How to use pathfinder in Illustrator CS6
Pathfinder Panel in Adobe Illustrator is truly a blessing. It helps you create complicated shapes in a click. It helps manipulate shapes to create a interesting or complicated shape.
Pathfinder Panel has some very useful tools in Illustrator CS6. It helps to merge,divide,intersect shape easily. With the help of it you can get some really interesting and complicated shapes easily. It is a time saver and helps you achieve great results in matter of just a click.
The Pathfinder Panel has various buttons that help create special shape. There are 10 buttons in the panel. Top row has 4 buttons referred to as Shape Modes and the bottom row has 6 buttons referred to as pathfinders.
So lets look at each one of them
1) Unite: This as the name suggests unites any overlapping shapes. Lets see an example,
First create a square and them make a rectangle overlapping the square. Now open the pathfinder panel from the windows menu or simply press shift + ctrl +F9 . Select both the shapes and press the first button in the pathfinder panel ie Unite and both the shapes will get combined.
2) Minus Front: This removes or deletes any shape that is on the top. So lets see how it applies to the shapes we made earlier. See how the black rectangle gets trimmed.
3) Intersect: This intersects the overlapping shapes and keeps the part that is overlapping. Looks quite opposite to minus front but here the intersecting part is preserved.
4) Exclude: This does exactly opposite of intersect so this will trim the overlapping part and unite the shape that is not overlapping.
That are the 4 shape modes of pathfinder panel. If you apply it in a strategic manner you can get really intricate and interesting shapes that will take some time to create if you try making them with pen or brush tool.
Now let's see the rest of 6 that fall under the pathfinders.
1) Divide : This divides all the intersecting shapes and make them individual shapes. what it does is intersects the shapes along the intersecting lines. The result is you get multiple shapes. For this however you have press the divide button and then select the shape right click and select ungroup. Then you will be able to select individual shape. If you don't do this you might thing nothing actually happened. So keep that in mind.
2) Trim: This is similar to Minus front the only difference being that after applying trim it does not deletes the overlapping part. It keeps them merged you have to ungroup it to select the individual shapes.
3) Merge: This as a bit of different way of working. It can be applies only to shapes having similar color! It merges overlapping shapes that are of similar color! If you apply it to shapes with different color it will do the opposite of merge ie it will intersect the overlapping part make 2 shapes out of it.
However if you have similar fill color shapes but one shape has a different color stroke applied to it then it will merge the overlapping shapes and delete the stroke.
Interesting isn't it.
4) Crop: It will crop the back shape where it intersects and keep only the overlapping part. This is exactly similar to Intersect but the difference being that this keeps the back shape.
5) Outline: The shapes will be converted to outlines. If you ungroup you get individual shapes just like divide but in outlines.
6) Minus Back : This does exactly opposite of Minus Front. It deletes the back overlapping shape.
That's it all the Pathfinder options clear and simple to use. Now you might be wondering
Pathfinder Panel has some very useful tools in Illustrator CS6. It helps to merge,divide,intersect shape easily. With the help of it you can get some really interesting and complicated shapes easily. It is a time saver and helps you achieve great results in matter of just a click.
The Pathfinder Panel has various buttons that help create special shape. There are 10 buttons in the panel. Top row has 4 buttons referred to as Shape Modes and the bottom row has 6 buttons referred to as pathfinders.
So lets look at each one of them
1) Unite: This as the name suggests unites any overlapping shapes. Lets see an example,
First create a square and them make a rectangle overlapping the square. Now open the pathfinder panel from the windows menu or simply press shift + ctrl +F9 . Select both the shapes and press the first button in the pathfinder panel ie Unite and both the shapes will get combined.
2) Minus Front: This removes or deletes any shape that is on the top. So lets see how it applies to the shapes we made earlier. See how the black rectangle gets trimmed.
3) Intersect: This intersects the overlapping shapes and keeps the part that is overlapping. Looks quite opposite to minus front but here the intersecting part is preserved.
4) Exclude: This does exactly opposite of intersect so this will trim the overlapping part and unite the shape that is not overlapping.
That are the 4 shape modes of pathfinder panel. If you apply it in a strategic manner you can get really intricate and interesting shapes that will take some time to create if you try making them with pen or brush tool.
Now let's see the rest of 6 that fall under the pathfinders.
1) Divide : This divides all the intersecting shapes and make them individual shapes. what it does is intersects the shapes along the intersecting lines. The result is you get multiple shapes. For this however you have press the divide button and then select the shape right click and select ungroup. Then you will be able to select individual shape. If you don't do this you might thing nothing actually happened. So keep that in mind.
2) Trim: This is similar to Minus front the only difference being that after applying trim it does not deletes the overlapping part. It keeps them merged you have to ungroup it to select the individual shapes.
3) Merge: This as a bit of different way of working. It can be applies only to shapes having similar color! It merges overlapping shapes that are of similar color! If you apply it to shapes with different color it will do the opposite of merge ie it will intersect the overlapping part make 2 shapes out of it.
However if you have similar fill color shapes but one shape has a different color stroke applied to it then it will merge the overlapping shapes and delete the stroke.
4) Crop: It will crop the back shape where it intersects and keep only the overlapping part. This is exactly similar to Intersect but the difference being that this keeps the back shape.
5) Outline: The shapes will be converted to outlines. If you ungroup you get individual shapes just like divide but in outlines.
6) Minus Back : This does exactly opposite of Minus Front. It deletes the back overlapping shape.
That's it all the Pathfinder options clear and simple to use. Now you might be wondering
What is the difference between Shape mode and pathfinders?
the answer is quite clear if you study the above examples. The Shape mode gives you one shape as the final result. While the Pathfinders keep the shapes intact even after applying it you have to go ahead and ungroup them to select individual shapes. These are helpful if you want to apply different color of effect to each part and do not want to delete the other shape parts.
I hope this was helpful.
Practice and play around with the Pathfinder panel and 1 day you will be able to create awesome art with it in a professional manner and become a Really Creative Graphic Designer.
