Advanced Keyboard Shortcuts in Illustrator

This lesson is exclusive to members

Course contents
SECTION: 4
Keyboard Shortcuts 14:06

Questions

1
1
1
1
2
0

Course info

104 lessons / 10 hours 33 quiz questions 31 projects Certificate of achievement

Overview

Hey there, I'm Dan Scott, an Adobe Certified Instructor with over 16 years of design experience under my belt, I'm part of the Adobe Expert program, and my online and in-person classes have been attended by more than a million people, just like you! Join me as we dive into the exciting world of Adobe Illustrator Advanced! In this course, you're not just leveling up in Illustrator, you're transforming into an Illustrator SuperHero!

In this course you will work on a bespoke brief designed to ignite your imagination, coupled with immersive course videos, you'll be crafting jaw-dropping graphics in no time. Throughout our journey together, you'll flex your creative muscles and construct projects that will elevate your portfolio to new heights. So, let's dive in and unleash your creativity!

You’ll learn:

  • - How to use artificial intelligence to boost your creativity in ideation. 
  • - The quick way to take hand-drawn sketches and vectorize and color them. 
  • - The building blocks needed to set you loose on a huge variety of beautiful effects and techniques.
  • - To make beautiful charts and graphs for your documents. 
  • - Color mastery to make quick color adjustments, Pantones, and blend it all together beautifully.
  • - How to master images inside of your illustrator workflow. 
  • - To harness all the secret gems that'll help you level up your typography skills. 
  • - All the tricks of the trade for drawing complex shapes easily. 
  • - To double your creativity with the Transform and Distort section. 
  • - To speed up your personal workflow to get the most out of your creative day.

Explore the full course outline for a comprehensive list of topics that will expand your Illustrator prowess beyond imagination.

If you're already comfortable navigating the basics but want to  unlock the true potential of Illustrator, then this Illustrator Advanced course is your ticket to becoming a master of Illustrator! So join me and the ranks of design superheroes and let's embark on this thrilling journey together.

Requirements:

- All you need is a copy of Adobe Illustrator, you can get a free trial from Adobe here to get started.
- A basic knowledge of Illustrator is required. I recommend watching my Illustrator Essentials course prior to embarking on this epic adventure.

Who this course is for:

- Creative adventurers who already have a basic understanding of Illustrator.
- Self-taught Illustrator enthusiasts yearning for structured guidance.
- Graduates of my Illustrator Essentials Course, hungry for more knowledge and skills.
- Visionaries who have developed their own unique Illustrator approach but crave exploration of the vast universe of tools, updates, and time-saving techniques.

What you'll learn:

- How to use Text to Vector Ai
- How to use Text to Pattern Ai
- How to use Generative Recolor
- When to use the Scissor Tool, Eraser Tool & Knife Tool
- Advanced Shape Builder Uses
- The differences between the Pathfinder Vs Shape Builder
- How to use the Join tool & Joining Path Ends
- Advanced Pen Tool Tricks
- Width Tool Advanced Techniques
- The Curvature Tool
- How to master corners with corner widget effects
- How to work with Compound Paths
- The difference between Expand & Expand Appearance
- How to create Graphic Styles
- How to make Symbols
- How to use the Smooth Tool
- Advanced use of Simplify Path
- What Live Shape Effects are for
- How to make Repeating Grids & Concentric Circles
- How to make Random Objects
- Advanced Keyboard Shortcuts in Illustrator
- How to add a Gradient on a Stroke
- How to add a Gradient in Text
- How to use the Freeform Gradient tool
- How to use Advanced Color Swatches
- How to use Global Color Swatches
- What is the difference between RGB vs CMYK color modes?
- How to proof colors
- How to use Pantone Spot Colors
- Recolor Artwork & Changing all colors at once
- How to use Blending Modes
- How to work with Images & Blending Modes
- How to make Black & White Images
- Learn Advanced Workflow Tricks
- All the Super Selection Mastery
- How to use the History Panel
- Advanced Fonts Tricks & Tips
- Use Retype to know what Font is being used
- How to put Text Inside a Letter or Shape
- How to use the Touch Type Tool
- How to add a Connected Stroke Around Multiple Shapes
- How to Offset a Stroke with Text
- How to make a Bar Chart in Illustrator
- How to make a Pie Chart in Illustrator
- Layer Power Moves
- Advanced Artboard & Pages Tricks
- How to Unlink vs Embedded Images
- How to Crop Images Rather than Mask
- How to Mask Inside Text & Multiple Shapes
- How to you use the Puppet Warp Tool
- How to use the Distort Envelope Shape & Type
- How to use the Envelope Mesh
- How to blend lines together
- How to make a Linocut Effect
- How to make 3D Gradient Lettering Blends
- How to spin text into a ring
- How to turn text into a 3D donut shape
- How to make a Duotone image effect
- How to make a Roughen Stamp Vector Effect
- How to make a Neon Sign Glow Effect
- How to use a Halftone Effect using Plugins
- Advanced Exporting Assets Tricks in Illustrator
- How to use the Dimension Tool

