Nudge

Description

Precisely adjust the position of art objects, patterns, and dashes, as well as remove all previous adjustments to patterns, images, and placed objects.

Nudge for Adobe Illustrator performs several functions:

• Precisely adjusts the position of an art object (native art only, excluding graphs and some live or plugin objects)
• Fine-tunes the position of an object’s pattern fill, either by clicking buttons in a panel or dragging a tool
• “Slides” dash pattern forward or backward along a path
• Untransforms a dash pattern, fill pattern, or placed or embedded object

To use it, select Nudge from the Window menu to open the panel. Select the object(s) you wish to modify, then click on the arrow buttons to move the object, pattern fill, or dashed pattern by one point. Hold down the Command/Control key to move 1/2 point, the Option/Alt key to move 1/4 point, the Control (Mac only) key to move 1/8 point. Holding down combinations of these keys will divide the distance it moves for even more precision. Hold down the Shift key to move 2 points, Shift-Command for 4 points, Shift-Option for 8 points, Shift-Control for 16 points, or combinations of Shift and the other modifier keys for larger increments.

Patterns can also be moved by dragging the pattern with a tool.

The “Untransform” button allows you to restore a fill pattern, dash pattern, placed image or imbedded raster object to its default setting. This will remove any transformations such as scaling, rotating, etc., that may previously have been done.

The flyout menu contains three items to help you work with transformations in your artwork. This is most useful for embedded raster images.

• Get Transformation Matrix copies the transformation matrix of the topmost selected object.
• Apply Transformation Matrix applies a previously copied matrix to another object.
• Show Transformation Matrix shows the position, skew, rotation, and effective raster resolution of the matrix last copied.

Requires Adobe Illustrator CS6 – CC.