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Participant
May 7, 2021
Question

How to open small artwork, rotate, scale up to edit, then scale back and rotate to original size?

  • May 7, 2021
  • 3 replies
  • 912 views

I have a really hard time trying to rotate and scale back edited shapes to their original size. Is there any way to do this so they are precisely as they were, rather than eyeball it?

I have a template for Go Kart panels decal. It's not very convenient to work with some of the panels when they are upside down and small in size. So I want to rotate them, scale them up, do all the changes, then scale them back down to their original size. 

Given their shapes are very uneven and rotation is not exactly 45 or 90 degrees, i just rotate them free hand till they become easy to work with, it's hard to get back to their original size, because if they are not exactly 100% rotated back how they were, scaling them down produce differences in size.

Is there some way to snap it back (I don't have a better word) so no matter what the orientation or size it gets back and fits nicely to its original size? 

 

Thank you for taking the time to read, appreciate any tips on how to go about it.

Best regards



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3 replies

michelew83603738
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 7, 2021

Why aren't you just rotating the canvas and zooming in and out? Or am I missing something. It seems like it would be a much easier workflow than what you are doing.

Ton Frederiks
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 8, 2021

Probably because the shipping version of Illustrator does not have a rotating canvas 🙂

Ton Frederiks
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 7, 2021

I think rotate canvas would do what you want (combined with a normal zoom in/out)

According to this feature request there is a beta with this feature:

https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/19196641-illustrator-rotation-of-the-artboard

You must first join the prerelease program see here for instructions:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator/illustrator-beta-for-apple-silicon-m1-devices-inviting-users-to-test-amp-share-feedback/td-p/11954250

Kurt Gold
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 7, 2021

I'm not quite sure about your approach. Possibly I even do not understand what you are going to do at all.

 

As per your description, it may be possible that you underestimate the Scale tool (uniform), but again: It may be that I do misunderstand your request.

 

Participant
May 7, 2021

Hi there 

I have a decal template which I need to fill it with graphics and text. I can't change the size because it is a precise fit for a vehicle's panels. The printer will scale it up upon output, since it's a vector, the quality will be fine. But I can't touch the size. 

 

Now, the shape are too small, so I want to scale them up, rotate them little to the left, then upside down, then back... to fit in my graphics and text. I don't want to spell things upsdie down or sideways so I like to roate the shape to make it comfortable to work with. 

 

Now with all the graphics and text in place, I need to rotate it the way the decal template is, scale it back down, and make sure my copy fits perfectly in the decal outline. If these were rectangles, it would be easy to rotate them and scale them to the size of the oriignal following it's H and W. But I can't rotate them back EXACTLY as they way so when I follow the size H and W of the original, it doesn't scale the copy accurately. I need to zoom zoom zoom, eyeball it to make sure the copy fit perectly into the original. 

 

So I want to find out, if there is any way I can scale up, rotate at random, and reverse it back to the EXACT size of the original when I'm done eiditing it. 

 

Does it make more sense now?

 

Inspiring
May 7, 2021

Hi there!

 

Illustrator will remember your rotation angle in the Transform Panel, so once you're finishing desgining your decals just reset the angle back to 0º.

 

 

In terms of remembering the original position of the decals, you can move them by an exact value which is easy to remember. Select the decal with the black arrow tool (Selection Tool) and hit Enter to bring up the Transform tool, and then use a nice round number for the horizontal and/or vertical move. Use the same amount but negative numbers to move them back in their original position. Does this make sense?