Operation Manual

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Drawing and painting
Last updated 11/30/2015
Note: Depending on where you begin to redraw the path and in which direction you drag, you may get unexpected
results. For example, you may unintentionally change a closed path to an open path, change an open path to a closed
path, or lose a portion of a shape.
Pencil tool options
Double-click the Pencil tool to set any of the following options:
Fidelity Controls how far you have to move your mouse or stylus before a new anchor point is added to the path. The
higher the value, the smoother and less complex the path. The lower the value, the more the curves will match the
pointer’s movement, resulting in sharper angles. Fidelity can range from 0.5 to 20 pixels.
Smoothness Controls the amount of smoothing applied when you use the tool. Smoothness can range from 0% to
100%. The higher the value, the smoother the path. The lower the value, the more anchor points are created, and the
more the line’s irregularities are preserved.
Fill New Pencil Strokes (Illustrator only) Applies a fill to pencil strokes you draw after selecting this option, but not to
existing pencil strokes. Remember to select a fill before you draw the pencil strokes.
Keep Selected Determines whether to keep the path selected after you draw it. This option is selected by default.
Edit Selected Paths Determines whether or not you can change or merge a selected path when you are within a certain
distance of it (specified with the next option).
Within: _ pixels Determines how close your mouse or stylus must be to an existing path in order to edit the path with
the Pencil tool. This option is only available when the Edit Selected Paths option is selected.
Compound paths and shapes
About compound paths
You can combine several paths into a single object, called a compound path. Create a compound path when you want
to do any of the following:
• Add transparent holes to a path.
• Preserve the transparent holes within some text characters, such as o and e, when you convert characters to editable
letterforms using the Create Outlines command. Using the Create Outlines command always results in the creation
of compound paths.
• Apply a gradient, or add contents that span multiple paths. Although you can also apply a gradient across multiple
objects using the Gradient tool, applying a gradient to a compound path is often a better method because you can
later edit the entire gradient by selecting any of the subpaths. With the Gradient tool, later editing requires selecting
all of the paths you originally selected.
Best practices for editing compound paths
Keep the following guidelines in mind as you edit compound paths:
• Changes to path attributes (such as stroke and fill) always alter all subpaths in a composite path—it doesn’t matter
which selection tool you use, or how many subpaths you select. To preserve the individual stroke and fill attributes
of the paths you want to combine, group them instead.