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Setting preferences for the pencil and smooth tools


    You can set preferences for the pencil tool and smooth tool. The preferences include tolerances that control how sensitive the pencil and smooth tools are to the movement of your mouse or graphics-tablet stylus, and whether you want the path to remain selected after you draw it.

    The tolerance is calculated in number of pixels. The larger the number of pixels you specify, the smoother and less complex are the paths.

    Note: You can also set preferences for the paintbrush tool (see Drawing and editing brushed paths), the pen tool (see Drawing with the pen tool), the segment tools (see Drawing line and arc segments), and flare tool (see Drawing flares), and the grid tools (see Drawing grids),

To set preferences for the pencil tool and smooth tool:

  1. Double-click the pencil tool  the pencil tool or smooth tool  the smooth tool .
  2. Use the Fidelity and Smoothness sliders or enter values in the text boxes:
    • Fidelity controls the distance (in pixels) in which curves can stray from the smoothed mouse or tablet data when using the tool. The lower the fidelity value, the more angular the curves; the higher the value, the smoother the curves.
    • Smoothness controls the amount of smoothing (by percentage) applied when you use the tool. The lower the smoothness value, the coarser the path appears; the higher the value, the smoother the path.
  3. To keep the path selected after you draw it, select Keep Selected. This option is selected by default.
  4. To edit a path only when you are within a certain distance of it, select Edit Selected Paths, and enter a distance.
  5. Click OK.