Great tool for Fashion Designers in Illustrator CS5: DRAW INSIDE

29. Jul, 2010 1 Comment

When Adobe Creative Suite CS5 was launched , the only feature which blew me away was the Draw inside feature in Illustrator. This tool is a life savior for most of the designers and Illustrators. Until now the clipping mask and make bounding box feature used to rule this sector of designing. But now it this little tool which sits inside of the tool bar, right at the bottom, just above Change Screen Modes .Just select the part you want to draw or paint in and click the DRAW INSIDE button and illustrator does the rest. It make the the clipping mask and all other calculation for you in less than a second. This feature can be used in Text, shapes, objects, and just about any thing you have selected on your canvas. Also not only you can use the pencil tool , but also all types of brushes, gradients, symbols etc etc to draw and stroke inside your selection. Making this the most versatile tool in the entire Illustrator CS5

Lets begin with a simple example

The Draw Inside Feature lies in the bottom of the tools panel .

in this instancce we have chosen to give the demonstration with text.

Change the color of the text if you wish to. And click the Draw Inside button, the Circle which is below the no fill box. Immediately you will see that illustrator has guessed that you want to draw inside the text, so it places a kind of bounding box around the text. The dotted line which you see around the 4 corners.

Select the Brush tool or gradient tool, or pencil , any thing you want .

Simply make the strokes over the text or the object. Don’t worry if your strokes go out side the text. Illustrator will clip it for you , instantly. When you are done, the text will look some what like this.. Also you can manually release the clipping mask if you wish to by right clicking over the object and choosing Release Clipping mask.

This feature can be used to create logos, design complicated path objects etc. The possibilities of this feature ends where your thinking ends. Enjoy.!