Forums | MacLife

Hmmm, I am still using PS7 and have considered upgrading to CS2.  I think the biggest draw for me is the non-square pixel support since I am constantly doing video work. Maybe I'll wait for CS3.

-mark

In AI to align just select the objects you want to align and use the align palette to align them. That seems pretty simple to me.
The objects will always move to the object that is closest to the selection edge you chose. If you choose align left then all the selected objects will move to align with the leftmost object in your selection.

How else would you want it? Isn't that the point of align?

In AI to select an object use the Selection tool (Dark Pointer) and click on the object.

If you are not able to select a filled object by clicking in the fill area with the selection tool go into AI preferences General and makes sure "Use Area Select" is checked.

If the object is part of a group use the Group selection tool. It's the white pointer with the little plus sign. It's under the direct selection tool (use the fly out) which is the white pointer with no plus sign.

The group selection tool allows you to select one object in a group or a group in a larger grouping.

For example:

Say you have three triangles and three squares. You have grouped the triangles into a group and you have grouped the squares into their own group and then you made a single group containing the triangle group and the square group.

If you clicked on this mess with the plain old selection tool you would select everything because it is a group.
If you used the direct selection tool you could only select what you could drag around or you would have to shift click each point in a single object to select the whole object. That sucks and is a real pain if all your objects are overlapping with points close to each other.

With the Group selection tool you can click on one of the triangles and it will select that triangle even though it is in a group within a group. If you double click that triangle it will select the triangle on the first click and then the triangle group on the second click. Even if you have an object in a deeply nested grouping hierarchy you can select up the group levels by how many times you click.

Cool feature.

Another way to select objects or specific groups is in the layer palette.

Click open the triangle next to a layer and see all groups with their own little triangles. Click any of those to open those groups to see the objects or groups inside. Each object or group has a selection circle next to it in the layers palette.

This method is really clunky and when Adobe moved to it I debated the lack of ease of use of it with the Adobe devs on the Adobe forums. For people that work on very complex vector art with very deep grouping they have made it harder to work and slower. Not good for the customer..... namely me

Last edited by Light Speed (2005-09-05 11:14 pm)

I understand that about the align pallete. I use it and frankly it sucks. When I align three boxes, all three move together and center themselves. Aligning then to one side of one box is ok but if I then need to center the three together all will shift to a common center. One box cannot be used as a fixed point. So If I was trying to align them to a box that is fixed and is being used for Keying the other objects, how does it help when than one moves as well?

In Corel Draw, you can align any object to another and use one object as a fixed point if need be. It's pretty handy and you can be very precise about the distance objects have to each other. I find in Illustrator will shift everything with no real way to lock an object in place other than locking it. Of course that makes the object untouchable for editing and aligning.

The align tool in Illustrator is cumbersome and none to precise for a program that prides itself as the vector drawing app.

Flexisign and even Freehand have better alignment features which is scary.

If you ever have a chance, try the vector drawing tools in Corel Draw, they make Illustrators an embarassment.

I've always thought Adobe's (or InDesign's, at least) align feature was incredible in the way it seems to read my mind and align exactly as I want it to. Unlike Quark's which never seemed to work the same way twice.

JackSkellington wrote:

I mean, if Corel can do it why can't Adobe?

Exactly!

I think the Adobe developers are so focused on adding fluff that they don't enhance or fix features that their products already have but don't work all that well.