Here’s how it works. Select an object and choose the Scale Tool from the toolbox. The object will have a center target, around which the scaling will occur. Click and drag that target, or just click somewhere outside or inside the object to move the target. Then click and drag on the desktop. Depending on which direction you drag, you’ll get a larger or smaller object. If you drag at approximately 45°, the scaling will be proportional, if not, you’ll get a non-uniform scaling. Hold down the Shift key for constraint, regardless of the angle you’re dragging. For precision, double-click the tool’s icon in the toolbox to bring up the Scale dialog box. Here you can see the choices of Uniform or Non-Uniform scaling, with fields to enter the percentage of scaling you want. You can choose to scale a copy of the object by clicking the Copy button on the right, and see what’s going on if you check the Preview box.

The most important feature or caveat of the Scale Tool is the option to scale strokes and effects. What usually happens is you make this beautiful drawing at about 4-inches tall. Somewhere down the line, someone gets the drawing and wants to reduce it to fit a different space than you designed it for. They select it and scale it down. If the Scale Strokes & Effects box is NOT checked, then all those heavy lines will remain the same heavy weight when the drawing is made smaller. You can read that as UGLY. Sometimes it can totally obliterate details in a drawing. If the box IS checked, then the strokes are scaled down proportionately, creating a pleasing, accurate depiction of your creation. Unfortunately, YOU have no control of what some bozo does with your work, so you’re at their mercy. BUT, what I do with my line work is when I’m completely done, I convert all the strokes to outlines. Now the work has no paths, so there’s nothing to get botched up. Naturally, they can’t edit the drawing without a lot of work, but that’s why WE get the big bucks – changes… Keep it in mind.

Next in the bin is the Shear Tool. I call it the skew tool as a hangover from FreeHand, but it does the same thing – it slants things. Besides that, my dictionary first shows shear as a verb meaning to cut or trim, then as a noun meaning a strain or shift. At any rate, it's the Shear tool and it turns rectangles into diamonds. Select an object and double-click the tool’s icon in the toolbox to open the Shear dialog box. It’s pretty cut and dried: enter a shear angle, axis, angle of the axis, whether you want a copy or not, and you’re pretty much done. Well, that’s if you are lucky enough to know exactly what you want. If you’re like most of us, you want to shear something just about “that much” and it’s pretty subjective. In that case, close the dialog box and click and drag on the desktop. The selected object will distort according to the distance and angle you drag. For greater precision, move the center crosshair to a corner and try to drag along the object’s baseline or some other reference path. It’s a lot of trial and error sometimes.

The bottom of the bin contains the Reshape Tool, which I rarely use. That’s only because I rely on adjusting points and paths with the Pen Tool. Some artists like to plop a line of points around an object in a rough approximation of its ultimate shape. Then they proceed to use other tools and features to make the path fit. I draw it to fit in the first place. It’s a matter of working style. At any rate, to understand this tool, you have to think like the Direct Selection Tool (white arrow) when it’s moving points and paths around. Select an object, then select a point on its path. Choose the Reshape Tool and click on a path on the selected object; drag. The path will change shape between the two points holding it in place. If you click on a path, you’ll leave a new point on it, just as you would get if you used the Pen tool. But the new point gets a larger square around it. I guess that’s to show you you’re using the Reshape tool, because it has no special properties. Double-clicking the tool in the toolbar results in reshaped eyebrows, nothing more. There’s no dialog box.