Adobe Illustrator is used in various areas of design — fashion design, technical drawing, web design, art, and more. Each designer should set up the program to cater for their own specific needs, and InkScribe’s extensive options allow for this. I’m sure that very soon InkScribe will become an integral part of your workflow in Adobe Illustrator, so now I want to tell you how to customize the tool to fit your preferences.

To open the InkScribe Preferences dialog window, double click on the icon of the tool on toolbox or choose the appropriate entry in the fly-out menu of the InkScribe panel. Alternatively, if already in the InkScribe Tool, press Enter.

InkScribe Preferences window consists of two parts. The left side allows you to customize how the tool functions, and the right side allows you to customize the optional annotations.

As many options are self-explanetory (and hovering over each option provides further assistance), I will just focus on those that, in my opinion, need to be explained.

Thus, the Snap to Tangencies and Highlight Tangencies options allow us to show and create new points where paths contact tangents. The angles of these tangents are set in the Preferences dialog window of Adobe Illustrator (Edit > Preferences > General) under Constrain Angle. Alternatively, if you have VectorScribe installed, the Protractor Tool can more easily control this angle.

The Constrain Distance by Factor option allows you to create a new point of the path only at a distance that is divisible by the number specified by this option.

To work in this mode, hold down the Opt/ Alt key. This option is useful when creating symmetrical objects of specific sizes and creating drawings.

Annotations

You can determine how many rows and columns your annotations will consist of which buttons will be displayed. Adding and deleting of new buttons is achieved by dragging.

Show Cursor Annotations will show you the information about the type of the selected point when hovering over that point or associated handle.

After choosing the tool’s parameters, you can save your settings. Open the Settings fly-out menu in the lower right corner of the InkScribe Preferences window, and choose Save Settings….

The Manage Settings fly-out menu entry and window allows you to select settings and rename or delete them.

You can quickly switch between Preference presets by selecting the appropriate one from the fly-out menu. For example, if you want the InkScribe Tool to resemble the operations of the Pen Tool, select the appropriate item in the fly-out menu.

About the author

My name is Iaroslav Lazunov, I am a graphic designer from Zhytomyr, Ukraine. I am glad that I finally found the job in my life that I can share my knowledge and experiments with you in my tutorials.

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