Lots of my students complain about the Bounding Box getting in their way as they work with the Selection tool. I tell them to just turn it off under the View menu (View > Hide Bounding). However, the last Bounding Box question from a student was a lot different. It went something like this, “I love the Bounding Box and use it all the time to scale and rotate, but sometimes I wish there was a way to make it go away for a second so I can move a rectangle from a corner without transforming it. Is there a modifier key that I can press to make the Bounding Box temporarily disappear?”
I thought long and hard to find a simple answer until I realized that one of my earlier tips does the trick. If you choose the Direct Selection tool or the Group Selection tool before you start working the Selection tool, press the Command key (Control on PC) and you’ll temporarily switch to that other selection tool, making the Bounding Box disappear. When you release this one-key “modifier”, the Bounding Box will reappear.
Tip provided by Jeff Witchel, Certified Adobe® Training Provider.
Author: jeff witchel
Jeff Witchel graduated from Pratt Institute in 1973 with a B.F.A. (Cum Laude) in Advertising Design and Visual Communications. He has been an award-winning advertising art director, writer, designer, illustrator, and TV producer ever since.
Before starting his own advertising agency in New Jersey, Jeff built his career at top New York ad agencies such as Young & Rubicam, Grey Advertising, and Wells, Rich, Greene. Over the years, he has created award-winning work for many clients including AT&T, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Jell-O Pudding, The Plaza Hotel, and Pfizer. His many prestigious awards include N.Y. Art Directors Club Gold Award, One Show Gold Award, N.J. Art Directors Club Award, multiple Andy Awards, Graphis Annual, numerous readership awards, plus an Emmy Award nomination.
Jeff is a self-taught computer artist with over 19 years of experience. His initial introduction to the computer was with PageMaker, but he switched to Quark 1.0 when it was first introduced in 1987. Having arrived on the desktop publishing scene so early, Jeff became the “go to” guy for answers when others started getting into computer graphics.
As an Adobe Certified Expert, he’s provided online support for Adobe and is now an Adobe Certified Training Provider for both Adobe Illustrator CS2 and Adobe InDesign CS2. Jeff is one of just a handful of Adobe Certified Instructors in the New York metropolitan area. He also is a Quark Certified Expert in QuarkXPress 6 as well as a master of Adobe Photoshop and related applications. He counts among his training clients ad agencies, design studios, magazines, illustrators, and photographers in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.
