# Forget the Pen Tool in Adobe Illustrator! This tool is way better! #adobeillustrator

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** Yes I'm a Designer
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8djD6zBNJM
- **Дата:** 17.10.2025
- **Длительность:** 15:51
- **Просмотры:** 10,224

## Описание

‪@astutegraphics‬ 
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Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:21 Discovering Astute Graphics
1:16 The Experiment
2:30 Getting Started with the Dynamic Sketch Tool
4:30 Comparing with the Pencil Tool
5:50 Advantages of working with the Dynamic Sketch Tool
6:30 Smart Remove Brush Tool
7:15 Reform Tool
9:30 Fewer Anchor Points = Better Workflow
12:12 Extend Path Tool
13:47  Vector First Aid Panel
15:07 Final Thoughts Outro

## Содержание

### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8djD6zBNJM) Introduction

I've never thought I would say this, but after 25 years of using the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator, I finally found something better. A tool that's not just more intuitive, it's actually more precise.

### [0:21](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8djD6zBNJM&t=21s) Discovering Astute Graphics

You probably heard of Astute Graphics. They are the team behind some of the most powerful Illustrator plugins out there. and I met them earlier this year at Adobe Max London and they challenged me to try their tools. Now, I will be honest, I've never been a big fan of plugins. I usually stick to the built-in Adobe tools and prefer not to rely on paid extensions, but that's mainly because I've never come across one that truly transformed the way I work until now. In this video, I will walk you through a few of my favorite Astute Graphics plugins, show how they fit seamlessly into an existing Illustrator workflow, and explain why after just a few weeks, I honestly can't imagine working without them. Before I dive into the specific ST graphic tools that I found the most useful, let me show you something that really opened my eyes. A little experiment that proves just how

### [1:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8djD6zBNJM&t=76s) The Experiment

effective these plugins can be. I drew this sketch of a vampire and a mummy dancing the tango and decided to record and measure the entire tracing process twice. First I used my usual workflow with the pen tool and the shape builder tool. Then I repeated the exact same process but this time with attude graphics dynamic sketch tool and a few of their other plugins that I will explain later. The results honestly shocked me. With the S2 tools, I saved about half an hour of work, over 30% of the total tracing time, and ended up with a cleaner, more precise vector artwork that used far fewer anchor points and parts. And that is a big deal. It means this workflow is not just faster, it's also more efficient and technically superior. And maybe the best part, it also felt better. Tracing with the dynamic sketch tool was so much more natural, almost like drawing with a real pencil on paper. I was actually having fun again while vectorizing. The best way to demonstrate these tools is to go

### [2:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8djD6zBNJM&t=150s) Getting Started with the Dynamic Sketch Tool

back to my original sketch. So, I'm going to turn off the coloring and also the tracing layers where I had my vector outlines. I am going to first start with the dynamic sketch tool. The cool thing about Astute Graphics panels is that you can actually activate the tools as well. So even if you don't have the tool selected, just have maybe the selection tool. And if I just click on the panel, it automatically selects the dynamic sketch tool. Now I prefer to use a stylus, a pen tablet when I work with this tool, but it actually works really well with a mouse as well. So let me just show you how it works. So when you start drawing with it, you click and start dragging. And it is more similar to the pencil tool in Illustrator, but with one major difference that you have a string. And this string helps you to be more precise. And you can see already that this is something I wouldn't have been able to achieve with the pencil tool when I'm using the mouse. But thanks to that string, I have a little bit of time to set up the right direction for my drawing. And you can see that even though this is a very long curve, but I still managed to get really good result. And of course, I don't have to always be exactly following the lines from my sketch. Like here, I ignored the curvature and I think I improved it a bit. Now you can make changes to how long this string is. So adjusting the length of the pulled cursor area. You can also adjust the accuracy of the drawing which I normally keep in the middle. And the iron icon here at the bottom, it refers to the smoothness of the drawing. But just so we can see how I would be able to do this with the pencil tool, I'm just going to switch back to the default pencil tool. And

