In this Adobe Illustrator Essentials lesson, you'll learn how to work with multiple shapes including how to duplicate shapes, copy and paste, change layer order, select certain parts of artwork, align layers, create groups, edit multiple shapes at once, and more!
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To duplicate objects in Adobe Illustrator, select the object, then hold option (Mac) or Alt (Windows) and click and drag the object to create another copy.
While you're dragging out a copy of the object, you can hold down shift (as well as option/Alt) to maintain either the horizontal or vertical position of the duplicate.
The keyboard shortcut ⌘/Ctrl D repeats the last action.
So, once you've duplicated an object, you can use ⌘/Ctrl D to duplicate the object again and move it the same amount you moved the first duplicate when creating it.
Copying and pasting objects in Illustrator works similarly to most programs:
It can also be useful to be able to copy an object and paste it exactly where it was, as a way to duplicate the shape. To do this you can use the shortcut:
There are a couple other options for pasting:
First select the object, right click, then choose Arrange, and you'll have options for bring to front, bring forward, send backwards, and send to back.
You can also select the object and use the keyboard shortcuts:
To create a new layer, click the + icon at the bottom of the Layers Panel. To delete layers click the trash can icon.
The eyeball icon allows you to toggle the visibility of layers on and off. The lock button makes layers un-selectable if you want to make sure you don't accidently mess with a layer.
You can adjust the layer order of sublayers, layers, and move objects from one layer into another by clicking and dragging them.
It's a good idea to label your layers, especially if you plan to import your artwork in to After Effects to animate. To rename a layer, double click the text to edit it.
If you want to animate your artwork in Adobe After Effects, you'll need to separate each piece that you want to be animated into it's own layer.
Learn more about preparing your artwork for animation in this tutorial.
There are a couple ways to select multiple objects with the Selection Tool (keyboard shortcut: V):
If you have multiple objects selected and you want to remove an object from the selection, hold Shift and click the object to remove it from the selection.
Once you have multiple objects selected, right click one, and choose Group. Or, use the keyboard shortcut: ⌘/Ctrl G.
When objects are grouped, they can be moved or transformed (scale, rotation, etc) all together.
To edit an object/s within the group, double click it. This will enter you into isolation mode where only objects within the group are selectable. Once you're done making any adjustments, click the gray bar at the top of the screen to exit isolation mode.
If you toggle open the group in the Layers Panel, you can adjust the layer order of objects in the group and add or remove objects from the group by dragging and dropping.
To ungroup objects, first select the group. Then, either right click and choose Ungroup, or use the keyboard shortcut: ⌘/Ctrl Shift G.
If you select multiple objects, you can transform them all together. Use the combined bounding box or tools like scale, rotate, or reflect to transform the shapes together.
You can also right click the selected objects and choose out of the options under Transform (Move, Rotate, Reflect, Scale, Shear). This way, you'll get a pop-up window that will allow you to type in the exact transformations you want to make.
When you select multiple objects and transform them all together, the selected objects act like a group. In other words, the entire selection is transformed around a single Reference Point. Learn more about Reference Points here.
If you want to apply the same transformation (like scale, rotation, or reflection) to multiple objects, but you want each object to transform around its own Reference Point (in other words, each shape should be transformed independently), then the option you want is called Transform Each.
First, select all the objects you want to transform. Then, right click on any one of the selected objects. From the menu, choose Transform > Transform Each. From here, you'll get a pop-up where you can adjust the scale, move each object, or rotate each object.
You can align individual shapes to the artboard. When you have multiple shapes, you have options to align them to the artboard, the selection, or a key object.
The align and distribute options are available in the top toolbar (depending on your workspace) or in the Align Panel (find under the Window menu if you don't see it).
The align options include: Horizontal Align Left, Horizontal Align Center, Horizontal Align Right, Vertical Align Top, Vertical Align Center, and Vertical Align Bottom.
Note that the alignment will happen according to the object that is furthest in whatever direction you're aligning to. For example, if you choose Horizontal Align Left, all objects will line up with the left most side of the left most object.
To align to a Key Object, select all objects you want to align, then select the key object again. The selection on the Key Object will be more bold and the alignment option will automatically switch to Align to Key Object. Then, click the type of alignment you want.
The distribute options include: Vertical Distribute Top, Vertical Distribute Center, Vertical Distribute Bottom, Horizontal Distribute Left, Horizontal Distribute Center, and Horizontal Distribute Right.
If you select multiple objects and align them to the artboard, they'll all get positioned in the exact same place. But what if you want the objects to keep their positions relative to each other, but you want the selection to be aligned to the artboard? There are two ways to do this:
Group all of the objects then align the group to the artboard.
Or, if you don't want the objects to be grouped, you can select all the objects and type in the position for that selection in the Transform Panel. For example, if you wanted to center the selection in a 1920 x 1080 px artboard, type in half the size of the artboard, 960 x 540 in the Transform Panel's position.
Aligning objects depends on the size of each object, but if you want to make sure that the space between objects is all the same, you want to Distribute Spacing. There are options for Vertical Distribute Space and Horizontal Distribute Space in the Align Panel.
In the next lesson, you'll learn how to build illustrations by combining basic shapes.
