IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 | Whether you are a graphic designer,
an illustrator, or an animator,
| | 00:03 | an interface or web designer, a fashion
or a motion graphics designer, or any of
| | 00:08 | the millions of creative professionals
who use Illustrator every single day,
| | 00:12 | I can help you become more efficient at
what you do and have fun in the process.
| | 00:17 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:23 | My name is Mordy Golding and I'm the
author of the book Real World Illustrator
| | 00:27 | and I also work at Adobe as the
Product Manager for Illustrator. I'm here to
| | 00:31 | take you on an in-depth tour of the
features found in Adobe Illustrator with
| | 00:35 | this course Illustrator CS4 Beyond the
Basics. This deeper look into the how's
| | 00:40 | and why's of Illustrator compliments
some of my other titles here at lynda.com
| | 00:44 | including Illustrator CS4 Essential
Training and Illustrator CS4 for the Web.
| | 00:50 | My goal is to give you the skills to
use Illustrator on a whole new level.
| | 00:54 | So I'll be introducing some useful and
dynamic features of the program.
| | 00:57 | You'll learn about a whole new vector drawing
paradigm with the Live Paint feature and
| | 01:02 | you will discover how to harness the
real power of Live Trace. You will also
| | 01:07 | explore world of 3D and
fun to use Distortion tools.
| | 01:12 | Along the way, you will learn how
transparency really works and how to make sure
| | 01:16 | that that project on your computer
screen comes out picture perfect in print.
| | 01:20 | More importantly, you will empower
yourself by learning to be smarter about how
| | 01:24 | to build your files using effects,
masks, and graphic styles. I can't wait
| | 01:29 | to help you build easy to update
Illustrator files more efficiently. To help with that,
| | 01:34 | I'll be offering additional insight
from the recording booth at the start
| | 01:37 | of every chapter. So let's get started.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you are a premium member of the
lynda.com Online Training Library, or if
| | 00:05 | you are watching this tutorial on a disc,
you have access to the exercise files
| | 00:08 | used throughout this title.
The exercise files for this title are arranged
| | 00:12 | by chapter as you see here in this folder.
| | 00:14 | If you are a monthly or an annual
subscriber to lynda.com, you don't have access
| | 00:18 | to these exercise files but you can
certainly follow along with the lessons.
| | 00:21 | Let's get started!
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1. The Joys of Live PaintIntroducing Live Paint| 00:00 | Admittedly, it can be very difficult to
learn how to draw inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:04 | You think about creating shapes and
anchor points and working with the Pen tool,
| | 00:07 | Bezier curves, not so much.
So it's really great that inside of
| | 00:12 | Illustrator CS2 Adobe added a feature
called Live Paint. Now the premise of
| | 00:16 | Live Paint is that you should be
able to draw visually instead of
| | 00:19 | mathematically.
| | 00:21 | However, many designers have kind of
shied away from this feature because
| | 00:24 | the name Live Paint doesn't really
describe exactly what the feature does.
| | 00:28 | So in these series of movies I want to share
with you all the wonderful functionality
| | 00:32 | that exists inside of Live Paint so
that you could more fun when you are
| | 00:36 | creating your artwork.
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| Drawing in Illustrator| 00:00 | Adobe Illustrator is defined as
a vector-based drawing application.
| | 00:04 | Now unlike its sister application Adobe
Photoshop, which is a pixel-based graphics
| | 00:08 | application, Illustrator allows you to
create artwork by first drawing specific
| | 00:12 | objects or shapes and then applying
attributes like colors to those particular shapes.
| | 00:18 | At a core level of understanding,
think about it in this way. Inside of
| | 00:21 | Photoshop you could take your Paintbrush
and apply paint directly to the canvas.
| | 00:26 | However, in Illustrator you're
one step removed from the canvas because
| | 00:30 | what you need to do is first create
objects like paths and Bezier curves, so on
| | 00:34 | and so forth and then you can apply
color to those objects. So you are not
| | 00:38 | applying attributes directly to the canvas;
you are applying them to objects
| | 00:41 | that sit on top of the canvas.
| | 00:43 | Now of course there are pros and cons
to each of these applications. But at the core
| | 00:47 | I do believe that the rules of
vector graphics lead to one of their
| | 00:51 | problems or the barriers that
designer face when trying to draw inside of
| | 00:54 | Illustrator. Let me illustrate
exactly what I mean. When I go here inside of
| | 00:58 | Illustrator. I'm just going to create a
regular plain print document. I'm going
| | 01:00 | to use the regular default settings
and I'll give you the disclaimer up front
| | 01:03 | over here. I apologize for not using
any pretty artwork for these examples
| | 01:07 | but I really want you to understand the core
of what's happening here inside of Illustrator.
| | 01:11 | So I'm going to be drawing
some very simple shapes.
| | 01:13 | Let's start by talking directly about
the artboard here inside of Illustrator.
| | 01:17 | Now if I wanted to have a yellow
background in my image, I can't apply a yellow
| | 01:20 | color to this artboard itself. I need
to first create a shape that I can apply
| | 01:24 | a color to that shape. You see inside
of Illustrator you can't apply color to
| | 01:28 | just any arbitrary area. You can only
apply color to a specific shape and
| | 01:33 | you apply color by adding either
fill or stroke attributes to a shape.
| | 01:36 | So now that we understand that let's
actually draw a shape here inside of
| | 01:39 | Illustrator. I'm just going to take a
regular rectangle right here on my page
| | 01:43 | and I'm going to set its fill over
here to None. I'll leave the stroke set to
| | 01:46 | black at one point.
| | 01:47 | Now as you know inside of Illustrator
because I have drawn a rectangle here,
| | 01:50 | I could simply go ahead and apply another
color to the shape. But I'm going to go
| | 01:54 | draw a second rectangle that's going
to overlap that rectangle. So now
| | 01:57 | I'm going to use my regular Selection tool
here. Let's take a look what I'm seeing
| | 02:00 | on my screen. I have two rectangles,
which means that I could simply select one
| | 02:04 | of those rectangle and apply a color
and I could select the other rectangle
| | 02:07 | and I can apply a color.
| | 02:08 | But if I'm just looking at my artwork
right now my eye does kind of see three rectangles.
| | 02:12 | I do see one rectangle over here,
one that's over here, but there is
| | 02:17 | also a shape that's created by the
overlapping rectangles. The problem that
| | 02:20 | exists inside of Illustrator is that I
cannot apply a fill color to just this region.
| | 02:24 | That's because the shape over
here, a physical object, does not exist.
| | 02:28 | This is simply an area that looks like
it's another rectangle, but all that rectangle is,
| | 02:32 | is simply another shape that
looks like it's created because
| | 02:34 | these two rectangles overlap in a certain area.
| | 02:37 | So in order for me to fill this
particular region I would need to physically
| | 02:40 | turn that into a distinct object. Now
Illustrator has several tools to do that.
| | 02:44 | For example there is the Pathfinder
functions. I could go over here, go to
| | 02:47 | the Window menu and I could choose Pathfinder
and there is an option here called Divide.
| | 02:52 | That would allow me to select these
two shapes, click on the Divide button,
| | 02:56 | and end up with three distinct
areas. So if I choose one over here and
| | 02:59 | then one over here and now that I
have three distinct shapes I would be able
| | 03:03 | to apply a color to this particular
region, but I would need to first apply
| | 03:07 | that Pathfinder Divide function. It
also means that I would not be able to
| | 03:11 | edit the original rectangles anymore
because those have been chopped up into pieces.
| | 03:14 | So let's go ahead and apply some color
to these regions. I'll select this first
| | 03:18 | shape right here. Let's give that one
yellow. I'll take this middle region over here.
| | 03:22 | I'll give that one, let's say a blue
color. And I'll take the one over here
| | 03:26 | and let's apply that one, say
maybe some red. So now what I have is
| | 03:29 | three distinct objects and I have applied
a separate color to each of those objects.
| | 03:34 | So we already know that one of the
limitations of working with vector objects
| | 03:37 | is that I need to have an
object in order to apply a color.
| | 03:39 | Well, there is another issue that
designers sometimes encounter with
| | 03:42 | Illustrator as well that also speaks
to the core of what vector graphics are.
| | 03:46 | As you notice here, this particular
shape has yellow fill and the yellow fill
| | 03:50 | comes exactly up to the edge.
