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Lesson Info

Object Placement and Duplicates

So what we're gonna do now is we're gonna get into a little bit. Mawr of placement of objects in the page duplicating and some other fun stuff. So we've drawn our shapes, our containers, and I'd like to go in, and I would like to put some of these on the page and work with them using smart guides, duplicating them, using our measurements in our mouth as well. Five. Got this container on. I'd like to duplicate my container selection tool. Several people go into do copy. They do paste on whenever you paste. It will always pays directly in the middle of your screen. Does not matter middle of your page. No middle of it, No middle of your screen, No matter where your screen is it paste in the middle of it. I know when the zoom when you click on the zoom, it always goes right to the middle of your screen. So I would like to go in, and I would like to duplicate my objects, and I want to do that in a really simple way. So what it's done is you select your object any object text container, imag...

er, container and hold down your option Year old key, and you notice your cursor will double. When they're cursor doubles, you will able to be able to go in and drag that, and you will be able to move that all over the place and literally duplicate. So option click and drag allows you to duplicate any object. You can click on it. You can duplicate it. That's really nice feature because as you begin moving quickly through here, you don't have to undo your tool to a command copy. Command paste moving around. Park it back into position. You could do multiple objects as well. Select multiple ones. Hold down the option option, click and drag, and you can duplicate just that quickly, which works out great. Okay, so option click and drag works for absolutely everything. If you are using an older version of in design, you may not have smart guides, so because we have smart guides here and we're going to get in that briefly when you hold down your option key and you want to copy something if you hold down your shift key shift will go ahead, and it will constrain it to where you're copying it Okay, so if I just hold down my option key and I click and drag right here, you'll notice that I can put it anywhere. But if I hold my shift key down, it will actually keep it in the direction than pulling. So it'll keep it kind of snapped to those areas very nicely. So when I drag something and I hold down my shift key, that will also constrain. So not only when I draw shift will constrain when I'm drawing it, but if I'm actually copying or moving, if I want to, just move it or copy it and I move it, you can see my cursor. I can put this anywhere. But if I hold down my shift key, no matter where my cursor goes, my item is going to stay right in line with that, either horizontally, vertically or in a 45 degree angle. So if you do want to move items and you just want to move something right across the page quickly or duplicate, just hold on your shift key. When you do it, it's going to keep it right on the same play. That's something I use all the time. It's just like rote memorization when I do that, because so many times you do want to keep things in line parallel aligned without having to realign it so good techniques to know and understand. So I've got an existing container right here. I'm not quite sure what size it is, but it really doesn't matter. And I'm working with somebody and I need to make this container a little bit larger. And so I click on the container and I can see my within my height. Right here is 2.3 before by 1.64 OK, whatever. I need to make this a little bit bigger. I could go. We in and I can simply add anything to this. I could say, you know, plus 1/2 an inch. So, plus 0.5 and it becomes 1/2 an inch wider if I want to take off 1/4 of an inch of height minus 0.1 to 5 and it makes it shorter. But do you notice that it added in, took away from the right hand side and it editor took away from the bottom. Now here's something that we have to pay attention to and that's what's called our reference point. Our reference point is this little section right here up in the upper left hand corner. It's got one little black dot in multiple little white dots by default. When we have started up in Designer installed it. Our reference point is in the middle, and that means it measures from the middle point. It rotates from the middle point. The position on the page is measured from the middle point there when we have our reference points elected. So when I went in and I added something to the size of my container, my reference point was up in the upper left hand corner, which meant that basically, if this is my reference point, that's the point that's locked. So if I add anything to the whipped right there, it's always gonna add it to the right. Maybe I want to make my entire container larger overall, but I wanted to make it from the center if my reference point is in the center and I would say 1/2 an inch to this to see how it keeps the centre, and it adds it to the side now for the beginners it may not seem like this is really that great of a feature. But if you're working with redoing a layout and you want to begin to change these things, or you have an art director that has very specific sizes, and you want to be able to do this very quickly instead of climate, click and drag and set up your guides and kind of fumble around, this reference point comes in really handy. Another thing is, too, is I need to position this if I'm building, say, a template for somebody, and I need to position this in very specific locations on the page. The reference point is gonna come in very handy now if I have the reference point set differently on different objects. Things are gonna happen differently when I apply different size or rotation, or I want a measure where this is. If I'm setting up a template and I need to have this corner off the container one inch over and three inches down, I'm going to need to make sure that the upper left hand corner of my object is the reference point I put in my distance over which is X actually gonna be horizontal, so I'm gonna have one inch over, but it's going to be one inch over in reference to the upper left hand corner. If I wanted three inches down, it's going to be in reference to the upper left hand corner. Very different if I referenced the center of my object. Because now one inch over will put my object one inch over in the center and three inches down puts it. They're very different location, but now the center is in that location. So that doesn't seem like that big of a deal. Just people like you would never use that. Here is where you'd use it. I position my object and now I'd like to go in and I'd like to rotate this. So I used my rotate tool on. I've got my rotate sections right here in the middle of my control bar and I rotate, which is great. But I have the reference point set someplace else and now I rotate. Hey, wait a second. Why is it rotating totally differently. Because the reference point matters. I may want to rotate things around a certain object. I may want to flip things as Well, if I want to go in and I want to flip this vertically right here, want to do, like, a shadow or something on this and I go in, they flip it right in the middle. Of course, what's going to happen when I use my flip is it flips it