In this post we talked about the use of Illustrator in the first phase of our web development cycle. That often requires a lot of close work, getting objects precisely aligned where they need to be. One example is to get objects that will mark the position of slices aligned on pixel boundaries. Another is to ensure that complex paths with with horizontal and vertical straight line sections do not have a slight angle associated with them. This attention to detail avoids little pixellated glitches which can detract from the quality of the finished page.
To achieve this we often use Guides. However one strange feature of Illustrator is that it lacks a specific Snap to Guides option. Instead it has SmartGuides, but these have the irritating feature of snapping to just about every object within reach. To work around this problem we do the following:
1. Set the guides, then lock them.
2. Select the object which needs aligining.
3. Select inverse.
4. Hide selected objects.
Now SmartGuides will function just as Snap to Guides. When the object is suitably aligned then just do a Show All to unhide the other objects.
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but it may not work for you, so you use it at your own risk. We can't
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