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Chapter 7: Scale, Skew, and Rotate

Much of the power of Illustrator is expressed in the ability to stretch, shrink, skew, and rotate objects
without losing any image quality. Since Illustrator is such a powerful tool for distorting objects, there are
many tool options for resizing and reshaping. Just as people living in snowbound areas of the planet
have developed a vocabulary to cover every shade of white, Illustrator offers multiple options for sizing,
reshaping, rotating, and flipping objects or groups of objects.
You can transform a simple drawing in an infinite number of ways by using Illustrators escalating set of
transforming tools. You can apply these tools to single objects, sets of selected objects, or grouped
objects.

Get Ready to Size, Scale, and Rotate

You can elect to display bounding boxes on your artboard, which provide convenient anchor points
around selected objects for sizing, mirroring, or rotation. For basic resizing or rotating, the Free
Transform tool usually does the trick. For more precise sizing or rotation, the Scale and Rotate tools
allow you to assign exact size changes and rotation angles. Further, they allow you to select anchor
points that stay in one place as you interactively resize or rotate an object.
The more esoteric Reflect, Shear, and Reshape tools provide more options for distorting selected
objects. In this chapter, youll examine and learn to use each of these resizing and reshaping tools.

Group Objects First

Before you begin to modify objects, it will be helpful to understand how objects can be grouped together
and then moved or transformed together. To group objects, first select them using a selection tool (such
as the Selection tool or the Lasso tool). Then choose Object | Group, as shown in Figure 7-1.

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Figure 7-1: Grouping selected objects

Once objects are grouped, you can select the entire group by clicking within it with the Selection tool.
With the entire set of grouped objects selected, you apply fill or stroke changes to the entire group. In a
similar way, the transforming tools covered in the rest of this chapter (such as those that resize or rotate
an object) generally apply to the whole selected group of objects.

Select Within a Group

If you want to change just one object within a group, you can ungroup the objects and then select an
individual object within the group. That can get tedious, however, especially if youre frequently
switching back and forth between changes to a bunch of grouped objects and changes to a single object
(or a few objects) within the group.
The solution to this problem is to use the Group Selection tool found in the Direct Selection tool tearoff.
The Group Selection tool allows you to select any object(s) within a group. So, for example, if you
wanted to change the fill color of just the spots on a lemon, you could use the Group Selection tool, hold
down SHIFT, and click on the spots, as shown in Figure 7-2. Holding down the SHIFT key allows you
to use the tool to select several objects.

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Figure 7-2: Selecting within a group with the Group Selection tool
To more or less permanently ungroup a set of objects, select the group and choose Object | Ungroup (or
use the shortcut keys COMMAND-SHIFT-G [CTRL-SHIFT-G]). Groups can themselves be grouped
again.
Note The keyboard shortcut for grouping is command-g (ctrl-g).
Tip If you're going to get into multiple levels of grouping, you'll probably be better served by organizing
collections of objects into more powerful layers. You will learn to do that in Chapter 20.
An alternative way to select several objects is to hold down SHIFT while clicking with the Selection
tool. Be aware that each level of grouping has to be ungrouped in turn. So if youve grouped a group
within a group, youll have to choose Object | Ungroup more than once to ungroup all the objects.

Change Objects with a Bounding Box

A bounding box is an imaginary, non-printing border around an object or group of objects. It facilitates
some basic transformations, including resizing, reshaping, mirroring (flipping), and rotating objects.
Illustrators object editing tools provide detailed control over any kind of tweaking you wish to apply to
an object or group of objects.
Youll explore each of those powerful tools shortly, but first heres the quick-and-dirty way to change an
object. When you just want to quickly and (relatively) crudely resize, rotate, or flip an object or quickly
experiment with all these changes to an object, the simplest way to do so is to use a bounding box.

View a Bounding Box

To view a bounding box around a selected object, choose View | Show Bounding Box (if this is not
already selected). When you do, a bounding box with four small, square side anchor points and four
corner anchor points appears, as shown in Figure 7-3.

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Figure 7-3: The bounding box enables quick-and-dirty resizing and rotating.
Most editing is the same, whether or not a bounding box is displayed. For example, you move an object
or group with the bounding box displayed by clicking on a path or fill within the bounding box and click
and drag to a new location on the artboard.
Tip Holding down alt as you click and drag makes a copy of the object(s) at a new location.

