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5h 27m 47s. Course Transcript Hi there, welcome back to Creative Quick Tips. My name is Justin Sealy, and this week I'm going to be showing you how to create a shape inside of Adobe Illustrator that has two rounded corners and two non rounded corners. So let's create a brand new document. We'll just start from scratch. Hit OK there, and it doesn't matter how big or how small.
And we're going to start off by creating just a rounded rectangle. So I'll just draw out a rounded rectangle, something like this. And it doesn't matter how big or small or what your corner radius is.
Then we're going to take away the stroke and just give it a color so you can see what it looks like on screen. There we go, so there's our base shape. So we know we want at least one of these corners to be rounded and that's why we have to use this. Then we're going to take our rectangle tool and you're going to use smart guides to sort of line everything up here. So I'm just going to start right here on the left hand side.
I'm just going to. Watch this course anytime, anywhere.
. Position the pointer where you want the arc to begin, and drag to where you want the arc to end. Click where you want the arc to begin. In the dialog box, click a square on the reference point locator to determine the point from which the arc is drawn.
Then set any of the following options, and click OK. Length X‑Axis: Specifies the width of the arc. Length Y‑Axis: Specifies the height of the arc. Type: Specifies whether you want the object to be an open path or a closed path.
Base Along: Specifies the direction of the arc. Choose X Axis or Y Axis depending on whether you want to draw the base of the arc along the horizontal ( x) axis or vertical ( y) axis.
Slope: Specifies the direction of the arc’s slope. Enter a negative value for a concave (inward) slope. Enter a positive value for a convex (outward) slope. A slope of 0 creates a straight line.
Fill Arc: Fills the arc with the current fill color. Note: To see a dynamic preview of the arc as you set options, double-click the arc tool in the Tools panel. Drag until the spiral is the desired size. Drag the pointer in an arc to rotate the spiral. Click where you want the spiral to begin. In the dialog box, set any of the following options, and click OK. Radius: Specifies the distance from the center to the outermost point in the spiral.
Decay: Specifies the amount by which each wind of the spiral should decrease relative to the previous wind. Segments: Specifies how many segments the spiral has. Each full wind of the spiral consists of four segments.
Style: Specifies the direction of the spiral. Drag until the grid is the desired size. Click to set the grid’s reference point.
In the dialog box, click a square on the reference point locator to determine the point from which the grid is drawn. Then set any of the following options, and click OK. Default Size: Specifies the width and height of the entire grid.
Horizontal Dividers: Specifies the number of horizontal dividers you want to appear between the top and bottom of the grid. The Skew value determines how the horizontal dividers are weighted toward the top or bottom of the grid.
Vertical Dividers: Specifies the number of dividers you want to appear between the left and right sides of the grid. The Skew value determines how the vertical dividers are weighted to the left or right side. Use Outside Rectangle As Frame: Replaces the top, bottom, left, and right segments with a separate rectangular object. Fill Grid: Fills the grid with the current fill color (otherwise, the fill is set to none).
Drag until the grid is the desired size. Click to set the grid’s reference point. In the dialog box, click a square on the reference point locator to determine the point from which the grid is drawn. Then set any of the following options, and click OK. Default Size: Specifies the width and height of the entire grid.
Concentric Dividers: Specifies the number of circular concentric dividers you want to appear in the grid. The Skew value determines how the concentric dividers are weighted toward the inside or outside of the grid. Radial Dividers: Specifies the number of radial dividers you want to appear between the center and the circumference of the grid. The Skew value determines how the radial dividers are weighted counterclockwise or clockwise on the grid. Create Compound Path From Ellipses: Converts the concentric circles into separate compound paths and fill every other circle. Fill Grid: Fills the grid with the current fill color (otherwise, the fill is set to none).
To change the default corner radius, choose Edit Preferences General (Windows) or Illustrator Preferences General (macOS), and enter a new value for Corner Radius. Alternatively, select the Rounded Rectangle tool, click in the document window, and enter a new value for Corner Radius. The default radius applies only to new rounded rectangles you draw, not to existing rounded rectangles. To change the corner radius while dragging with the Rounded Rectangle tool, press the Up Arrow key or Down Arrow key. When the corners are the desired roundness, release the key. To create square corners while dragging with the Rounded Rectangle tool, press the Left Arrow key.