So what're you waiting for? Let's start the course now!
Daniel Scott

Daniel Scott

Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor

instructor

I discovered the world of design as an art student when I stumbled upon a lab full of green & blue iMac G3’s. My initial curiosity around using the computer to create ‘art’ developed into a full-blown passion, eventually leading me to become a digital designer and founder of Bring Your Own Laptop.

Sharing and teaching are a huge part of who I am. As a certified Adobe instructor, I've had the honor of winning multiple Adobe teaching awards at their annual MAX conference. I see Bring Your Own Laptop as the supportive community I wished for when I was first starting out and intimidated by design. Through teaching, I hope to bring others along for the ride and empower my students to bring their stories, labors of love, and art into the world.
True to my Kiwi roots, I've lived in many places, and currently, I reside in Ireland with my wife and kids.

Certificates

We’re awarding certificates for this course!

Check out the How to earn your certificate video for instructions on how to earn yours and click the available certificate levels below for more information.

How to earn your certificate

Work your way towards your certificate for this course by following these simple steps.

  • Watch the course videos
  • Complete the Class Projects - look out for the videos marked with
  • Upload your class projects into the My Projects area in your account
  • Complete and pass the Knowledge Quiz (Merit level courses only)
  • Complete the Distinction Certificate Project (Distinction level courses only) - look out for the video marked with
  • Upload your Distinction project to the My Projects area in your account
  • Request your certificate when you've completed the requirements for the certificate level you're working towards

Good luck!

Pass certificates

We’re awarding ‘Pass’ level certificates for this course.

You can work your way towards your ‘Pass’ certificate by following these simple steps.

  • Watch the course videos
  • Complete the Class Projects - look out for the videos marked with
  • Upload your class projects into the My Projects area in your account
  • Don’t forget to request your certificate when all your projects are complete

Good luck!

Merit certificates

We’re awarding ‘Merit’ level certificates for this course.

You can work your way towards your ‘Merit’ certificate by following these simple steps.

  • Watch the course videos
  • Complete the Class Projects - look out for the videos marked with
  • Upload your class projects into the My Projects area in your account
  • Complete and pass the Knowledge Quiz
  • Don’t forget to request your certificate when you have passed the quiz and completed all your projects

Good luck!

Distinction certificates

We're awarding 'Distinction' level certificates for this course.

You can work your way towards your 'Distinction' certificate by following these simple steps.

  • Watch the course videos
  • Complete the Class Projects - look out for the videos marked with
  • Upload your class projects into the My Projects area in your account
  • Complete and pass the Knowledge Quiz
  • Complete the Distinction Certificate Project - look out for the video marked with
  • Upload your Distinction project to the My Projects area in your account
  • Don't forget to request your certificate when you have passed the quiz and completed all your projects

Good luck!

Downloads & Exercise files

Transcript

Alright, it is time to get fancy with shortcuts. We've covered a few in the course already. There's loads more to give to you. I just want one video where we can like,  just get them all in one place so  that you can review them later on. Potentially if you're like, oh, what was that shortcut? Okay.

There's one video. There's also a PDF  that you can download in the exercise files. Okay? It'll be in there. I'll make it after this video so it'll be in there for you. Um, so the first one, let's start with something simple.

Let's grab the direct selection tool,  which is the A key, not the shortcut. Let's grab this heart in the middle. Now you don't need to open up the exercise files. Um, you can if you want. I've made one called, uh, shortcuts ai. Uh, um, just with some stuff in it.

Ignore the poem. Anyway, uh, I'm selecting on this. Okay? And one of the handy shortcuts is if you look down your  keyboard next to the M key, you've got like a full stop,  a comma and a forward slash  or a comma period forward slash whatever you wanna call it. So the first one is actually go for the last one. The last one is the best one.

It's forward slash key. Okay? On your keyboard and that with whatever you have selected  and whatever's at the front here. Okay? So if you have your fill at the front  or your stroke at the front, okay,  it will just clear it out. It's really handy.

I'm gonna undo that. If I click on this one  and the fills at the front,  I hit forward slash it just clears it out. It's got no fill, no stroke. So what do the other ones do? Let's click on the heart with the direct selection tool. Let's use comma, okay?

