Release the mouse button when you have the settings you require. Use the Left Arrow key to set the set corner roundness to the minimum setting or the Right Arrow key to set it to the maximum. Use the Up Arrow key to increase the roundness of the corners or the Down Arrow key to reduce the roundness of the corners. Rounded Rectangle Tool : Using the Rounded Rectangle Tool, click and drag out a rectangle, but don’t let go of the mouse button. The up, down, left and right arrow keys on the keyboard will allow you to control extra features for some of the drawing tools. A dialog will appear where you can type in the sizes you require such as the height and width. If you want to draw a shape to an exact size, choose a drawing tool such as the Rectangle Tool and click on the document and let go (don’t drag). Shift Altĭragging out a shape whilst holding down both the Alt and Shift keys will give you a constrained shape (same height and width) drawn from the centre. Release the mouse button when you have the settings you require, then the keys on your keyboard. The Star Tool and the Polygon Tool draw from the centre by default. It’s in the same place as the Alt key, so I will just call it the Alt key for simplicity. On the mac the Alt key is called the Option key. Incase you were wondering about the Option key. Release the mouse button when you have the settings you require, then the Alt key on your keyboard. Perhaps you will find this keyboard shortcut more useful with the Ellipse Tool for drawing circular objects such as wheels from the centre outwards, but it works with all the drawing tools. Holding down the Alt key while dragging a shape will allow you to draw a shape from the centre outwards.

So if you are dragging out an ellipse using the Ellipse Tool and holding down the Shift key, you will get a perfect circle. The Shift key will constrain the shape, which means that the width and height of the shape will be the same. Holding down the Shift key, click and drag out a shape. Click on the Rectangle Tool and hold the mouse button down for about a second so all the drawing tools will be revealed. The drawing tools referred to in this text can be found in the Tool bar. Creating shapes such as rectangles, ellipse or polygons with Adobe Illustrator might appear easy to do, but lets take a look at some keyboard shortcuts to give you more control.

Scale up or down adobe illustrator