Selecting Magically with the Magic Wand

?Use the Magic Wand tool to make selections based on similarities in various object attributes — exactly the same or based on a range of settings.

To use the tool, click the object, which can be either an open or closed path (for example, a square or a line). Illustrator then goes out and selects all objects that are similar to the object you clicked. How similar do the objects have to be? Excellent question! Read on to get the scoop.

Choose Window?Magic Wand or simply double-click the Magic Wand tool to bring up the Magic Wand palette, as shown in Figure 6-6. Here you find settings for Fill, Stroke, Stroke Weight, Opacity, and Blending Mode attributes. Checking one or more of these attributes selects objects based on that particular attribute or attributes. The Tolerance setting establishes the range within which the attribute must fall to be selected. For example, if you select a stroke weight with a Tolerance setting of 2 points (pt) and click an object with a stroke weight of 5 pt, all objects with a stroke weight between 3 and 7 pt will be selected (5pt minus 2pt, and 5pt plus 2 pt). Similarly, if you check the Opacity option and set the Tolerance setting to 10%, all objects with an opacity between 40% and 60% are selected when you click an object with an opacity of 50%. The Tolerance settings for Fill and Stroke ranges from 0 to 255, which equates to the number of brightness levels. Rather than go into the techno-geek definition of brightness levels, a lower Tolerance setting selects only colors that are very similar to the object you click, whereas a higher Tolerance setting selects a wider range of colors. The only attribute that must be exactly the same is Blending Mode. (For more on blending modes, see Chapter 10.)