Operation Manual

Live Paint groups
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About Live Paint
Live Paint limitations
Create Live Paint groups
Expand or release a Live Paint group
Select items in Live Paint groups
Modify Live Paint groups
Paint with the Live Paint Bucket tool
Close gaps in Live Paint groups
About Live Paint
Converting your artwork to Live Paint groups allows you to color them freely, as you would a drawing on canvas or paper. You can stroke each
path segment with a different color and fill each enclosed path (note, not just closed paths) with a different color, pattern, or gradient.
Live Paint is an intuitive way to create colored drawings. It lets you use the full range of Illustrator’s vector drawing tools, but treats all the paths
you draw as though they are on the same flat surface. That is, none of the paths is behind or in front of any other. Instead, the paths divide the
drawing surface up into areas, any of which can be colored, regardless of whether the area is bounded by a single path or by segments of multiple
paths. The result is that painting objects is like filling in a coloring book or using watercolors to paint a pencil sketch.
Once you’ve made a Live Paint group, each path remains fully editable. When you move or adjust a path’s shape, the colors that had been
previously applied don’t just stay where they were, like they do in natural media paintings or image editing programs. Instead, Illustrator
automatically reapplies them to the new regions that are formed by the edited paths.
Adjusting Live Paint paths
A. Original B. Live Paint group C. Paths adjusted, Live Painting reflows
The paintable parts of Live Paint groups are called edges and faces. An edge is the portion of a path between where it intersects with other paths.
A face is the area enclosed by one or more edges. You can stroke edges and fill faces.
Take, for example, a circle with a line drawn across it. As a Live Paint group, the line (edge) dividing the circle creates two faces in the circle. You
can fill each face and stroke each edge with a different color using the Live Paint Bucket tool.
Circle and line (left) compared to circle and line after conversion to a Live Paint group and filling faces and stroking edges (right).
Note: Live Paint takes advantage of multiprocessors, which help Illustrator perform the operations more quickly.
For a video on using Live Paint, see www.adobe.com/go/vid0042.
Live Paint limitations
Fill and paint attributes are attached to faces and edges of a Live Paint group—not to the actual paths that define them, as in other Illustrator
objects. Because of this, some features and commands either work differently or are not applicable to paths inside a Live Paint group.
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