Illustrator 101: Faster Font Selection

It’s important to note that this will also work in Photoshop, but I’m using Illustrator as an example. If you’re anything at all like me, you have a ginormous font collection and scrolling through the entire list to find the one your looking for can be cumbersome at times. Here’s a quick tip to spend less time scrolling and more time designing.

Illustrator 101: Faster Font Selection
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Free Illustrator Brushes: Ink/Watercolor

I’ve got another set of Illustrator brushes for everyone. I previously released these shapes as vectors, but decided to go ahead an make a brush library out of them. I hope you can put them to good use. Screenshot after the jump.

Free Illustrator Brushes: Ink/Watercolor
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Free Vectors: Tree Silhouettes

It’s free vector time again, and I’ve got some tree silhouettes to share with everyone. Download ‘em and stick ‘em in your archive. Hopefully they’ll be of good use! Details after the jump.

Free Vectors: Tree Silhouettes
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Illustrator: The Tilde Trick

BittBox Reader Jeff F tipped me off about this neat little Illy trick. It just so happens that if you hold down the “tilde” key on your keyboard, you can get a neat effect using any of Illustrator’s drawing tools. Holding down the tilde key, (the little squiggly line above the tab key, left of the number 1 on your keyboard.) while using a drawing tool will cause Illustrator to repeat the shape rapidly as you move your mouse. Examples after the jump. Thanks Jeff!

Illustrator: The Tilde Trick
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Get More-Natural Adjustments with the Illustrator “Reshape” Tool

A hidden gem in my opinion, Illustrator’s “Reshape” tool can come in very handy in a variety of situations. In a nutshell, the Reshape tool allows you to drag a single point on a path and it tries to retain the overall shape of the entire path, while you only move the one anchor point. What? I’ll explain below.

The Illustrator Reshape Tool
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