Unlock Creative Shape Combinations in Adobe Illustrator

Let's go over the Pathfinder feature, which is a really powerful tool that allows you to combine multiple shapes to create other ones. This can change the way that you approach drawing things. I'm going to open up an example file here, which is the Pathfinder comparison.

First, I want to show you the different modes and Pathfinders that are available. And then I want to show you an example of how to use these. So we can find Pathfinder as a panel under Window, and we can go down here to Pathfinder.

And in the Pathfinder panel, we have the shape modes, and we have the Pathfinder. So let's go through each of these. So they are fundamentally organized in different sections because they do different things.

Let's look at the artwork that I'm starting with here. I want to show you an outline mode. Just so you can see that basically all of these are the same, with the exception of Merge having two circles.

All of these are a rectangle and a circle. So we've got one color, a different color. That is important because Merge later on will have two things of the same color.

But all the rest of these are exact duplicates of each other, and we're going to have them interact in different ways. So with Pathfinder, you are going to find new paths or create new paths by combining or having shapes interact with each other. When I select these two right here, and I go to the Unite option, which is the first one, it unites them together.

It merges them together. If I view this in Outline mode, we now see that it is a single combined shape. If I take this one here and it starts with the same artwork, but then I minus Front, it subtracts the Front object because the orange was in Front, and it subtracts it from the bottom.

Intersect here gives you just where they overlap. So, just where these two intersect. And Exclude gives you the opposite.

It gives you everything, but where they intersect. Now all of these have given new paths. So sometimes they are grouped together.

And if I ungroup those, then we will see that they are different parts. And if I view this in Preview mode, we see that those are two different parts there. But it has kind of destructively changed these things.

Now, these shape modes can work in a different way. Let me just revert the file. It's basically going to close it down and reopen it without saving changes.

And this is by default destructive in the sense that those two original shapes are no longer there. They get combined into one shape. Let me undo that.

So I can go in, and I can create compound shapes, essentially. I'm not going to choose it from the menu here, but that's what they're called: compound shapes. And the way that we create compound shapes of these various types is by holding Option.

Notice when I hover over, it says Unite. And in parentheses, Option or on Windows, that would be Alt to create a compound shape that adds to the shape area. So the default, if you just click, is destructive.

On Windows, Alt-click is non-destructive. It's live. It's a live Pathfinder.

And over the years, Illustrator has switched back and forth. It used to be live, then it was destructive, then it was live. And the Option or Alt-click has always been the opposite of what the default is.

And there are kind of two camps. One camp that likes the destructive. One camp that likes the non-destructive.

I like the non-destructive way. And unfortunately, my way did not become the default. So I always have to hold Option when I click on this.

That seems to be the way that they've kind of stayed. I don't think they're switching back and forth anymore. It seems like they kind of got that out of their system.

In my opinion, the wrong side won. I think you should be non-destructive by default. And you can always be destructive later on.

So let me show you what I mean. When I Option-click, it looks like they're united. But behind the scenes, it's still the two original shapes.

They were just united in appearance. Let me switch back to preview mode. That means they are grouped together as a kind of one compound shape.

But they are made of multiple individual shapes. Compound means multiple things in one. So if I double-click to go into that group, it's still fundamentally one object.

And what's really interesting about this is that it works like one object in the sense that there is one stroke. So if I go in and add a color to this, I'm just going to do black and make this thicker. When I double-click to go in, it's acting like one object with one stroke.

Like it's united together. But I can still have the editability of the individual shapes. If I want to, I can hit Expand, which is what it does by default.

Expand would be to render that destructively. Once you expand, if I were to save and close this file and come back to it later, those original shapes would be kind of sacrificed. They were destroyed to create the final shape.

So I'd only click Expand if I really have to, if something forces me to do it. But otherwise, I like to keep it as a live compound shape. So let me just revert this file here.

So normally, if you just click it, it's destructive. You cannot just double-click to go in and edit those shapes because they are gone. Undo.

Instead, what I normally like to do in most situations is unite them by option-clicking to create the compound shape. I can still have it act like one object, but when I double-click to go in, it is still made up of those multiple objects. So, for example, mine is front.

I can option-click or alt-click on Windows, but I can still go in, and it will subtract any place where it overlaps. Intersect. Again, I'm going to option-click or alt-click on Windows.

Only where they overlap. You just get that overlap. It's all live.

