In this lesson you'll learn about the Rotate tool as well as the Reflect tool
in Illustrator. If you want to go ahead and follow along,
open the support files, decorative.ai and superhero.ai from the support files.
And when we use the Rotate tool, some people might think, well why do we need that tool?
Can't we just go to the Selection tool, select what we want to rotate, hover
over a corner, off the corner a little bit and click and drag and hold SHIFT for 45, 90
degree and so on angles. That is true, we can rotate it that way.
However the Rotate tool gives us a couple more options and customizability.
So you'll notice when you select something with the Selection tool first, then select the
Rotate tool, you'll see this little thing in the middle here. This is a rotation point so by
default, if I just click and drag anywhere. I don't have to go right off
the edge, I can click and drag anywhere here in the workspace and it will
rotate it along that axis basically, along that point really. So what if we wanted to
rotate on a different point? What we can do is just hover over this and click and drag
it over, and now it will rotate around that point so you'll notice the difference.
Now it's rotating around that point instead. Another way to do that is if you hold on
to ALT on the PC or OPTION on the MAC and then, just turns into this little
minus sign next to it and the cursor. If I just click, it resets the point there.
You could click over the original or there and then it brings up this Rotate menu.
So now we can really set a specific angle. It has Preview, you can Copy it or you can
just hit OK, just rotate it and not create a new copy. So it's a little bit more customizable.
A couple of short cuts. Of course we know what ALT or OPTION does. If you hold onto CTRL on the PC
or Command on the MAC. That toggles it to a selection tool where we can
click and drag and move it around. And then as you're rotating it, if you hold
SHIFT, it will constrain it to specific angles.
So what's a practical use for this? Well, I'll show you if you go to File, New,
just create a new document. I'm going to create a leaf design here. So if I click, click and
drag with the Pen tool and then click to reset that angle there, click and drag it
back over, OK. So I've got a basic leaf here. So if I wanted to rotate this,
I could use the Selection tool, right, and it would select it but it's rotating it just
from the center. What if I want to just rotate it and have the rotation point over here?
Well choose the Rotate tool and I'm going to ALT on the PC or OPTION on the MAC and click
right here so it resets the point here, and for Angle, let's do, it needs to be
divisible by 360 degrees so I'm going to do 10 and so you can toggle the
Preview. You'll see the before and after. I'm actually going to click Copy and then I'm
going to press CTRL on the PC or Command on the MAC and press the D or you could go to
Object, Transform, Transform again. So if I do that, and just hold onto it, it creates the
spiral pattern here, a rotated pattern. So it's pretty cool. That's one
application of it, of the Rotate tool. If you click and hold onto the Rotate tool
and go to the Reflect tool, this is a little bit different and you just select
all of this. So go ahead and open up superhero.ai Click and drag around this person and
I'm going to hold SHIFT and click the background so I deselect the background.
I just want him selected. Now we could of course rotate this. We could click and
drag it so it kind of reflects it but we don't know if it's the same exact width.
I could hold SHIFT and it would actually flip it like that. I can hold ALT and it will
just expand from the center. But what if we want just a specific reflection, the
same exact width? I'm going to press CTRL or Command Z to undo that. So once you have them all selected,
click and hold onto the Rotate tool and select the Reflect tool and you can click
and drag and it just reflects. If I hold down ALT and click over here though,
it will actually reflect it at a specific angle. So you can actually customize it or you can
just say Horizontal or Vertical. So Vertical would be 90 degree angle and click Copy.
And then you can then create a copy as well. So then I know it's the same exact width
so you're not stretching it out, making him too small. So it can be pretty useful as well, not
just with one object but as we've shown here, there's a bunch of objects put together.
You can have a bunch of shapes and you want to reflect it on the left hand
side or the right hand side. You can select them all and then select the Reflect tool
and again, just hold ALT on the PC or OPTION on the MAC and you can enter in a
specific value. So that's the Rotate and the Reflect tools. I hope you learned a lot
about these two tools, Just practice with them and you'll get better and
you'll see the different applications where we would use those when we want
to rotate something, maybe create some kind of pattern or even rotating
something along the middle. Like if I use the Star tool and make kind of a burst, hold
SHIFT so it's level there and then Rotate, click right in the middle there, same kind of thing.
Copy, Control D to repeat. You come up with some pretty cool patterns.
So there are a lot of different applications for the Rotate and Reflect tool.
I will see you in the next lesson.