Aligning objects

hi everyone..
i'm trying to center an image on the stage and am unable to use the "align" feature in the modify menu..
it seems to always be grayed out no matter what i do.
is there a trick to using it? thanks for your help!

Hi there,
If you're trying to align a single image to the Stage, then use the smart guides by dragging the center of the image until the smart guides appear both vertically and horizontally. It'll look something like this:
(EDIT: click the image to see the vertical as well as horizontal smart guide line)
hth,
Joe

Similar Messages

Indesign CS5 - how to align objects

Dear All,
I have a problem with Indesign that is present from CS2 trough CS3 & CS4 version. I thought that CS5 version finaly will solve this issue, but it seems to me that nothing changed.
When we have to align two objects lets say in Illustrator, we may always mark the reference object by second click (then it is locked). In different software the sequence of marking objects for aligment is important (even better solution in my opinion than in Illustartor). But in Indesign things work different. If we align objects to the top - the most top object is reference. When we align to the left the object most to left is the base for aligment.
I think that everyone learned to live with that by right placing the objects before aligment. Sometimes by centering (in past versions) we were forced to lock one of the objects before aligment. But now in CS5 locked object is not selectable. Besides that I never liked this long "work around" method.
My question is how to easy align vertical centres of the objects shown on the picture below when I want object A to stay on place and object B to be centered to A. I don't want to use smart guides.
Paul

Hello Peter,
thank you for fast feedback. I appreciate it.
I don't want to use smartguides because when there are more objects around it will be confusing to guess if you have right center or not.
Changing preferences for locked objects will not help much I guess. I like the way the locked objects are unselctable now and of course, as you mentioned, it is time consuming way to go.
The case is, that I would like Adobe to add this issue to the wish list. If this "double click" way is good for Illustrator, why it is not implemented in Indesign, forcing users to use some magical, time consuming, workarounds.
To be honest, I hopped that I miss the point in this case and someone will tell me some obvious shortcut to use by selecting the objects to get the things right.
Paul

How to align object in the report layout

Hello,
I find it very difficult to aligin objects in the report editor or in the template editor. I know there are some alignment options, like aligning to the grid or aligning a group of objects, but they seem to work on the bounding rectangle for the object. For my text objects, those rectangles are arbitrarily sized. So aligning those rectangles does not correctly align the text baseline, for example.
Does anyone have a tip on how you can align objects? I there maybe a way to alter the size of objects by changing a number in a property sheet somewhere?
Regards,
Frans

The problems I am having now occur when I am editing the margin in the template editor. For some reason, the flex and confine options can not be turned off in the template editor. I believe they are turned on in this mode, at least in tools:options: paper layout they are turned on. But anyway, this really does not matter because I don't have nested objects in the margin. The objects that will go flying off are completely unrelated to the object I want to move or resize.
Update: I have just tried editing the layout of a report that was based on the template I am working on. Turning flex off there had a positive effect. It seems indeed the 'flex' setting is to blame for the problems I am experiencing. Thanks for the tip!
So now I would really like to know how to turn of flex in the template editor..

Can't get rid of jagged edges of aligned objects

I have the annoying problem of jagged edges on aligned objects in Illustrator. This image demonstrates it well: http://i.imgur.com/AIyK6vK.png
You can see the white background shining through where objects align to each other. I thought this was only a display thing which wouldn't show up on print or export, but I get the same aweful results when exporting to png, pasting as a smart object in PS etc. How do I fix this?
Thanks!

I've tried that aswell and it looks a bit better, but that isn't always (never?) a good solution.
Jacob, I've had no luck with the other thread, I was already using smart guides. This is a strange problem. I've not seen a lot about this anywhere else, don't you guys have this issue?
There is one better solution than a background layer. Select all objects and offset the path buy a very small number, maybe 0,01 mm but that is also more of a "hack" than a real solution..

Align objects to text paths?

Hi all,
I don't know if this is possible at all in Illustrator, but I want to align objects to text paths. Look at the following example to get an idea what I mean.
I start with something like a circular hierarchy, that I get as an output from another program. These are only lines and text. Now I want to add a flag behind the text. This flag should have the same orientation as the text path.
As this hierarchy is actually pretty big (this is only a snippet), I don't want to rotate all the flags manually. I tried to do it manually with the below example, but it still doesn't looks right...
Does anyone know, if there is a proper method to rotate the flags according to the orientation of the text paths in Illustrator? Any help is much appreciated!

