- [Deke] In this movie,
we'll take a look at the various ways
you can resize artboards using the artboard tool
and it turns out there's five different methods in all.
Now, you can see I've made some slight modifications
to this document, specifically I changed these numbers
in the lower artboards to letters.
I'm going to start things off here by switching
to the artboard tool which you can get by pressing Shift + O
and then I'll click on artboard nine.
I'm going to drag it down a little bit
so that I have more room to work.
Thanks to the fact that my Move/Copy Artwork
with Artboard icon is turned on,
that went ahead and moved the nine along with the artboard.
Now, the most obvious method for scaling an artboard
is to drag either a corner handle,
as I'm doing in this case,
or either a top or bottom handle,
or one of the side handles.
Assuming that your smart guides are turned on,
you'll see the width and height of your artboard
inside that heads-up display.
All right, that's looking a little messy to me,
so I'm going to go ahead and undo all those modifications
by pressing Ctrl + Z, or Command + Z on the Mac,
as many times as it takes to get back
to my original artboard.
Now, let's say you're happy with the artboard's proportions,
that is you like the relationship between the width
and the height of the artboard,
which is known as the aspect ratio incidentally.
Then, you can press and hold the Shift key
as you drag any handle, by the way.
It doesn't have to be a corner handle,
it could be a side handle or a top or bottom handle as well.
All right, I'm going to undo those modifications as well,
because notice when I drag specifically a corner handle,
I'm resizing the artboard with respect
to its opposite corner.
If I want to scale the artboard with respect to its center,
then I would press and hold the Alt key.
That's going to be the Option key on the Mac.
Notice, when I had the Alt key down,
or the Option key on the Mac, and I drag a corner handle,
I am scaling all four sides.
If I just want to scale a couple of sides,
I could drag a side handle.
Notice if I go ahead and press the Alt key,
or the Option key on the Mac,
and keep that key down incidentally,
then I'm moving both sides either away from each other
or inward and the same goes if I were to Alt or Option drag
the top or bottom handle.
Then, if I add the Shift key to all that,
then I can constrain the aspect ratio
while scaling with respect to the center.
In this case, I have both the Shift and Alt keys down,
that's going to be Shift and Option on the Mac.
Perhaps surprisingly,
this works with multiple artboards as well.
If I click off the artboard in order to deselect it
and then I Shift marquee these bottom guys right here,
then I could drag a corner handle
in order to scale all four of these artboards.
Notice that I'm scaling
with respect to the opposite corner in this case,
and as a result I'm no longer aligned with the type
and that's because as things stand now,
Illustrator's not equipped to scale artwork
and artboards together.
I'll go ahead an undo that modification
and I'll just drag this top handle upward like so,
so that the artboards are taller, but they're not any wider.
I might not want them to be quite this tall,
so I'll go ahead and move these guys down,
because if I make these artboards too tall,
then they'll start to include the numbers above them.
All right, so that's method number one.
Now, the other methods are going to go a little quicker here.
Another way to work is to select an artboard
just by clicking on it and all of these methods,
by the way, work whether one artboard is selected
or multiple artboards.
Now, I'll go up to this item on the left side
of the control panel, which currently reads Custom,
click on it and then I could go ahead and choose a preset
such as letter size page if I like,
or I could go with an iPhone 6,
which surprisingly is much larger.
All right, so that's method two.
Method number three is to resize the artboard
to exactly match the artwork.
You do that by not clicking on the number zero,
because that's going to create a new artboard,
but instead double-clicking on it.
If you double-click on any object,
you're going to resize the artboard to match.
All right, I'm going to undo those last couple
of modifications, again, by pressing Ctrl + Z,
or Command + Z on the Mac,
and I'll draw a new artboard
so that we can see method number four
which is easily the most obscure method,
but I just want you to know it's there.
You go to the Object menu, choose Artboards,
and then choose Fit to Artwork Bounds.
That's going to resize that new artboard
to include everything inside the document.
All right, now I don't really need that artboard,
so I'll just go ahead and press the Backspace key,
or the Delete key on the Mac, to get rid of it.
Notice, that gets rid of the artboard without getting rid
of any of the actual objects inside your illustration.
All right, now for method number five,
which is probably the most practical solution there is
and that's to dial-in your own custom numerical values.
I'll just go ahead and select artboard zero once again,
and then notice that in addition to the X and Y values,
which are the physical coordinates of the artboard,
we've got width and height.
I could go ahead and dial-in a width value of six inches,
six double quotes, and then press the tab key
and you can see that Illustrator goes ahead
and converts inches to points on-the-fly.
Then I could dial-in a height value of eight inches,
that is eight double quote, and press the Enter key,
or the Return key on the Mac, to accept that change.
Now, if you want to lockdown that aspect ratio,
then just go ahead and turn on this link icon right here.
Now, notice if I were to dial-in a width value of 12 inches,
let's say, then the height value will change in kind.
Now, that doesn't lock these values
into absolute agreement with each other,
rather it expands the width and height values
by the same amount.
It could even do simple math, if you like.
If you decide, for example, that you want this page
to be half as wide, you would enter slash two
after that width value and that will go ahead
and divide the height value by two as well.
If you want to make the height twice as tall,
then you'd enter asterisk too and then press the Enter key,
or the Return key on the Mac.
That goes ahead and makes the width value
twice as wide as well.
All right, I'm going to drag this guy over a little bit
to give myself some more room.
Now, notice that everything is happening
with respect to the center of the artboard,
and that's a function of this guy right here,
the so-called Reference Point matrix.
You can change that, by the way.
You can scale with respect
to some other portion of the page.
For example, if I select this top point right here
and I turn off the link,
and then I increase the height value
by 200 points, let's say, by entering plus 200
and then pressing the Enter key,
or the Return key on the Mac.
Notice that the page grows taller and it does so downward,
because that top point is fixed according
to that Reference Point matrix.
By the same token,
I could click off the page to deselect it,
and then Shift + drag to marquee these bottom artboards.
I could make them taller by selecting this bottom point
in the Reference Point matrix,
and then I could click after the height value
and enter plus 300 this time around,
and press the Enter key, or the Return key on the Mac.
You'll see that the pages grow taller
because that bottom point is fixed.
All right, well, once again that's going to encroach
on the numbers and so I'll press Ctrl + Z,
or Command + Z on the Mac, to undo that change.
I'll go with something a little more subtle,
such as plus 50, let's say, for that height value
just to bring the height of those artboards up
ever so slightly.
I'll go ahead and drag these guys down
to provide us with a little more room as well.
Then, I'll go up to the View menu
and choose Fit All in Window
so that all of my artboards fit on screen at the same time.
Finally, I'll go ahead and escape out
of the artboard editing mode just
by pressing the Escape key,
which returns control to my black arrow.
Those are the five different ways you can resize artboards
using the artboard tool here inside Illustrator.