're doing so it'll paste it right back into the center of the our board or way you selected it from command B or control B paste in back is where it's going to paste it behind the actual selection of what you've just copied command of control K is to get up the preferences panel in this you can change all the preferences in Adobe Illustrator as such as how your UI looks wherever you want it to be white or black and everything else and it's a pretty nifty way of getting to your preferences here are some of the main tools and the hotkeys for them v that is the selection tool a is the direct selection tool y is the magic wand tool q is the lasso tool T is the type tool backslash is the line segment tool which allows you to create lines within Adobe Illustrator without having to create path through the pen tool those are my most used tools in Adobe Illustrator there are a bunch more you just have to hold or hover over some of the tools in the tool panel on your left of the screen and you should see the hotkey there command or control G will actually go ahead and group a selected amount of shapes or objects within Illustrator this is great for when you just want a group a whole logo composition together so you don't move it about when you're trying to move the whole thing come on shift and G will ungroup the objects that you've selected so make sure you select the objects first on the shapes then press command G and if you want to ungroup them select that group again and command shift G well not many people use is command two now if you have a shape in illustrator that you don't want to touch or maybe you don't want to go ahead all the way to your layers panel and press the lock button press command two on that highlighted and selected shape that will lock that shape in place so you cannot move it command option and two will go ahead and unlock those locked layers or locked shapes that you've just locked command or control three will hide the selection so it makes it very easy just to hide a certain part of the design if you want to option command and three will show that selection again now when you're working with typography you don't want to be going up to the object panel and praying outlines you just press shift command + o on the keyboard and it will create your live text into editable shapes for you to edit a simple one that not many people use often enough is space now when you hold down space you can pan around all the different artboards in Illustrator you'd be surprised that some people don't know how to do this they go ahead and click for hand or press H when you hold down the spacebar it activates a pan and when you let go it deselect it or deactivates it the same is for Z just press Z and you'll go to the zoom and you'll be able to zoom in and out or you can press command + or - to zoom in or zoom out another nifty hotkey that I love to use is what I want to duplicate a shape without copying and pasting it you can highlight the shape go to move it and then press option whilst you're moving it and not duplicate that shape to repeat that process again in the same velocity distance press command D while still highlighted on that shape and I'll carry on duplicating it for eternity a very simple honest command a which will select everything that is unlocked in illustrator command shift and a will be selected to everything that you've just selected and if you're someone who applies a lot layer effects within illustrator than shift-command and II will apply the last effect that you've used to a new shape if you're someone like me that works a lot with logo designs or vectorizing typography and hand lettering then viewing your paths is a very good way of making sure that they work correctly and that there's no discrepancies and the best way of doing this is by going to outline mode which you can easily do by pressing command and Y which will take you into the full outline mode taking all the colors away and it will also take you away from the GPU view so those are some of the hotkeys and keyboard shortcuts that you can use in Illustrator to speed up your workflow I would just like to take a second to thank freshbooks for sponsoring this video fresh books is an invoicing platform where you can send invoices to clients and also record your own expenses and get paid even faster I use fresh books and I have been using fresh books for nearly a year now to do all my invoicing and to collect all my expenses for the end of the tax year now I'm a self-employed designer that means that I send a lot of invoices and I get a lot of invoices sent to me now fresh books makes it super easy for you to go ahead and send invoices and also track payments and to track your expenses as well there's a mobile app that you can use to take pictures of receipts if you're on a business trip to have as an expense and freshbooks also allows you to automatically charge late fees to clients that don't pay you on time and probably one of the best features of FreshBooks is the fact that you can tell if a client has viewed your invoice it is an amazing thing so if a client says to you that they didn't get the invoice I didn't see it you can say now you did see it and I know you saw it because it tells me if you'd like 30 days of fresh books completely free risk-free go ahead and click that link down below make sure that you tell them where you came from so where it says where did you hear about me say will Patterson and they will know that I sent you to that but guys thank you so much for watching this video it's awesome to be black if you have any ideas or any content ideas that you want me to talk about or any question you'd like me to answer put them in the comments down below and let me know some of your favorite shortcuts in adobe illustrator CC thank you so much for watching and i'll catch you in the next video see you soon
Thanks for your comment Bulah Forsthoffer, have a nice day.