Resize and Reshape with a Bounding Box

To resize an object, click and drag on a side or corner anchor point while holding down SHIFT. Holding
down SHIFT maintains the height-to-width (aspect) ratio of your object(s) as you resize. Figure 7-4
shows a group being resized using a bounding box with the SHIFT key.

Figure 7-4: The height-to-width ratio is maintained as the squirrel is resized with bounding box.
The bounding box around this set of grouped objects provides easy access to basic transformation
actions. If you want to resize without maintaining the height-to-width ratio of your object(s), click and
drag a side anchor point to change height or width, or a corner anchor point to resize both height and
width independently of each other. With this technique, you can make an object or group wider,
narrower, shorter, or taller.

Rotate and Flip with a Bounding Box

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Displaying a bounding box around selected objects also makes it easy to rotate or mirror (flip) these
objects. To rotate a selection, choose the Selection tool, and move your cursor near a corner or side
anchor point. As you do, a rotation cursor appears, as shown in Figure 7-5. Click and drag with the
rotation cursor to rotate the selected object(s) around the center point of the selection.

Figure 7-5: Using the rotation cursor with a bounding box

You can also use a bounding box to mirror (flip) an object horizontally or vertically. The routine for
mirroring an object is similar to the one for resizing, except that you drag an anchor point across the
box, and post the opposite edge of the bounding box, creating a mirrored version of the object.
If you hold down the OPTION (ALT) key as you mirror an object with the bounding box, the object
mirrors using the center of the selected object as an axis. If you hold down the SHIFT key as you mirror,
the object retains its height-to-width ratio but also flips horizontally and vertically, as shown in Figure 76.

Figure 7-6: Quick mirroring with the bounding box

Tip If you want to rotate your object around an axis other than the center point, jump ahead to the
Rotate Objects Precisely section.

Resize and Reshape with the Free Transform Tool

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Enabling a bounding box around selected objects has its merits: it makes rotation, sizing, and mirroring
easy to accomplish. The downside is that you have to put up with a bounding box popping up on your
screen whenever you select an object or group of objects.
If the bounding box is getting in your way, choose View | Hide Bounding Box (or COMMAND-SHIFTB [CTRL-SHIFT-B]) to make it disappear.
The Free Transform tool applies a functioning bounding box to selected objects. Use it to rotate, resize,
or mirror a selected object. When you select a different tool, the bounding box created by the Free
Transform tool disappears.
If you are an artist or designer who is new to Illustrator, or if you dont need precision sizing and
rotating, you will find the Free Transform tool useful. Its versatile, intuitive, and easy to use. You can
quickly resize a selected object using the Free Transform tool by clicking and dragging on a side or
corner anchor point. Hold down SHIFT as you drag to maintain the height-to-width ratio as you resize
the object.
To rotate a selected object with the Free Transform tool, hover over a corner or side anchor point and
click and drag to rotate clockwise or counterclockwise. You can easily mirror (flip) a selected object
using the Free Transform tool by clicking and dragging on a side anchor point. To mirror the object
horizontally, drag a right or left side anchor point over and past the other side anchor point. To mirror
vertically, click on the top anchor point and drag past the bottom anchor point.
As mentioned, using the Free Transform tool is very similar to displaying a bounding boxits really a
matter of your preference as to whether you want and need the bounding box displayed all the time.
Note For more precise control over sizing and rotating, you'll want to use the Scale and Rotate tools.
These tools allow you to enter sizes or rotation angles digitally, and to rotate an object around any
of the anchor pointsnot just the middle of the object.

Resize Precisely with the Scale Tool

The Scale tool has a couple of advantages over sizing freehand with a bounding box or the Free
Transform tool. The Scale tool allows you to resize to an exact percentageso, for instance, you can
resize an object to 50 percent to make it exactly half size. And you can use the Scale tool to resize an
object from a defined point, as opposed to just scaling from a selected anchor point with the Free
Transform tool.
Using the Scale tool interactively is a bit like driving on an icy roadcontrolling the process is a bit
scary until you get comfortable with the tool.
When you resize using the Scale tool, you simply click and drag on a selected object to change the size.
If you hold down the SHIFT key and click and drag out at about a 45-degree angle from a corner handle,
you can maintain the height-to-width ratio of the original drawing. If you hold down the SHIFT key and
drag up or down, you will change only the height or the width, as shown in Figure 7-7.

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Figure 7-7: Using the shift key with the Scale tool to change only width while maintaining the original
height
By default, when you resize a selected object with the Scale tool, the center of the object is used as the
point from which the object is enlarged or compressed. You can change that point by clicking within a
selected object with the Scale tool. Then, when you resize the object, the newly selected point is the
pivot and hub from which the object is resized, as shown in Figure 7-8.

