5 Underrated Adobe Illustrator Tools To Transform Your Illustrations
The 11 Illustrator Tools You Need To Know To Start Designing Today
Before We start
About Adobe Illustrator
This is by far my FAVORITE design program. A lot of people don’t know this (which is completely understandable) that Adobe Illustrator is a Vector-based program
What does Vector mean? It means that anything you create can be scaled up and down infinitely without your design losing its quality.
Before I bore you even more with all the benefits this program has to offer, you can check out my other blog post: Illustrator vs Photoshop - Top Reasons You Should Invest In Adobe Illustrator Today When Branding For Your Business
Download Adobe Illustrator
… let’s download it! (click here to start your 7-day free trial of Adobe Illustrator)
“But Kiki, why would I pay for Adobe Illustrator when I can use Canva for free?”
I hear this often. Many people do not want to commit to paying a monthly fee for Adobe Illustrator when they can just use Canva for free.
I get it! HOWEVER, the sky is the limit with what you can create in Adobe Illustrator vs. Canva.
In Canva, you are VERY LIMITED with the free version and a lot of people use the same design templates! The whole point of designing what you want is to stand out, right?
You can start with a 7-day free trial of Adobe Illustrator, and after this tutorial, if you decide you want to keep it, you can continue to pay the subscription each month.
Now, I have to be honest, the above link is an affiliate link but it’s cool because the more support I get from you by purchasing through this link, then the more time I’ll have to deliver some awesome free knowledge your way.
It's a win-win!
A Beginner’s Guide to Essential Adobe Illustrator Tools
A Beginner’s Guide to Essential Adobe Illustrator Tools
More than 100 tools exist in Adobe Illustrator—which can seem like an overwhelming number to master if you’re just starting out with the program. Even seasoned designers familiar with the ins and outs of Illustrator can forget what each tool does. But don’t worry, that’s why we’ve put together this quick reference for the six most essential tools—And if you’re just getting acquainted with the software, learning how these basic tools work will save you a lot of time and frustration.
So whether you’re editing customizable vector graphics or designing a project from scratch, this guide will help you find the right tool for the task. To start, you’ll find the Illustrator tools on the left side panel after you open the program. If you click on one of the icons, a submenu opens to show more tools related to the main tool.
Selection Tool
Shortcut Key: V
The selection tool in Illustrator lets you isolate certain pieces of a design for small, minute adjustments. You can also use the tool to order objects on top of or behind one another, group or ungroup pieces of a design, and apply effects to only one selection.
Learn how to create and remove anchor points.
Find out how to create curves and straight lines.
Discover the different ways to manipulate anchor points.
Shapes Tool
Shortcut Key: M (for rectangles); L (for ellipses)
The shapes tool in Illustrator helps you create—you guessed it—shapes quickly. You can choose a rectangle, ellipse, star, flare, or another option from the menu.
Learn about the different shapes for the tool options and how they work.
Discover different ways to manipulate the sizes and proportions of shapes.
Find out how to use keyboard keys to change how you manipulate shapes.
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Type Tool
Shortcut Key: T
Use the type tool to create and manipulate text in an Illustrator document. Choose fonts, font weights, glyphs, and other details to create the style you want.
Learn how to use the type tool and its menu alternatives.
Use text to fill shapes.
Discover ways to create stylized text for a project.
Eraser Tool
Shortcut Key: Shift + E
If you make a mistake in Illustrator, or if you want to remove portions of a fill or stroke, the eraser tool becomes invaluable. The eraser works just like the eraser of a pencil.
Find out how the eraser tool works when you select specific objects.
Learn how to separate one object into two objects by splitting them.
Watch how anchor points change after applying the eraser tool.
Blob Brush Tool
Shortcut Key: Shift + B
You can use the blob brush tool to create vector shapes. This tool works similarly to the pen tool—but the resulting image serves as a full vector shape.
Learn how to create drawings using the blob brush.
Discover the differences between pen and blob brush.
Find out how the blob brush interacts with color swatches.
Artboard Tool
Shortcut Key: None
Artboards allow you to work on multiple panels or canvases at the same time. You might export them to After Effects as slides in a stop-motion video or design a corporate mockup with multiple elements.
Learn how to create and manipulate artboards.
Duplicate objects among different pieces of an artboard.
Synchronize actions across all pieces of an artboard.
That’s it! With just these six tools you’re already well on your way to Illustrator mastery. Ready to test out your prowess? Download our royalty-free stock images and vectors—including awesome infographic templates and abstract designs—and start creating.
5 Underrated Adobe Illustrator Tools To Transform Your Illustrations
5 Underrated Adobe Illustrator Tools To Transform Your Illustrations
English
Do you want to discover 5 Adobe Illustrator tools? Want to learn how to improve your illustrations, artworks and designs. Adobe Illustrator is a powerful and dynamic piece of software for any designer or illustrator. It can help create mind-blowing...
Haydn Symons
2022-09-13
Do you want to discover 5 Adobe Illustrator tools?
Want to learn how to improve your illustrations, artworks and designs.
Adobe Illustrator is a powerful and dynamic piece of software for any designer or illustrator. It can help create mind-blowing vector illustrations to eye-catching designs, like some of my examples within my portfolio (wink-wink nudge-nudge).
However as this software is so powerful and sometimes complex for some, this can lead to certain tools been unused or even forgotten.
Within this blog post you will discover my top 5 underrated tools in Adobe Illustrator that can drastically help your creations. These tools and shortcuts are often overlooked, which you can use to your advantage! This blog post is perfect for beginners as these tools are easy to use, but can also be revealing for the most experienced Adobe Illustrator users.