And finally, exclude. Again, option-click or alt-click. And it's a live intersect that only where they overlap, you get a hole.

And that is actually a hole in the sense that you'd see through it. If I right-click on this, arrange, and bring to the front. Or I can also do this by object, arrange, and bring to the front.

Notice you can see through that to see what's behind it. So, I like these live compound shapes. If you ever want to release that compound shape, you can say release, and you get back your two original objects, which is really nice.

You can non-destructively get those back. But if you option-click, you like to keep it live most of the time. If, for some reason, you need to expand because maybe there's a certain Illustrator feature that requires you to expand it, you can always do that.

But in my opinion, why go destructive by default? In many situations, I like to keep it live as a compound shape. There can be times when you need to expand those Pathfinders, and I'll get to that in an example. But in most situations, I like to keep it live as a compound shape.

Now, that is only for shape modes. Pathfinders are different. Pathfinders are always destructive.

They don't have that alternate way of working. That's why they group them in a separate group. So this only has one way of working.

Divide. We'll go here. Divide here.

Now, at first glance, you think, well, it didn't really do much. But it did. It's just grouped, and I need to ungroup it so we can see the difference here.

And notice what it did is every place where there was kind of an overlap, it divided up into pieces. Remember, these were two separate objects, and they created all of these. So it kind of gave you the overlapping areas and kind of divided that up into different pieces.

Next, we go to Trim. Again, at first glance, it seems like nothing happened. But let me ungroup so I can move these separately.

And any underlying shapes were basically like minus front, but the top shape still is there. It just trims the underlying parts. Merge.

Take note that these two are the same color. The blue is a different color. So I'm going to Merge.

Again, all of these have to be ungrouped for you to be able to move them separately. Things that are of like color get united, and the different color that's behind gets trimmed, essentially. Crop.

It takes the top shape. Let me undo. It takes the top shape and crops in, and you only see what was kind of in that area.

So it gets rid of everything else. You only see what was inside that top shape. Outline just creates outlines.

When you do that, it's kind of like dividing, but it creates strokes. So if I go in and make them all strokes here, I'm going to make them two points so we can see them better. And I'm going to ungroup those and separate those.

So it kind of did like a divide and create lines. Almost. It's not exactly.

And minus back is kind of the opposite of minus front. It subtracts that back shape from the top shape. But it's not a live mode.

The only things that are live modes are the top four, which are essentially adding things together, subtracting things, and intersecting, and the opposite of that, which is to exclude. So those are the fundamental concepts, and I want to show you how these things get used in some examples. So let me close this file.

And I'm going to open up a different file. Here I've got some examples. This is the cloud and plug that we created earlier.

I'm going to zoom in on the cloud here. To do that, without having to choose the zoom tool and kind of to be able to drag, we can do Command Spacebar or Control Spacebar on Windows. It's possible that that might interfere with one of your system keystrokes, so you might have to change that system keystroke to allow this to work.

But if you have disabled things like on the Mac, like the spotlight keystroke or change it to something else, then Command Spacebar allows you to drag left and right to kind of zoom in on a custom area. Of course, you can also do Command Plus and Minus or, on Windows, Control Plus and Minus, but sometimes I like to get the exact zoom level by holding Command Spacebar and then scrubbing left and right to get the zoom level that I want. Now, when we created this, these were all created as completely separate, independent shapes.

So if I were to put a stroke on all of these, so I go over here to Stroke, and I give it a black stroke and make this thicker so you can see it, we can see all of the individual shapes. I don't want that. I want it to look like one shape, but I still want the editability to go in and make changes.

So if I go into my Pathfinder panel, if I were working destructively, just clicking Unite, then yes, it would look like one thing because it is. And I look in Outline Mode, and I see it is one thing. The problem that I have with that is now if I want to move or change the size of just this circle, I can't really do that because it's not a separate circle anymore.

So it's not easy to edit. Yes, I could go in with my Direct Selection tool, click on these points, and I could start to edit those points, but I can't edit it as though it's a circle because it is not one anymore. So instead, I'm going to undo and go back to before I did the Pathfinder.

Okay. And this time, when I select these shapes, I'm not just going to click Unite. I'm going to Option, or Alt click Unite, and that's going to keep it as a live compound shape.

So it looks like one shape. It has one stroke around it. Perfect.

