Annoying! Objects jumping after I release mouse in Illustrator

Today while I was working in Illustrator I noticed something particularly annoying. For some reason when I moved a guide flush with an anchor point or tried moving any object flush with a guide, the object or guide would jump away from where I placed it by a pixel or so.
I initially thought maybe my smart guide or snapping settings were turned off, after checking everything I could think of I came to no resolution. I was almost driven mad, I have been doing this daily for the last 10 years, why suddenly couldn't I do this.

Turns out the Fix was a setting I have never heard of before. In the Transform dialog box there is a tick box called "Align to pixel grid." unticked it and problem solved. You will notice that this setting will relate to a selected object, so you will have to select something (or everything) in order to turn it off for that object.

Hope this helps someone as it really is an annoying feature not to know about.

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Illutrator Tutorial: How To Make An Interweaving Vine or Helix

In this tutorial I will show you how to make a simple 2d interweaving vine or helix shape.

Click video below to watch

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Illustrator Tutorial: Adding texture using a transparency mask

In this tutorial I will show you how to add texture to a vector object using the transparency mask in Illustrator. You can use whatever texture you want whether it be a vector one or bitmap, I'm going to use a jpeg for this example which you download below.

Right-click and save as to download

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Illustrator Tutorial: Digital Inking - Adding Colour

A follow up to my Digital inking tutorial, in this one I will show you how to colour the line art that we made in the previous one.

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Vintage floral design

A new design I have done, kind of a vintage floral type of thing. Done in Illustrator CS3

© 2013 Terry Mahy

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Illurator Tutorial: Digital inking with the brush tool

In this tutorial I will go through digital inking with the brush tool and a wacom tablet. First I'll show you suitable settings for the inking process then I'll show how to merge your line art into a single vector shape.
Click video below to watch :)

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Mahy Bros Logo

Having a bit of a slow period so I've been playing around with designing logos and such. This one was done in illustrator.

© Copyright 2013 Terry Mahy

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Illustrator Tutorial: How To Make A Stitch Effect

In this tutorial I'm going to show you how to make a Stitching effect in illustrator. This effect can be added to anything that can have a stroke and it is really quick to do. Watch the video below to see how.

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Illustrator Tutorial: How To Make Symmetrical Shapes

In this tutorial I am going to show you a simple method I use to make symmetrical shapes. Click the video below to watch :)

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Illustrator Tutorial: How To Make A Straight Ribbon Banner

In this tutorial I will show you how to make a simple straight ribbon banner and add stitching to it. We will cover things like smart guides, pathfinder and the direct selection tool. Watch below :)

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Illustrator Tutorial: Making Patterns in Illustrator

In this video I'm going to quickly show you how to make a pattern swatch in illustrator and how to manipulate that pattern on an object.

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Illustrator Tutorial: Biohazard Symbol

In this tutorial I will take you through making the biohazard symbol Above. Although The symbol itself is quite complicated, it is actually pretty easy to make. After making the symbol I will also show you how to make a little triangle sign for it as well.

Click video below to watch.

Texture used in tutorial (click to view full size)

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Illustrator Tutorial - How to Make a Crescent Shape

In this tutorial I will quickly cover an easy method to create the crescent moon shape.
This tutorial is pretty easy and probably aimed more at a beginner to intermediate user. Click video below to watch.

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Illustrator Tutorial: How to make an Ace of Spades

In this tutorial I will show you the process I use to make an Ace of Spades and decorate it.

© Copyright Terry Mahy 2012

This tutorial is pretty easy and probably more aimed at a beginner to intermediate user. Click video below to watch.

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Illustrator Tutorial: How to make a Post Ink Stamp

In this tutorial I show you how to make a post ink stamp like you would see stamped over the payment stamp on your received letters. This tutorial is really easy and aimed at beginners. It covers things like typing on a path, pen tool and using the transparency/opacity mask.

Finished Product

Click Video Below to View Tutorial

Below is the Texture I use in this tutorial, Click for full size

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Illustrator tutorial: Lines with Rounded corners, Metro/subway map

In this tutorial I'm going to show you a really easy way to make lines with rounded corners like in a subway map. The process Is simple as anything and really easy to do.

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Illustrator Tutorial: Pathfinder

The pathfinder is a very handy set of tools which allows you to merge, cut out or subtract shapes from another. The following tutorials go over the more common uses for pathfinder and serve as a simple introduction into using them.

Part 1 Merging Objects

Part 2 Subtracting Objects

Part 3 Excluding Overlapping Objects

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Illustrator Tutorial - Vote Badge

In this tutorial I am going to show you how to make a simple vote badge. The process is really easy and is a great introduction for beginners into making stuff in Adobe Illustrator.
Watch the video below:

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Illustrator Tutorial - Dotted Lines

In this tutorial I'm going to show you how to make dotted lines in Illustrator. The effect is very easy and customisable.

I'm also going to do something different today and offer this tutorial as both a video cast and a written tutorial. So click the video below to watch or continue reading.

So the first step is to obviously open a new document of any size and draw out a line using the line tool. Make sure the line has a stoke so you can see it.

Now we want to bring up our Stroke dialogue window. This can be done by going to windows > stroke or by pressing Ctrl + F10

Your Stroke box should look like the image below, if you're missing options click the little dialogue menu on the top right of the box and tick "Show options".

Now we want to click the round cap option shown below

Then we want to tick the dashed line and enter the following values: dash: 0 pt and Gap: 16pt

And there you have it, a dotted line.

You can also customise the values to get different sizes, to increase the size of the dot, simply increase the size of the stroke. To increase the gap between the dots, increase the gap value. As long as the dash value is 0pt the dot will remain round.

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In this tutorial I am going to show you how to add vectorised textures to a vector object to make it look worn/vintage. It is a very easy process and the finial product will be able to resized freely without loosing quality.

 Below is the final product

Here's some free textures available for use:
Commercial use
Personal use:

you could also make your own from a black and white photo using the trace option in Illustrator.

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