Draw a rectangle with the default white fill and a 10-point black stroke and take a look at the Appearance palette. When the rectangle is selected, the Appearance palette displays a thumbnail icon and the word “Path,” which is the targeted item. (When we discuss Groups later in the chapter, we’ll discuss what the target is.) The palette also lists the target’s stroke (with the weight beside it), the fill, and the transparency. The order in which the listed items appear is important, because they define the final appearance of the object.

Selecting vs. Targeting

At first glance, it can appear that selecting and targeting are one and the same. They appear this way because of Illustrator’s Smart Targeting feature, where Illustrator does most of the targeting for you automatically, but selecting and targeting are really two different things.

For the most part, selecting is an action that is used to define a set of criteria that will be used for performing transformations. As we’ll see in Chapter 4, Advanced Vectors, transformations consist of moving, scaling, rotating, skewing, or mirroring objects. You select objects because you want to move them from one side of your document to another, because you want to delete them, and so on.

Targeting on the other hand, is an action that is used to define a set of criteria specifically to apply an attribute such as a stroke, a fill, a transparency, or a live effect. When you select a path with the Selection tool, Illustrator automatically targets that path so that you can apply attributes to it. However, there may be times when you want to specifically target an entity. For example, you can target a layer and then add a stroke attribute to it. This gives every object on the layer a Stroke attribute (we’ll discuss this concept in detail later in this chapter). Selecting the layer simply selects all of the objects on that layer. Applying a Stroke attribute at this point results in the individual paths getting the stroke. Targeting the layer results in the layer itself getting the Stroke attribute (the layer is a container, much like a group is a container for its contents).

When you add a stroke to a layer, it is added to the top of the stacking order. All objects on that layer appear with a stroke. Because the stroke applies to the entire layer, even objects that are overlapping each other are stroked.

The Appearance palette displays the attributes for the targeted item.

Let’s expand on what you learned in the previous chapter about fills and strokes. By default, a fill is painted first; the stroke is then painted on top of the fill. This is why you can see the entire weight of a stroke that is painted on the centerline of a path. However, you can click the Stroke attribute that is listed in the Appearance palette and drag it so that it appears listed beneath the Fill attribute.

The Appearance palette gives you the ability to change the stacking order of attributes. Here, the stroke attribute appears beneath the path’s fill.

You can also use the Appearance palette to target individual attributes by simply clicking them to highlight them. For example, when you click an object to select it, you can apply an opacity setting to that object via the Transparency palette. This opacity setting is applied to both the Fill and the Stroke attribute of the selected object. However, if you first target the fill by clicking it in the Appearance palette and then changing the opacity setting, you’ll notice that the setting is applied to the fill only and not to the stroke. This is indicated in the Appearance palette by a disclosure triangle just to the left of the Fill entry: The Opacity setting appears indented immediately underneath the fill’s Color setting.