- [Voiceover] In this movie,
I'll demonstrate how the scale tool,
along with the other
old school transformation tools,
allow you to uniquely set the origin point,
which is the center of the transformation.
So, to give you a sense of what I mean,
I'll go ahead and select the dynamic object here.
And then, here inside the Appearance panel,
I'll click on the word Transform
in order to bring up the Transform Effect
dialogue box.
And notice if I turn on the Preview check box,
we are currently transforming the shape
about its center point,
as indicated by
this little reference point matrix right there.
But I can change that if I want to.
I can transform with respect to a side,
like so, or,
either the top or the bottom.
Or I could select one of the corners.
But that's it,
that's all the control I have.
Otherwise, If I wanna scoot that point elsewhere,
then I would need to invoke these Move values.
For example, I could set
the horizontal value to negative 10,
and the vertical value to negative 10 as well,
in order to scoot that guy up a little bit.
At which point, I'll go ahead and click OK
to accept that change.
Compare that to the behavior of the Scale tool.
I'll go ahead and click on the static shape,
in order to select it,
and then I'll switch to the Scale tool.
Once again, you can do so
by pressing the S key if you like.
And, notice right there, that we have this little target,
can you see that right there in the center?
And that indicates the default transformation origin,
which only starts out in the center of the shape.
And so there's a couple of ways now
that I can use the scale tool, that is
actually drag with it, inside the document window.
The first way is exactly that:
I could just begin dragging,
and in order to make the best use of this tool,
you wanna start 45 degrees away
from the transformation origin.
So you wanna move up and to the left,
for example, and you wanna move pretty far away,
and I'll demonstrate why in a moment.
But, I'm gonna start up left, like so,
and then, I'll begin dragging.
And notice, if you drag toward the origin,
you're gonna make the shape smaller,
and if you drag away from origin,
you're gonna make it larger.
And of course you can squish it if you want,
or make it taller, it's entirely up to you.
But it's always a good idea
to begin dragging 45 degrees,
in any direction, by the way,
it could be 45 degrees over here,
or over here,
doesn't matter.
And you wanna stay pretty far away
from that origin point,
because notice,
if I'm close in, like so,
and I'm not really 45 degrees away,
then I'm gonna make huge differences
very rapidly, so tiny movements of my mouse
are gonna have a big impact on this shape.
You also have the option
of constraining the proportions as you drag.
And you do that by dragging,
as I was doing before,
and then while you're dragging,
go ahead and press and hold the Shift key,
and that will constrain the proportions.
The other thing you can do
with the Shift key,
is you can begin dragging horizontally,
that is, from the origin point like so,
and then, press the Shift key
in order to constrain your scale
to exclusively horizontal
as you're seeing me do right now.
Or you can start above,
and drag while pressing the Shift key
to constrain your scale
to exclusively vertical.
The thing is, in every one of these cases,
we're just accepting that default transformation origin,
right there in the center of the shape.
Now you don't have to work that way.
If you wanna move the origin,
then don't begin dragging.
Click instead.
So let's say I wanna scale
with respect to the intersection
of the two center guides,
I'll go ahead and click right there,
and that moves my target to this location.
It's a little bit hard to see,
but there it is,
after which point,
I would move my cursor once again,
45 degrees away from that origin point.
Not the shape itself,
but rather the origin.
And then, I would begin dragging,
and in this case,
I'm pressing the Shift key
as I drag toward the origin.
And notice that it's gonna make the shape smaller.
At some point, I'm gonna flip it
as soon as I move past the origin point.
If I don't want that to happen,
then I need to stay on this side.
Or of course, I could make the shape bigger,
and in this case,
I'm making it exclusively horizontally bigger,
that happens sometimes
when you have the Shift key down.
If you'd rather it was proportionally larger,
then I just need to move my cursor
up a little bit like so.
And because I have my Smart Guides turned on,
I can see the degree to which I'm scaling
the shape in that heads up display.
Alright this time I'm gonna click
to set the origin right about there.
And by the way,
if you change your mind,
and you wanna move it to a different location,
then you can just drag it around
as you're seeing me do now.
Alright another option that's available to you,
is to duplicate the shape
as you scale it.
And you do that by
once again, dragging from 45 degrees away,
just for the most control, once again,
and in my case of making the shape smaller.
And then, you press and hold the Alt key,
or the Option key on the Mac,
at which point you'll see
that double arrowhead cursor,
which is showing you that you're gonna make a duplicate.
If you want the duplicate
to be scaled proportionately,
then press and hold the Shift key as well.
So I currently have both the Shift and Alt keys down.
That would be the Shift and Option keys down on the Mac.
And notice that new shape
appears in front of the old one.
That's just something to bear in mind.
Compare that, by the way,
with the behavior of a dynamic transformation.
If I go ahead and click on this guy,
in order to select him,
and of course, there he is
in a different spot than I anticipated.
But now I'll go ahead and click
on the word Transform inside the Appearance panel.
If I turn on the Preview check box,
and make copies of the shape like so,
you can see that the copies appear
in back of the original.
And to make that even more clear,
I'll switch the origin point to the center
of this little reference point matrix.
So in other words it's exactly the opposite,
Transform puts the copies in back,
whereas the Scale tool puts the copies in front.
But because they're static shapes,
you can change the stacking order to any extent you like,
just by right clicking in the document window,
choosing Arrange,
and in my case, for example, choosing Send to Back.
Alright there's just one more trick you should know.
I'll go ahead and select this shape
with my black arrow tool.
Then I'll switch back to the Scale tool.
You can also set the origin point,
and bring up the Scale Dialogue box
by pressing the Alt key here on the PC,
or the Option key on the Mac.
And notice what happens.
Your cursor goes from being a standard cross cursor,
to being a cross with three dots after it.
And that tells you that you're gonna
bring up a dialogue box.
So just go ahead and Alt click in order to
set your origin and bring up the Scale dialogue box.
Notice, there's the origin point right there.
And then, go ahead and enter your desired percentage value,
such as, in my case, 120 percent, let's say.
And then, click OK if you wanna scale the actual shape,
or if you wanna scale a duplicate,
go ahead and click on the Copy button.
You also have a keyboard shortcut of Alt, Enter on the PC,
or Option, Return on the Mac,
in order to invoke copy like so.
And it's a little hard to see that this happened,
(laughs) because I'm covering up the original shape.
So, I'll just go ahead and press the V key
to switch to my black arrow tool,
and I'll drag this guy to a different location.
And that's how you set the transformation origin,
which represents the center about which
the transformation occurs,
either by clicking, for example,
using the scale tool,
or by Alt or Option clicking
to bring up a dialogue box
here inside Illustrator.