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- [Voiceover] In this

movie I'll show you how



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to expand and simplify

your auto traced artwork,



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so that you can access the

path outlines directly using



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Black and White Arrow tools.



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And so, for example, where

this artwork is concerned



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Illustrator has gone ahead and traced



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the top edge of the paper.



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And we also have a single

little piece of dust



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right over here that

I'd like to get rid of.



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And that's the point at

which you just go ahead



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and expand your artwork so you can modify



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the path outlines directly.



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And so I'm going to go ahead

and zoom back out here.



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And I'm going to create a new layer



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by dropping down to the little page icon



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at the bottom of the layers panel,



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and Alt or Option clicking on it.



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That forces the display of

the layer options dialog box.



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At which point I'll go

ahead and call this guy



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"Expanded Paths" let's say.



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And then I'll click OK.



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Alright, now I wanna copy the 600 ppi



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version of the artwork.



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So I'll click on this

little circle to select



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it right there, and

then I'll press the Alt



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key or the Option key on the Mac;



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and drag either of these blue squares



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and drop it onto the new layer.



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And because the Alt or Option key is down,



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that goes ahead and duplicates the artwork



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as opposed to moving it.



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Alright, now I'll go ahead and collapse



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the tracing layer and turn off it's eye



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so that it's no longer visible.



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And then I'll go up to this Expand button,



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up here in the control panel,



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and click on it.



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Essentially anytime you

see the word "Expand"



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inside Illustrator that's going to convert



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this special object to

static path outlines.



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And sure enough, in our case, we end up



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with this group; and we

can tell it's a group



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because we're seeing the word "Group"



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over here on the far left

side of the control panel.



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But I want to gain direct

access to all the paths,



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so I'll go up to the object

menu and choose the "Ungroup"



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command, or you can press

Control + Shift + G,



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or Command + Shift + G on the Mac.



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And now I'm going to go ahead



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and zoom in here on this top junk.



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And I know I want to get

rid of this little guy,



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so I'll go marquee it

with the Black Arrow tool.



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And then press the Backspace key,



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or the Delete key on the

Mac to get rid of it.



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And then I'll just marquee this

garbage up here at the top,



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and I'll again press the

Backspace or Delete key.



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Alright now let's say you want to simplify



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the path outlines a little bit,



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Illustrator offers a feature

that does exactly that.



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And so the first thing I'll

do is press Control + A



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or Command + A on the

Mac in order to select



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all the path outlines.



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And then I'll press

Control + H or Command + H



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on the Mac to hide those anchor points



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so we can better see what we're doing.



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And now you want to go

up to the Object menu,



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choose Path, and choose Simplify.



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Now by default, Illustrator

goes a little bit



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too far, and we can see

that by turning on the



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preview checkbox...



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(speaker chuckles)



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And that just looks absolutely ridiculous.



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The good news is we've dropped



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from 29,000 anchor points to just 4600.



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But of course the bad news is,



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that our artwork is

absolutely unidentifiable.



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So, we have a couple of options here.



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We've got the angle

threshold that determines



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the maximum angle of our corners.



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And so notice that as

you crack that value up,



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you typically get better

and better results.



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And so, I could take it

all the way up to 180.



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But then we're not really dropping



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too many anchor points here.



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Which is why I ultimately took it down to



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150 degrees like so.



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And then what you typically want to do



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is crank the curve precision value



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all the way up to 100%. And

that still is going to give us



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fewer anchor points than we had before.



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Notice that we've dropped

about 9000 anchor points.



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And then I just go

ahead and press the Down



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Arrow key while this value is active



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'til I'm no longer

comfortable with the results



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that I'm seeing onscreen.



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Which happens at about 97%;



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things start to shift

a little bit too much.



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Which is why I went ahead took this



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value back up to 98%.



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And notice we've still

got way fewer points,



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about half as many anchor

points as we had before.



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Which means that this document



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is going to be a lot easier

to export and to print.



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And now I'll just go ahead and click OK



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in order to except those results.



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And just so we can see the

difference nice and close here,



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I'll go ahead and press Control + Z



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or Command + Z on the Mac.



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These are the unsimplified paths.



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And then if I press Control + Shift + Z,



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or Command + Shift + Z on the Mac



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to redo that simplification,



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we see those simplified path outlines



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with only about half as many anchor points



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doing some really great work

inside this illustration.



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Alright and just because

Control + H or Command + H,



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that keyboard shortcut that

hides the anchor points,



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because it's sticky, it's actually saved



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as a state in your document.



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I'll go ahead and press Control + H



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or Command + H on the Mac



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in order to bring back those anchor points



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and I'll click off the

illustration to deselect it.



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And that friends, is how you expand



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and simplify your auto traced artwork



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here inside Illustrator.