How to Use the Magic Wand Tool in Adobe Illustrator

You've become pretty comfortable with Photoshop, and you want to try something in Illustrator. A lot of the tools look the same, but you go to select some pixels with the magic wand tool, and you don't get the marching ants you were hoping for. What's going on? Luckily, you can apply your Photoshop knowledge to Illustrator, if you keep the right mindset. This guide will help you get started with the magic wand tool.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Computer
• Adobe Illustrator
• Open Illustrator Document

1. Make a few filled and stroked shapes on your document (for practice). Use the rectangle tool or one of the other shape tools.

2. Click on the magic wand tool in the toolbar. Click on your shape. Notice that the path is now highlighted. This highlight is what you are looking for. Illustrator doesn't use marching ants the way you might be accustomed to from Photoshop.

3. Double click on the magic wand tool in the toolbar. A little menu will pop up.

4. Expand that little menu. There is a small icon in the upper right of the menu which will let you expand it.

5. Check one of the boxes such as "stroke" or "fill color." Depending on which box you check, the magic wand tool will now select everything in the layer that shares that attribute or characteristic. So If you have a bunch of red and blue rectangles, and you check "fill color" and click on a red rectangle, all of the red rectangles will be selected.

Tips & Warnings

• Hold down the shift key to highlight more than one type of object at once.
• You will not get marching ants--that's only in Photoshop!

[mrsrussell]

on 2/28/2009 great article! I love using illustrator but i was a little confused about what the wand tool was actually for. Thanks!!!! 5*