Comma will just add a gradient. You don't have to go and like find that gradient swatch  and find the gradient panel. Just get started. Opens up the gradient panel, you're away. Easy peasy to switch it to a solid. It's the first one, it's the full stop or period.

So it's just those three keys in a row. Full stop is fill comma, which is the next one is gradient. And then the last one, the slash is empty. Let's go back to the full stop. So we've got something put into it. So we've got uh, a fill in there  and if you wanna switch the fill and the stroke.

Okay? 'cause you want it for the fill but not the stroke. Actually let's do it for this one. Okay. Who remembers what it was? It is shift X says I'm going  to switch the fill with the stroke.

There you go. Often I do it the other way around. I'm like, oh, it's meant to be the fill shift X. Okay? It's the shortcut for whatever this,  if you click this a lot, okay, you see a H above shift x. If you click that a lot, that's what that does.

Another handy one is just the X key on its own. Okay? If I select this and I want to add a stroke color to it  and I go and I go up to here to my color panel, okay? And I go, alright, right? I wanna stroke. No, no, not not the fill.

I want to do. The stroke's gonna undo. Okay? What I do is hit the X key and watch what happens over here. X just brings the either the fill  or the stroke to the front. So it means I'm gonna say, okay,  not the fill, click it once.

So the strokes at the front and now when I  click it, I have a stroke. Now the handy one is just DD just goes scrap all  of the weirdness going on. Just add a white fill and a black stroke. D is for default. Switch everything. I'm gonna go undo one  that we've reviews loads already is command Y  or CTR Y on a pc.

And it's just that outline mode X-ray mode. Very useful. The other one is if I grab my direct selection tool  and click on something, you get all the anchor points  and the blue dots and the targets. Remember the command or control H. Okay. And that just gets rid  Of it.

It, you've still got it  selected, okay? But there's just none of the junk around  to make it a little bit easier sometimes working on stuff. Okay? I could still actually click on these anchor points. Okay. They're quite tricky to work on,  but sometimes it is nice to have something selected  that's not so messy.

Just don't forget to turn it back on command or control H. Another handy one is font sizes. So I'm gonna grab my type tool,  which is a tiki I'm gonna select on this  and the shortcut is on a Mac command shift. And you're looking for the uh, greater than  and less than on my keyboard. It's the same as the uh, period and comma keys. Can you see down there next to the M key on my keyboard.

You can't see my keyboard. Look at your own keyboard. Okay? So we're holding down command shift  and hitting either of those to go up  or down on a pc it's control shift. Okay? Greater than less than super easy  for doing font sizes.

Another one that I love is with kerning. Okay? Or letting space between letters. Okay, so let's say that I don't like this big gap  between big, okay, the B and the I. So I can e actually I can select it all  and then hold down my option. Ke mac al key, a PC and just use my left  or right arrows to do it all in one go.

Or I can have my cursor flashing between one of them. Hold down my option. Ke mac al key, a pc, the same thing. Use my left and right arrows. I can just toggle it  in, tidy it up, okay? Especially when you're dealing with a logo.

Okay? When you've got some of these like overhangs that uh,  you know, you might be working on a font  that hasn't had a lot of love. Okay? This one actually is, it's a great font myriad,  but you might end up with like one of those free fonts  where there's just some weird gaps going on. Alright? The last font one is if I select this, uh,  poem, don't read it.

Um, if you select all of it. So I've just kind of like triple clicked it. If you hold the option key and use up and down. So we use left and right to do the uh ing. Okay? But if you use up and down, it will do the lidding,  the space between the lines, the line spacing.

Okay, that's really handy. Let's look at some preferences  that can really speed up your workflow. Uh, let's go on a Mac. I'm gonna go to the Adobe Illustrator settings  and start at general on a PC member. It's editing, remember it's edit  and then the bottom you'll see the same thing. You'll see settings and let's go to general.

So in the general one, uh, some things  that are useful is this here, if you're working  with older files, it defaults too. Whenever you open up an old file and you try  and save it, it keeps giving it the like I've been converted  and you're like, ah, stop doing that. You might like it. Leave it on. If you don't like it's paying, leave it off. I've gotta leave mine on.

It's my matches. Everybody else's for uh, the courses. I like this one. Zooming with my mouse wheel. If you don't have a mouse wheel, you don't need this one. But I've got a mouse with a little wheel on it  and I like zooming in and out with it.

