Hi everyone. Hey, we're going to look at the simplify tool. Its job is to grab all of these many, many anchor points. Way too hard to edit. And with the push of the button, bam,  the same skull, way less anchor points,  way easier to adjust. That's the simplified tool.

All gets better. We're gonna use it stylistically  to go from this curvy donut shape rocket to this kind  of like straight line geometric thing. Looks cool, huh? At least I think so, uh, let's jump in. Let's get uh, busy with the simplify tool. Alright, to get started, open up the simplify file from  exercise files and uh, we're gonna tidy up the anger points.

Basically that's what we're doing. So  where I use it the most, uh, quite often is the width tool. Okay? I've made this like thing blobby thing, okay? And I want to outline the appearance  or expand the appearance, okay? 'cause at the moment it's still editable.

So shift W to go the width tool, okay? It's still this kind of editable shape  and if I wanna start messing with it, uh, more detail,  like the anchor points, I need to uh, expand the appearance. So we've done that before. Let's go to object  and let's go to expand  or expand appearance, whichever is available. And you can see what it's done. It's added a bunch  of anchor points now so I can grab my direct selection tool  and start modifying it.

Okay? 'cause it's often it gets me close with the width tool  and then I wanna go and make adjustments. But you see all the junk over here  and you're like oh man, so many anchor points. That's what the simplify tool is really good for. So, uh, I'm going to select it with my black arrow. Okay?

And I'm gonna go to Object. I'm gonna go to Path and I'm going to go to simplify. Click on that one. And it's hard to see what's changed here. Um, the weird thing about the simplify tool, I'm gonna uh,  undo it to come back out of it. If you select it with your black arrow, okay?

Versus your white arrow, you get a different view. Okay? So black arrow selection tool, no anchor points. It's a little bit easier to see the edges,  but with the white arrow you get to see  how many anchor points there is  and that's what I want in this case. So be uh, deliberate on how you select it. Okay?

Then go to object, go down to path, go to simplify. And can you see how many anchor points have disappeared? Like so much easier to work with it  and it's retained most of its shape. You slide this that way to get less and less anchor points. Now it's got four trying  to create this whole thing and it's not doing well. Okay?

And you just slide this back  and forth to decide how much is too much. Okay? And look, basically you want as little as you can. You wanna go left, left, left as long as you can  until it still holds its shape  and you can do some really easy editing. The automatic feature which it launch with. Okay?

Does auto simplify is generally 90%  of the time I leave it, just leave it there. It's pretty good. Yeah, I'm gonna leave it there  and now I can go through and adjust this thing. It's nice and simplified. Good work tool. Uh, let's have a look at the difference between these two.

So um, this one here, if I select this top one  with the direct selection tool, this is the thing  that I drew earlier, okay? It's meant to be a leaf. Um, it so many anchor points  'cause I drew it with the pencil tool. Okay? And there's bottom one here, believe is a comparison. So you go to decide whether you want to go.

First of all, let's have a look at the difference. How many anchor points disappear. So I got up with  A direct selection tool  so I can see all the anchor points. Let's go to object, let's go to path. Let's go to simplify and look at that. So it's really got rid of a lot of them  and you can keep going this way  and it kind of does a similar job  to smooth that we did in the last one.

Except it's not gonna try  and like deliberately smooth everything. It's just gonna keep removing anchor points which kind  of ends up at the same point. Except you'll probably end up  with sharp bits as well as curves. Okay? It's just gonna remove anchor points. Let's click on auto.

What I find useful is um, let's come,  I'm gonna undo that to get out of it, okay? And I'm gonna go with my black arrow. Remember we can toggle between the two. If I wanna go in and not see the anchor points  'cause I'm really more interested in the edge  of this one rather than how many anchor points. So I'm gonna go back into the tool path. It's gonna simplify.

What we can do is go into these  advanced options, click on that. Okay? These advanced options, mine keeps defaulting to that. It's not normal. Yours probably doesn't  default to straight lines. And what I like to see is show original path.

Can you see there is so many less anchor points in this now,  but can you see on and off? It's basically the same shape. You can't probably even tell basically  there's a blue line and a red line. Let's crank that up. See if I go around to minimum curves,  can you see there's a bit of a differentiation now. Okay, so it's kind of really tries  to minimize the anchor points  and it's basically the same shape.

Awesome. The corner threshold, it'll just decide. See this point here, this decided this is a point  because of this angle 150 degrees. Basically the lower it is the more likely it will convert. Um, like changes of direction into uh points. The higher it is, sorry, the more sharp it will likely  make these corners with it lower.

It has to be a very, very acute angle  to make it a corner point. Let's turn off the show original path  and have a look sharp, keep it smooth. Drag it this way. More likely to be smooth this way. More likely to do changes of direction into sharp. But this one here is such a big change of direction.

It's always gonna be sharp. We can't get  higher enough in this angle. So you might have to go too smooth if you want  to kind of get rid of some of these. Remember simplifies job is to try and remove anchor points. Click okay and let's have a little look. Look at the control I have over this one versus this one.

