- [Instructor] In this movie, I'll show you how you can
align and distribute artboards in Illustrator CC,
which will allow us to take our current mess
and turn it into this tidy document here.
All right, so as is often the case,
the first step is to select the Artboard tool,
which you can get by pressing Shift-O.
And notice that artboard zero is currently selected.
I want to add artboard seven, eight,
and nine to that selection so I'll press the Shift key
and marquee those three artboards.
You don't want to marquee artboard zero or you'll turn it off.
So just go ahead and Shift-marquee these guys.
And that way, you'll select all of the artboards
along the bottom row.
All right, now for the sake of demonstration,
I'm going to drag these guys over to the left here,
just so we can see an example of what can go wrong.
All right, now I want to direct your attention
to the word Align over here on the right side
of the control panel.
And notice if you click on it,
you're going to bring up a pop-up panel
that includes one row of alignment options
and another row of distribution options.
Now you can work inside this pop-up panel if you like.
The problem is, every time you go to select
a different artboard, that panel's going to disappear
and then you're going to have to bring it back
and it's going to disappear again and so forth.
So if only for the sake of this video,
I'm going to go up to the Window menu
and choose the Align command,
which is going to bring up the persistent Align panel.
That is to say the one that's not going to disappear
over and over again on me.
All right, I'm going to move it into a different location
by dragging its title bar right here.
That's what it's called, even though there is no title.
I'm just going to go ahead and drag it down
to a kind of neutral location
that's away from the artboards.
Now I want you to notice among this first row
of alignment icons, we have three icons
devoted to horizontal alignment
and three devoted to vertical alignment.
Right now, we want these artboards to align vertically.
And so if you were to click on Vertical Align Top,
you'll move all but one of the artboards upward
to match the top edge of what was formerly
the highest artboard.
All right, so I'll go ahead and press Ctrl-Z
or Command-Z on the Mac to undo that change,
so you can see the opposite effect.
So notice right now, artboard eight is the lowest one
in the group.
And so if I were to click Vertical Align Bottom,
I would move artboards seven, nine, and zero downward
to match the position of artboard eight.
Or if I undo that change, I can move all the artboards
to some extent or other by clicking Vertical Align Center
and that will adjust them all
so that they vertically align as we're seeing right here.
Now I want to distribute the artboards
so that the space between artboard seven and eight matches
that between eight and nine as well as nine and zero.
And you can accomplish that using this second collection
of distribution options right here, all of which
allow you to horizontally distribute the artboards.
Now because all of my artboards are the same size,
I can click any one of these icons
and get the exact same result.
And so I'll just go ahead and click on this center guy
right here, Horizontal Distribute Center,
and that will give me the effect that I'm looking for.
All right, now I want to take artboard one
and align it to artboard seven.
And so I'll click on artboard one
and then I'll Shift-click on artboard seven
so that those two artboards are selected.
Notice artboard eight is not selected,
because it does not have a blue boundary.
All right, now I want to take advantage of one of these
horizontal alignment icons right here.
And so if I were to click on this last one,
Horizontal Align Right, I would move artboard seven
over to the position of artboard one, because artboard one
was in the right-most position to start with.
That's not what I want, of course, so I'll press Ctrl-Z
or Command-Z on the Mac to undo that move.
If I click on Horizontal Align Center,
then I'll move both artboards so seven is overlapping eight.
Clearly not what I want so I'll press Ctrl-Z,
Command-Z on the Mac.
The guy I do want is this one right here,
Horizontal Align Left, which is going to move artboard one
into alignment with artboard seven, because after all,
artboard seven started in the left-most position.
All right, now I need to do the same with artboards four
and zero, so I'll click on one and Shift-click on the other.
And then I'll go ahead and click on that same icon,
Horizontal Align Left, to move the four
into the proper location.
The problem is that now it overlaps artboards two and three.
And so if I were to click off the artboards to deselect them
and then Shift-marquee all of the top artboards,
one, two, four, and three, and then do anything
such as click on Vertical Align Center,
then I'm going to move that four, because it's caught
on artboard three, and that's not what I want.
So I'll just go ahead and press Ctrl-Z or Command-Z on a Mac
to undo that change.
And I'll press Ctrl-Z or Command-Z again
in order to undo the previous step.
And now I'll just click off the artboards to deselect them.
I'll Shift-marquee two and three here,
move them over to some intermediate location.
And then I'll click on artboard four,
Shift-click on artboard zero,
and click the Horizontal Align Left icon
here inside the Align panel.
Then I'll click off the artboards to deselect them.
I'll Shift-marquee artboards one through four
and I'll click on this guy, Vertical Align Center,
in order to line up those artboards like so.
We still have a distribution problem,
so notice that the distance between artboards one and two
is much larger than the distance between three and four.
But I can take care of that just by clicking on
Horizontal Distribute Center in order to produce
this effect here.
All right, now we need to move five and six
into the proper positions.
And I'm just going to take artboard five
and move it down a little bit, just so we can better see
the effects of vertical distribution.
And then I'll Shift-click on artboard eight
as well as artboard two.
So two, five, and eight are now selected.
The artboards that are in the good positions, two and eight,
are to the left of five, and so once again, I'll click on
Horizontal Align Left here inside the Align panel.
And then I'll drop down to this first group
of distribution options,
all of which are devoted to vertical distribution.
Once again, because all of our artboards are the same size,
we can click on any one of these icons.
So I'll just go ahead and click on
Vertical Distribute Center and that goes ahead
and evens out the spaces between all three artboards.
All right, now I'll click on artboard nine
and Shift-click on six and three like so
and then I'll just run through the same steps.
I'll click on Horizontal Align Left
and then I'll drop down and click on
Vertical Distribute Center
in order to produce this effect here.
All right, now I'll press the Escape key
in order to exit the Artboard edit mode.
And I'll hide the Align panel
either by clicking on this little X or you can go up
to the Window menu and once again, choose the Align command.
And that'll go ahead and hide that panel.
And then finally, I'll go up to the View menu
and choose Fit All in Window, which will magnify
and center our 10 perfectly aligned artboards.
And that is how you align and distribute artboards
here inside the most recent edition of Illustrator CC.