I'll show you that once out. The other one is the show rich tool tips. That's when you're hovering above stuff, okay? And it goes, Hey, do you mean like this thing  with the big giant version of it with the description? If you like that and those things popping up, keep it. Otherwise if you're like me you're like  man, stop sewing those things.

The other one that's kind of really handy is, okay,  if I am like over here and I've got this selected, okay,  and if I hit Zoom, so I'm gonna use  Command plus it zooms into the thing I've got selected. They changed that a while ago and I hated it for a while  and loads of people complained to me like I invented it  'cause I'm the illustrated teacher. Okay? I find it actually quite handy now. A lot of people still really hate it. So say you just wanna zoom in on the middle  of your screen here and I've got the select it  goes, it jumps over here.

So you can turn that off settings  and go to general notes, selection  and anchor points if you're in here from general down  to selection anchor points and say this one here,  uh, zoom to selection. Turn that off. And now when I'm zooming,  if I've got this selected, it'll just zoom into the middle  of the document or me with my scroll wheel now. Ooh, scroll wheely stuff. I'm gonna turn mine back on 'cause I like it. You wait there magically.

It's done now. Thank you editor. Another little shortcut is we've done this one is I've got a  few different objects, I just wanna smush 'em all together. Okay? If I grab the shape builder tool, okay, instead  of going round and going clicking U and clicking U  and all the other bits, just hold shift  and draw a box around them all  and it will just smosh 'em down. Like the pathfinder just kind of unites them all.

Handy shortcut, we've done command D loads. Okay, so if I duplicate one holding down my option kac,  I key on a PC and I hit command D,  D, D, you get lots of them. Command D, what can be useful is if I've got this one,  this one, let's make this one nice and big  and it's kind of over, you know, there's stuff behind it. Let's make this one transparent. So let's open up in our parents panel  and say this whole object is gonna be an opacity lowered  down to something like this. Okay?

So it's above it,  but I can't click the thing behind it, okay? If I double click it, I just go inside my uh, heart here. It's not what I want. Okay? So to click things  underneath other stuff, okay,  hold down the command key on a Mac control key, a pc  and you'll see my cursor changes. See the little chevron there?

Okay, it means I can click on the top one  and then the one underneath that  and then the one underneath that. And with it selected I could say,  actually I want to change the fill color. Okay, so there you go. Beautiful color Dan. Another handy one is the shift key. Okay, if I click on this  and I'm moving it, I can just use my arrow keys.

Just 1, 2, 3. I'm just kinda like moving at one point at a time. If I hold shift, it does it in lumps of 10. Okay? And that kind of continues on for lots of stuff. We covered this before.

So this font,  if I grab the font size and go up one to 50  and you know, uh, 55 and we can keep going up one,  but if I would shift, it'll go up in lumps of 10. Okay? It works for anything that is. Has any of these dials, if I had a stroke to it,  10, 20, 30, anything with a number? Now one of the things though, when you are moving it around  and kind of going, just tapping things,  just like light little tap, okay? Is it can be quite a big chunk when it moves.

Okay? So what you can do is have nothing selected. So click off on the background, be on your properties panel,  close down the text to vector. If it's occupying too much, you see here  where it says a keyboard increment. Okay, you can turn it down. So one point is what it's doing at the moment.

I like to put it down to 0.1. Okay? And it just means now when I move stuff,  can you see it's real fractional. And what if I need to move it a bit bigger though? Oh, hold down the shift key  and it will times that, you know, 0.1  by 10 you end up moving one point at a time. I find I use that a lot more than doing the huge chunks.

The  Up and down arrow though, in some of these transform ones. So I've got this thing here. You can actually just click in  here instead of kind of going, all right, I want it  to be one pixel cost deleting eight, typing in nine. Okay? You can just click in here  and just use the up and down arrows. Can you see it just goes up in single digits, okay?

And if I hold shift it goes up in big digits. Okay? Same with all of them. Uh,  let's say the rotation's quite good, okay? If I go up 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, just by using my up  or down arrows hold shift, it goes up in tens. Look at us, we're doing stuff right.

The next one is toggling between programs. I had to rejig my screens here because I use two of them. You do a lot of work between  Photoshop and Illustrator, okay? Or any other program. It doesn't have to be Adobe. Hold down the command key on a Mac  or control key, a PC and hit tab.

Okay? And you will be able to cycle through  all of the things that are open. What I tend to do is I go, all right, so uh, if I go over  to Photoshop and then hello you uh, go back to Illustrator  and I can just click it once. So command tab, let go, command tab,  let go on a pc, it's control tab. You don't even need to see those little icons. Can you see?

