Rubber Band Option for Illustrator Pen Tool

Martin Crawford

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Jun 26, 2003, 9:37:19 AM6/26/03

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The rubber band option has been available to Photoshop since version 5. It is a great feature and would be particularly useful for new users. It has been long overdue for Illustrator. Hey, why not add it to InDesign 3 as well.

Joe Duhamel

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Jun 26, 2003, 9:42:13 AM6/26/03

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"Rubber band" is exactly what the pen tool does. Are you thinking about a "free form" type of pen tool? In illustrator, that's the pencil.

Unless you're talking about something else. Exactly what functionality is missing in Illustrator's pen tool?

Gary Newman

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Jun 26, 2003, 10:23:12 AM6/26/03

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Feature-request it.

Joe Duhamel

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Jun 26, 2003, 10:25:52 AM6/26/03

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Oohh.. gotcha. Never used it. Good request.

Doug Katz

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Jun 26, 2003, 10:09:23 AM6/26/03

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Martin wants the pen tool to "pre-draw" the path segment that would appear if the user clicks at whatever point the cursor happens to be hovering... like Photoshop's toggle-able rubber band feature. AI 10.0.3 doesn't have this feature.

Larry G. Schneider

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Jun 26, 2003, 11:59:57 AM6/26/03

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Only problem. What if you are going to make a Bezier point?

Larry

Martin Crawford

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Jun 27, 2003, 6:54:19 AM6/27/03

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Thanks Gary, I've added this to the feature-request forum.

Larry, could you expand your question? As far as I have experienced it, the pen tool works very well with this feature in Photoshop. The "rubber band" can also be turned off if you don't want to use it.

Gary Newman

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Jun 27, 2003, 12:04:40 PM6/27/03

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Larry

The Rubber Band option does make bezier paths. If you have Photoshop, check it out. Some people really like it, and for those, it would make a nice feature addition to Illustrator.

Larry G. Schneider

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Jun 27, 2003, 11:56:57 AM6/27/03

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Martin,

The line you make can be vastly different if you are using Bezier curves to generate your line. Just a simple straight line rubberbanding of the line will not be of much use in this situation.

Larry

Larry G. Schneider

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Jun 27, 2003, 12:17:58 PM6/27/03

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Gary,

If you mean the Freeform Pen tool, I see what you mean. In AI, this could be accomplished easily by adding a visual track to the Pencil tool.

Larry

Gary Newman

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Jun 27, 2003, 4:20:33 PM6/27/03

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Nope, not the Freeform Pen tool. It’s an option with the regular Pen tool - it’s a pop-up in PS7.

Larry G. Schneider

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Jun 27, 2003, 4:48:10 PM6/27/03

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OK, I see what you mean now but it's not something that really adds much. You still have to click-n-drag the next point to get the full shape of the curve.

Larry

Gary Newman

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Jun 27, 2003, 5:55:36 PM6/27/03

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Yeah - I don’t care for it much either - but some people really dig it.

Oscar Rottink

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Jun 30, 2003, 3:41:26 AM6/30/03

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It is a very useful option to make smooth forms of if you would like to draw nice, smooth, clipping paths around a curved object without using too much anchors. I came at this post while searching for my Illustrator-"rubber band" but unfortunatly.. it's not there.

cydonia

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Jul 1, 2003, 12:40:22 PM7/1/03

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It's a great way to learn the pen tool, which is not really easy for some people, I learned the pen tool using the rubber band feature. Actually, the pen tool in Photoshop is superior to the pen tool in Illustrator, imo. I don't use the rubber band tool in photoshop anymore, but I definitely needed it when I started. It's like pen tool training wheels.

Mark Durgee

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Jul 2, 2003, 11:02:33 AM7/2/03

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> It's a great way to learn the pen tool, which is not really easy for some
people

It's hard for a beginner to grasp. Especially from a book. It's much easier
to learn by watching. Illustrator 7 and/or 8 used to come with a training CD
that had a video of learning to use the pen tool. That's how I went from
clicking and doing a lot of editing to getting it right in the first pass.

visualkaptur...@aol.com

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Jul 15, 2017, 10:18:07 PM7/15/17

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Larry