Hidden Features
This is the Adobe Help Center window (another “product annoyance” is that Adobe ships with an Opera installation rather than use IE & WebKit). I searched for “corner radius” because I thought the only way to change the radius of a corner on a box was to option-click with the tool and use the dialog.
I said, no way. That’s just too stupid.
It gets worse. Adobe Illustrator CS2 introduced the “Control Palette” whereby you adjust a tool’s or object’s properties. Guess what? Not the corner radius property.
Check out the screen shot of the window above… well, I’ll quote the text to make it easier:
To change the corner radius of a rounded rectangle
The corner radius determines the roundness of the rectangleês corners.* To change the default corner radius, choose Edit> Preferences > General (Windows) or Illustrator > Preferences > General (Mac OS), and enter a new value for Corner Radius. Alternatively, select the Rounded Rectangle tool, click in the document window, and enter a new value for Corner Radius. The default radius applies only to new rounded rectangles you draw, not to existing rounded rectangles.
* To change the corner radius while dragging with the Rounded Rectangle tool, press the Up Arrow key or Down Arrow key. When the corners are the desired roundness, release the key.
* To create square corners while dragging with the Rounded Rectangle tool, press the Left Arrow key.
* To create the most rounded corners while dragging with the Rounded Rectangle tool, press the Right Arrow key.