As a side note, if you’re new to my blog, do check out my other articles on how to help you with creativity, freelancing to the world of illustration.
Blend Tool
The blend tool is brilliant to help you create neat-looking gradients and shapes in Adobe Illustrator.
Most simply, create 2 shapes (like the images below) and choose the Blend tool in the toolbar (or W on the keyboard). Click on the first shape, and then click on the other shape.
Then hay presto, a nice gradient is made!
You can dictate how smooth or how many ‘steps’ are between the two shapes whilst having the shape still selected, and double-clicking on the Blend tool within the toolbar. From here you can input ‘Smooth Color’, ‘Specified Steps’ to ‘Specified Distance’, according to your preferences.
*Bonus* Changing the colour of your blended shape
If you don’t like the colour of your blended shape, you can change the colour by clicking the colour wheel at the top right of the horizontal toolbar.
Click on this palette icon and double click the colour below ‘New’. You can see that once you select a new colour, your ‘blended shape’ will change too. Neat!
Shape Builder Tool
I only just came across this brilliant tool, but what magic it is! If you haven’t heard of this one you’ll love it.
To use, create a few overlapping shapes (circles, rectangles and any paths of your choosing). With the shapes selected, choose the ‘Shape Builder Tool’ (or Shift+W), and hover over your selected shapes.
You can then click and drag from one shape to another, which combines your shapes together. This is an ideal tool if you’re creating complex illustrations which overlap and combine.
Live Paint Bucket
Much like the shape builder tool, you can colour a shape (or multiple shapes) with the live paint bucket tool.
Select your shapes that you want to change the colour, click on the ‘Live Paint Bucket’ tool (or K on your keyboard), and when you hover over a shape the outline turns red. You can then click into each shape and change the colour.
With the tool still selected, you can flick between different colours by using your left and right arrows.
View Outlines
Have you ever wanted to see the paths in your Adobe Illustrator file?
Well you can, by holding CMD + Y (Mac) or Control + Y (Windows).
Within this view you can see all of your different paths like you can in normal viewing mode. However it’s a lot easier to see all of your paths without the distraction of colours and vectors.
Clipping Mask
Clipping masks are certainly overlooked and underrated to those who are Adobe Illustrator beginners (and if you are a beginner, I highly recommend Adobe’s tutorials). It can save a heap of time and make your creations look brilliant.
For example, lets say you have a shape you want to mask within another shape. Select both of your shapes and press and hold CMD + 7 (or Control + 7 on Windows). Your shape has now been masked within that shape.
You can move this shape around (and also the mask around), by selecting the layer within the ‘’ layer.
This is the most time-saving and useful tools within this blog post, so make sure you practice this one!
Bonus Tip – Draw Inside & Adobe Colour Themes
I know this article reveals 5 underrated tips, but I wanted to throw in these underrated Adobe Illustrator tools, as they are too good not to share! If you ever get frustrated with colour, or if you’re not confident with choosing good colour schemes yet (which you can learn more about within this article), then I highly recommend Adobe Colour Themes. This is a very similar feature to Adobe Color (once known as Adobe Kuler). Adobe also has a great tool called Adobe Express which you should also check out!
Located under ‘Window’ > ‘Colour Themes’, you can create your own colour schemes (from complimentary, analogous to triad), and choose colour schemes from there. Simply by clicking and dragging around the colour wheel. You can then save these Themes to your collection, add to your swatches, or by using them directly in an artwork.
You can also ‘Explore’ other popular colour choices from the community, which I’ve used countless of times! To do this, simply click the ‘Explore’ button. You can filter between ‘Most Popular’, ‘Most Used’, and / or ‘Random’, to find some amazing colour schemes. Let others do the hard work for you and utilise Adobe Colour Themes.
Become a master with your colour with this very underrated Adobe Illustrator tool!
As an addition to this, have you ever wanted to draw inside a shape or path? Well you can!
Much like the clipping mask technique above, draw inside works as a mask too (and it’s super simple!).
Select some shapes or paths and click ‘Draw Inside’, most often located at the bottom of your side bar in Adobe Illustrator. In this example, click on the ‘Paintbrush Tool’ (B), and draw something within this shape.
You can see that your paint brush marks are only visible within this shape.
You can change these paint brush marks (or anything you draw within the shape), by selecting the layer within your
Share Your Underrated Adobe Illustrator Tools!
I use Adobe Illustrator daily, it’s such a powerful tool that a lot of other creatives swear by too. Even though this is the case, most of these tools are sometimes overlooked (and I was guilty of this too!)
It’s crucial that you practice and get to know these tools so they also become a part of your design armory.
Here’s what we covered within this article:
Blend tool (W)
Shape builder tool (Shift+W)
Live paint bucker (K)
View Outlines (CMD / Control + Y)
Clipping mask (CMD / Control + 7)
Adobe Colour Themes (Window > Colour Themes)
Draw inside (Shift +D)
I’ll love to get your feedback on this article, so be sure to comment below with any tips or Adobe Illustrator tools that you love that you can share with others!
If you’re new to myself and my work, I’m a illustrator, designer and artist from Hampshire, with an online portfolio. I specialise in editorial, publishing illustration to advertising illustration, commonly using gouache and digital to create my work.
You can also see my previous blog post showcasing my current sketchbook, featuring portraits, landscapes to everything in-between!
Many thanks for listening and visiting my news page today. You can follow what I’m up to on my Twitter, Facebook or Google + pages, I’ll really appreciate it if you do, and don’t be afraid to say hi to me! Many thanks again, and have a great day!