In this lesson you'll learn about Shape tools and keyboard shortcuts to use when
you're creating them, how to customize them and so on. So If you look on the Tools
panel, there's a Rectangle tool. If you click and hold on to that, there's a
couple of other tools on here. I don't know many people who use the Flare tool but
the other ones can be pretty useful when you're creating logos or different
shapes, infographics and so on. So if you select the Rectangle tool and just click
and drag out here on the artboard, if you hold SHIFT, you can make a perfect square.
If you don't, then you can make a rectangle that's either wider or taller.
And you'll notice right here down at the bottom, just like in InDesign that we have a
Fill and a Stroke. So basically the color inside the shape and then the border.
So if we have a Stroke that's colored, you can double click on it and choose a custom
color and you can also styleize it up here at the top. You can make it thicker
and you can make a specific style. You can click on the side, there's other styles
there that correlate with the brushes. And so once you've drawn it out, you can use
the black arrow and move it around of course. And you can also click and drag the edge
to resize it, and you can hold SHIFT at that point to maintain the original
proportion of the shape when you're resizing it. And you can also choose the
white Direct Selection tool and click and drag and really customize it.
It can be helpful when we're creating logos or custom shapes. If you click and hold on the
Rectangle tool, there's another one called the Rounded Rectangle tool and so if you
click and drag that out, and you'll notice right here these little circles. If you click and
drag, it will adjust the angle of the rounded corners and you can click and drag it
all the way until it's completely round on the edges. Now if this was a perfect square like
this, you know, we did that same thing. Let me draw one here, holding SHIFT and click and drag this in,
it will become a circle, like a complete circle like so. Now we can do
that with the Rectangle tool as well though, so if I draw with the rectangle tool,
and then it also has these options here. Now what if you want this to just have
one side rounded or maybe straight, we can use, click on Shape up on the Control panel
and you'll notice if this is linked. Then, if I just want to adjust all of them.
So if I unlink that, then you can really adjust the corners there and
customize them each at a time so you can have some that are more rounded than others
for a custom shape for an infographic, illustration, logo and so on.
And if you click and go onto the Ellipse tool, you can create these ellipses.
You can also hold SHIFT just like with the Rectangle tool. You hold SHIFT and it will be a
perfect square. If you hold SHIFT on the Ellipse tool, it will create a perfect circle.
And if you hold down ALT with these or OPTION on the MAC, it will click and drag
from the center and then if you hold SHIFT, it'll be a perfect circle. So if you want to click and
drag from the edge like so, don't hold ALT, just hold down SHIFT for a perfect
circle but if you want to draw it from the centre, hold down OPTION on the MAC,
ALT on the PC, you can draw from the center Now the Polygon tool, if you click and
drag that out, it really depends on what you drew last time with the shape but,
see how it's changing? That's because I'm pressing the Up and Down arrows on the keyboard.
So if you press the Down key a bunch of times, it will
create this rectangle and if I hold SHIFT, it will hold it to just a 90 degree
angle there, a flat angle, and I click and drag again and press Up, it'll create
this kind of diamond or square and then a pentagon, hexagon, octagon and so on.
And if I hold... eventually, it almosts looks like a circle but it's not, just a polygon,
a bunch of sides. You can also click and hold and go to the Star tool and so by default.
it'll look like this with five points. And if you hold SHIFT, it'll be level like that.
If you're drawing one out though and press the down arrow, just like the
Polygon tool, you can create different shapes.
So this one is more of a diamond, and if you press up, you can have
kind of these bursts that you see sometimes in advertisements. When I worked at a
newspaper laying out advertisements, we would use this on like car dealership ads
for example, and we would add a Fill, so you could flip that and add a Fill instead of a
Stroke. And with all these of course, we can use the Direct Selection tool and
select an anchor point after the fact as well as the path and really customize
them more. Then you can use the black arrow and the Selection tool and move it
around and also rotate it by just hovering off the edge. You can also add style to
these. Up here we've got different brush strokes for the Stroke there and you can
also add a variable width if you want and then adjust the Fill and the Stroke up here
and not just down at the bottom of the Tools panel. You can adjust the Opacity
and also the style, so if you click on that you can add style to some of these
If you click this right here you can Open Graphic Styles. There's a bunch of other ones that
are available. So you can load those up and apply specific ones that we want to
add in there. If you go the Transform panel, up in the right handside of the Control panel
you can add a couple of effects here like Shearing and there's also rotating which you can
manually rotate here then with a number instead of just using the
Selection tool. You can also adjust the size and the placement of the shapes
by using the Transform option up here. The Shape tools can be pretty useful when
you're creating logos and illustrations. I hope you learned a lot in this lesson
and I will see you in the next one.