Illustrator 101: To Scale or Not to Scale? Strokes, That Is.

September 27, 2007 | Posted in Illustrator | 45 Comments »

As you might be able to tell by the title, this isn’t an advanced feature, but because of the wildly popular “Illustrator Quick Tips” I’ve been publishing, I’m starting a new series of simple, yet very useful tips aptly named “Illustrator 101.” (I will also be doing this for Photoshop, so keep an eye out for “Photoshop 101″ tips coming soon as well) Sometimes the simplest things can be the most helpful, so to kick of the Illustrator 101 series, we’re going to save ourselves some transforming headaches, and harness a simple scaling option in the Transform palette.

Illustrator 101: Scaling Stokes and Effects Option

In Illustrator, when you draw an object, apply a stroke, then scale that object up or down, you can control wether or not the stroke size gets scaled too, or stays the same. The way you control this feature is from the “Transform” palette (Window > Transform). This can be very useful for things like logos, where you want everything to look exactly the same at every size. Let’s get started . . .

I’ll show you an example of scaling the stroke and the object, and an example scaling the object only, but first, draw a simple shape on the artboard like below, and apply a stroke. (I used a 5px stroke)

Illustrator 101: Scaling Stokes and Effects Option

1. Scaling an Object and the Stroke:

Open your Transform palette, and click on the options in the upper right. You need to make sure “Scale Strokes and Effects” is “checked.” It works like a toggle switch. If it’s unchecked, and you click on it, the menu will disappear, and it will be checked. Open the options again to make sure you did it right.

Illustrator 101: Scaling Stokes and Effects Option

Now that you have “Scale Strokes and Effects” active, scale your object (with the black arrow, like normal) and you will notice that not only the object gets bigger, but your stroke as well:

Illustrator 101: Scaling Stokes and Effects Option

1. Scaling an Object, but NOT the Stroke:

Simply uncheck/deactivate “Scale Strokes and Effects” in the Transform palette…

Illustrator 101: Scaling Stokes and Effects Option

Now, scale your object, and only the object gets bigger/smaller. Your stroke stays the same!

Illustrator 101: Scaling Stokes and Effects Option

This feature can save you a lot of trouble keeping things consistent at different sizes, and also works for “effects” if you use those, and brush strokes as well. No trickery, just toggling an option in the Transform Palette :)

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 27th, 2007 at 5:16 pm and is filed under Illustrator. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

45 Responses to “Illustrator 101: To Scale or Not to Scale? Strokes, That Is.”

gura Sep 27, 07 at 5:30 pm

good job :] thx info
Josef J. Sep 27, 07 at 5:59 pm

SWEEET!! That would save me so much time, thanks BB!!
Jorgesarcos Sep 27, 07 at 6:02 pm

Awesome to know this… i used to change it on the preferences =P
toekneebee Sep 27, 07 at 7:27 pm

I’ve been a long time lurker who has thoroughly enjoyed your tips and freebies. I’m a graphic designer of 11+ years and still find fun, funky, useful posts here. With all that “mushiness” aside, this is a truly helpful tip for me. I know Illustrator pretty well but have always been baffled by this. Thanks so much! Keep up the stellar site…
Luke Sep 27, 07 at 8:01 pm

Thanks, thats an awesome tip, I’ve been manual scaling til now. Cheers!
Laz Sep 28, 07 at 12:04 am

thanks for the useful tip!
James Sep 28, 07 at 2:23 am

Ahh cool,

I was always going to Object > Transform > Scale and ticking the box there.
uran Sep 28, 07 at 4:53 am

Cool, thank you Bittbox, your tutorials is great! Will looking on your site…
your friend from China~~
Mau Sep 28, 07 at 5:00 am

thanks!never seen before this one
Paige Sep 28, 07 at 7:22 am

Unbelievable!
I’ve been converting strokes to outlines this whole time. This site is fantastic.
lina Sep 28, 07 at 12:40 pm

So that’s how you do it! lol
Jud Sep 28, 07 at 2:30 pm

Something so simple, yet it save s SO much time. Thanks.
theCarrotNetwork Sep 28, 07 at 2:43 pm

Another top tip!

Nice one Bitt!
Janshi Sep 29, 07 at 4:57 am

Wanna have this on photoshop
Jason Oct 2, 07 at 12:05 pm

Reading this made me laugh at the memory of one of my early design projects. Back in my “young and foolish” days. If only I knew this tip back then!

Thanks for the great tip!!
theMunna Oct 4, 07 at 12:45 am

Hello, Nice tip!! I knew that strokes doesn’t transformed , So Did it by expanding all of them. Thanx and another thing is that I really need an tutorial for making GIF in photoshop or Illustrator because when i do that it appears a white outline in browser.

Thanks for this blog man.. I am a very old wish comer and ad clicker of it… Keep well….Oh! and I am from Bangladesh…

Good Luck
claudia Oct 4, 07 at 10:54 pm

yes, this was really useful.
anneke verdonschot Oct 5, 07 at 2:07 am

this is a very usefull tip…THANK YOU ….anneke
Eric Oct 5, 07 at 9:49 am

Cool. Great tip! Is this in CS3 only? Thanks a lot
nick-fu Oct 10, 07 at 3:54 am

thank you so much for making my life a whole lot easier!!

;)
nick
The Aitch Oct 10, 07 at 3:51 pm

Awesome! but here’s where I need help. How do I make a dotted stroke in illustrator and then, how do I convert that dotted stroke to a path?

