05 Inserting Clip Art and Editing

To teach you how to place clip art into Illustrator and then edit the clip art. You can change the colour, shape and delete part of the clip art with ease. Although this tutorial uses Word as an example, you can use any program that uses clip art.

Step one: Selecting a picture in Word

1. Open Word (Start > Programs > Microsoft > Word).
2. Go to: Insert > Picture > Clip Art
3. In the 'Search for Clips' text box type a word and do a search.
4. When you have found a picture that you like, right click on it and select: Insert.
   This will place the clip art into Word, even though you might not see this.
5. Close the clip art box by clicking on the at the top right corner of the clip art window.
   You should now be able see your clip art picture on the page in word.
6. Click on your clip art. You should now see a box around the clip art.
7. Go to: Edit > Copy. This will place the clip art into the computers temporary memory.

Step two: Placing the picture into Illustrator

1. Open Illustrator (Start > Programs > Adobe > Adobe Illustrator 10).
2. Go to: Edit Paste.
   Your clip art should now be in Illustrator.
3. If you wish you can change the size of it with the Free Transform tool: .

Step two: Changing colours and groups

The clip art will come into Illustrator as a group. That is a number of lines and shapes grouped into one object.

Once objects are grouped, selecting any part of the group with the selection tool or the lasso tool selects the entire group. If you are unsure whether an object is part of a group, select it with the selection tool.

The Direct Selection tool and Direct-Lasso tool let you select a single path or object that is part of one group or several groups. If you have groups of objects within other groups, you can select the next group in the grouping hierarchy by using the Group Selection tool . Each successive click adds another subset of grouped objects to the selection.

Three groups: Group A is part of group B, which in turn is part of group C.
To select grouped objects with the group-selection tool:

Select the Group Selection tool , and click the path you want to select.
Click the same place again to select successive groups until you have selected everything you want to include in your selection.

First click selects an object (left). Second click selects group A (right).

Third click selects next group, which is group B (left). Fourth click selects group C (right).

Three groups: Group A is part of group B, which in turn is part of group C.

To select grouped objects with the group-selection tool:

Select the Group Selection tool , and click the path you want to select.
Click the same place again to select successive groups until you have selected everything you want to include in your selection.

First click selects an object (left). Second click selects group A (right).

Third click selects next group, which is group B (left). Fourth click selects group C (right).

To change colours of of your clip art

1. Use the Group Selection tool to select parts of the group.
2. Open your colour pallet, if it is not already open: Window > color.
3. Select different colours. Remember that the colour will only apply to either the stroke or the fill, depending on which is a the front: At the moment the stroke is at the front therefore if you select a colour it will apply to the stroke only.

Before

After

Step three: Editing the shape of the clip art

It is easiest to break up the group before editing.

To break up the group

1. Select the Selection tool: (Not the Group Selection tool ).
2. Select the clip art.
3. Go to: Object > Ungroup.
4. Deselect by clicking on the white page.
5. Reselect the clip art.
6. Go to: Object > Ungroup.
   
   You will need to repeat this several times before the clip art is completely ungrouped.
   
   Occasionally Illustrator does not ungroup the clip art completely. If this happens, use the Group Selection tool to select a single part of the group and delete it. When you paste it back again it will not be part of the group, although it will also not be in the correct place, but you can move it.
   
   You may notice that when the clip art is selected, that it has a rectangle around it.
   
   
   Bug viewed in outline view: You can see a rectangle.
   
   The rectangle is a left over from Word. You do not need it in Illustrator so it is best to remove it.
7. Deselect the clip art by clicking on the white page.
8. Go to: View > Outline. You need to do this as the rectangle is invisible in Preview mode.
9. Select the rectangle with the Group Selection tool and delete it.
10. You will notice other bits of debris, delete them as well.
11. Go back to Preview mode: View > Preview.

Editing the shape of the clip art

Now that the clip art is broken down into it's component parts you can edit it as you would any other drawing in Illustrator. Use the following tools to edit the shape:

Direct Selection tool: Use this to select anchor points, move them and change the position of the control points.

Convert Anchor Point tool: To change the shape of a path.

Delete Anchor Point tool: To change the shape of a path.

Add Anchor Point tool: To change the shape of a path.

Pencil tool: Select a path and redraw the shape of the path.

Select a path and change its size.

And others.

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