right on top of itself. So if I wanted to go, we and I wanted to flip it over on the bottom reference point there. I do that and certainly make that happen. But what happens when I want to copy when I do something like this? Because I want to create multiples off this. So I would like to flip this and create kind of this little funky cast shadow, and I want to duplicate it as well. I want the have that to happen right at my base line. So it flips right over my baseline. I'm going to use that. I go to my flip and I hold down my option because option copies right there it is. And then, of course, I could get really fancy. And I could set my opacity to make that, you know, look, so it's really light there and I could have my little reflection going on right there. Okay, That's why you go ahead and do something like that so I can have reflection. All they did was copy it, but I flipped it over right at the bottom of that because that was the reference point. Now you could do it really? Difficultly. Copy Paste, paste it there, rotate the whole thing, flip it orientated, get it back up in there. Use your cursor to put it right there. But once you learn how to use these tools, they become really handy. So with any object that I have right here, I may want to do something cool. So I'm gonna go and I'm going to edit my corners here, and I'm going to change this one corner. I'm a changes other corner right there, and I'm going to create kind of this kind of flair pedal right here. There is my object. And what I'd like to do is I'd like to go ahead, and I'd like to rotate this around so most people would take this copy paste, and then they go in and they'd rotate, and then they'd have toe line this thing up and forget it. I want to rotate this all around a certain point. I'm gonna rotate this around lower corner. I'm gonna copy as I go. So I set my reference point. That's my point of rotation. That's my point of measure. That's my point of flip right there. Now when I go when I rotate, shirt goes all the way around. But when I hold down my option key and I rotate and I know it makes it look like it's magic what it isn't so The point of reference is very important when you want to flip when you want to rotate. Because a lot of times when we get into other layouts here, when we're going to be designing spreads, we want to have the left hand page of our book mirror the right hand page of our book. And if we want to flip things over a particular point, we certainly can use anything as a reference point. Now, we do have specific rotate tools and things like that here, but these here in the control bar work really well, sometimes difficult when you're working with something. If I just have a normal container here and I have that container. I can't tell if it's been flipped horizontally or vertically here, because when everything's done, it looks pretty much the same. You'll notice that these aren't in the right locations right here. It gives me the little picture of my actual object so that P is upside down and it's also flipped backwards. So I know that there's something wrong. So there's that. And then it's flipped normally right there when I click on that object and that P reads normally because if I would look at this, would you guess that like this containers been rotated? Know what if I put something in there any content, It also was going to be rotated as well, so just use that as your reference right there. It's nice to have nice to understand, and you can just go in. Rotate that and you just get an idea just something else to pay attention to. If you want to go in and you want to rotate something other than just the 90 degree flip or rotate or mirror right here, we have our angle right here where we can go in and yes, we can do our drop down menu and you can rotate the whole thing again. It's going to rotate right on that access point. Actually, put the reference point in the middle here, and you can see when we go in and rotate that 90 degrees, it'll rotate directly on there. You can go in and just use it all up. Arrow down, arrow and rotate. However you'd like on your object works just fine, But one thing we haven't gotten into is if you take your selection tool, hover outside any of the corner of your acted on active objects. Right there, you'll get your little double ended rounded arrow, which is your rotate. And, of course, it's going to rotate like so when I do this, it will actually allow me to go, and it will rotate and show me my little angle of measure as I go. Of course, if I hold down my shift key, it's gonna constrained. 0 45 90 1 35 1 80 all the way around. Plus it will actually draw so I can actually see the angle of what's going on. So I know where it is that I'm rotating all the way around which is like, totally cool. The end angle just ends up right here, and I can always reset that 20 Unlike an illustrator that when she rotated, even if it's angled, it sets it back to zero. So but that's just me. So there's my rotate. And of course, if I have my reference point here and I choose my rotate right there, it's gonna rotate around that specific reference point. We also have the skew feature, which allows us to go in and basically create a parallelogram with something so we can skew everything off. It's really easy. It's just a basic measurement here that we can go in and skew off one way or another, Negative is gonna go left positive is going to go right, and we can skew off any container so that we can make it all belong or just kind of bendy and sleepy. Okay, so here's another thing I would like to go in, and I would like to create like items that are inside other items like circles inside of circles. So if I were to go in and I were to drag and draw just my lips tool right here, there is my circle, and I would like to draw another circle right in the center, but I would like to make it 20% smaller. I can go in to my within my height right here, and they're both the same. So it's like, um, you know, I can link these together so that I could create something, and I just want to make it slightly smaller, say, 80% of its size. So if I go in and say times 80% I've linked with within the height together. So whatever I do with the whipped I do with the height and I want to copy it, So 80% is going to make it 20% smaller. Type it in there. Option to copy. It may hit return. Okay. Where did the duplicate from the reference point? Guess where the reference point waas Right there. So it makes a difference, doesn't it? So I do the reference point in the center Times, point, er times 80 percent or times 0.8. Like that option return. There you go. And then I could duplicate this. I could do that again. Times 0.8 option return and I can get concentric circles. Try to do that with anything else. If you try to draw that and have concentric circles to make sure this facing you comes in a nice graduated way not gonna happen, is it? But when you do with math, it's pretty awesome. Uh huh, Yeah. So, using the math using the rotate using the point of reference, you can do a lot of things. And it's not just using the point of reference for your rotate in your scale in your draw, but also, if you want a position, things in a very specific location on the page, You wanna have the location of it right in the center of your object, be at the center portion here, or your content be over here this particular size, taking up this amount of space.