It doesn't overlap the edge in anyway.
| | 03:53 | Notice it falls short of what the edge is.
It's precise. It's exact. In fact, I sometimes
| | 03:58 | refer to Illustrator as being too
perfect because sometimes in a design you do
| | 04:02 | want to fill to somehow overlap the stroke.
I find that sometimes designers jump
| | 04:07 | through hoops just to make it appear as
if artwork is less than perfect inside
| | 04:10 | of Illustrator.
| | 04:11 | Now that we have an understanding of
what these limitations are inside of
| | 04:14 | Illustrator, we can begin to start
peeling away some of the layers that are
| | 04:17 | inside of Illustrator and see how we
might get around some of these issues.
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| Creating a Live Paint group| 00:00 | So we know that inside of Illustrator
you need to apply an attribute to
| | 00:04 | a specific path. You can't just apply
an attribute to any arbitrary area. Well,
| | 00:08 | that's exactly where this feature called
Live Paint comes in inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:12 | Let's take a look at what I mean.
| | 00:14 | I am going to start by drawing two
rectangles that overlap each other on my artboard.
| | 00:18 | I'll use my Selection tool to
select both of them and I'll set
| | 00:21 | the fill attributes to both these
rectangles to None. So now I have two rectangles,
| | 00:26 | they overlap each other, but what appears,
to the eye at least, is that I have three rectangles.
| | 00:30 | I have one area here, another
area here and a third area here.
| | 00:35 | What Live Paint allows me to do is to
paint objects not by how the objects
| | 00:39 | themselves are built but rather by
the visual boundaries that they form.
| | 00:43 | So where a program like Photoshop, for
example, might see this as three distinct areas,
| | 00:47 | Live Paint will allow me to do
that exact same thing, but here inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:52 | In fact, it's almost the exact
same thing as me having to go to
| | 00:54 |
the Pathfinder panel and splitting these
into three distinct objects and then
| | 00:58 | applying the colors to them, but
I don't have to apply the Pathfinder.
| | 01:01 | Let me show you what I mean. I'm going
to select both these objects right here.
| | 01:04 | I'm going to over here down to my toolbar.
I'm going to select a tool here called
| | 01:08 | the Live Paint Bucket tool. Now I'm
going to move my mouse over here and as
| | 01:11 | soon as I come near the regions of
these particular objects, they are going to
| | 01:14 | highlight in red and a little popup is
going to say Click to make a Live Paint group.
| | 01:18 | So I'm going to go ahead and
click, and you will notice that now as
| | 01:21 | I move my cursor around these regions,
they get highlighted in red. The red
| | 01:25 | outline is indicating that that area is
visually a separate object which I can
| | 01:29 | paint using the Live Paint Bucket tool.
| | 01:31 | For example, I'll come over here and
expand the docks so that I can see all
| | 01:34 | my Swatches here. Let's move the
Pathfinder panel away here. I'll choose
| | 01:38 | the yellow swatch here and I'll move my
Paint Bucket tool to this region and click
| | 01:41 | once to apply the yellow fill. Next
I'll choose is Gradient and I'll apply
| | 01:45 | the Gradient here to the middle, and
I'll even take a pattern and apply a pattern
| | 01:48 | here to this other region here. Now it's
important to realize what's happening here.
| | 01:51 | I still have two distinct paths
in my document. I have two rectangles.
| | 01:55 | But I have three paintable regions.
To illustrate that, I'm simply going to
| | 01:59 | come over here and use my regular
Direct Selection tool and I'll select one of
| | 02:03 | these rectangles right here and see
that I could actually move it around.
| | 02:06 | In doing so the overlapping area simply
updates itself. In fact this is why
| | 02:10 | Illustrator refers this feature as
Live Paint and it allows me to move
| | 02:14 | the object and then it updates
those filled areas as I do so.
| | 02:17 | So the main takeaway here is that this
Live Paint function, at least in this
| | 02:21 | particular example, with the Live
Paint Bucket tool, I can actually paint
| | 02:24 | objects inside of Illustrator not by
how they are built; rather I can paint
| | 02:28 | and apply attributes based on how
those objects appear on my artboard.
| | 02:33 | Now again this is a departure from the
vector-based way of thinking because if
| | 02:37 | you think about it, this area or this
region right now that has the Gradient fill
| | 02:40 | applied to it, there is no object
there. There is just a Gradient fill
| | 02:43 | that was applied to an area that
looks like there is an object there.
| | 02:46 | So with this example we'll begin to see
what Live Paint brings to Illustrator.
| | 02:50 | But as we are soon to find out,
this is only the beginning.
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| Using the Live Paint Bucket tool| 00:00 | Let's take a close look at how the
Live Paint Bucket tool works inside of
| | 00:04 | Illustrator. So to keep things simple
again I'm just going to draw two regular
| | 00:07 | rectangles on my artboard. They overlap
each other. I'm going to select both of
| | 00:11 | these rectangles and I'm going to
create a Live Paint group. I'll tap the K key
| | 00:15 | on my keyboard, it's the keyboard
shortcut for the Live Paint Bucket tool and
| | 00:18 | then I'll simple mouse over the
selected artwork and I'll click once to turn
| | 00:22 | this into a Live Paint group.
| | 00:23 | Now as I move my cursor around, I can
identify the regions that are paintable.
| | 00:27 | So what I first need to do is I need to
pick up a color that I want to use with
| | 00:30 | the Paint Bucket tool. So I go over to
the Swatches panel. Let's say I want to
| | 00:33 | work with Green. I click on the Green
color and then I come back and then I
| | 00:36 | click once to fill that region. Well,
in reality when I'm painting a lot of
| | 00:39 | objects, moving back and forth between
what I'm seeing on my artboard and the
| | 00:42 | Swatches panel can be somewhat tedious.
| | 00:44 | So take a look at the three colored
boxes that appear now above my Live Paint
| | 00:48 | Bucket tool cursor. You can see that I
have a big green square, then I have a
| | 00:52 | yellow square to the left of it and a
blue square to the right of it. Well, if
| | 00:56 | you take a look at my Swatches panel,
you will see that I also have a green
| | 00:58 | square here. To the left of it I have
yellow and to the right of it I have blue.
| | 01:02 | In fact these three squares
that I see on top of my cursor right now
| | 01:05 | represent the Swatch that I currently
have selected and the Swatch that appears
| | 01:10 | immediately both to the
left and to the right of it.
| | 01:12 | I can actually move or change the fill
Color by simple tapping the arrow keys
| | 01:16 | on my keyboard. For example I'll tap
the right arrow once right now, I now have
| | 01:20 | the light-blue color selected and you
can see that it automatically moved over
| | 01:24 | that, now the one to the right is a
dark-blue Swatch. In fact as I type the
| | 01:28 | left and the right keys on my
keyboard notice how the Swatch actually moves
| | 01:31 | inside the Swatches panel. In this way
I can apply color to my objects without
| | 01:35 | having to go directly to the Swatches
panel. To illustrate that when we move
| | 01:38 | over here to this middle region. Say I
want to fill this with the light-blue
| | 01:41 | color. I can simply the tap the left
key on my keyboard a few times and then
| | 01:44 | click to fill that with a light blue.