You can just kind of shortcut between the two. So if I go, uh, you, I need my weird heart copy tab,  command tab on a Mac control tab on a PC and hit paste  and it's gonna be a smart object  and it comes in, there we go. And then tab back. Okay, I find that super handy. The other one is if you've got more than  one, uh, document open. So I've got two tabs open, you can cycle between them.

This one can be tricky, okay? It is the command tilde key, okay? On my um, Mac, okay. And on my like English query keyboard,  if you've got an international keyboard,  it can be trickier on a pc. It's the same. Hold down the control key  and find the Tillie key.

You're like, what's the Tillie key? It is this one. Okay, on my Mac. Where's a good version of it? Uh, that one there, that's the key. It could be this key, the grave key as well.

Not sure mine are always tied together on my keyboard,  so I'm never sure which one it is. But look for that in your keyboard. If you're on a, I dunno, another languages keyboard,  you might have to find out like what is the uh, tilde key. It's about like that, okay for my style of um, keyboard,  you know, Spanish, German, whatever it is, or the grave key. Okay? So that's the other one that's this kind  of looks like an apostrophe looks for those two  and you should be able to then hold down the monkey  and hit that some keyboards I know can't do it,  but it is really handy for toggling through tabs  and that works for anything that has tabs in Photoshop bin  Design Premier Pro, it's handy.

And you'll notice I get my doc on the left hand side. He is like, what is he doing? The crazy person I  know I like it on the left. Uh, it's only 'cause I've got two screens. Um, actually I have it on for all the time. Yeah, I have it on the left.

I feel like I've got a lot  of uh, left and right room, but not a lot of up and down. I'm not sure it makes sense,  but that's where I keep my dock. I turn it off, right? The next one is the F key. Just tap it once and it kind of gets rid of not much. Tap it again and it kind of ti up everything.

This is good when you are maybe presenting  to somebody at your desk,  you wanna show a colleague or a boss, okay? You can do it this way. I do it for my intro videos  for this course so that I can kind of show you stuff  and I can kind of do stuff in here. There's nothing, you know,  no reason why you can't work this way,  Especially if you know a few of the shortcuts, okay? You can kind of work in a full screen way. It's great if you've got like a really  small laptop screen, okay?

And you wanna go full screen and just keep cycling  f to bring it all back. So it's kinda like 1, 2, 3. We'll get you all the way through. Another one for those people who have a mouse  with a scroll wheel, okay, up and down is zoom in  and out a hold shift and it will go left and right. So I'm just using my scroll wheel on my mouse holding shift. Key down goes left and right.

If you hold down the option key on a Mac alt key on  a pc, it'll go up and down. I'm surprised how much I use this. I dunno why. Okay, it'll depend on your um, scroll wheel as well. Mine's quite jumpy. I can go through my settings.

I, I'm happy with it. It's a bit ugly  and jumpy, but there you go. Shift to go left and right option or alt to go up and down  and then do nothing and it will zoom in and out. Last one kind of random is if you grab,  let's grab the line tool. So depending on what you've got done,  grab the line tool pick, uh, stroke color. So remember X to bring it to the front.

There you go. And I'm gonna pick a color  and actually I'm gonna pick one of my, I drop a tool,  I'm gonna pick one of my colors that I've picked here. Grab the line tool. Ooh, it's ended up being the fill. I'm gonna pretend I did that on purpose. How do I switch it round?

I wanna bring the fill to the actual, the fill color  to the stroke color shift X. You remembered good work. Grab the line tool. Uh, and what I'm gonna do is if you hold down  that same tilty or grave key, okay? And then start dragging the weirdness happens. Anybody remember Spirograph?

It's got very spirograph feel. Okay? You can grab any tool, okay? And watch this. Hold down that tilty or grave key. Okay?

How do I get rid of all the blue dots whilst  still having it selected? Ooh, you remember Commander Control H? Okay. And I can say, actually I wanna play around with this  and pick the color and stuff,  but yeah, spirograph, why does it use it? I don't know. It's just been there forever  and I like showing people  and do I use it Not very often other than  trying to impress you.

Alright, that wasn't impressive. Hope some of those shortcuts were though. Remember there's a shortcut sheet with them listed in. Okay. And um, yeah, highlight the ones that you like. Test them out.

You don't need to remember them all. Just the ones that you and your industry might use. Learn those ones. Pick one a month. Hopefully they'll save you some time. Alright, that is it.

All the sweet, uh, shortcuts all in one video. I'll see you in the next video.
  • Powered by Marvin
  • Terms of use
  • Privacy policy
  • © Bring your Own Laptop Ltd 2025