Apply Pattern Swatches


You can whet your appetite for designing unique pattern swatches by checking out the prefab ones that come with Illustrator. Do that by choosing Window Swatches to display the Swatches palette. The first four icons at the bottom of the Swatches palette allow you to display all swatches or just color swatches, gradient swatches, or pattern swatches.

Figure 18-4 illustrates the swatch icons. The fifth icon in the Swatches palette ”New Swatch ”copies a selected pattern fill, and the final icon is Delete Swatch. You can drag existing swatches onto this icon to remove them from the palette.


Figure 18-4: The Swatches palette
Tip  

Color and gradient swatches provide easy access to colors or gradient fills that you use frequently.

You can change the way these swatches are displayed by choosing Small Thumbnail View, Large Thumbnail View, or List View from the Swatches palette menu. Figure 18-5 shows the available fill swatch colors as a list.

click to expand
Figure 18-5: Viewing swatches as a list

When you select the Show Pattern Swatches button, you ll see the pre-set patterns that come with Illustrator. To experiment with the pre-set pattern fills, create a quick path or shape (or use an existing one). Select the path or shape with the Selection tool and click one of the pattern fills. Try moving your pattern fill within the path by holding down the tilde (~) key as you click and drag within the object. The object itself doesn t move (as long as you hold down the tilde key), but if you look closely, you ll see that the pattern fill has scrolled to a different position behind the path . Figure 18-6 shows two bricks with the same pattern fill applied, but with the fill moved within the shape.


Figure 18-6: Each brick uses the same fill, but the location of the fill has been moved.
Tip  

Technically speaking, the key you hold down as you move a pattern fill within a shape should be referred to as the key on your keyboard that would produce a tilde (~) if the shift key was held down. However, nobody knows the name of the character under the tilde (few enough folks know what a tilde is!), so the key is usually referred to as the tilde key.

You can switch pattern fills by simply clicking a different one in the Swatches palette. Or choose a color from the Color palette to replace your pattern fill with a solid fill color.




How to Do Everything with Illustrator CS
How to Do Everything with Adobe Illustrator CS
ISBN: 0072230924
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 175
Authors: David Karlins

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