| | 01:46 | If I want to make this region yellow,
again I'll tap the left arrow key twice
| | 01:50 | and the simply click once to apply the
yellow color. Now you will notice as I
| | 01:53 | moved this cursor around, I'm only
able to fill these areas. But what about
| | 01:56 | stroke attributes. How can you modify
the stroke color of these objects, these
| | 01:59 | in the Live Paint Bucket tool? Well, to
do so simply hold the Shift key on your
| | 02:03 | keyboard. Notice that now when I
mouse over the edges over here, the edges
| | 02:06 | become highlighted which will allow
me to apply a stroke color to these
| | 02:09 | particular areas. If I let it go with
the Shift key, I go back to working with
| | 02:13 | filled areas.
| | 02:14 | Now I can actually change the behavior
of the Live Paint Bucket tool by simply
| | 02:18 | going to the toolbar and double-
clicking on the Live Paint Bucket tool.
| | 02:21 | Let's take a look at the options here.
| | 02:23 | Notice that by default the Live Paint
Bucket tool paints fills only. Now we are
| | 02:27 | using the Shift key to move to paint
with stokes but that's the same thing as
| | 02:30 | me un-checking this options and turning
this option on. However, it is possible
| | 02:34 | to have both options checked. In doing
so, I'll OK to show you, as I move my
| | 02:38 | cursor over the edge I can paint the
stroke, I move over to the fill I can
| | 02:42 | apply a color to the fill. Let me go
back to the Live Paint Bucket tool options
| | 02:46 | and you will there is also an option
here for the Cursor Swatch Preview. Those
| | 02:49 | are the three boxes that appear
above my cursor. If I find that somewhat annoying,
| | 02:52 | I could simply un-check that option
and those three boxes will disappear.
| | 02:56 | The Highlight option simply identifies
how Illustrator will let me know what
| | 02:59 | area is a paintable region by
highlighting it in Red. If I wanted to highlight
| | 03:03 | the areas in something else, I can
simply choose that from this list. I can
| | 03:06 | also choose how thick that border
should be. So play around a bit with the Live
| | 03:10 | Paint Bucket tool, see what options
work best for you because the Live Paint
| | 03:14 | Bucket tool is at the
center of the Live Paint feature.
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| Using Live Paint with open paths| 00:00 | It can be easy to conceptualize
what Live Paint is doing when using two
| | 00:04 | overlapping rectangles. But it's yet
another level when you think about what
| | 00:07 | you can do with Open Paths inside of
Illustrator with Live Paint as well. So
| | 00:11 | let's take a look at another example.
I'm going to use the Line Segment tool to
| | 00:15 | draw four paths inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:17 | These are four independent paths but
they all crisscross each other. Now again
| | 00:21 | because the way that I have drawn the
paths, I do see visually an area here in
| | 00:24 | the middle that appears as if it's a
closed area but because I haven't created
| | 00:28 | a filled object I can't apply the fill
attribute. However, with Live Paint I
| | 00:33 | can and that's because you want to
think about a general rule. Live Paint
| | 00:37 | allows you to apply a fill attribute
to a region or an area on your page that
| | 00:42 | looks like it's an actual object. It
doesn't necessarily have to be one. The
| | 00:45 | only thing that I need to do is to
turn that into a Live Paint group.
| | 00:48 | So I'll go over here, take my regular
Selection tool. I'll select all four
| | 00:51 | paths and the keyboard shortcut
to create a Live Paint group is
| | 00:55 | Command+Option+X on the Mac or Ctrl+Alt
+X on Windows. Notice by the way that
| | 01:01 | whenever you select a Live Paint group,
the handles that appear on the corners
| | 01:04 | here have little stars inside of them,
Indicating this is something special.
| | 01:07 | And indeed it is because the way the
Live Paint works. Just to show you where
| | 01:10 | that command lives inside of the menu,
you can go over here to the Object menu,
| | 01:14 | choose Live Paint and then you would
choose the Make option. But now that I
| | 01:17 | have created my Live Paint group, I'm
simply going to go ahead and select the
| | 01:20 | Live Paint Bucket tool again by
tapping the K on my keyboard. I'll select
| | 01:24 | Yellow for my Swatches panel because
it's my favorite color and I'll fill this
| | 01:27 | middle area here with Yellow.
| | 01:29 | Remember I didn't have to physically
create an object here. I have these four
| | 01:33 | paths that created what looks like a
closed area. In fact if I use my direct
| | 01:37 | Selection tool, I'll be able to see
that each of these are individual paths,
| | 01:40 | nothing has changed there and because
this is a Live Paint group, as I move or
| | 01:44 | change the boundaries of these paths
the filled area automatically updates.
| | 01:49 | In fact, if you look at my Layers
panel you will see that if I twirl down the
| | 01:52 | contents of Layer 1, I see that I now
have a Live Paint group and if I twirl
| | 01:56 | down the contents of that I can see
the four paths that appear inside of that
| | 02:00 | Live Paint group.
| | 02:01 | So now we are really starting to see
some of the benefits of working with Live
| | 02:04 | Paint groups. You don't need to
actually connect paths in order to fill them.
| | 02:08 | Think about what this means when you
are creating quick sketches inside of
| | 02:11 | Illustrator, or when you are working
with artwork that other people may have
| | 02:14 | created, the key concept to always keep
in mind when working with Live Paint is
| | 02:18 | that as long as the area looks like its
enclosed you can apply a fill attribute
| | 02:22 | to it, even if they are made up of
separate paths as long as they are on
| | 02:25 | encompassed within a single Live Paint group.
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| Detecting gaps in Live Paint groups| 00:00 | So we know that the Live Paint feature
inside of Illustrator allows us to apply
| | 00:04 | fill attributes to areas that look as
if they are enclosed. Additionally,
| | 00:08 | we also know that Illustrator was probably
no fun as young child because it always
| | 00:12 | colors in perfectly insides the lines.
Well, one of the great things about Live
| | 00:16 | Paint is that there is some bit of
leeway that's involved. In other words,
| | 00:20 | there is room for error.
| | 00:21 | Let me show you exactly what I mean
here. I'm going to start by drawing four
| | 00:25 | lines again that intersect each other.
I'm going to take these four lines,
| | 00:29 | select them and then turn them into a
Live Paint group. I'll choose Object >
| | 00:33 | Live Paint > Make.
| | 00:35 | So I now have the ability to use a Live
Paint Bucket tool to simply select the
| | 00:39 | yellow color and fill that middle
area there with yellow. I also know that
| | 00:43 | these paths are still individual paths.
So I can use my Direct Selection tool
| | 00:47 | to simply go ahead and just select
one of them and change our edit to paths
| | 00:50 | themselves and the filled
area just updates accordingly.
| | 00:54 | But let me zoom in on this piece of
artwork a little bit and let's focus on
| | 00:57 | something else here inside of this Live
Paint group. Notice that as I move one
| | 01:00 | of these paths around, the fill
updates and that's because the area still
| | 01:04 | appears if it's closed.
| | 01:05 | But what would happen if I take my path
here and I would actually create it or
| | 01:09 | edit it so that now the area is no
longer enclosed. What happens to that yellow
| | 01:12 | fill? The answer is that the yellow
fill completely disappears. Because they no
| | 01:16 | longer have an area that looks like
it's closed, that yellow paint has nowhere to go.
| | 01:21 | Now if I were to go ahead and close
that area again, once the yellow paint
| | 01:25 | leaves that particular area, it
doesn't come back again. Of course, I could
| | 01:28 | simply the Live Paint Bucket tool and
apply that yellow color once again. But
| | 01:32 | let's do a different type of edit here.
| | 01:34 | I am going to take that same path over
here. I'm actually going to adjust this
| | 01:36 | so that there is just a small little
gap that's there. Take a look at this. If
| | 01:40 | I zoom it really closer, you can see
that I now have a gap that appears between
| | 01:45 | the paths themselves, yet the yellow
color is still here. Now how is that happening?
