Illustrator: Align objects without moving one of the objects
So you have a business card built in Illustrator and you want to center the text on the card. If you select the 3.5″ x 2″ box and the text box and click “Vertical Align Center” on the Align palette, Illustrator will move each object halfway towards the other object!
If you want only to move the text and not the 3.5″ x 2″ box, you will need to make the 3.5″ x 2″ box the “key object.” To do this, select both objects, then click the 3.5″ x 2″ box (not a Shift+click though). This will align all the other objects to the “key object” you just clicked.
–Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com
A note about the author
I love working in a field that changes every day. I am a web developer/designer with an agency background. I have empathy for the user first, then developers, then machines. I follow web standards, coding conventions, then, I do whatever it takes to make it work. Visit my contact page, even if you would just like to say hello. To stay in touch, follow me on Twitter
Further Reading on Illustrator
- Package links for output: Illustrator collection script
- Graphic web design and cascading style sheets
- Six plus hours uninstalling and re-installing Adobe Creative Suite 3 (OS-X)
May 18th, 2008 at 8:28 am
Great i was just trying to do this, and found your site, thanks.
October 30th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Fantastic thanks.
January 20th, 2009 at 10:36 am
Yes! been looking for ages for this. Why didn’t i google for it before
February 3rd, 2009 at 9:55 am
Thank you! I was going crazy with the alignments!
June 7th, 2009 at 4:50 am
Thanks. This is so helpful. I was doing a whole of workarounds just to align 2 shapes!
June 24th, 2009 at 11:52 am
Woa. Been looking for this for quite a while. Thanks!
June 26th, 2009 at 10:57 am
shit, it was so simple
thank you
September 28th, 2009 at 12:11 am
Masterfully done! Thanks so much.
October 4th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Thanks for this, been beating my head at it for like 20 minutes. See, good deeds don’t go un-noticed. Thanks for your help, sir.
October 19th, 2009 at 9:57 am
Great tip! Saves lots of frustration.
But why is there no indication of how this works (or which object is the key object, even after you have selected one) in the interface? (at least not version 10. I understand that is really old, so maybe newer versions have some visual indication of this)
October 26th, 2009 at 11:49 am
So much of Adobe Illustrator feels like arcane hand magic… Thanks for the demystification!
November 11th, 2009 at 7:53 am
Awesome! I’ve been struggling with this for so long. Thanks!
February 23rd, 2010 at 2:43 pm
You’d be amazed how many times I googled this and found nothing before I just tried the plain English phrase “center align without moving one object”. THANK YOU!
April 8th, 2010 at 7:56 am
thanks!!
April 27th, 2010 at 2:11 pm
I swear I was going go find a bridge. In photoshop 7.0 it’s very easy, the first object you select automatically serves as “key object” – I almost thought that Adobe decided to get rid of that feature. Great that I came across your post.
August 2nd, 2010 at 2:28 pm
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!
August 30th, 2010 at 11:40 pm
Great! Thanks for preventing headaches!
September 27th, 2010 at 10:23 am
Thank you very much! This was starting to drive me insane.
October 22nd, 2010 at 2:57 pm
Well done, sir! You know, just proves that it’s helpful to review the docs, even after using the same software for 20 years…
Select the objects to align or distribute. To align an anchor point on the object, use the Direct Selection tool and select the anchor point.
In the Align panel or Control panel, do any of the following:
To align or distribute relative to the bounding box of all selected objects, click the button for the type of alignment or distribution you want.
To align or distribute relative to one of the selected objects, click that object again (you don’t need to hold down Shift as you click this time). Then click the button for the type of alignment or distribution you want.
Note: To stop aligning and distributing relative to an object, choose Cancel Key Object from the Align panel menu.