- Rod Alarie, Staff Member
today's video consists of multiple keyboard shortcuts for advanced workflow in Adobe Illustrator so follow along so you can elevate your knowledge with keyboard shortcuts and sponsoring today's video is skill share our skill share offers thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people on topics including illustration design photography video freelancing and much much more now to become a member of this learning community with two months of totally free access stay tuned into the very end of the video and make 2020 the year where you explore new skills and expand on your passions so the first shortcut is kind of split into two separate shoka's now in the layers window we can select individual objects on a layer and the blue icon lets us know when it's selected but to select them all simply just hold down the alt/option key and then click the layers panel here but this is a quick way to highlight all objects on a single layer but also you can press command or control a to select everything outside of the layers window you essentially do the same thing but without the layers window open now the second a shortcut is a real gem and it saves me a lot of hassle in my workflow sometimes we have a really busy artboard and we might need to access shapes or objects below other objects very quickly now obviously the circle is in the way of the Fox below but I can hold down the command or the control key while still using the selection tool and then just double click this will grant access to parts of my design below the circle without having to hide or remove other objects so the third keyboard shortcut helps in viewing your design without any anchor points or handles obstructing your view they can be annoying sometimes and so to hide them simply press command or control key and then H this will hide your anchor points and your handles by pressing the same shortcuts is going to bring them back into view now this is especially useful for those of you who use illustrator CC and opt to use the anchor points with a large setting now one of my favorite tools that I use on a regular basis in my workflow is the group selection tool now it doesn't actually have any keyboard shortcut given to it as you can see it's right here below the direct selection tool now you could always assign your own shortcuts or you can simply use a direct selection tool and then hold down the alt option key and this is going to bring up the group selection tool for use now letting go of the alt option key will bring you back to the direct selection tool and so you can easily toggle between the two with this way now we all know that under the color palettes we have the fill box the gradient box and then the nothing box well they're actually shortcuts for all three of these so firstly if you press the comma key on your keyboard you opt to use the fill on a selection and then you can press a period or a full stop which will add a gradient and then a ford slash is going to apply nothing on the object at all but now a quick example of how to use this and speed up your workflow is that let me just select one part of the fox and then use the select same function to access all orange shapes I can then press the period key on my keyboard to apply a gradient to all the objects and then press and G for the gradient tool so it's applied evenly across the design itself this way shortcuts are very useful indeed and when working with color it just speeds things up a little bit now it's a quick and a neat little shortcut for when you're using the shape builder tool now of course you need to select your objects as you usually would and then look at the shape builder tool here or use a shortcut of Shift + M now to unite my entire selection I would have to draw all over the place like so or I could just hold down the shift key and then click and drag to select and unite my entire set of shapes now this obviously works like the Pathfinder unite function but it's nice to know that you have this when using the shape at at all on large designers now for the next keyboard shortcuts I will bring up the preference settings with command or control K now notice here you have the increment settings and - set to 1 this indicates how far I can add an object along my artboard in Adobe Illustrator so if I press the arrow keys on my keyboard the Fox is going to be belong at this pace however if I want to speed things up I could just hold down the shift key and then nudge them again so now things are sped up by a factor of 10 and again this is something that will save you time over your days and your years working with illustrator now this keyboard shortcut is handy if you're working on various documents or have many windows open instead of coming up to the top and then selecting the document you want to use you can just hold down the command or the control key and then press the apostrophe on your keyboard to toggle between your documents now as I mentioned at the start of video sponsoring today's tutorial is skill share skill shares an awesome community with an abundance of classes be curious and creative people alike most classes are under 60 minutes with short lessons to fit any schedule this means that they can be easily integrated into your work flow day to day now as you guys know I really like to design posters in my free time as it's a passion I've come to really enjoy and so one class I'd been eyeing up on Skillshare is a digital poster design class taught by Tami Coker now you can join Skillshare and become a member for two months totally for free simply by clicking the link in the description box below you're going to be able to really grow in the creative areas that you want to for 2020 and you will learn new skills that you've always wanted to master so do check out Skillshare a link down below so let me know if you can add some new shortcuts to your workflow arsenal and do remember if you want to keep learning essential skills within illustrator or as a designer in general subscribe to my channel for weekly your graphic design content do have a great day and a positive start of the week and until next time guys design your future today peace
Thanks sdfalsaceN your participation is very much appreciated
- Rod Alarie
About the author
I've studied astrobotany at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green and I am an expert in space food. I usually feel mischievous. My previous job was tax examiner I held this position for 16 years, I love talking about quilling and stand-up comedy. Huge fan of SSundee I practice yoga and collect pez.
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