| | 01:50 | Even in a program like Adobe Photoshop,
for example, where I do have a Paint
| | 01:54 | Bucket tool that I could flood fill an
area, we know that if there is even a
| | 01:57 | small gap, even one pixel, that yellow
would now fill the entire document. But
| | 02:02 | somehow inside of Illustrator, even
though there is a gap there, the yellow
| | 02:06 | fill is still being applied to that area.
| | 02:08 | So if you go back to the rule of Live
Paint from in here where we say that,
| | 02:11 | you can fill in the area that looks like
it's enclosed. Here I have an area that
| | 02:15 | looks like it's open or you can say
that it looks like it's almost closed. And
| | 02:19 | yet, I'm able to apply a fill to that
region as well. This happens because
| | 02:23 | there is a certain behavior that's
built into the Live Paint feature. Something
| | 02:26 | called Gap Detection.
| | 02:28 | In fact, let me zoom out just a little
bit over here. I'll select my Live Paint
| | 02:33 | group that I have right here and I'll
go to the Object menu and I'll choose
| | 02:36 | Live Paint > Gap Options. A dialog box
opens up, basically allowing me to see
| | 02:42 | how I can treat this particular
Live Paint group with regard to gaps.
| | 02:47 | Now, by default, when you work with
Live Paint groups, the Gap Detection option
| | 02:50 | is turned on. Just to show you, by the
way, I can simply uncheck this option
| | 02:54 | with the Preview option turned on.
You could see that now the yellow paint
| | 02:57 | disappeared. That's because there is a gap
that's right here. But by turning Gap Detection on,
| | 03:01 | the yellow fill stays intact,
even though there is a small gap there.
| | 03:05 | Now, what determines a gap? Well, you
can actually choose to have paint stop at
| | 03:09 | small, medium or large gaps or
alternatively, you can choose Custom and specify
| | 03:14 | your own value. This behavior inside
of Live Paint, Gap Detection is a game changer.
| | 03:20 | As we've already seen, Live Paint
allows you to apply fill attributes not to
| | 03:24 | distinct vector objects but to just
areas that look like they're enclosed
| | 03:27 | inside of Illustrator. Now we see that
those areas don't even need to be closed at all.
| | 03:32 | In fact, what this really does is it
allows me to think about Illustrator in a
| | 03:35 | non-perfect way. Here, I can fill areas
that are not perfectly closed. You can
| | 03:41 | almost say that the Live Paint
feature with this Gap Detection flies in the
| | 03:44 | face of the very core of what vector
graphics are. But in really what this
| | 03:48 | feature does is that it allows you to
draw in a far more intuitive fashion
| | 03:51 | inside of Illustrator.
| | 03:53 | Now as with anything there are always
pros and cons, but if you think about it,
| | 03:56 | many times when you're drawing inside
of Illustrator and you want to be able to
| | 03:59 | paint certain areas, you may find it
far more useful to create Live Paint
| | 04:02 | groups rather than try to struggle
using the Pen tool and then chop pieces
| | 04:06 | apart using Pathfinder.
| | 04:08 | More importantly, when you're trying
to create artwork that may look a little
| | 04:10 | bit less than perfect, working with
Live Paint and Gap Detection can get you
| | 04:14 | great results in a very short amount of time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding paths to a Live Paint group| 00:00 | One of the most important aspects of a
Live Paint group is not the word Live or
| | 00:04 | Paint but the word Group. In reality
a Live Paint group is simply a regular
| | 00:08 | group inside of Illustrator but that
is treated somewhat differently.
| | 00:11 | It's a special type of group that allows
you to apply attributes to regions that look
| | 00:16 | like they're closed or as we've seen
with Gap Detection, to regions that appear
| | 00:19 | as if they're almost closed. So let's
take a moment here to see how important
| | 00:23 | this aspect of a group actually is.
| | 00:25 | I am going to start by just drawing a
regular shape here inside of Illustrator,
| | 00:28 | maybe an ellipse, for example. Then
I'll simply take a couple of paths and kind
| | 00:31 | of draw them here inside the shape.
Now I know that I can quickly turn this
| | 00:34 | into a Live Paint group by simply
going ahead and selecting all the objects
| | 00:37 | that are here and then using the Live
Paint Bucket tool to just click anywhere
| | 00:41 | in that area.
| | 00:42 | Now I could mass over these regions
and I can paint those regions with color.
| | 00:45 | I'll go ahead and I'll choose some
colors here just something random over here
| | 00:48 | just so we can get something inside
of it. Maybe I'll actually apply little
| | 00:51 | Radial Gradient in there and we'll do
another color, let's say, right over here.
| | 00:55 | Now I know that I can take my
regular Direct Selection tool and I could
| | 00:57 | actually move these paths around to
just how those filled areas act. But let's
| | 01:01 | say now I realize that I want to add
some other regions, maybe I want to go
| | 01:04 | ahead and add some color to an area
over here. Well, if I take my regular Line
| | 01:07 | tool, for example, and I draw a line
over here, and then I switch back to my
| | 01:10 | Live Paint Bucket tool using the K
key on my keyboard, notice that I can't
| | 01:14 | treat these two regions differently,
even though it looks like there are two
| | 01:17 | different regions.
| | 01:17 | The reason why, because this path that
I've created right here is not part of
| | 01:21 | the group. Only objects that live
inside of the group can determine the
| | 01:25 | boundaries for a paintable region. But
objects that don't belong to this group
| | 01:29 | have no effect whatsoever on the
areas that I can paint with Live Paint.
| | 01:33 | So what I really need to do is I need
to take this path and I need to make sure
| | 01:36 | that this path somehow gets inside of
a group. Now there are several ways of
| | 01:40 | doing this inside of Illustrator.
One way is drop into the Layers panel.
| | 01:43 | I could simply take this path that I've
created and drag it into the Live Paint group.
| | 01:47 | Now that it's part of that group, I
can't paint these regions as separate
| | 01:50 | regions. Now I'm going to press Undo
for a moment to bring that path back out
| | 01:53 | of the group, because in reality,
when you're working with very complex
| | 01:57 | designs, trying to drag a specific
path into a specific group amongst all
| | 02:01 | little objects that exist in the
Layers panel can be somewhat difficult.
| | 02:05 | So what I can do is use a Merge
feature. I'm going to go ahead and use my
| | 02:08 | regular Selection tool and I'll select
my Live Paint group and also the path
| | 02:12 | that I've created. You'll notice that
there is now a button that appears inside
| | 02:15 | my control panel called Merge Live
Paint. With one click of a button, I now
| | 02:20 | have taken my Live Paint group and I
have added that path into that Live Paint
| | 02:23 | group. Notice the path no longer exists
outside the group, we've now added into
| | 02:27 | the group itself. So now with my Paint
Bucket tool, I can actually go ahead and
| | 02:32 | modify those separate regions.
| | 02:34 | Let me show you one other technique as
well. I'm simply going to go ahead and
| | 02:36 | take that path right there and delete
it for a second here. Let's think we've
| | 02:39 | had never happened at all.
| | 02:40 | If I know that I want to draw a path
into this particular group, I have a way
| | 02:44 | to do so using Illustrator's
Isolation Mode feature. I can use my regular
| | 02:48 | Selection tool to double-click on any
group. In this case here, I'm inside of a
| | 02:52 | Live Paint group, so notice that I've
now isolated the Live Paint group. A gray
| | 02:56 | bar appears across top of my screen
letting me know that I'm now inside of
| | 02:59 | Isolation Mode.
| | 03:00 | When I've isolated a group, I'm now
inside the group, so any new shape or any
| | 03:04 | new path that I draw on my artboard
automatically gets added into that group.
| | 03:09 | So I'll use my Line tool here to
simply draw a new path and then I can either
| | 03:13 | click on little arrow over here or I
could use my regular Selection tool to
| | 03:15 | just double-click on any space outside
of the group. I'm no longer inside of
| | 03:19 | Isolation Mode, but you can see now if
I use my Live Paint Bucket tool, I can
| | 03:23 | paint these two regions separately.