To create the most rounded corners while dragging with the Rounded Rectangle tool, press the Right Arrow key. Drag until the star is the desired size. Drag the pointer in an arc to rotate the star. Press the Up Arrow and Down Arrow to add and remove points from the star. Click where you want the center of the star to be. For Radius 1, specify the distance from the center of the star to the star’s innermost points. For Radius 2, specify the distance from the center of the star to the star’s outermost points.
For Points, specify how many points you want the star to have. Then click OK. To increase or decrease the number of points in the star, you can also use the up and down arrow keys while drawing the star. In the Flare Tool Options dialog box, do any of the following options, and click OK:. Specify the overall diameter, opacity, and brightness of the flare’s center.
Specify the Growth of the halo as a percentage of the overall size, and specify the fuzziness of the halo (0 is crisp and 100 is fuzzy). If you want the flare to contain rays, select Rays and specify the number of rays, the longest ray (as a percentage of the average ray), and the fuzziness of the rays (0 is crisp and 100 is fuzzy). If you want the flare to contain rings, select Rings and specify the distance of the path between the halo’s center point (center handle) and the center point of the furthest ring (end handle), the number of rings, the largest ring (as a percentage of the average ring), and the direction or angle of the rings. Do any of the following:. Select the flare, and double-click the Flare tool icon to open the Flare Tool Options dialog box. Change settings in the dialog box. Tip: To reset a flare to the default values, hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (macOS), and click Reset.
Select the flare and the Flare tool. Drag an endpoint—from either the center handle or the end handle—to change the length or direction of the flare. Select the flare, and choose Object Expand. This makes the elements of the flare editable, like elements of blends.
Adobe Illustrator has always been the go-to application for drawing vector-based graphics due to it’s ability to draw a variety of shapes quite easily. However, some shapes were more complex to produce. Take a rounded corner rectangle, for example. Illustrator has had a Rounded Rectangle tool for many versions, but once you drew a shape with that tool, there was no way to modify the radius of the corners.
We could also apply rounded corners to a shape as an effect, but then making an adjustment to the radius of the corners required a trip to the Effects panel to make it happen, and the effect was global, meaning that it was applied to every corner of the object. So needless to say, applying corner effects to objects has always been a challenge. A New Way to Round Corners in Illustrator With the 2014 release of Illustrator CC, Adobe gave us a taste of an improved way to modify the corners of objects in the form of the Live Shapes feature, and with each successive update, the feature has gotten better and better. It’s a tad ironic that Adobe InDesign beat Illustrator to the punch with this feature by several versions, but we’re happy to have this addition in Illustrator and the implementation of the feature is quite nice. Creating a Live Shape With the latest version of Illustrator (2015.3.1 as of this writing), it’s hard not to create a Live Shape. Whether you like it or not, every shape tool in Illustrator with the exception of the Star and Flare tools creates a Live Shape—and the corners on the star shape can still be dynamically adjusted.
Start with the most basic shape tool, the Rectangle tool. Actually the Rectangle and Rounded Rectangle tools behave in almost the same way now, with the exception that the Rounded Rectangle tool will draw a rounded corner rectangle or square immediately, while the Rectangle tool will not. When you release the mouse button after drawing a rectangle, you’ll notice a widget appear in every corner of the rectangle. Click on any of these widgets and drag towards the center of the shape, and you’ll see the radius of the corners begin to adjust as you drag. If you haveSmart Guides enabled, you’ll also see the radius value displayed as you drag.
The rounded corner is the default corner so when you drag a widget, the corners will initially be round, but you can change the corner type by simply option/alt-clicking on a widget to change the corner type from Round to Inverted Round to Chamfer (aka beveled). More Live Shapes With the 2015 release of Illustrator CC, other shapes besides the rectangle got a feature boost by making them Live Shapes as well. Select the Ellipse tool and drag to create an oval or circle.
