VC 114 :: Week 06 1 of 3 03 November 2008
— Demonstration Outline —
week::six
Paths, Points, Selections & the Pen Tool
Path Basics
About Bézier Curves
o Developed by Pierre Bézier in the 1970's for CAD/CAM operations.
o They are the basis for Adobe’s PostScript page description language.
PostScript is the basis of Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF), which, in
turn, is the basis of all imagery in Illustrator.
Components
o A path is made up of one or more straight or curved segments.
o The beginning and end of each segment is marked by anchor points,
which work like pins holding wire in place. (or like the points on a
connect-the-dots children’s activity.)
o You change the shape of a path by editing its anchor points. You can
control curves by dragging the direction points at the end of
direction lines that appear at anchor points.
Points
o Paths can have two kinds of anchor points—corner points and
smooth points.
At a corner point, a path abruptly changes direction.
At a smooth point, path segments are connected as a continuous curve.
You can draw a path using any combination of corner and smooth points.
Corner Point
Smooth Point
Open, Closed & Endpoints
o A path is either open, like an arc, or closed, like a circle.
o For open paths, the start and end anchor points are called endpoints.
o Object fills work best with closed objects, since Illustrator does not
have to guess how the object should look between endpoints.
Direction Point
Anchor Point
Selected Anchor Point
Straight Segment Curved Segment
Endpoint
Direction Line
