Closed (sort of)
TEOM as you know it has been closed. I will keep it up for reference but it no longer will receive tutorial updates.
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Thanks for the support throughout all these years :)
Illustrator CS2
Finding the Hidden Tools
Illustrator offers many tools for you to work with. The problem, however, is that not all are visible and the new user might have difficulty accessing them.
If you are new to the program and wondering what tools I’m talking about, take a look on the screenshot below:
While the Tools Palette displays 26 tools, there are still (if I counted right =D) 63 other tools for you to play with!
As you are probably dying to learn how to access them I won’t keep you waiting any longer…
- First of all, the tools are divided into groups; each group has one tool that is visible in the Tools Palette while the others are the hidden tools. To identify which of the visible tools represents a group, look at the bottom right corner of the tool button: if there is a black triangle, it means that there are hidden tools available.
- Once you know that there are hidden tools available, click on the visible tool and hold down the mouse button until a bar appears displaying the other tools. Drag the cursor over the desired hidden tool and release in order to select it. The new tool will be displayed on the Tools Palette and the bar will disappear.
Here’s a demonstration of how this works:
But what if you want the bar(s) appearing like in my screenshot?
All you have to do is to follow the steps before but, instead of releasing the mouse over the hidden tool, release it over the Tearoff arrow:
Tools, Menus and Palettes · Mar 27, 2006 ·