### [4:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8djD6zBNJM&t=270s) Comparing with the Pencil Tool

let's see. I'm using the mouse again and you can see that obviously it's a bit more rough compared to the other line. But again, thanks to the settings that we have in Illustrator, once I let go, it's going to smooth this out. And if I double click on the pencil tool, I can see the settings that I'm using. So here, it's the fidelity that's most important. You can make the path more smooth or accurate or keep it in the middle like I have. But we can already compare between these two parts. I feel like the dynamic sketch path is much nicer. Not only because it is smoother, but also it has less anchor points and that is crucial. It feels like it created the least amount of anchor points necessary for this path. while the pencil tool actually added quite a lot of unnecessary anchor points. Now, let's remove the pencil tool path and I'm just going to drop this back here and switching back to the dynamic sketch tool and let me show you other advantages of working with this tool. So, for instance, if I just continue drawing here, it automatically joins these together. But if there is a straight segment, I can also hold down the alt or option key to create a

### [5:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8djD6zBNJM&t=350s) Advantages of working with the Dynamic Sketch Tool

straight line. Once again, this is going to be a single path as you can see. And again, continuing to draw here. Now, I'm not holding down any keyboard shortcuts. I'm just drawing the path. And of course, just like with the pencil tool, if I want to redraw sections, I can easily do that. I'm just going to continue drawing this segment here. And I'm using the stylus now. So my lines going to be a little bit more dynamic. And I'm just going to go down this way. And that is looking quite nice. Now taking a closer look at this path that

### [6:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8djD6zBNJM&t=390s) Smart Remove Brush Tool

we created so far. I feel like there's a few things that I would want to improve on it. First of all, I feel like this point here is not necessary. So for this I can use the smart remove brush tool. Another one of a graphics tools. With this we can paint over a path and remove anchor points automatically. However, it will try to keep the original curvature as close as possible to what we already have there. Unless you hold down the alt or option key which can ignore that tolerance. So if I click here, you can see it still allowed me to remove it, but still tries to keep the original curvature as close as possible. I could also use another brilliant tool from

### [7:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8djD6zBNJM&t=435s) Reform Tool

Astute called reform tool. I have a panel here for it open. So if I just click on that, it will select the tool automatically. And with this, all I have to do is to click and drag a path to change it. And you will see the original path in blue and the updated version of it in red. And the reform path can be adjusted like so. It's a bit like the width tool in Illustrator. So I can adjust it slightly like that. Here I can drag it up a bit. So here I dragged it down. There I dragged it up. So these two points are created. And if I want to see the result, I can just press enter to accept the changes. And if I'm still not happy, I can just do another one. Also, there's a start and end point whenever you use the reform tool. And if you drag these on the path, you can define the section or segment that you want to make changes to. So if the right side of the path is the way I wanted it, I can just limit the reform to work on the left side. I can even limit it here. Maybe just that part I want to change. Again, I can press enter to see the changes happening. Now, here's another brilliant feature of the dynamic sketch tool. I'm just going to draw this curve here. And then I'm going to draw with the alter option key held down to have straight lines created. Now, normally if I wanted to remove the lines that are not required here, I would use the shape builder tool. But with the dynamic sketch tool, all I have to do is to simply hold down the shift key and even without selecting the parts, I can draw over them and remove what I don't need. So once again, holding down shift key, I can remove these either one by one or even try to remove all of them at the same time. And remember the smart remove brush tool. In this case, I'm pretty sure if I paint over this, I will be able to remove it once again without changing the curve at all. Now, another very important advantage of working with the dynamic sketch tool is that we won't

