Illustrator Drawing Techniques - Help.
Mintsauce (1004 pencils) | Thu, 2009-07-30 16:14Illustrator's drawing tools are highly versatile and after a small learning curve fairly easy to use. There is just one point I haven't figured out. If you have a a point with one handle how do you add another handle WITHOUT changing the curve? The only way I know is using the Pen tool with ALT, but that either flattens the point to no handles, or ads two handles and throws the curve out.
Any ideas?
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Wish I had an answer for you... I bet if you posted your question on Veerle's site, she'd have an answer.
I mean, her work and everything. Haven't been over there in a while... thanks! I'll ask her.
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I'm not sure I understand what you want to do, did you try ctrl click n drag?
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If you have a curve with two handles you just grab one handle with the open arrow selection tool (in pen mode hit command key for this). Of course this affects the other curve, but I think you're fighting what a bezier curve is a lot of the time - the connection point for two curved lines.
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Dirt and Rust
The issue is when you have a curve with one handle. If you start a path by clicking and then dragging the point will have only 1 handle, to the direction in which you're dragging. When you close the path, this point will stil have only 1 handle.
I needed this specifically when I was cleaning up a calligraphy font with messy connectors. Basically I fixed the kerning, converted to outlines, ungroup and Pathfinder Unite. Cleaning up the connectors I had problems with some points having 1 not two handles and thus giving me sharp corners on a supposed to be smooth curve. Alt Clicking with the pen tool creates a second handle but destroys any semblance to the old curve. There seems to be no way to create a second handle without doing this.
What I ended up doing was create a second layer with the working paths and reduce opacity to 50%. I locked the layer below. I then added the double handles with the pen tool and adjusted the curve to fit the layer below. Once I fixed all the connections I deleted the original path, increased opacity back to 100% and tada!
BTW. Veerle said there was no way of doing this except alt-click pen and being very careful.
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Why not add a two-handled point really really near to this one-handled beast and after you've copied the identical arc delete the single pointed one?
"Art -- the one achievement of Man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised." - James Thurber
Honey, I just use the tool in the Convert Anchor Point tool (Shift + C). Click on the point and you'll get two handles. You might have to readjust the curve after that. Sometimes, what you think is one handle is really two that are kind of stuck together. Have you tried zooming in real tight to see if that might be the case? If so, you should be able to select the "hidden" handle to manipulate it.
I'm interested in other ideas people have -- I often find out from threads like this about techniques I never realized existed :-)
Mara
Thanks Mara, I'll try Shift C. Funny, I've not used that in... forever I think.
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