Adobe Creative Cloud All-in-One For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Chapter 3

Creating Basic Shapes and Beyond

IN THIS CHAPTER

Creating rectangles, ellipses, stars, and polygons

Resizing shapes

Using the Pathfinder panel

Using the Shape Builder tool

Basic shapes, such as squares, circles, polygons, and stars, are used in all types of illustrations. With the right know-how and with the use of the right tools, you can easily create any shape you want for your artwork. In this chapter, you find out how to use the shape tools to create shapes based on precise measurements, and how to combine shapes to create custom shapes. You also learn how to edit and resize your shapes.

The Basic Shape Tools

As a default in the Essentials workspace, the only visible shape tool in the Tools panel is the Rectangle tool. If you click and hold down that tool, you can access hidden tools such as the Rounded Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon, and Star tools, shown in Figure 3-1.

You can tear off this tool set so that you don’t have to find the hidden shapes later. Click and ...