I don't know of more automated way than doing it manually. However you can make the rotation precise using the smart guides. Assuming the text is live (not outlines), this is how I would do it:
Make sure on the View menu, there is a checkmark in front of Smart Guides (Ctrl+U)
With a text object selected, pick the Rotate tool (R), find, and click the anchor point of the text object which will be at the left bottom side if the text is left aligned. The Smart Guides will show an "Anchor" label when the mouse cursor is over it.
Then, away from the Anchor point, click and drag the path of the text object to rotate it until aligned horizontally or vertically to the artboard which will be indicated by the Smart Guides displaying a straight horizontal or vertical line.
Hold Ctrl key down temporarily to switch to a selection tool and click with it the flag you want to rotate.
Release the Ctrl key to get back to the Rotate tool and press the Enter key on your keyboard to get the Rotate dialog.
Change the Angle value to positive if it is negative and negative if it is positive and press the OK button. On a pc you can do all of this step with three keyboard keys instead of the mouse if you press first the Home key, then Delete or Minus for changing the value to positive or negative, and finally press Enter to apply and close the dialog. The flag is now rotated with the same angle as the original orientation of the text.
Cut (Ctrl + X) the flag, and Undo (Ctrl + z) a few times until you go back to the original orientation of the text.
Paste (Ctrl + V) to get a copy of the rotated flag and position it in place. I can see that your skills with position the flags are much better than aligning the orientation and I don't think you need more complicated way of doing it.

Align objects grayed out

I placed an image in my Pages document, and I would like to center it. I clicked on it, went to arrange, and then align objects. All of the choices are grayed out. Any ideas why?

Choose at least two objects, they align against each other.
If you just want it to align to the cntre of the pahge just drag it till an alignment line shows up.
Either that or you object is inline in the text and not floating.
Peter

Why does Vertical Align Center align objects along the horizontal?

And why does Horizontal Align Center align objects along the vertical?
-g-
P.S. Please please please make the Eydropper tool available by function key so I can toggle to it while using the Text tool. Please!

g,
but when I select two objects and click the vertical align button they snap to an invisible horizontal line
This is (almost) identical to:
Because (the centres of) vertically aligned objects will be on the same horizontal level/line.
And that is just one way of expressing what vertical alignment means. Here are a few others:
Their centres have the same height,
Their centres have the same Y value on the Artboard/Workspace,
In all cases, you can draw a horizontal line through their centres.
Mathematically, Y = C (Y is a constant value C) is the equation for a horizontal line.

Too much undo (control+z) when aligning objects

Sometimes control+z undoes too many actions when I am working on aligning objects. I suspect this is useful if you move a single object a bunch of times with the arrow key (and maybe is an intended feature of the undo function when aligning objects), but most of the time for me it moves the last handful of objects I moved to their previous locations. That's not help. Is there a way to prevent this?
Thanks!
Greg
v7.1

Hi Joe,
I didn't mean "align" as in one of the specific alignment function from the menu bar to be used on a group of objects.
For example, if I highlight an object and move it with the left arrow key 10 spaces, then I highlight a different object and move it in some other directions, using the shift+arrow key 5 times, and I continue this on any number of objects, all of the objects from all alignment operations, back to the last time I perform a completely different action such as creating an object, move back to their original locations when I press control+z one time. I would rather just the last object I moved return to its previous locations.
Thanks,
Greg
v7.1

Aligning objects on stage throughout timeline

I am new to Flash and am probably missing the obvious.
I want to select objects on the stage and move them to a new
position, or align them to a guide line. However, I want to do this
for a whole series of frames in the timeline. In essence, select
all frames in the timeline, and then select all objects on the
stage, and align them to the left side and top side.
However, it seems to only align objects in the current frame.
I started with one circle on stage, then added more keyframes
in the timeline, changing the color of the fill at different
keyframes.
Is there another way to do what I want?
Thanks,
Patrik

I found it...Edit Multiple Frames.

Can't align objects or paths to guide intersections with smart guides (or at all)

In AI, smart guides indicated "intersection" when I am drawing a path or moving an object to align to the intersection of two guides, when I release the mouse, the object I am moving/drawings jumps slightly off the intended alignment intersection. IfI continue to try to move it to align, it jumps to the other side or back to where it was but will mot match the intersection. What am I doing wrong?

Lightgeist,
In addition to what Lutz said, is Align to Pixel Grid ticked in the Transform palette? If it is, you may select everything and untick it, and untick Align New Objects to Pixel Grid in the Options (and choose another document type or change the defaults).

CS2 - Aligning Objects question

OK..I want to align one object to another without the second object moving out of position.
In CS, I swear I clicked on Object 1 (the one I want to align to the second object) and then added Object 2 as a selection......then held down the shift or control key and clicked again on Object 2 to define that object as the one that WON'T move......
then clicked on a vertical alignment button and Object 1 centered itself to object 2.
Anyway, I tried this using various methods in CS2 and in each case - - both objects move when centered together....
What's up with that? Did Adobe change the alignment method yet again?
How can I keep Object 2 "in position?"
Thanks.

