The Power Of The Pen Tool

Imaging Week 3

The Pen tool is the most versatile and useful tool in Illustrator.It appears daunting to use at first,but when one understands how it works,the rules it follows,and how it produces illustrations,it becomes a handy quick mode of drawing in Illustrator.

In this class,we were taught how to trace objects using the pen tool.The process works like so:

• Choosing the image which requires a trace and saving it.
• File>Place>Selecting image>Click on template checkbox>Press Place.
• Creating a new layer(or using Layer 1) to trace using pen tool.

I almost successfully managed to trace the shapes out,and learnt that the tracing feature on Illustrator can be very useful when it comes to deriving a vector image from a normal picture/graphic.