| | 03:25 | So again, the important aspect here is
that all the paths that live inside of
| | 03:28 | the Live Paint group help determine
which areas or regions are paintable. But
| | 03:32 | those paths, all need to be
encompassed within a single group and we've
| | 03:36 | explored three possibilities of how
to bring paths into a Live Paint group.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Live Paint Selection tool| 00:00 | I believe that the Live Paint feature
inside of Illustrator really brings a
| | 00:03 | whole new exciting dimension to
working with vector graphics inside of
| | 00:07 | Illustrator. But one of the key
reasons why I believe that is because of the
| | 00:10 | feature I'm about to show you. We've
already seen that when working with Live
| | 00:14 | Paint groups, I have the ability to
apply paint attributes to regions that
| | 00:18 | appear inside of my screen that are
not necessarily physical objects. That
| | 00:22 | these regions of color don't even need
to be completely closed. There can be gaps.
| | 00:26 | And they can be made of either
close paths, open paths or a combination of that.
| | 00:30 | But when you're working inside of
Illustrator, applying fill and stroke
| | 00:33 | attributes which is only part of the
game. After all, creating those underlying
| | 00:36 | paths is important too. So let's focus
on another part of Live Paint that most
| | 00:41 | people don't even realize is inside of
Illustrator. I'll create a very simple
| | 00:44 | Live Paint group. I'll draw let's say a
circle on my screen, now I'll take two
| | 00:48 | paths and basically cross them to the
circle. I'll select all of them and I'll
| | 00:52 | hit Command+Option+X or Ctrl+Alt+X on
my keyboard to create a Live Paint group.
| | 00:58 | I'll use the Live Paint Bucket tool to
apply some colors to these areas that
| | 01:02 | appear inside of the circle. Now what
you're seeing here is really nothing new
| | 01:06 | because you already know how to apply
all this. However, let's focus on an
| | 01:09 | aspect that we hadn't really touched
on before. Let's focus on one of these
| | 01:12 | paths that kind of go
right to the circle itself.
| | 01:15 | This particular path right there has
an anchor point on one end and an anchor
| | 01:19 | point on the other end, yet because
this path is part of a Live Paint group,
| | 01:23 | it's able to help me intersect
different regions of color inside of the circle.
| | 01:26 | But let's say I don't want to see this
particular part of the path that's right here.
| | 01:29 | I don't want to see that part
that extends beyond the circle, I just want
| | 01:32 | the path define a boundary
for color inside the circle.
| | 01:35 | Now those with traditional
Illustrator backgrounds might once again look
| | 01:39 | towards the Pathfinder Filters or maybe
use a Scissor tool to cut a particular
| | 01:43 | path right here and then delete this
part of the path. But let's take a moment
| | 01:47 | to really understand what a Live Paint
group is. Until now, we know that a Live
| | 01:51 | Paint group allows us to make edits or
to apply attributes to objects, based on
| | 01:56 | their appearance, not based on the way
that those paths were actually built.
| | 02:00 | So if we can apply attributes to these
objects based on how they appear, can we
| | 02:04 | perhaps modify the paths themselves
based on how they appear? Is Live Paint
| | 02:09 | powerful enough to do that? And
the answer is surprisingly yes.
| | 02:12 | Let's take a look at the toolbar over
here and you can see that it has a Live
| | 02:15 | Paint Bucket tool. But just to the
right of it is the Live Paint Selection tool.
| | 02:19 | The Live Paint Selection tool
allows you to make selections based on the
| | 02:24 | same rules of Live Paint, and those
rules are bound by the appearance of
| | 02:28 | objects, not by the underlying path.
| | 02:30 | So I'll select the Live Paint
Selection tool, I'll come over to this part of
| | 02:34 | the path and click once on it and you
can see that what I've done is I've now
| | 02:37 | selected just this segment of the path.
There is no anchor point right over here.
| | 02:41 | There is one anchor point
here and one anchor point at the end.
| | 02:44 | But when you're using Live Paint you
don't think about anchor points at all,
| | 02:48 | all you think about is how it looks or
appears on your screen. What it looks
| | 02:52 | like here is that the boundary, the
circle, creates a separation between this
| | 02:55 | part of the path and the rest of it.
| | 02:58 | Now that I have just this part of this
path selected, I can tap the Delete key
| | 03:02 | on my keyboard to actually remove it.
So without using any Pen tools or any
| | 03:06 | Scissor tools or any path-cutting
functions at all I simply selected a portion
| | 03:10 | of a path that looks like I wanted to
remove it and I got rid of it by hitting
| | 03:13 | the Delete key. I can do the same for
this area as well. Simply click on it to
| | 03:17 | select it and press Delete to remove it.
| | 03:19 | But I have other options available to
me as well. For example, say I want to
| | 03:22 | keep this path here, for whatever
reason. I could simply go ahead and select
| | 03:26 | that portion of the path and change
its stroke Color to None. I don't see the
| | 03:31 | path here, but it does exist. What
have I done? I've actually taken the path
| | 03:35 | right now that again has one anchor
point in this end. The other anchor point
| | 03:38 | that appears in this path is all the
way down over here. But on one single
| | 03:42 | path, I was able to have part of the
path have a Black attribute and part of
| | 03:46 | the path has a stroke attribute set to None.
| | 03:48 | If you think about it, it's quite
incredible. In fact, I'll show you a simple
| | 03:52 | example. I'll take my Line Segment
tool and create a simple crisscrossing
| | 03:55 | pattern. I'll select both of these
paths and give them the regular default
| | 03:59 | White fill and Black stroke. Let me
change the stroke weight here to about 5
| | 04:03 | points and I'll zoom a little bit so
we can see this a little bit closer.
| | 04:05 | I'll turn this into a Live Paint
group again using the keyboard shortcut,
| | 04:08 | Command+Option+X or Ctrl+Alt+X, and
now I'll use my Live Paint Selection tool
| | 04:13 | to select just one portion of this path.
Again, what's creating the boundary
| | 04:17 | between this area and this area is
this path that crisscrosses that area.
| | 04:21 | So with this portion of the path
selected, I can actually go to my stroke panel
| | 04:25 | and turn on the Dash Line setting.
What I have now basically is one path that
| | 04:29 | is half-dashed and half solid. I can
even choose to select this area of the
| | 04:33 | path and change its stroke
Color to completely something else.
| | 04:36 | If I go into Outline Mode, I still see
that I have two regular paths that I've
| | 04:40 | created. Yet I've been able to apply
different attributes by using the Live
| | 04:44 | Paint Selection tool. I'll go one step
further. I'll use the Direct Selection
| | 04:47 | tool to select just this one path right
here and I'll change its stroke to None.
| | 04:53 | Now, I can actually see that this
particular path that exists, again, one
| | 04:57 | anchor point here, one anchor point here,
two stroke attributes applied to that
| | 05:01 | single path and that is simply made
possible because of this path right here.
| | 05:05 | If I were to move this path, Live
Paint would simply go ahead and update that
| | 05:08 | attribute of that particular stroke.
| | 05:09 | So many times, if you really think
about how Live Paint works, you can create
| | 05:13 | shapes or paths to define geometry that
will ultimately allow you to adjust the
| | 05:17 | appearance of that particular object.
