This may sound familiar: You're in the midst of building a fairly complicated Illustrator document when you find yourself spending more time trying to select your objects than manipulating them. Selecting objects positioned on top of each another in Illustrator can be quite a challenge, if not downright annoying at times. Fortunately, Illustrator 9 offers up a complete arsenal of tools and commands devoted to helping you select the object you want while keeping the others out of your way.

A Broad Selection of Selection Tools
Illustrator's toolbox includes five tools just for selecting: selection, direct selection, group selection, lasso, and direct lasso. The selection and lasso tools are pretty self-explanatory, and the direct selection tool is mainly used to edit an object's points and paths. If you have a group of objects within other groups, you can sequentially select and add the next group in the hierarchy by using the group-selection tool, which can be found in the direct selection tool pull-out.

All of the selection tools are nestled at the top of the Illustrator toolbar.

All of these tools perform well in their own right, but they can seem rather limited when you attempt a more complex task such as selecting an object obscured by another. This is where the "Next Object..." command comes in handy.

To selecting an object below another object, do the following:

1. Position the selection tool over the top object, the object above the one you want to select.
2. Ctrl-click (Mac)/Right-click (Windows) to open the contextual menu (don't move your cursor as you do this). Choose the Select submenu.
3. Choose "Next Object Below" from the Select submenu. Keep in mind that this command only works within one layer. If you are trying to select between multiple layers, try using the Layers palette.

The contextual menu offers up a Select submenu for getting at those hard-to-reach areas.

Lock 'em or Make 'em Disappear
Two of the most useful tools for isolating selections are the Lock and Hide commands. Both commands have been around in virtually their present form since the earliest incarnations of Illustrator. In fact, it would be tough to find any old-school Illustrator user who doesn't rely on these two commands just as much as the pen tool. Their usefulness is found in the sheer simplicity of what they do.

The Lock command makes objects visible but unselectable. To lock an object or series of objects, simply select the objects and then choose Object>Lock from the main menu. The lock command is a great, in-the-moment method to quickly get objects out of your way, but an even more powerful option lurks just a little-known key combination away: Select the object you want, and click Shift-Option-Command-2 (Mac) or Shift-Option-Ctrl-2 (Windows), and all other objects on the page will be locked. This allows you to concentrate your efforts on the objects selected. When you're ready to select those objects again, choose Object>Unlock All.

The Lock and Hide commands can be found under the Object menu, but the keyboard shortcuts are fairly easy to remember.

The Hide command works in similar fashion as Lock but instead makes the objects invisible and unselectable. To hide selected objects, choose Object>Hide Selection from the main menu. A companion command for the lock all deselected artwork exists as well: Try Shift-Option-Command-3 (Mac) or Shift-Option-Control-3 (Windows) to hide all unselected artwork.

Power users may want to master the keyboard shortcuts for Next Object, as well as for the Lock and Hide Others commands.