You’ll notice a widget on the right side of the shape. Now this widget won’t adjust the corner since ellipses have no corners. Instead of adjusting corners, it creates a pie shape. Click on the widget and drag up or down to remove that portion from the ellipse.
Once you make an adjustment using the widget, you’ll notice a second widget is available that allows you to adjust two angles of the pie shape. Once again, if you have Smart Guides enabled, you’ll see the angles of the pie shape. Draw a polygon using the Polygon tool. This too becomes a Live Shape. You’ll notice the corner widget like you saw with a rectangle Live Shape which allows you to easily change the corners of the polygon.
Css Rounded Corner
This Live Shape however contains an additional adornment that is the shape of a rhombus (diamond). Dragging this adornment changes the number of sides of the polygon. Creating a rectangle on the fly has never been so easy! Flexibility One of the biggest benefits of Live Shapes is that you can easily adjust the dimensions of the shape and the corner radius remains intact instead of distorting the way a drawn object would. You can also see all of the properties of a Live Shape by clicking on the Shape link in the Control panel.
This displays a panel showing all of the adjustable properties of the selected shape and provides users with the ability to turn on corner scaling if desired. Live Shape Limits Live shapes certainly have limitations. One of these limitations occurs when you try to adjust the corners of an object beyond what is mathematically possible.
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When this happens, you’ll see the corners turn red indicating that they’ve reached their limit and cannot be adjusted beyond that point. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s just Illustrator’s way of saying “Sorry, I can’t go any further,” and you can stop at that point or back off a bit.
The limit that you encounter will depend on several variables including the shape, and size of the object, and the radius of the corner. You’ll also encounter a limitation when you make a manual adjustment to a shape. By manual adjustment I mean modifying an anchor point on the shape, or adjusting only a single corner of the shape.
This essentially “breaks” the Live Shape and changes it to a standard closed path that you have if you drew it with the Pen tool or any of several other methods in Illustrator. Once you do this, all of the Live Shape features are lost, never to return. Despite these minor limitations, I’ve found Live Shapes to be quite flexible in my designs and have found myself taking advantage of the Live Shape features more and more. Categories:, Tags.
Rectangle / Rounded Rectangle Properties. Width / Height: Specifies the height or width of the rectangle. The corners are maintained, and the radii do not change. Rectangle Angle: Rotate the rectangle, using the Scale/Rotate widget. Constrain Width and Height Proportions: Use the Scale Corner Radii For Shapes checkbox to ensure that corner radii increase or decrease in direct proportion to the object's transformation. Corner Type: Specifies the Corner type of any of the corners of the rectangle.
Corner Radii: Use the stepper control or type in an absolute value in the Transform panel, for each of the corners of the rectangle. Ellipse Properties. Width/ Height: Specifies the width and height of the ellipse. When equal, the ellipse is a circle. Ellipse Angle: Specifies the angle at which the Ellipse is placed on the canvas. Pie Start / Pie End Angle: Use the Pie widget (to the right of a newly-drawn Ellipse shape) to present the shape as a pie chart representation. Constrain Pie Angle: Specifies if the difference in the Pie Start and Pie End Angles must be maintained when modifying their values using the Transform panel.
Invert Pie: Specifies when the Pie Start and Pie End Angles must be swapped. Use this to generate a 'slice' graphical representation. Polygon Properties. Polygon Radius: Specifies the exact radius of the polygon drawn. Use the on-screen widget to modify the radius. Polygon Side Length: Specifies the length of each side of the polygon. Polygon Side Count: Specifies the number of sides the polygon will have.
Using the on-screen widget, you can change this to between 3 and 10. Use the slider to modify the value between 3 and 20. If you want a value between 3 and 1000, type the value manually. Angle: Specifies the angle at which the polygon will be drawn or placed relative to the canvas. Corner Type: Specifies the type of corner you want for the polygon (Round, Inverted Round, or Chamfer).