### [9:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8djD6zBNJM&t=570s) Fewer Anchor Points = Better Workflow

end up creating unnecessary amount of anchor points. So, here's an interesting example. I'm just going to draw this belt. As you can see, I have almost all the lines in place like that. And then I hold down the shift key, remove whatever we don't need like that. And most importantly, if I select this shape here in the middle, notice that it has only three anchor points. That's what you would expect because it's a triangle. It only needs three anchor points. However, if this is something that you do with the native tools in Illustrator, like the pen tool and the shape builder, you will get a different result. So, I'm going to use the pen tool and turn on the smart guides, which will help me to start drawing on these existing parts. So, I can click and drag. There's the first one. I'm going to control commandclick away and then click and drag again. Click and drag. like that. Can just adjust these handles a bit so they are closer. All right. So that is looking good. And then using the pen tool again I can just click and click to close these up. By the way, when you use the pen tool with the stylus, it often happens that you accidentally create smooth points when you want to create a corner point. That can be annoying and that's something that I never had issues with when I used the dynamic sketch tool. But now that I have these, I have to actually select them all and then switch over to the shape builder tool. Again, that's something that's much more convenient with the dynamic sketch tool. Remember, we didn't have to change tools and also we don't have to have the path selected that we want to make changes to. But here with the shape builder tool, now having the path selected, I can just join these segments together. But the problem is if I do that now this triangle will have these additional unnecessary anchor points on it. So if we compare the two, you see here we have only three anchor points while here we have four additional unnecessary anchor points. That is actually quite a big problem and especially in case of a complex illustration, you would end up creating a lot of unnecessary anchor points which will make the file harder to work and also making changes more difficult. While we are here in this

### [12:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8djD6zBNJM&t=732s) Extend Path Tool

section, I also wanted to show you another brilliant estude tool. So for instance, we have this line and these two parts have to actually continue to meet this. Now, normally what you would do is to drag this anchor point down, but then you end up creating gaps here in the existing area. Another thing you could do is to use the pen tool, click on this, and then try to connect into this other path that we created. But then again, you end up having an unnecessary anchor point here, which you will have to smooth out or do something about. But instead of doing any of this, we could just use the astute extend path tool with which I can just click on this point and notice how it predicts how this path would continue. So I could drag that anchor point out as far as I want, but I can also make sure it intersects that other path. So I can drag it out there. And notice it doesn't add any additional anchor points. It also doesn't mess up the existing path segment. It just simply does what we need. So once again here on the right side, I can select that point there, drag it down, and join it into this other path. And let's just take a look at this here. If we look at the outline view, we can tell that the original path hasn't changed. And if there's any unnecessary anchor points, we could just use the smart remove brush tool, paint over them, and it is looking perfect already. Maybe also we can remove this one. Last but not least, I also wanted

### [13:47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8djD6zBNJM&t=827s) Vector First Aid Panel

to show you the astute graphics vector first aid panel which can be a lifesaver. So here I have the finished illustration which I did with the pen tool and the shape builder combo. And if I select everything and I choose check selection, we can see the amount of errors it found. So there's four stray points, 81 unneeded points, and so on and so forth. We have also over 300 points that are too close to each other. So all of this can be fixed with a single click. But if we want to see them, like let's say the three short handles, we can just say show and then it will show us where it is in the illustration. So there it is. We can see another preview of the stray points. Let's see where that stray point is. And yeah, so this is not connected to anything. But instead of just looking at these, we can just say fix all and we will see that there are no further issues. So if I click away, we shouldn't see anything changed in the illustrations. So it should still look exactly the same as before, but now we fixed all of those issues automatically. This can be a huge timesaver, especially for complex illustration projects. Now

### [15:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8djD6zBNJM&t=907s) Final Thoughts Outro

with these few tools that I highlighted in this video, I was only scratching the surface as SG Graphics has over a 100 features for Adobe Illustrator. And the best thing is that you can try them all completely free for 7 days. Use the link in the description and let me know in the comments which of their tools you find the most useful. Have fun vectorzing and I will see you in the next one.

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*Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/18374*