So at the end of the day, one thing is
| | 05:21 | clear. Live Paint allows completely
smashed barriers of how you think about
| | 05:26 | working with Vector
artwork inside of Illustrator.
| | 05:28 | Rather than focus on the anchor points
and then the line paths, you can ship
| | 05:32 | your focus to the appearance of those
paths. All in all, the Live Paint feature
| | 05:36 | inside of Illustrator makes you think
completely different about how you draw
| | 05:38 | your graphic. Hopefully, this feature
alone will save lots of time and frustration.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Releasing and expanding Live Paint groups| 00:00 | One of the first questions that I
usually get whenever I show somebody the Live
| | 00:03 | Paint feature inside of Illustrator is,
is it going to print? And the answer is
| | 00:07 | of course, it will. Like almost any
other feature inside of Illustrator,
| | 00:11 | be it Live Trace or Live Effects,
those things are all expanded and printed
| | 00:15 | correctly. However, there may be
times when you want to expand a Live Paint
| | 00:19 | group on your own. So
let's explore how to do that.
| | 00:21 | I am going to simply create a regular
Live Paint group. I'll draw a circle with
| | 00:24 | a couple of paths that kind of
crisscross through it. I'll select these objects
| | 00:28 | here and I'll choose Object > Live
Paint and I'll choose Make. I'll apply some
| | 00:32 | color to these regions with the Live
Paint Bucket tool. I'll go ahead and
| | 00:35 | choose a few colors here. Let's add a
Gradient, say right about over here and
| | 00:39 | let's do a few other colors as well. It
has to be yellow, yellow is my favorite
| | 00:43 | color, and I also choose to change
some of the stroke attributes as well.
| | 00:46 | Select this path right here and I'll
change its stroke attribute to None.
| | 00:49 | I'll also use my Live Paint Selection tool
to select just this region over here and
| | 00:53 | I can hold on the Shift key and select
just this region over here and I could
| | 00:56 | change those attributes to None as well.
| | 00:59 | Well, as we know, inside of Illustrator,
even though I'm able to actually apply
| | 01:03 | paint to these specific regions, I
can't use my regular Selection tool to
| | 01:07 | select that particular shape. And
that's because there is no shape that exists
| | 01:11 | there, only to the rules of Live Paint,
the fact that it looks like it should
| | 01:14 | be an enclosed and paintable region,
can I apply a fill Color to that region?
| | 01:18 | However, there are no distinct paths
that make up that area. The truth is,
| | 01:22 | though, I can take my Live Paint
group and expand it any time. In doing so,
| | 01:26 | Illustrator will flatten up my Live
Paint group and create a distinct object
| | 01:30 | necessary to make my artwork appear as
if I see it right now, but without using
| | 01:34 | the Live Paint feature.
| | 01:36 | To do so, I can simply use my regular
Selection tool to select the entire group
| | 01:40 | and then in the control panel, click
on the Expand button. In doing so, I no
| | 01:44 | longer have a Live Paint group. If I
take my regular Direct Selection tool,
| | 01:47 | I'll see that I now can click on
these regions and actually pull them out.
| | 01:51 | In fact, I sometimes will create a Live
Paint group just to be able to quickly
| | 01:55 | color and manipulate some areas and
then choose the Expand command, which if
| | 01:59 | you think about it, ends up giving you
a far more powerful Pathfinder like function.
| | 02:03 | Let me press Undo a few times to kind
of go back to my original Live Paint
| | 02:07 | group. There is another option
available to me as well. If I go ahead and I
| | 02:10 | choose my regular Selection tool to
select the Live Paint group, I could go to
| | 02:13 | the Object menu, choose Live Paint
and then choose Release. That returns my
| | 02:18 | artwork back to the original shapes
that I've created. However, I'll lose
| | 02:21 | the appearance of the paint that I've created.
| | 02:23 | Now in reality, whenever you print an
Illustrator document, if you do have a
| | 02:27 | Live Paint group in your document,
Illustrator will automatically expand it
| | 02:30 | before it gets to the printer. That
way the printer knows how to create those
| | 02:34 | particular regions. However, that's
something that Illustrator just simply
| | 02:36 | handles on its own, you don't need to
think about that. Just know that any Live
| | 02:40 | Paint group that you create inside
of Illustrator will print correctly.
| | 02:42 | However, if you ever manually want to
pick apart the regions inside of a Live
| | 02:46 | Paint group, you can always choose to
expand it. Keep in mind that once you
| | 02:49 | expand your Live Paint group, you can
no longer use the Live Paint Bucket or
| | 02:52 | the Live Paint Selection tool on those objects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding how Live Paint groups work| 00:00 | When you truly understand how Live
Paint groups work, you can really take
| | 00:04 | advantage of them. For example, we
already know that Live Paint groups allow us
| | 00:08 | to simply take multiple objects and
then any regions that are created by those
| | 00:12 | objects, the way that they
overlap, can be magically painted.
| | 00:15 | Well, let's take a really close look at
how we create Live Paint groups inside
| | 00:18 | of Illustrator, how they work and how you
can take advantage of those particular attributes.
| | 00:21 | Let me create a simple rectangle
inside of Illustrator. Then I'll draw some paths
| | 00:28 | that overlap that rectangle. Now
I'll go ahead and I'll choose to select
| | 00:32 | all these objects and using the Live
Paint Bucket tool covert it to a Live
| | 00:36 | Paint group. Now, I'll
apply some color to these areas.
| | 00:39 | Now that I've applied to colors here,
I could simply work with some of the
| | 00:46 | other attributes of the shape as well.
Say for example, I don't want any strokes here.
| | 00:48 | I could simply select my entire artwork
here and change my stroke setting to None.
| | 00:53 | So now I simply have a rectangle
that I would split up into four regions.
| | 00:58 | Remember if I want to create more
regions, I could simply double-click on the
| | 01:01 | group to isolate it and now I can draw
a new path, which has no fill or stroke
| | 01:05 | attribute, yet by exiting Isolation
Mode, I can use my Live Paint Bucket tool
| | 01:10 | to still paint these regions.
| | 01:11 | Again, the geometry of that path being
there creates the region. Let's go ahead
| | 01:16 | and add a Gradient here and maybe a
pattern down here as well. Now let's say I
| | 01:19 | want to remove this actual region from
this artwork. I could fill it None or I
| | 01:24 | could use my Live Paint Selection tool
to just select that particular region
| | 01:27 | and delete it.
| | 01:28 | Now let's say I wanted to add a stroke
around the exterior of my artwork. Well,
| | 01:32 | we know that if we have multiple
objects, we can actually group those objects
| | 01:35 | together and apply attributes such as a
stroke attribute to the group. In doing
| | 01:40 | so, I can easily stroke just the outside
of the objects that appear inside of that group.
| | 01:44 | Well, remember that a Live Paint group
is in actuality a group. So I should be
| | 01:48 | able to apply the same concept. So
let's see how we can do that. I use my
| | 01:52 | regular Selection tool here. We exit
Isolation Mode. I'll select the entire
| | 01:56 | Live Paint group and rather than just
apply a regular stroke to the objects in
| | 01:59 | the group, I'm going to apply a stroke
just to the group itself. I'll do that
| | 02:03 | to the Appearance panel. I'll go over
here and I'll choose to add a new stroke.
| | 02:07 | Now I'll change away to that stroke
something significant like maybe 10 points.
| | 02:11 | Now remember we went ahead and we
deleted this area here with a Live Paint
| | 02:13 | Selection tool. Notice that right now
that area has no stroke applied to it at all.
| | 02:17 | But if I want the stroke to only
apply along the exterior of this,
| | 02:20 | I'm going to change the stacking order of
where that stroke applies inside of this
| | 02:24 | particular Live Paint group.
| | 02:25 | To do that, I'll take the stroke and
I'll drag it beneath the Contents. This is
| | 02:30 | a really great example of seeing
exactly how Live Paint really works.
| | 02:34 | Because as you can see, the path geometry,
the actual anchor points in the paths that
| | 02:38 | make up the underlying regions of this
particular Live Paint group don't look
| | 02:41 | anything at all the way that it
actually appears on my screen.
| | 02:44 | So when you're working with Live Paint
inside of Illustrator, you think about
| | 02:47 | the boundaries that you create and the
regions that you can actually paint and
| | 02:51 | apply attributes to. When you apply
that knowledge to what you already know
| | 02:54 | about groups, you can see how easy it
is to create complex artwork inside of
| | 02:58 | Illustrator, without thinking about all
the math and underlying path functions
| | 03:01 | that you would normally have to deal with.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Converting Pixels to PathsIntroducing the trace options| 00:00 | So let's talk about converting pixels
into vector paths. Now back inside of
| | 00:04 | Illustrator CS2, Adobe introduced the
feature called Live Trace. Basically,
| | 00:08 | with one click on a button you can
convert any photograph into vectors.
| | 00:13 | Sounds great in concept, but if you've ever
tried it on your own, you may not always
| | 00:16 | be happy with the results
that you get from Live Trace.
| | 00:19 | Well, in reality, there is a lot of
settings that go on behind the scenes
| | 00:22 | inside of Live Trace and in these movies,
we're going to learn all about them.
| | 00:26 | On top of that, this particular chapter
is also going to explore other possible ways
| | 00:30 | for converting your images into
vectors. We may not always be using Live Trace
| | 00:34 | but maybe manually tracing as well.