Corner Radius: Specifies the radii of the corners of the polygon. Make Sides Equal button: While modifying a polygon, if the Live Shape becomes disproportionate or loses symmetry, use the Make Sides Equal button to balance the sides of the polygon. Line Properties. Line Length: Specifies the length of the line drawn. Line Angle: Specifies the angle at which the line is drawn, relative to the canvas.
Editor’s Note: This article from 2007 describes how to make rounded corners in Illustrator CS6 and prior. If you’re using Illustrator CC, there’s a much easier method, as Chad Chelius shows in his 2016 postRounding Some Corners I recently got a request from someone who wanted to use Illustrator to create dynamically resizable buttons for a Web site. To complicate matters, he wanted the button style to be flexible enough that left-hand corners can be rounded, and right-hand corners can be rectangular corners, or vice versa (Figure 1). I can’t even begin to tell you how often I hear requests from folks who want to round only some of the corners of an object in Illustrator.
Css Rounded Corner Box
(I can hear those FreeHand users giggling because FreeHand can do that.) So how did I do it? In a nutshell, I start with a regular rectangle. I use one fill with a rounded corner effect applied, and one without. Then I use the Transform effect to offset the fills slightly so that rounded corners are visible on one side only, or just on the top or bottom (Figure 2) Figure 2. Here are the steps to do this yourself:. Draw a rectangle. Fill it with your favorite color.
Use the Appearance panel to add a new fill. With the new fill targeted, choose Effect Stylize Round Corners. Do your thing and give yourself some nice rounded corners. (If you’re working with text, use the Effect Convert to Shape Rounded Rectangle option.). With that fill still targeted, choose Effect Distort & Transform Transform. Under the Move section, adjust your fill slightly so that it’s offset from the original fill.
Use horizontal movements to add rounded corners to the left or right, and vertical movements to add rounded corners to the top or bottom. If you want everything to be centered, apply a Transform effect to another fill (without rounded corners) with the exact opposite settings. All you FreeHanders are still snickering because FreeHand can round just one corner, and opposite corners. Well, I have news for you. I can use the same technique I just employed to do just that: round any specific corner, some, or all.
And of course, once it’s a style, it’s one click to apply it. Pick a Corner Any Corner In Illustrator (more so than just about any other program) there are always a variety of ways to accomplish any design task. Some are more efficient than others. Some are easier to implement. Each offer pros and cons and each offer benefits for certain design tasks. With that in mind, I offer my solution for creating rectangles with a rounded corner (or three) of your choice. Figure 3 is a rectangle that has rounded corners on two opposite sides.
To make this shape, I created a normal rectangle and used the normal Round Corners effect (under the Effect Stylize menu). I then added an additional fill, which didn’t have rounded corners. With the second fill targeted, I applied a Transform effect that applied a 50% scale to the fill, and I instructed the Transform to be applied from a specific origin point — a corner of my choice. This action effectively covered up the rounded corner with a square corner.
Had I expanded the shapes, the result would look like Figure 4. The key here is in the Transform effect. Let’s see how I did this, step-by-step:. Draw a rectangle. Apply a fill and remove the stroke. Choose Effect Stylize Round Corners and apply the effect.
Via the Appearance panel fly-out menu, add a new fill. With the new fill targeted, choose Effect Distort & Transform Transform.
In the Scale section, set both the Horizontal and Vertical values to 50%. Now for the most important part — using the 9-point proxy, select one of the 4 corners to apply the scale from (Figure 5).
The corner you choose will not have a rounded corner. Click OK to apply the effect. Duplicate the fill and double-click the Transform effect in that fill.
Change the origin point in that fill to specify another corner that should have a square corner. Repeat to add a third fill if you’d like. Your Appearance panel should look something like Figure 6.
You can save this as a Graphic Style so that you could apply this with a single click. You might even create an entire library of styles that stored different corners of an object as being rounded, for any design task.
Of course, these are all graphic styles with multiple fills and effects. And sometimes you need just a single plain flat object with a rounded corner. You could of course draw your rectangle, quickly apply a style, expand the appearance, and then use Pathfinder to create a single final shape.
