- [Instructor] In this movie, we'll take a look
at the various units of measure that are made available
to you by Illustrator,
and we'll see how they compare to each other,
as well as how you can switch them out on the fly.
And believe it or not, this might be
the most exciting movie in this chapter.
Now, you can work with inches or millimeters
or what have you, but throughout this course,
I'll be working with the default unit of measure
associated with the US English version of Illustrator,
and that's points.
The reason that points are so useful is that
they are a very tiny unity of measure,
and they allow you to precisely measure type,
line weights, and things like the way different strokes
line up with each other, so that your artwork
looks picture-perfect.
And so, let's see what that looks like.
I'll go up to the file menu and choose the New command,
or again, you can press that keyboard shortcut of Ctrl-N
here on the PC or CMD-N on the Mac.
And here I am looking at the specs for that document
that I created in the previous movie.
And so, as you can see, the unit is set to inches
because that's the unit I used last time around.
Illustrator has always been great about remembering
your last operation in any given session,
which is generally a wonderful thing,
but as I say, the default unit of measure is points.
Now, I want you to see how these units are organized.
We have five units that are associated with print documents,
and then, we have pixels, which is typically your best unit
when you're creating screen graphics,
either for the web or a device.
But for now, we're going to limit ourselves
to these first five.
And so, what we have here are points, picas and inches,
all of which are Imperial units,
and then we have the metric units,
millimeters and centimeters.
So, very likely, even if you have
no idea what a centimeter is,
which you will by the end of this movie,
you know that it's equal to ten millimeters.
But what in the world is going on with the others?
All right, so, I'll go ahead and show you
by closing out of this dialogue box,
and then, I'll switch to a document
that I've created in advance,
which compares all five of the print units.
Now, Americans in particular have a habit of just assuming
everyone knows what's going on with imperial units,
but it's worth reviewing,
even if you think you already know.
First, 12 points make up what's known as a pica,
and then six picas fit inside of an inch.
And so, what that mean is, 12 times six, or 72 points,
fit inside an inch.
Now, just so you have an idea of what that looks like,
the distance between these two red lines here is an inch.
Now, I'm not suggesting you whip out a ruler
and measure the lines in the videos.
That's not going to work, because we all have our screens
set to different resolutions.
But, insofar as this particular document is concerned,
the distance from one red line to the next
is exactly one inch.
Meanwhile, the distance from one black line to the next
is one pica, and finally, each one of these lines
except for the arrow lines, is one point thick.
Now, I want you to see that even though one point
or 1/72 of an inch, sounds pretty thin,
these lines are actually pretty meaty,
which is why you can go thinner still,
as in the case of these arrow lines right here,
which are just a half-point thick.
Now, for those of you
who are more comfortable with the metric system,
an inch is about 25 and a half millimeters,
a pica is a little more than four millimeters,
and a point is slightly more than a third of a millimeter.
That last bit, the fact that three points very nearly
exactly fit into a millimeter,
is the part that you want to remember.
And so, to give you a sense for what that looks like,
these two red lines are still an inch apart from each other.
Each of the black lines is a centimeter apart,
so, we have about two and a half centimeters per inch.
And then, each of these lines is one millimeter thick,
or roughly three points across.
So, what we have here is some very thick lines indeed,
which is why designers across the world
tend to favor points, even if those same designers
are more comfortable with the metric system.
Now, the great thing about Illustrator is,
it really doesn't care which unit you prefer,
and it allows you to overwrite units on the fly.
And you do that by, once again, going up to the file menu
and choosing the new command, and I'll go ahead
and switch my unit of measure to points, as by default,
at which point I can see that the width of this document
is going to be 432 points.
Well, I've been working with points and picas
for more than 30 years now, but I still couldn't tell you
what a width of 432 points looks like.
It's just too big.
And so, let's say I want the width to,
in fact, be eight inches.
And so, I'll just go ahead and click in a width value,
which selects the whole thing, and I'll dial an eight,
followed by the letters IN, the IN being for inches.
And then, I'll press the tab key,
and notice that Illustrator goes ahead
and converts from inches
to the active unit, points, on the fly.
And so, apparently, eight times 72 equals 576 points.
You can do the same with metric units.
And so, for example, I can change the height value
to 500mm, for millimeters, and then press shift-tab
to back up to the width value.
And notice that Illustrator is once again
converting that information on the fly.
Or, I could change the width value
to 100cm, for centimeters, and press the tab key
in order to run that conversion.
And it gets even simpler, by the way.
If I want to restore a height value of 8 inches,
I could just enter
eight followed by the double quote character, like so,
and then press the tab key, and Illustrator,
once again, runs that conversion.
All right, now, let's say
I want to change the bleed to two picas.
In that case, I could click in the top value
and enter 2p, the P stands for picas,
whereas PT, as you can see over here, stands for points.
But I'll just enter 2p and press the tab key,
and notice that Illustrator converts
the four linked bleed values
to two times 12 points per pica,
which is 24 points in all.
If I wanted two picas, six points, then I would enter
2p6, like so, so wherever the P lands,
divides the picas on the left from the points on the right.
And so, now, if I press the tab key,
Illustrator does the math, which is two times 24 plus six,
and we get 30 points of bleed.
You can even do basic math if you like.
I could enter 3", or three inches, followed by /4,
that is, divided by four, and that will give me
3/4 of an inch, which, when I press the tab key,
converts to 54 points.
So, just remember, if you want to run those conversions
on the fly, then all you need to know is
double quote for inches, CM for centimeters,
and MM or just one M all by itself for millimeters,
and finally P for picas and PT for points.
And that's how you work with the various units of measure,
specifically, the international design standards,
picas and points, here inside Illustrator CC.