Well, let's go ahead and take a look.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting expectations: Live Trace| 00:00 | Live Trace is a feature inside of
Illustrator that allows you to trace
| | 00:03 | pixel-based content and convert it
automatically into vector paths.
| | 00:07 | Before we get started tracing images,
it's important to set the right expectations
| | 00:12 | upfront. Making the transition from
a pixel-based image to vector-based
| | 00:16 | artwork is not absolute. It's a
translation and as such that translation is
| | 00:21 | open to interpretation. Every image
that you work on is going to be somewhat
| | 00:25 | different and therefore the settings
for that trace will also be different.
| | 00:28 | Likewise, you'll find that Live Trace
excels at certain types of task, but
| | 00:32 | maybe not at others.
| | 00:34 | For the most part though, it's
important to realize that Live Trace was created
| | 00:37 | by Adobe as more of a creative type
of tool. We'll go through many of the settings,
| | 00:41 | but as you'll soon see, you can't
always expect to get the perfect results
| | 00:45 | from every type of image. For example,
let's take this Lynda.com logo
| | 00:48 | that's right over here. This is
actually an image that I have taken right off
| | 00:51 | the lynda.com website. You can even
see here that it's a GIF file that's 72
| | 00:55 | pixels per inch. I can't tell you
how many times I've received logos or
| | 00:59 | artwork from clients that are simply
taken right off from their websites.
| | 01:02 | These clients of course expect that
this artwork should print perfectly on
| | 01:06 | their high quality print brochure.
The reality is as a designer you may be
| | 01:10 | faced with having to recreate such
artwork. Let me zoom in here on the artwork
| | 01:14 | over here and I'll apply the Live
Trace and you'll see that I don't really
| | 01:16 | get the best results. We can talk about
how to make the trace better, but
| | 01:20 | I'll also tell you that if you are
trying to replicate something exactly or
| | 01:23 | perfectly, Live Trace may not be
the best way to go. But don't worry.
| | 01:27 | Throughout this chapter we'll learn
all types of techniques to get just the
| | 01:30 | kind of results that you want. Let me
move over here to this next image.
| | 01:33 | This is actually a 2D bar code used in mobile
applications and again, by just clicking
| | 01:38 | on the Live Trace button here, I see
that I really don't get the results that
| | 01:41 | I may be looking for.
| | 01:42 | Because it's a simple and straightforward
image though, I can use some of the
| | 01:45 | settings inside of Live Trace to get
better results. Finally, I move over here
| | 01:49 | to this image as well and I'll click
on it. Here I'll kind of open up more
| | 01:52 | some of the interpretation of what this
artwork actually is. It was sketched or
| | 01:56 | drawn either on paper and then
scanned into Photoshop, or maybe was drawn
| | 01:59 | directly inside of Photoshop. But here
by clicking Live Trace, I do seem to get
| | 02:02 | the results that seem to be more along
the lines that I'm looking for. Finally,
| | 02:06 | let me zoom out over here and I'll
actually click on the photograph.
| | 02:09 | This is really where I
believe that Live Trace excels.
| | 02:11 | Again, more as a creative tool. I can
work with so many photographic in nature
| | 02:14 | like this and with one click of button
get more of a stylized results. Now that
| | 02:18 | we have a better understanding of
what to expect out of Live Trace,
| | 02:21 | we can begin to explore all of its settings
to get just the results that we want.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Live Trace feature| 00:00 | Live Trace is an incredibly complex
feature that has lots of settings inside
| | 00:04 | of it to allow you to tweak and get
just the right results that you want.
| | 00:07 | But it certainly doesn't seem that way
when you first see the feature. The way that
| | 00:11 | you apply Live Trace is you simply
select any rasterized content in your document,
| | 00:15 | and you'll automatically see
the Live Trace button appear directly
| | 00:18 | inside of your control panel. One click
of a button automatically converts that
| | 00:22 | into a traced object. Now by default,
Illustrator always converts images into
| | 00:26 | black and white artwork.
| | 00:27 | But you can change that by choosing
from one of these presets. For example,
| | 00:31 | I'll choose Color 6 and I'll see that
that artwork now gets converted using
| | 00:35 | colored artwork. In fact, there are a
variety of presets. For example, one here
| | 00:39 | called Photo High Fidelity, which
converts my artwork into vectors but keeping
| | 00:44 | that photographic feel. But these
presets are simply a shortcut for you to get
| | 00:48 | to a certain place. Once you are
there however, you want to click on this button
| | 00:52 | over here called Tracing
Options. That opens up a dialog box, which
| | 00:55 | really lets you go to town on
basically tweaking and getting every single
| | 00:58 | adjustment right in your trace.
| | 01:00 | Now don't worry, throughout this
chapter we're going to learn what all these
| | 01:03 | settings do, but for now I'm just
going to click on the Cancel button.
| | 01:05 | I'm going to press Undo a few times to
go to back to my image before I actually
| | 01:08 | traced it. You'll notice that just
to the right of Live Trace button is a
| | 01:12 | button here that has a little triangle.
It may not appear like a button, but if
| | 01:15 | you know that you want to trace this
into color image, rather than first
| | 01:18 | clicking the Live Trace button and
then changing the preset, this allows you to
| | 01:22 | choose a preset right off the bat.
In doing so, it traces that using that
| | 01:25 | particular setting.
| | 01:27 | Now you'll notice that once you trace
an image inside of Illustrator, you can't
| | 01:30 | actually edit or access the vector
path themselves. In order to do so,
| | 01:34 | you'll need to click on the Expand button.
At this point the artwork that you see on
| | 01:38 | your screen is no different than any
other artwork that you create or draw
| | 01:40 | from scratch inside of Illustrator. So now
that you know how to apply a Live Trace
| | 01:45 | to artwork inside of Illustrator,
we can learn about all of it's settings and
| | 01:48 | bring out the true power that lies within.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding how Live Trace works| 00:00 | If you want to get the most out of
Live Trace, it's important to realize
| | 00:03 | exactly how Live Trace works, what
makes it tick. Well, let's take a closer look.
| | 00:08 | I have this document open. I'm
simply going to click on this photograph.
| | 00:11 | I'm going to click on the Live
Trace button, great! I have now taken my
| | 00:14 | photograph, and I have turned it into
vectors. But you'll notice now that if I
| | 00:17 | go ahead and I look at the image
itself, I can't actually select the vector
| | 00:20 | artwork, until I go ahead and I click
on the Expand button. And when I do so,
| | 00:23 | notice that there were not that many
anchor points on here. You may have used
| | 00:27 | other tools in the past, like maybe
Adobe Streamline, and you know that when
| | 00:30 | you've traced images using that software,
you ended up with lots like millions
| | 00:33 | of anchor points.
| | 00:34 | So I'm going to press Undo to go back
to my Live Trace object here, and let's
| | 00:38 | take a look at some of the other
things that you could do with Live Trace.
| | 00:40 | You'll also know that we can choose a
Preset, for example, change for the color
| | 00:43 | 6 preset. Well, if I already traced my
artwork first into black and white,
| | 00:47 | how did Illustrator know where all these
colors come from? Well, to answer that
| | 00:51 | question we go to the very core of why
the feature is called Live Trace?
| | 00:55 | It's live, because Illustrator stores
to copy that image inside of the file.
| | 00:59 | Now when I go ahead and I trace the
artwork, and I've converted from pixels
| | 01:03 | into vectors, Illustrator doesn't get
rid of the image, it keeps the image, and
| | 01:07 | that allows me to make changes. So
it's called Live Trace, because the
| | 01:10 | photograph and the vectors are tied
together which really allows me to go ahead
| | 01:15 | and make change this to either of them.
