Moving Through Infinite Vision

Background

Recently over at Illcraft Artist and Illustrator Brian Denham wrote a blog post titled "Double Vision". Whereby, he opens a second copy of the same Illustrator document in order to have a zoomed out view of the document open on one side of the screen and the zoomed in document he's editing on the other. He feels it saves him time so he doesn't have to zoom in and out constantly when working on artwork.

This is something I had never done. So, it got me thinking what other aspects of Moving, Zooming, and Viewing an open Illustrator document was I not aware of nor taking advantage of. Also, I'm using CS3. So, all the techniques below may or may not work in earlier versions of Illustrator.

Moving and Zooming

The basics of moving and zooming around a document got me through years of using Illustrator. Of course you have the scroll bars (Not my favorite). The Hand Tool (H) is much easier to work with than the scroll bars for moving yourself around the document. It allows you to literally grab and move the window view around.

In the bottom left hand corner is a magnification selection area. Or use the shortcut to Zoom Out Command/Ctrl + Minus Sign or to Zoom In Command/Ctrl + Plus Sign. These shortcuts follow the defaults set in that magnification area in the bottom left hand corner of the screen.

When you want to control the area of your zoom use the Zoom Tool (Z). Double Clicking on the Zoom Tool in the toolbar will bring you to a 100 percent magnification. This is not the same as going to View > Actual Size (Command/Ctrl + 1). The Actual Size brings you to the same magnification, but to the default center of the document. Whereas, Double clicking the Zoom Tool will be based on where you are in the document. View > Fit In Window (Command/Ctrl + 0) will fit your whole document centered in the window. This is a good shortcut. Sometimes you need to quickly see how your document as a whole is looking.

Set Your Own Views

This is a bit more advanced use of moving around the document. It allows you to create exact positions and magnifications you can jump to on the screen. I don't use this technique very often. Though it may be helpful to you.

Go to View > New View. In the View Dialogue Box enter the Name you want to give your view. Now any time you want to jump to this exact spot on the screen at this exact magnification you go to View > Name (Name is what you named the view, in this case Logo).

This technique doesn't take very long and can help you get to specific areas of a document quickly. It is especially helpful with large documents that have areas you want to zoom in close to. If you use illustrator for website creation views can be used for specific areas or regions of your document. You could create a header view, a footer view, or a zoomed in view for the logo. Let me know how you use views in the comments.

Ever since I picked up Illustrator I wanted to be able to set keyboard shortcuts for views. If this ability was in place I would use views all the time. This is a feature I would love to have Adobe add. It would make views really useful. In website creation it would allow me to fly around the document with quick keyboard commands. I'm sure graphic artists would benefit from this feature as well when creating large illustrations.

Navigator Panel

The Navigator Panel is great. I've only recently started using it. You can get to areas of the document really fast with this tool. I usually keep it really small and have it open above my layers. For demonstration purposes I enlarged it in the screenshot below.

To open the Navigator Panel you go to Window > Navigator. Using this tool is really intuitive. Just drag the view square around the Navigator Panel and it will mirror your movements in the open document Window. All the shortcut magnifications will work and the Navigator Panel display box will adjust in size accordingly. You can also type over the magnification amount in the left hand corner of the Panel or use the scrolllbar in between what looks like a small mountain range and a big mountain range. Clicking on the Big Mountain Range Icon is like hitting Command/Ctrl + Plus Sign and clicking on the Small Mountain Range Icon is like hitting Command/Ctrl + Minus Sign.

In the next section I'll cover multiple Window. The Navigator panel does work with multiple windows open. I would like it if Adobe had the position of the box in the Navigator Panel auto adjust based on the new position and magnification of the selected window. That would improve its use with multiple windows open. On to using multiple windows.

Multiple Windows

The ability for Illustrator to open Multiple Windows makes me wish I had a dual screen setup, which I currently do not. It would be cool to have a full document view on one screen and the window I'm working in on the other screen.

Opening another window is really simple. Go to Window > New Window. Then scale the window. Position it where you want and set the magnification to anything you see fit. A selection or change you make in one window will automatically show in any other window. You can save any open window. Even though there are multiple windows open its still just one document. In the screenshot below you can see how the selection of the AiBURN icon is the same in every open window.

Apply These Techniques in Your Workflow

As with most programs we get used to working with certain tools and routines and may not realize the program has more options. Maybe you already used or were at least aware of all the tools and shortcuts covered in this article. If not let me know in the comments how they work out for you. How have they improved your workflow? Also, let me know if you have any techniques that work well for Moving, Zooming, or Viewing an Illustrator document that were not covered in this article. I'd love to expand my skill set as well.