Thanks very much and looking forward to your advice!
sankoch Oct 23, 07 at 2:37 am

thanks
kskdsn Oct 23, 07 at 4:46 pm

theMunna-
Creating a gif from an Illustrator doc is simple.
Go to File>Save for Web.
Pick GIF from the first drop-down list on the right side.
Click “transparency” on.
Then in the “matte” setting, pick a color that matches your background (you’ll see it showing in the preview).
Unfortunately, one color won’t suit every background. You might need to customize each image for different background colors.
Good Luck
-KSKDSN
kskdsn Oct 23, 07 at 4:50 pm

Aitch-
This makes no sense to me, but this is how to do it.
Make a line and set its style to dashed.
With it selected, go to Object>Flatten Transparency.
Make sure “convert all strokes to outlines” is selected. Hit OK, and you’re done.
Your original stroke will still be there, but each little dash segment has now been bumped into it’s own shape.
Good luck.
-KSKDSN
The Aitch Nov 8, 07 at 11:05 am

Thanks KSKDN Just last week I “found” how to convert a stroke to a path, and I know all about the dashed lines, but I want a dotted line. Seems like no matter what values I set for my dashed strokes, they are still square. I would like round. Thks
kskdsn Nov 8, 07 at 12:29 pm

Still possible, but a little more advanced. You need to use the “Brush” tab (open it from menus Window>Brushes).

Now, draw a little circle (maybe 1/4″), with the fill & stroke characteristics you want. In the Brush tab, open the little click-down arrow at top right of the tab and choose “new brush”. it will ask you what type, so choose “Scatter” and name it if you want. For now, leave all the settings at the default and choose ok.

Next, draw an empty rectangle, circle or pen shape on the artboard, and click on your new brush icon in the tab. This should stroke your line with the brush you just created. If it’s not quite the effect you want, double click your custom brush icon and tweak the size/spacing percentages (you probably want to keep them set to “fixed”) until you get what you want.
Then, just expand the stroke.

With custom brush strokes, you can get lines made of not just circles, but anything you can draw in Illustrator. I did a project in which I quickly created a swirl of colored flowers, by making a custom flower brush and adjusting the settings to vary the size, scatter and color.
Have fun.
KSKDSN
hexefish Nov 10, 07 at 10:15 am

Thanks for this tip!
Andres Nov 14, 07 at 9:55 am

Thanks a loooooooooooot!!!
You’ve save my life…and my time.
James Grifin Nov 16, 07 at 6:44 am

Your tutorials are excellent for Illustrator users if your a beginner or not. Your teaching methods are very precise, clear and un-patronising.

Thanks
CARLY Dec 28, 07 at 8:32 pm

Wow thanks for the great tips!
PETER JONSON Feb 7, 08 at 4:26 pm

CAN YOU SEND THIS TO MY BOSS????
Rena Hicks Apr 17, 08 at 6:58 am

hership dogmatically maladive towards withstand hoistway uplook domestically
Pine Valley RV Park and Campground
http://www.thebigpicturedvd.com/cgi-bin/master/viewer.cgi/The_Iron_Giant
Lorraine Sep 13, 08 at 3:08 pm

Thank you very much.
Matthew Jan 11, 09 at 6:20 am

Thanks for this – I’ve been tearing my hear out wondering why strokes didn’t scale!
Jenny Mar 20, 09 at 10:35 am

This is a great tip, but it didn’t work for scaling down a brushstroke. What am I doing wrong? Also, I am working with a logotype, and as I scale the illustration with the brushstroke larger, eventually this distorts the position of the type. Any suggestions?
Holly D May 24, 09 at 4:37 am

Horray! I’ve been changing mananually and finally figured it was time to figure out how to do this in AI – I’m more familiar with Corel but have tried to wean off it to AI but go back to Corel when I can’t figure something out. Thanks for the great tip!
Laura G Jun 6, 09 at 12:19 am

I had been looking for this,
all this week, thank u very much
u saved my life :D
Bigger and Louder Farts Oct 1, 09 at 10:33 am

I wonder if I could get a bounding box on my a$$?
Ben S Nov 19, 09 at 7:37 am

Aaaah this has been bugging me since I started using Illustrator years ago. Thanks very much for sharing this useful info with us all! Life saver :D

And yes… it’s taken me this long to getting round to putting ’scale object and stroke in illustrator’ into Google…
Gunnar @ Trigger Vision Media Jan 17, 10 at 3:39 pm

This was super helpful. Thank you so much! I would have never figured this out by myself…
Andy Jan 29, 10 at 6:08 am

A related question:
Is it possible to scale the stroke weight without scaling the object? I have a drawing with a lot of different stroke weights. Now I want to make all strokes a bit thinner (say 80%) without scaling the object. Does anybody know how this would be done?
Ramsi Feb 5, 10 at 11:59 am

OMG the answer! so simple! thx
airlie Feb 13, 10 at 10:31 am

thank you thank you! exactly the answer I needed.
BB Mar 6, 10 at 12:46 am

Thanks, I am a graphic design student and its funny all the things teachers don’t teach you! I was about to get a major headache until I read this tip.
Tim G Mar 12, 10 at 4:49 pm

Here’s a gotcha: If you’re importing an .ai document into your doc, if the original doc didn’t have these prefs, be sure to embed prior to scaling. Your new doc will not override the existing prefs. (Just discovered this the hard way.)