But they kind of look the same. There you go. Removing anchor points does a few things as well. It can speed up your machine, okay? If you've got lots of anchor points  and you've got an older machine,  it can be really tricky if you're sending this out  to get like laser cut or 3D printed or um, like an engraver  and you've got lots of anchor points. It can be quite tricky for the machine to process.

The file size is bigger, whereas this is really  simple and easy. Next, the simplify tool's really good  after you've done a live trace. Okay, I've done this earlier in the course  and if I look at it with my direct selection tool,  can you see how many anchor points it is? It's really good. It's followed the lines really nicely. We end up this like ah, like uneditable vector line.

Really, really uh, thick, okay with anchor points. So what we can do with it's selected, I'm gonna go  to object, go to path  and go to simplify, just leave it as is. It's kind of hard to see with the anchor points here,  but I wanna show you how many anchor points it's got  rid of. Remember you  Can just drag it up or down depending on what you need. I'm gonna drag it up. Cool.

It happens so often with live trace  to simplify it afterwards  that they actually built it into it. So I'm gonna grab my black arrow, click on this image,  I'm going to trace the image. I'm gonna see, okay, okay, it's gonna default to that. I'm gonna open up my properties panel. Slide down to the bottom, find image trace. Okay?

And I'm gonna say under the advanced, okay,  what they've done is they actually built in simplify. It's the same tool that is built it into this panel as well. So I can say, actually let's simplify this down  so there's not so many anchor points. Okay? I want less anchor points  and I wanna crank up the noise to get rid of some  of the dots in the head there. Good enough.

Okay. And yeah, simplifies just kinda like baked in. I'm gonna go to and say ignore the background color. It's pretty good at defaulting to it. And there you go. If I go to expand now  and go to the A key, I kind of end up at the same point.

Okay? But it's kind of built into the live trace  so rather having to do it a second time. Alright, the next one's for giggles. Um, it's kind of a cool effect. I drew this. I did not draw this.

This is a generative AI I'd said, uh,  donut powered spaceship. A cool thing about it though is if I select it all do  with my black arrow, okay? 'cause I don't really wanna see  the anchor points in this case. So the V key and I'm gonna go to Object, I'm gonna go  to Path, I'm gonna go to simplify. It can be really cool to go inside the advanced options  and say convert to straight lines. Do much and just drag this down till you find something  that's kind of like quite geometric.

See preview on, preview off. Cool. Huh? It's kind of a, a quite a stylized look up to you. I quite like that. Now what's this handsome guy doing here?

Hello? Uh, what you can do,  this is another live trace that I've done. It has got lots of anchor points. So if you've got the world's oldest  prettiest machine, don't do this. Just watch. Okay?

'cause there are a lot of anchor points. Okay? So we need to simplify this up. Um, so yeah, just watch if your machine starts kind  of overheating that's 'cause it is  because it hates doing lots of anchor points. So what I find is I wanna do two things. Well actually I wanna do one things, I want to smooth it,  but it's handy to simplify it first to get rid  of all the anchor points, then smooth it out.

'cause it's really hard that this machine,  even my one's pretty amazing kind of maxed out, uh,  MacBook Pro, it finds it hard  to work with this many anchor points. So if I selected all my black Arrow, okay,  and I go to Object and I go to part,  even though I wanna do smooth,  I gotta do simplify first just to kind of clean it up  to get it to kind of something usable  that's not gonna melt my computer. Okay? And then I'm just going  like, what can I get away with? Still looks like me A little bonus tip. Okay?

If you hold down the command key on a Mac control key on a  pc, it'll toggle the blue lines on and off. Kind of wanna show it to you,  but I don't wanna show it to you  'cause you'll forget to turn it back on. Okay? So hold down the command key on a Mac and hit H  or control key on a PC and hit H. Okay? And it just, it's nothing to do  with simplify or smooth.

It just removes all the blue stuff  because it's hard to see what I look like right when  I've got all the blue lines around it. So I look more zombie-like so I've got rid of it  and then I'm gonna go drag it down to like something  Doable, maybe a little bit higher. Now that's done. I'm gonna click off to kind of close  that little panel, select it all again  and now do my smoothing and it won't be so hard, okay? 'cause there's not as many anchor points. It smoothed me out.

How high can I go? Still freaking mine out a little bit. Click and wait. Bouncing ball of doom. There you go. A nice kind of smoother version of myself.

There you go. So there you go. That is the simplified tool. Its goal is to remove anchor points,  but you can use it stylistically  and often you need to use it, uh, after doing a live trace  or while you're using the live trace  with the built-in version of it. Okay, there you go. Simplify tool.

Super handy. Hidden under this, but really useful. Okay. Deep in the dark reaches of Illustrator,  but something that we use all the time. Super handy. There you go.

I'll see you in the next video. I'm back. I was making the next video  and I did exactly what I said not to do. I was clicking on these with the why Arrow. I'm like, wait a minute. Points go.

Something's broken. What's wrong with it? Remember, command  or control H to turn them back on. Don't forget, I'll probably  remind you in the next video as well. Okay? So there you go.

All right, now it's the end of the video. Off you go.