From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

919 Reversing the stacking order in Illustrator

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

919 Reversing the stacking order in Illustrator

- [Instructor] In this movie, I'll show you how to reverse the stacking order of two or more selected objects inside Illustrator, which is a lot trickier than it ought to be. So, consider this example right here, we've got this blend, that's going from blue, very light blue up here at the top, to a kind of pale yellow down here at the bottom. And the reason that it's going in that direction is because blends go from the back forward. So in other words, this top light blue object is actually at the back of the stack, and this pale yellow object is in front. What we want to do is switch things around in order to achieve this effect here so that that pale yellow glow appears to be nestled inside of this light blue scallop shape. And that will allow us to create this seamlessly repeating tile pattern. And so the most obvious solution to my mind is to just double click anywhere on this blend in order to enter the blend Isolation Mode, and you'll know you're isolated because you'll see in the top left corner of the document window that you're working in a blend that happens to be on a layer called blend. And what that allows us to do is break things apart as much as we like using the Black Arrow tool. So if I select this guy for example, and drag it to a different location, the blend updates on the fly. That's not what I want, however. So, I'll undo that modification. Instead, what I want to do is change the stacking order. So I'll right click anywhere inside the document window, choose Arrange and then choose Bring to Front in order to move that shape to the front of the stack, but it doesn't work. Illustrator gets mad at me and tells me that I need to look for a command called Reverse Front to Back, but it doesn't tell me where that command is. And so I'll just go ahead and click OK. And notice if I were to go up to the Object menu even, and choose Arrange where all the arranged commands are, then I'm not seeing a command called Reverse Front to Back. And so what I need to do is just escape out of that menu and then escape out of the Isolation Mode, which you do by pressing the Escape key. And then just go ahead and select the entire blend by clicking on any one of its six path outlines. And then you go up to the Object menu, choose Blend, and there it is, Reverse Front to Back. And that will go ahead and reverse the order of the objects. All right, so that's one way to work, but that only works with blends. What if you're trying to reverse the order of a bunch of different kinds of paths outlines? Well, in that case, I'll go ahead and press Control + Z or Command + Z on the Mac to undo that change. What you need to do is go to the Layers Panel here, click on the flyout menu icon, and then notice this command Reverse Order. Unfortunately, it's dimmed, and that's because this command only works on things that are selected inside the Layers Panel. And so what you have to do is escape out of that menu, then deselect the object by pressing Control + Shift + A or Command + Shift + A on the Mac. Now what you want to do inside the Layers Panel once again, is twirl open that blend layer by clicking on this little twirly triangle, then twirl open this next item, which is the blend itself. And now you can see every single path inside the blend. What you want to do is click on one and then scroll down the list and Shift click on another to select a range of objects like so, then bring up the flyout menu icon at which point the Reverse Order command is now available. And go ahead and choose that command like so. And the great thing about this option, even though it's hard to find, is that once you know it, you can reverse the order of as many path outlines as you like. So I could go ahead and click on this guy here inside the Layers Panel and Shift click on this one. And notice I'm not clicking on the targets right there, the circles that is to say, I'm just selecting these layers. Then if I were to bring up the flyout menu and choose Reverse Order, I would just reverse the order of those few path outlines and I would get still a different effect. That's not what I want however, so I'll just go ahead and press Control + Z or Command + Z on the Mac to undo that change. And so if nothing else, just remember with all objects deselected, for some reason, it's got to be that way, you want to select whatever path outlines you want to reverse here inside the Layers Panel by clicking on one and then Shift clicking on another in order to select a specific range. And then you bring up the flyout menu and choose the Reverse Order command. And that is how things work inside this, sometimes topsy-turv, but always powerful world of Adobe Illustrator.

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