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.