Adobe Illustrator CS3 – Using Live Paint to Edit Paths
If you think about it, Live Paint allows you to apply attributes—such as fills and strokes—to paths based on their appearance as opposed to their actual makeup. It would be even nicer if you could actually edit your paths based on appearance as well, don’t you think? Adobe was apparently reading your mind (a scary thought) and added another tool to the mix—the Live Paint Selection tool—that enables you to select portions of objects based on their appearance.
Let’s take a look at an example. Use the Line Segment tool to draw two perpendicular lines, creating an X. Select both paths, and press Command-Option-X (Control-Alt-X) or choose Object > Live Paint > Make to convert the two paths into a Live Paint group. Now, select the Live Paint Selection tool, and click one of paths. You’ll notice that you can select each segment of the line individually. What were two paths before are now four line segments. With one segment selected, press the Delete key to remove that segment from the path. Select another segment, and change its Stroke attribute. You can also click one segment and then drag to select other segments in one step.
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The Live Paint Selection tool can also select the fills of Live Paint areas. If you have two overlapping shapes in a Live Paint group, you can select the overlap and delete it. You can also double-click to select continuous areas of similar attributes and triple-click to select similar attributes across the entire Live Paint group.
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At the end of the day, Live Paint adds a more flexible way to color and edit paths, and it also adds more value to the Pencil tool, because complete closed paths aren’t required. The important point to remember is that a Live Paint group is a group, and anything you can do with a group in Illustrator you can do with Live Paint groups as well. For example, you can add attributes such as strokes to the Live Paint group for interesting effects. Experimenting with the Live Paint feature certainly helps you when you’re editing paths, and the good news is that it’s a fun feature to use.
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