From the course: Illustrator 2021 Essential Training

Stroke attributes - Illustrator Tutorial

From the course: Illustrator 2021 Essential Training

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Stroke attributes

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- [Instructor] In this chapter, we're going to take a look at all things to do with strokes. And that will start with the basic stroke attributes. Now, in the fall that I'm working with here, I have a plain common or garden stroke down at the bottom here, which I'm just going to zoom in on, so it's easier for us to see. And the stroke panel can actually be accessed in several places. In the layout that I'm using here, which is essentials classic I have the stroke panel here, like so. Now you may well come across it in this short form here, but if you choose show options, the full panel will be revealed. However, if you choose to pick it up from any of the other places, you can get it such as the stroke hyperlink here in the properties panel. And also if you're using the control strip up here, then you do get the full panel from there. I'm going to leave mine open and its full state just here so we can examine it. And the first thing that we come across is the strokes weight. Now, by default, that's usually measured in points. However, if you wanted to give it a specific dimension for your artwork, so let's just say I wanted to go to three millimeters just here, as long as you type the unit, then the dialogue will convert it to points for you. You can change it either using the field just here. So I'm using a track pad and I'm just scrolling over the numbers there. \ That's why they're changing so rapidly. You can also use the carousel icons to move it up and down and some preset weights over here on the dropdown. Next on from that, we've got the end caps. Now at the moment, mine is using a flush or butt cap, which means it actually finishes at exactly the same place as the ends of the vectors just here. I can use a rounded cap, which rounds off the ends after the vectors. And also I can use a projecting cap, which is the square version of the same. In addition, we've got some options for corners. So I'm just going to pan across here to this shape on the side here, which has some corners and the default is mitered. So pretty much if you've ever seen the construction of a picture frame, those are usually mitered, but you can have them rounded and you can also have them beveled if you choose to do so. The default there is corner. You can also set a limit for how much of a corner you get. So if you get a really steep angle, it may be that you end up with a super pointy edge. Let me show you how that works. If I just get my pen tool just for a moment and draw you a very, very steep angle, like so, okay. So there's my very steep angle. You can see it's not doing anything with the mitering, but if I increase the mitering here, then I get this very long point. To be perfectly honest, unless I was using that as an effect I'd probably round that off because it makes a nicer join there, like so. The last thing we'll look at in this movie is the stroke alignment. Now you'll notice that two of these here are dimmed. They're not available and that's because stroke alignment can only work on closed paths. So if I delete the shape that are just drawn there and go back and select the shape from the corner here, you can see that I now have those options available. So if I choose to align the stroke to the inside, it moves to the inside of the actual vector stroke. And the outside is the converse. The default there is always to the inside, but later on, when you get to appearances, there may well be times where you actually want to use inside, outside and center at the same time, we'll just have to wait and see.

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