Is There a Way to Smooth Pen Lines in Illustrator?
Even experienced users of Adobe Illustrator find themselves faced with the need to simplify objects they've drawn with the application's Pen tool. Regardless of the care you take in creating vector objects, you may find it easier to smooth out an unintentional kink in a path you've already drawn than to delete your work and start again. Illustrator's Smooth tool offers the help you need.
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Instructions
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Select the object you want to smooth. Use the Selection tool for standalone objects and the Direct Selection tool for objects within groups.
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Click on the triangle in the lower-right corner of the Pencil tool in the Adobe Illustrator toolbox to reveal the Smooth tool. The tool also shares a toolbox location with the Path Eraser.
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Double-click on the Smooth tool in the Adobe Illustrator toolbox to bring up the Smooth Tool Preferences dialog box. Adjust the settings to your needs. The Fidelity setting ranges from 0.5 to 20. At lower values, small movements of the tool add new anchor points to the paths you smooth. At higher values, the Smooth tool reduces path complexity. The Smoothness setting ranges from zero to 100 percent and regulates how much the Smooth tool alters the path.
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Slide the Smooth tool along all or parts of the path you want to smooth. Treat paths more than once to increase the amount of smoothing without raising the tool's settings.
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Tips & Warnings
Make a copy of your object before you use the Smooth tool so you can revert to the unaltered version without using multiple undos. Experiment with the tool's settings so you become familiar with how it operates. Use the Smooth tool to produce subtle variations on an object of which you need multiple copies. The Smooth tool helps minimize the machine-like precision of duplicated vector artwork. To use the Smooth tool on type, convert it to outlines first.
At high settings, the Smooth tool obliterates details. Use lower settings and repeated applications to achieve more subtle results.
References
- Adobe Systems: Using Adobe Illustrator CS5
- "The Adobe Illustrator CS5 Wow! Book"; Sharon Steuer; 2010
- "Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Premium All-in-One for Dummies"; Jennifer Smith, et al.; 2010
- "Illustrator CS5 for Windows and Macintosh Visual QuickStart Guide"; Elaine Weinmann, et al.; 2011