Figure 7-8: Rescaling around a point fixed by the Scale tool

The Scale dialog box resizes digitallyno clicking and dragging required. It also allows you to control
whether to rescale an objects stroke (outline) proportionally as you rescale the object.
To resize using the Scale dialog box, follow these steps:
1. Select any object(s).
2. With the object(s) selected, double-click the Scale tool. The Scale dialog box appears.
3. Use the Scale box in the Uniform section to enter a percentage if you want to resize the object
while maintaining the same height-to-width ratio.
4. Use the Horizontal and Vertical boxes in the Non-Uniform section of the dialog box to enter
different percentages if you want to resize the height and width independently.
5. Click the Preview check box to see the object interactively resize on the artboard as you enter
values in the sizing boxes.
6. Click the Scale Strokes & Effects check box if you want to proportionally resize strokes and
effects.

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7. Click the Objects check box to resize objects. Youll almost always want to select this option;
otherwise, the object itself wont resize.
Tip For the very rare occasions when you want to resize the pattern fill in an object but not the
object itself, deselect the Objects check box. You'll explore pattern fills in Chapter 18.
8. Click the Patterns check box to proportionally resize patterns within a shape.
9. When your object is correctly resized, click OK (or press ENTER).
Figure 7-9 shows an object rescaled with and without rescaling the associated stroke.

Figure 7-9: The rescaled fish with unchanged stroke now has proportionally thicker lines.

Rotate Objects Precisely

The Rotate tool rotates objects with the same kind of precision and control that the Scale tool uses. As
with the Scale tool, you can use an associated dialog box to define rotation to a precise angle. And, as
with the Scale tool, the Rotate tool can be used to define a rotation point that acts as a fulcrum as you
interactively rotate an object.
To rotate a selected object (or set of objects) precisely with the Rotate dialog box, double-click the
Rotate tool. The Rotate dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 7-10.

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Figure 7-10: Defining rotation for a selected objectthe negative value in the Angle box indicates that
the bird is being rotated counterclockwise
The value you enter in the Angle box of the dialog box defines the degree of rotation. The Copy button
creates a second, rotated version of your selected object while leaving the original unchanged. The
Preview check box allows you to view changes on the artboard as you make them in the dialog box,
before your press ENTER or click OK. The Objects and Patterns check boxes allow you to elect to
rotate objects and/or their fill patterns independently.
The Rotate tool also allows you to rotate around a selected anchor point in a selected object. To rotate an
object around a selected anchor point, follow these steps:
1. Select the object (or objects).
2. Click the Rotate tool.
3. Click an anchor point on the selected object to establish the rotation point.
4. Click and drag a different anchor point to rotate the object around the selected point, as shown in
Figure 7-11.

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Figure 7-11: The bird is being rotated around a defined fulcrum point.

Use More Transform Tools

The Rotate tool tearoff includes the Reflect tool. The Scale tool tearoff reveals the Shear and Reshape
tools. All three of these tools provide more options for warping, stretching, and basically mangling any
selected object(s). These tools work much as the Rotate tool does, but they produce different effects.
In the dialog boxes for the Reflect and Shear tools, the Preview check box shows your changes before
you click OK or press ENTER. The Objects and Patterns check boxes, when available, determine
whether objects and/or pattern fills are transformed.
The Reflect, Shear, and Reshape tools are demonstrated in Figure 7-12.

Figure 7-12: The Reflect and Shear tools work on the objects in a cohesive way, while the Reshape tool
works on individual elements of an object.

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The Reflect tool (in the Rotate tool tearoff) allows you to mirror selected objects precisely by using a
dialog box. You can flip an object upside down by choosing the Horizontal button. Choosing Vertical
mirrors an object without changing the top/bottom relationship. Or you can rotate both horizontally and
vertically by choosing the Value button and entering an angle in the Angle box.
The Shear tool (in the Scale tool tearoff) skews selected objects. The shearing (skewing) takes place
around the center point of the object unless you first click to set an anchor point. In that case, the anchor
point is fixed while the rest of the object shears. You can also define shearing for a selected object by
double-clicking the Shear tool to open a dialog box similar to the Rotate dialog box.
The Reshape tool (also in the Scale tool tearoff) interactively works on selected objects to stretch and
distort them. Click first to set a fixed anchor point, and then drag on another point to distort the object.
The Reshape tool is not associated with a dialog box.

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