But that’s a lot of clicks. So having an action that would do all this for you with a simple keyboard shortcut is better. In fact, being that the holidays are upon us, I’ve decided to give all of my dedicated readers a gift.
Two, actually. The first is a Graphic Style library (Figure 7) you can download.
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This library contains a plethora of styles with different round corner effects. All you need to do is load the style library and you’re good to go. One click will give you the rounded corner(s) of your choice.
Feel free to adjust the parameters as you see fit. I used a rather large round corner setting, mainly so the preview in the Graphic Styles panel clearly shows each effect. The second downloadable gift is an Action that expands and combines the effect, leaving you with a flattened object.
Adobe Illustrator Rounded Rectangle
Once you load the Action, you can use the keyboard shortcut that I’ve assigned (Command-Shift-F12) or you can apply your own. You can also copy and paste any of these shapes into InDesign if you’d like. Categories:, Tags.
Here’s how I create less than four rounded corners on a rectangle: 1. Draw the rectangle at the desired size. Draw a circle with the correct radius for the corners you wish to create. Align the circle to the corner of the rectangle you wish to round. (If you’re going to round more than one, make a copy of the circle first.) 4. Using the direct selection tool, delect the arcs and point of the circle except the arc that will become the rounded corner.
I find it easiest to first delete the arcs, then go back in keyline mode and delete the stray points that are left. Using the direct selection tool, delete the corner point of the rectangle where the rounded corner will be. Select one end point of the arc, and the nearest endpoint of the rectangle, and join them together to restore the edge of the rectangle.
Repeat for the other edge to complete the shape. If you wish to round another corner, go back to step 3.
Not necessarily better, but as the author said there are almost always multiple ways to accomplish the same task in Illustrator, Photoshop, etc. What’s also easy? For those of us migrated from Freehand anyway Keep your copy of Freehand! It still has uses.
Or go get a free download from Adobe’s site, I think they still offer it. If you’ve upgraded to MAC OS 10.6.x, you’ll need to also retrieve the new version of “FreeHand MXa Registration” from Adobe and stick it in your Library Application Support Macromedia folder so Freehand opens once again. Then just open Freehand, make your box with the 1, 2 or 3 rounded corners and save the file. Open it again in AI (CS4) and save as AI doc. Then copy and paste into your working AI doc. But thanks for your effort in giving us ex-Freehanders a library of rounded corner styles until Adobe gets their act together and allows all of us to selectively apply rounded corners in AI, without all of the tedious workaround and frustration. Thanks for the tutorial.
I’m new to illustrator from freehand. By the way your interpretation of the freehand functionality is incorrect. Freehand allows you to apply a different radius to any of the corners of an object. The great thing is that this is then editable in the property inspector, so if you would like to change the radius of a corner you can easily change it at any time. Of course if you like you can also go through the same process as you carried out above in freehand too.
As we all have to move to illustrator now it’s shame that it falls so far behind in some regards (this and colour management in particular), especially as certain areas (effects, etc) are more advanced. This tutorial is complete rubbish.
You are making a SIMPLE procedure into an unecessarily complicated drama. The method you have given above is floored for a few reasons, the most obvious to me is that following your process you end up with several shapes combined.
So then if you want to apply a blend mode to the overall shape (eg ‘multiply’) you get an inconsistent blend effect becuase your shapes are more opaque where their internal shapes overlap. The simple CORRECT way to solve this problem is as follows (for a shape with 2 rounded corners): -Create a rectangle.Duplicate this rectangle.To rectangle 1 apply the rounded corner effect (effect stylize rounded corners) -Then with rectangle 1 still selected go to Object Expand Appearance (This relesases the shape from its Effect) -Offset rectangle 2 (with square corners) so that it covers two rounded corners of rectangle 1 (use alignment controls to ensure the two rectangles are aligned).Select rectangle 1 and 2 and in the pathfinder pallette hit ‘Transform’ (first option). Now you have a single shape with 2 rounded corners and 2 square corners. Obviously this method can be adapted to make a shape with 3 or 1 rounded corners. Simple 5 second procedure.
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