Adobe Illustrator CS4 How-Tos: 100 Essential Techniques

#42 Using Color and Pattern Swatches

The Swatches panel is an all-purpose repository of colors, gradients, and patterns. With a vast number of available colors for print and digital output, the Swatches panel helps organize colors into convenient sets so you don’t have to search through thousands of colors to find the ones you need.

Things You Can Do with a Pattern Fill

Use the Selection tool to move the pattern within your shape. Do this by holding down the Tilde (~) key as you click and drag within the object with the Selection tool. The path doesn’t move (remember to hold down the Tilde key), but the pattern fill moves within the path.

You can also rescale a pattern fill without rescaling the path that it is applied to. Do this ...