As graphic designers, we’ve all been there. We’ve spilled coffee (or soy sauce) on something (our keyboard) and thought COMMAND Z! Only to realize that doesn’t work in real life. To help you cope with the loss of whatever just died a liquid death, below is a list of our commonly used illustrator shortcuts. You can’t use these in your real life either but they’ll help you to work more efficiently as a graphic designer on infographics, logos, or whatever it is that you do in illustrator.
Edit
- Cmd + Z : Undo
- Shift + Cmd + Z : Redo
- Shift + Cmd + V : Paste in place
- Shift + Cmd + Option + V : Past in place on all artboards
- Cmd + I : Spell check
Guides
- Cmd + 5 : Make guides
- Alt + Cmd : Lock guides
- Cmd + R : Show artboard rulers
- Cmd + U : Turn smart guides on and off
- Cmd + Shift + I : Hide or show the perspective grid
Tools
- P : Pen tool
- H : Hand tool
- M : Rectangle tool
- L : Ellipse tool
- T : Type tool
- Shift + O : Artboard tool
- I : Eyedropper tool
- A : Selection tool
- V : Direct selection tool
- Space : Hand tool
Object
- Cmd + G : Groups selected items
- Shift + Cmd + G : Ungroups selected items
- Cmd + A : Select all objects
- Shift + Click : Select multiple items
- Option + Click on Layer : Selects everything on that layer
- Shift + Cmd + ] : Move a selection to the front
- Shift + Cmd + [ : Move a selection to the back
- Shift + Cntrl + B : Hide or show bounding box
- Shift + Drag : Scale proportionally
- Cmd + 2 : Lock object
- Option + Drag : Duplicates object
View
- Cmd +/- : Zoom in and out of the document
- Cmd + 0 : Recenters the selected artboard
- Shift + F : Presentation mode
Strokes and fills
- X : Toggle between stroke and fill
- Shift + X : Swap stroke and fill
- > : Gradient fill mode
- / : Removes fill/stroke
Pen tool
- Option + Click : Activates anchor point tool when an anchor point is clicked
- Cmd : With pen tool active, allows you to move an anchor point while using the pen tool
- + : With pen tool active, this activates add point tool
- - : With pen tool active, this activates remove point tool
- Cmd + J : Join two anchor points
More tips and tricks
