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Illustrator vocabulary. Paths. Paths (also called Bézier curves) are the heart of Illustrator. Everything created in Illustrator is composed of paths. Paths can be either open or closed.
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Paths Paths (also called Bézier curves) are the heart of Illustrator. Everything created in Illustrator is composed of paths. Paths can be either open or closed. These blue boxes indicate anchor points, places where a pathbegins or ends or changes direction. Anchor points are onlyvisible when a path is selected.
Paths can be filled or not Closed path filled with gray. Path is not selected, so anchor points don’t show. Paths can be stroked or not Closed path filled with a pattern and stroked with green. Paths also can be filled with a gradient, a blend of two or more colors.
The Illustrator path • Paths are composed of anchor points and line segments. • The simplest path is a straight line. Line segment Anchor points
Curved paths • Curves are defined by direction points (also called handles) attached to anchor points. Direction points appear round, whileanchor points appear square. Neither one prints when you print your drawing. Change the shape of a curved segment by dragging its direction points.
Illustrator objects • A path with its associated fill and stroke is called an object. • Objects may be simple (a single line segment) or very complicated. • You can create invisible objects by specifying “None” for fill and stroke. • Several objects may be grouped so they can be edited and moved as a single object.
The Illustrator drawing • You can create very complex drawings by stacking and manipulating simpler objects. • Illustrator stacks objects in the order in which they are created, oldest object on the bottom, newest one on top. • Illustrator also allows you to create multiple layers in a drawing.
This Illustrator drawing has 386 objects on six different layers. It uses both solid color and gradient fills. The heron’s plumes are open paths stroked with white and filled with “none.”
Stacks and layers • Think of layers as overlapping sheets of clear plastic on which you can draw objects. • Illustrator stacks these opaque objects on a layer as you draw them. Layer 2 Object 3Object 2Object 1 Layer 1
Stacks and layers • You can instruct Illustrator to change the stacking order of objects on a single layer. • You also can change the order in which the individual layers are stacked by dragging them up or down in the Layers Palette. • Photoshop and PageMaker also have layers palettes that work much like the one in Illustrator.