Tom,
Nothing has changed about the alignment method, exactly. However, it has
never been necessary to hold down the Shift or Control (or Alt) key when reclicking on the selected object that you want to remain in place. In fact, holding down the Shift key will
deselect any selected object you click on, so holding down the Shift key always disabled the key object feature. Try it in 9 or 10 or CS and you will see.
What did change in CS2 was that holding down the Ctrl/Cmd key while you already have one of the selection tools active temporarily toggles to the other selection tool. And it has always been the case that the Align palette listens only to clicks from the regular black arrow tool, not to clicks from the Direct Select tool. So what I suspect is happening is that you were starting from the regular black arrow tool, and habitually holding down the Ctrl key when you reclicked on the selected key object, even though the modifier was ignored. Now that the Ctrl key toggles to the other selection tool (in your case the Direct Select tool), you no longer have the correct tool selected when you reclick.
If you are working from the regular black arrow tool, all you have to do is stop using
any modifier keys. Which would have worked in earlier versions too.
Since I habitually work with my main tool being the Direct Select tool, and practically never use the black arrow tool, I actually appreciated the toggle in CS2, since it freed me from having to switch to the black arrow tool in order to set a key object. That is, if you do work with your main selection tool being the Direct Select tool (which generally speaking is a more efficient way to work), you can now set up alignments from that tool, by holding down the Ctrl key to temporarily get the black Select tool, whereas in earlier versions you had to change your tool using a and then change it back using v.
http://rwillustrator.blogspot.com/2006/03/object-alignment-tips.html

How to Align objects

Hello!
I have a set of 5 cfselect boxes, set up in two colums of two
cfselects each (Except the last one) I cannot get them to align by
the objets themselves, instead they align by text, which poses an
obvious aestetical issue. I have tried several style parameters but
no luck. what would you do to have them neatly aligned? I tried
going into design view, but for some reason it all looks like a
loong vertical line of objects on DreamWeaver. Help please? If you
need any further info, I'd be happy to provide it!

Ehm..I am working on another form, and I had been using
style="margin:" to align them, but on this one I have too many
fields to do it that way and they don't match since I have them in
rows of two and, by creating a cfformgroup for each pair I cannot
move them around individually (and I won't even get started on the
pains of trial and error moving a couple of pixels at a time). I'm
sure there is a better way, and if anyone would care to point me to
it I'd reaaally appreciate it!

How to align Objects to a path while scattering the objects in even spaces with decreasing size?

Hello
I am facing following trouble:
I am suppose to draw a spiral and on this path i want to align a symbol to it (in my case a circle).
Now i have found two ways how to to it.
First i can use the Brush palette and then apply my symbol to it. but then the problem is the size of the circles are all same but i need the circle to get smaller towards the center of the spiral
Second approche i took, i used the blending options between two objects that i also attach to a path. So i could resolve the issue about the decreasing size but now another problem has appear: The gaps between the circles are not same. I would like to have even spaces.
So now my question is: How can I resolve this my problem?
For better visualising my problem, you can check out this screenshot here: http://goo.gl/PEvZI
If anyone can give me a hint or a tip i would be very appreciating it.
Thanks in advance...
Regards,
Natla

Before you apply the Transform Effect, store the circle as a Symbol. Then, after finding a set of Transform settings you like, drag the resulting object to the Graphic Styles palette. The resulting Graphic Style will not include the basic Appearances (stroke, fill) of the circle; it only stores the Transform Effect. In the palette, the Graphic Style will appear to be blank, but it will contain the Transform Effect. That way, you can apply the Graphic Style to any other object with one click.
Same thing works if you first merely Group the circle and apply the Transform Effect to the Group. But storing the circle as a Symbol also lets you use the Replace Symbol command to instantly swap in/out any other Symbol.
Symbol swapped for one containing an isometric cube:
Symbol swapped for one containing a Lens Flare object:
JET

Aligning objects on different layers?

Hello - Kinda new to this.
I have 3 photos 8x10 that I want to take and place into a larger photo (24 x 10) . I did a "duplicate layer" of each additional image and duplicated into the master image ( the canvas of which I resized to make 24 ").
I now have the images all in "one image" having 3 layers. Now I want to distribute the images across the width of the background layer.
I cant seem to be able to do this. It is as if it is trying to align layers and not the image that is on the layer ,
I can grab an image on a layer and move it around but I can seem select jus the image part and align those. It is as if I want to make the image itself which is on the layer be an object itself but it thinks the object is the layer ( the image and the alpha channel)
Could someone point me in the right direction.
Thanks

c.pfaffenbichler is correct about the background layer. You need to make that a normal layer and get rid of the black part. Ideally, you should convert that layer to a normal layer befor you change the canvas size. Do you want the two end images to line up with the edges of the canvas, or do you want all equally spaces in the image. If you want them abutting the esges, just move the two end images to the edges of the image. then you can use distrubute, or with just three images, you can move the middle one, and it should snap to the middle, if you have snap turned on.
If you want to distribute the layers away from the edges of the image, you can do as I suggested above with adding two line shapes to help distribute them. However, center distribute does not always work well, and can give you odd spacing. So I wrote a script that can equally space layers. You can down load the script:
https://cloud.acrobat.com/file/90e63df5-e1b8-4320-a098-362cf0fa3a70

Illustrator CS6 - How do I align objects into a grid?

