How To Scale strokes and effects proportionally in Illustrator

Ever scaled an object with strokes and effects applied and after resizing your artwork didn’t look right anymore? The strokes looked to big, the patterns had the wrong size? This all happens when you don’t scale strokes and effects proportionally.

In Illustrator when you scale an object up or down, with either a stroke or effect applied, you can control wether or not the stroke or effect size gets scaled or stays the same. This applies to pattern fills as well. Even when you’ve added dynamic corners to your object, you can control how they are getting scaled. Usually the object gets scaled only, not the stroke or effect.

Use this one tip and you will never see your strokes and effects get screwed up again!

We can control the scaling of strokes and effects via the Scale Tool.

Simply double-click the Scale Tool and in the Pop-Up Window make sure to:

1. Check Scale Corners (if you applied round corners)
2. Scale Strokes & Effects
3. Transform Patterns (if you applied a pattern fill)

When you then use the Free Transform Tool (E) and resize your object, all effects and strokes and patterns will be scaled proportionally.

Here is a quick gif to show you how to do it:

[WPGP gif_id=”2401″ width=”800″]

You are right, of course as usual, there is more one one way to the scaling and resizing of strokes and effects. You can set it in the Transform Panel or under Preferences, let me show you how to do that in the video below.

Watch the Quick Tip Video on How To Scale Stokes and Effect Proportionally in Illustrator CC: