
When one knows the hows and whys of Width tool, it becomes apparent that the Brush tool and Width Tool, can’t work together. The idea is, you don’t need Brush tool when you have Width Tool and vice versa, which brings us to our next checkpoint. When you already click the Basic and then draw, the default calligraphy brush gets applied to your path, which is devoid of any variant effects. The Basic option in Brush Panel isn’t even a brush but rather means to remove brush strokes for the selected paths and convert it to just a standard path.

When you first “ draw the path”, select the “Basic” option in Brush Panel (F5). While using the Brush tool in Illustrator, make sure to convert the Brush Definition to “Basic”. The standard stroke can be converted into any desired shape using Width Tool. This helps a great deal with the main function of the Width Tool i.e. All the features designed for Width Tool can give best results when the stroke is centrally aligned. The primary reason for this is to optimize the functionality of the tool. This way you will find that the Width Tool is enabled now if it wasn’t working before in case the stroke was aligned other than centrally. This gets avoided by default when the path is open. For aligning the stroke in the center, click the first option and you are good to go. Just beside ‘Fill Color’, click the underlined word ‘Stroke’ and you will find three options in Align Stroke. The feature is disabled when the stroke is aligned to “Inside” or “Outside”. One of the foremost step while making Paths which you are going to enhance further using Width Tool, is to make sure that the Stroke is aligned to the “Center”. Here’s the checklist to go through for maximizing the use of width tool in Adobe Illustrator: 1. Do remember that as this will help in getting your edits done quickly.īesides knowing the basic functions of the tool, there are many advanced uses for it and right ways of using the Width tool. To make things quick, Shift + W gets handy as a short key for Width Tool. While there is an array of tools available in Illustrator, width tool in Adobe Illustrator is one such hidden gem, which majority of design artists use in their tasks regularly.