I am a fan of pixel art and the Live Paint Bucket tool in Illustrator CS6 (I don't really like using Photoshop for this because it is more limited in this field). I have made a thing in pixel art, but I noticed that things weren't exactly lined up. See the picture:
It has messed up the paint bucket tool a lot. Can I align these so that they make a grid? I have tried the Align tools, but I end up with stuff like this:
Horizontal Distribute Center
Can I do this (without changing the document grid)? I have tried this script, but I get this:
Note: My grid is not in proper layer order.

easyaspi,
How about using Align to Pixel Grid?
You may select everything and tick Align to Pixel Grid in the Transform palette, and also tick Align new Objects to pixels Grid in the Options flyout.
You may also use a document type with that as default (RGB for web and the like).

Aligning objects in DW with CSS

I can not seem to line up my graphics. I am new to CSS. I used one of the CSS templates from DW.
Here is my site: http://charitybiblechurch.com/index2.html
I made the background black (temporarily) so you could see where the objects are not touching.
If you look at index.htm on the same site, this is what it should look like. Index.htm is just a jpg inside an html (a temporary fix)
Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you,
MWG

Copy & paste this code into a new document. Note: I changed images to absolute URLs so I could see them. You can change them back.
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<title>Charity Bible Church, Caledonia, NY</title>
<style type="text/css">
/**zero out default browser values on everything**/
* {margin:0; padding:0}
body {
margin:0 auto;
padding:0;
font: 100% Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
margin: 0 auto;
background-color: #590302;
#container {
overflow: hidden; /**for float containment**/
background-color: #D4D4D4;
width: 862px;
margin: 0 auto;
padding: 0;
#container h1, #container h2 {font-size: xx-small; text-indent: -99999px;}
#header {
margin:0;
padding:0;
#sidebar1 {
margin:0;
padding:0;
float: right;
#mainContent {
margin:0;
padding:0;
float: left;
width: 570px;
#footer {
padding: 0;
margin:0;
#footer h3, #footer address {
font-size: x-small;
text-align:center;
color: #641415;
padding: 5px
.fltrt {
float: right;
.fltlft {
float: left;
.clearfloat {
clear:both;
height:0;
font-size: 1px;
line-height: 0px;
</style>

</head>
<body>
<div id="container">
<h1>Charity Bible Church of Caledonia, NY</h1>
<h2>Serving the Caledonia area with Truth, Love and Compassion</h2>
<div id="header">
<img src="http://charitybiblechurch.com/images/header.jpg" width="862" height="176" alt="header" />
</div>
<div id="mainContent">
<p><img src="http://charitybiblechurch.com/images/main.jpg" width="570" height="329" alt="main" /></p>
<p><img src="http://charitybiblechurch.com/images/heaven.jpg" width="293" height="70" alt="heaven" /><img src="http://charitybiblechurch.com/images/sermons.jpg" width="277" height="70" alt="listen to sermons" /></p>
</div>
<div id="sidebar1">
<p><img src="http://charitybiblechurch.com/images/times.jpg" width="291" height="198" alt="times" /></p>
<p><img src="http://charitybiblechurch.com/images/map.jpg" width="291" height="66" alt="map" /></p>
<p><img src="http://charitybiblechurch.com/images/blog.jpg" width="291" height="65" alt="blog" /></p>
<p><img src="http://charitybiblechurch.com/images/about.jpg" width="291" height="70" alt="about us" /></p>
</div>
<hr class="clearfloat" />
<div id="footer">
<h3>© 2011 Charity Bible Church</h3>
<address>
3164 State St.
Caledonia, NY 14423<br />
PHONE: <a href="tel:585-502-8387">585-502-8387</a>
<a href="mailto:[email protected]">E-Mail</a>
</address>
 </div>
 </div>
</body>
</html>
Incidentally, using all images and no text isn't a good idea. Images can't be read by translators, screen readers and search engines.
Nancy O.
Alt-Web Design & Publishing
Web | Graphics | Print | Media Specialists
http://alt-web.com/
http://twitter.com/altweb

Aligning objects

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