Expert: Tom Rouze - 3/31/2006

Question
Hi,
I know you only have CS, but you may be able to do this in CS
too! I am creating a freebee t-shirt for my sister's church and am
stuck. I have a solid blue hand print that I drew in Illustrator. I
would like to place "inside" the handprint a map of north and
south america. I don't want the map to extend past the edge of
the hand.  I know there is a way to do it with the push of a
button, but I don't know how and I can't find it in the manual.
Please help me! Thanks!

Answer
Hi Tara,

Actually I just upgraded to CS2 about a month ago.  I'm still learning some of the new features.  Pretty cool!
Anyway I think what you want to do resize the map.  Without getting to complicated here's one way you can do it.  Create a new layer and put the map on that layer. Lock the other layers.  Now select the map, with your selection tool click, hold and drag a corner point of the map while holding down your shift and alt keys.  Pull the point toward the center of the image or away to resize proportionally from the center point of the image.  Basically your are adjusting by eye but it'll work. I would normally recommend do all resizing in photoshop but for this project you'll be fine.
There is another way that involves plugging in the size you want in inches but this was easier to explain.  If you would like I could explain that another time.  Either way would work fine.  The second option takes some of the guess work out if you know the exact size you want to make it.

Hope this helped.  If you have any other questions please ask away I'll be glad to help.

Thank you,

Tom