Overview

In This Chapter

• Discovering different methods of selection

• Selecting objects, points, and groups

• Adding to and taking away from selections

• Using the Magic Wand tool

• Selecting without tools

• Understanding the Select menu

• Fine-tuning points

To change a path in Illustrator, you have to select it. In fact, 99 percent of the time you can’t make any changes at all to a path unless it’s selected. Some exceptions are when you change Document Color Mode (see Chapter 1) and when you use the Pen tool to continue on an existing path (see Chapter 7). Everything else requires that you make a selection.

When you make a selection in Illustrator, you’re saying, “From this moment forward, I want to change this part of the artwork and nothing else.” You’re targeting a point, path, object, or objects for change. By using Illustrator’s wide variety of selection tools and commands, you can target everything from a single point to your entire document. And the changes you make — the size, rotation, fill or stroke colors, and so on — simultaneously affect everything that you select.