 |
After launching Adobe Illustrator and creating a new document, you'll see this tool palette on the left side of the screen. There are a lot of tools, but these are the six that you'll use most often when creating a poster:
-
The selection tool (black arrow) selects, moves, and resizes objects. This is the tool you'll use most.
-
The direct selection tool (white arrow) lets you grab corners or other points in complex objects. Of the six most-often used tools, it's probably the least-used -- you'll only use this if you create complex objects
-
The text tool adds and edits text. Most often you will probably use text boxes for your text. The boundaries of a text box control the flow of characters; when text reaches a boundary, it will automatically wrap to fit inside the defined area. Illustrator does not have a spell check feature. If you have a lot of text on your poster you may want to type it in Word and copy it to a text box in Illustrator.
-
The rectangle tool creates a predetermined shape in your document. The colors of your shape are determined by the colors selected in the stroke and fill area of your toolbox.
-
The fill color refers to the area enclosed by the outline (inside of a text box or the inside of a shape).
-
The stroke color refers to the outline of a shape or text.
|
