If, when you're creating a compound shape, you know that you want to expand it, you can hold the Option (Alt) key while clicking the Add, Subtract, Intersect, or Exclude button. To do so, you can expand a compound shape by clicking the Expand button in the Pathfinder panel. It is certainly useful to be able to select the individual objects of a compound shape, but many times you just want to create a new shape that combines all the selected shapes. The Exclude shape mode combines all the selected shapes and removes the areas in which the objects overlap with each other. The Intersect shape mode combines all the selected shapes and displays only the areas in which all the objects overlap with each other. This function replaces the Minus Front pathfinder, which was found in older versions of Illustrator. The Subtract shape mode combines all the selected shapes and takes the top objects and removes them from the bottommost object. This function replaces the Unite pathfinder, which you can find in older versions of Illustrator.
The Add shape mode combines all the selected shapes and gives the appearance as if they were all joined together. The following are the four shape modes you can choose from in the Pathfinder panel: See the sidebar "Illustrator Shape Modes and Photoshop Shape Layers" for additional functionality that you can take advantage of when using compound shapes.įigure 4.62 Here are some examples of the different possible shape modes you can apply.
Using the Direct Selection tool, you can select the individual objects in the compound shape and edit them. When you create a compound shape from multiple selected objects, the resulting shape appears as a single object and takes on the attributes of the topmost object ( Figure 4.62). Once a shape mode is applied, the resulting shape is referred to as a compound shape.
The top row of the Pathfinder panel contains four functions, called shape modes, which are used to combine multiple selected shapes in different ways. Illustrator's Pathfinder panel, which you can open by choosing Window > Pathfinder, contains a wellspring of functions that you can perform with at least two selected paths. It can also be easier to edit existing shapes using other shapes rather than trying to adjust the anchor points of individual paths. Although you can use a variety of the tools we've mentioned so far in this chapter to create and edit paths of any shape, many times it's far easier to combine simple shapes to create more complex ones. Those tools are great on their own, but you'll often need to create shapes that are a bit more complex. In Chapter 2, Vectors 101, you learned about using the basic drawing tools such as the Rectangle tool and the Ellipse tool. Learn More Buy Exploring the Pathfinder Panel
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