Exactly what I want. But when I look in Outline Mode, I still have all of the component things, the things that went into it. It is a group, which I can double click on, and I can go in, I can still move these things around.

So I can edit these, and it's always keeping it as this kind of combined shape, even though it's made up of smaller individual shapes. So I love the editability of this live compound shape. So for me, that is a distinct, definite reason to use the live Pathfinder.

I don't always need that for every situation, but in this situation, I think it's great. Now you might think, well, why would I ever want to be destructive? Let me give a different example here. So let's say I'm doing the same thing here, where I want this to have a stroke, but I want it to look like one united shape.

If I am destructive, it unites it. Now, let's say, well, normally I thought you said you like it to be non-destructive. So let's say I undo that.

So I'm going to option click or alt click. And the good part about this, that it is separate, is that if I try to move these things around, of course, they are individual shapes. I can move them individually, which is great.

I love that. But what's not so great in this situation is, what if I want to round just these two points here? I want this to be round and this to be round, but nothing else. Right now, that is not a point that I can select because I still have this circle and I still have this rectangle.

So I can't select these individual points. Sure, I can select the point on the rectangle, and I could select the point on the circle, but there's no point here because it hasn't been rendered. So in this case, the edit that I want to make requires that I expand it or that I work destructively.

So if I thought that non-destructive was good, I could have started that way, just like I did, and later I could change my mind. I could say, "Oh, I really need that to be a point." So let me expand it.

And once you've expanded it, then I can go in with my direct selection because I just want to select these two points. Only those two points are selected, and I can round just those two points. But I needed to render them as points to be able to do that change.

So it's not that you always use one technique or always use the other. It depends on what you're trying to do. Normally, I do like to keep things live because I always leave myself the option later to expand it if necessary.

So you don't have to necessarily know ahead of time. I would just say, normally, just try going for that live compound shape, and you can always expand it later on if you're not sure. But hopefully, this shows you some examples of when you would use Pathfinder.

Just some other things that you won't do in the exercise, but just to kind of go a little further here. Let's say I was going to make like a little Pac-Man or something. So I'm going to make no stroke.

I'm going to double-click on the color here, and I'm going to choose yellow. Actually, I'm just going to do yellow here with maybe a little bit of orange here. A little bit of magenta here to make it orange, I should say.

Okay, so I'm making a little Pac-Man character here. If I want to cut out the eye as a whole, so I've got this eye, it doesn't matter what the color of that eye is. And you might say, well, you can't just make it white.

Well, that's not really creating a hole for it. So I do want to cut that out. So just to show that it's black, just filling it doesn't cut it out.

I want to cut it out. So that means I want to minus the front. So I'm going to option click or alt click to minus or subtract the front to actually make a literal hole out of that.

I could also draw a triangle. So let's say I go in here and I choose my polygon tool and I draw my triangle. I might want to go in with my direct selection tool and just kind of make that a little bit pointier here to kind of form the mouth.

So imagine this is kind of the mouth where things can go in, but again, I want to cut that out. So again, I need to subtract that front object. So, click option again.

And now I've got that little hole. And of course, you can have it chomp on some little bits as Pac-Man normally would. Option: drag a couple of those little bits.

Chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp. Actually, I want to put him in front. So I do object, arrange, and bring to the front.

Chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp. But the beauty of him is that he's still live. I can double-click in, and I can adjust the mouth.

I can double-click into this group, but sometimes double-clicking doesn't work. If that's a problem that you can't get in there, you can click and hold on the direct selection tool and use the group selection tool. The group selection tool is really selecting something in a group.

It's actually not for selecting the entire group. It's for working in groups. So you can grab an individual item that's in a group because the regular selection tool selects the entire group.

The group selection tool is used to select one thing in the group without having to double-click. That actually makes working with things in Pathfinders really nice. So you don't even have to do the double click.

You could just go in and start moving things around. And you don't have to do the double click or double click multiple times. And it can make working with those nice.

If you want to edit the shape, you can use the direct selection tool to edit the shape. And you can open the mouth wider or smaller, like so. So, it just gives another little example of using the Pathfinder.

And the beauty of that is that it's live. If, for any reason, you do need to expand it, you can always do that later by coming here and clicking expand. And then that would be actually rendered.

And it's just not live anymore. But let me undo. I generally would only do that if I'm forced to, if I have to do it for some reason.