Pathfinder or Puzzlemaker? YOU DECIDE!
'Twas the day before Wednesday, and all through the lab, not a creature was stirring, except for the eleven n00bs desperately trying to understand what the f*ck just happened and why they were there in the first place.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Digital Designs, where dreams are shattered and friendships are put through the ultimate test. Can you survive the term? Will the lecturer survive the term? What is the meaning of life? Join us on our journey to seek the path of enlightment---that is, Pathfinder tools.
Conveniently located in the Windows tab, Pathfinders are useful when you want to geometric-abstract-ify things.
O Hail Thy Pathfinder.
There was a shitload of options, so as Distinction-deserving graphic design students (wink wink), we put all of them to the test.
We did two types of tests---first using only two shapes, the circle and star. The item on the left is the original form. The one in the middle is what happens when we use the Pathfinder tool on objects with fill colours and no outlines. And the one on the right is what happens when we use it on ONLY outlines.
Then we tried each one with three shapes---a circle, a star, and a square.
Then we went into the "actual" Pathfinder tools:
Some effects aren't as visible as others. When you use Divide and Trim, for example, you'll only notice the difference when you double-click and go into individual selection mode, or something like that.
Other effects literally turn the objects invisible (such as in the case of Crop and Outline on outlines).
Overall, it was quite entertaining. Though I think they should change the name into Puzzlemaker, since that's what it actually does, both on the object and the user.