Either the pixel based artwork, or the
| | 01:18 | vector based artwork. In fact, you
can see a lot of this happening directly
| | 01:21 | here inside of Illustrator. You'll
notice that as you've traced the object, and
| | 01:25 | you have that Live Trace applied, if
you look at your control panel there are
| | 01:29 | these two triangles that appear here.
| | 01:31 | The one on the left is a triangle with
these jagged edges, and the one on the
| | 01:34 | right is basically a triangle made up
of these anchor points. Both of these
| | 01:38 | buttons actually control what you
see on your screen. For example, a few
| | 01:42 | moments ago I had a photograph on my
page. I clicked the Live Trace button and
| | 01:45 | chose the Color 6 preset, and now I
see what that artwork looks like when
| | 01:49 | converted into vector artwork, and I
see that because of the settings that are
| | 01:52 | contained inside of these two buttons.
The button on the left, the one with
| | 01:56 | jagged edges, controls the preview
setting for the pixel-based artwork. The
| | 02:00 | button on the right controls the
preview settings for the vector based artwork.
| | 02:05 | In other words, the trace. So let's
take a look at what we have here. If I
| | 02:08 | click on the Preview settings for the
image, I see that right now it would set
| | 02:11 | to No image. Obviously, once I go
ahead and I actually apply the Live Trace,
| | 02:16 | Illustrator doesn't want to show me
what the image looks like any more, it
| | 02:19 | wants to show me what the trace looks like.
| | 02:21 | So it turns the preview of the image
off. Likewise, if I click now on the
| | 02:25 | preview for the vector artwork, I see
that it sets a tracing result. Let me go
| | 02:28 | ahead and change that to No tracing
result. So what I see right now on my
| | 02:32 | screen is nothing. I don't see the
original image, nor do I see the trace
| | 02:35 | result. So let's go back over here to
the image settings, and let's change that
| | 02:38 | to original image. Remember,
Illustrator never got rid of the photograph. It's
| | 02:42 | still here inside of my file, and
Illustrator is using this image in order to
| | 02:45 | trace it. Now if you think about it,
I have a preset set here that's set to
| | 02:50 | Color 6. That means it's using 6
different colors to convert this photograph,
| | 02:54 | which has millions of colors
into it, into vector artwork.
| | 02:57 | Now how does Illustrator reduce the
number of colors from millions to just 6?
| | 03:01 | The answer is that Illustrator uses a
color reduction algorithm. If you have
| | 03:05 | ever tried saving a GIF file out of
Illustrator, or even Photoshop, you may be
| | 03:08 | familiar with something called the
selective color method, which is commonly
| | 03:11 | used when trying to reduce an image
that has lots of colors into, for example,
| | 03:15 | a GIF image that can only contain a
maximum of 256 colors. Basically, Photoshop
| | 03:20 | or Illustrator performs an analysis of
the image, and finds the colors that are
| | 03:23 | used most often and uses that information
to reduce the number of colors in the file.
| | 03:28 | But let's take a step back here for
a minute, and think about how this
| | 03:31 | reduction happens here inside of
Illustrator? I'm telling Illustrator that
| | 03:34 | by the end of the day, I want 6 colors
in this artwork. But the photograph has
| | 03:38 | a million colors inside of it. So does
Illustrator go ahead and convert this
| | 03:42 | now into vector artwork using a
million colors, and then try to find ways to
| | 03:45 | reduce that to 6 colors? Well, that
would take a lot of processing. Instead
| | 03:50 | it's a whole lot easier for
Illustrator to actually perform this color
| | 03:53 | reduction while the photograph is
still a photograph that hasn't been traced yet.
| | 03:57 | Not only can Illustrator perform
that calculation faster, the tracing
| | 04:01 | result that it gets at the end of the
day will be much better. In fact, you can
| | 04:04 | actually see this happening inside of
Illustrator. If I go to the Image Preview
| | 04:07 | button again, I'm going to choose
something here called Adjusted Image.
| | 04:10 | Adjusted Image is actually the
photograph itself that has been reduced in
| | 04:14 | colors before it was traced. In fact,
you can even see some pixels here on the screen.
| | 04:19 | By optimizing the image, or you can
even say by conditioning the image in
| | 04:22 | advance before tracing it, Illustrator
can get much better results. We'll talk
| | 04:26 | more about this concept in detail, when
we learn more about the tracing option
| | 04:30 | settings. But for now, let's explore
some of the other preview options that you have.
| | 04:33 | I'm going to back over to the
Image Preview, and I can choose something
| | 04:35 | called a Transparent Image. This can be
helpful if I want to overlay the traced
| | 04:40 | image on top of the actual photograph.
This way I can compare the photograph to
| | 04:44 | the result. I'll come now to the
tracing options, and I'll go ahead and I'll
| | 04:47 | choose Outlines.
| | 04:48 | So now I can see the photograph
beneath, and I can see exactly where
| | 04:51 | Illustrator is going to be drawing
the path. Likewise, they can choose an
| | 04:54 | option here called Outlines As Tracing
that fills in those settings. So I now
| | 04:59 | have a photograph behind it, the filled
object that are there, and the paths as well.
| | 05:03 | Now as long as the object
itself remains a Live Traced object, I can
| | 05:07 | easily change any of the traced
settings, and the artwork will update
| | 05:09 | accordingly. And when we actually click
on the Expand button, thus Illustrator
| | 05:13 | convert the artwork to path, but which
can no longer be edited any more as a
| | 05:17 | Live Traced object. So as we learn
more and more about the Live Trace feature
| | 05:20 | inside of Illustrator, it's
important to get this concept clear.
| | 05:24 | Live Trace keeps your photograph and
your vector artwork in the same file.
| | 05:28 | You can make change this to either the
vector part of the file, or the raster part
| | 05:31 | of the file, and these two files are
linked. So when you make a change to one
| | 05:35 | of them, the other automatically
updates. At this point you are ready to
| | 05:38 | actually learn what those settings are.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making raster-based adjustments| 00:00 | So you know how to apply a Live Trace
to a photograph in Illustrator. You also
| | 00:04 | know that a Live Trace function is made
up of two specific parts. Conditioning
| | 00:08 | the image while it's still in pixel form,
and then actually converting it into
| | 00:12 | vector artwork. In this movie we'll
focus specifically on the first part. So
| | 00:16 | I'll start by clicking on the photograph,
and I come over here, and I actually
| | 00:19 | apply the Color 6 tracing preset. I
move it up a little bit more towards the
| | 00:23 | top of my page, and then I'll go
ahead and click on this button here which
| | 00:27 | allows me to open up the
tracing options dialog box.
| | 00:29 | Let me position that right about over
here. Now, remember the trace itself is a
| | 00:34 | two-step process. First, we condition
the image and then we trace it. If you
| | 00:38 | look at the tracing options dialog box,
it's divided into two main sections.
| | 00:43 | On the left side we have something called
Adjustments, and on the right side we
| | 00:46 | have something called the Trace settings.
The adjustment side is where all the
| | 00:50 | conditioning happens to the image
itself. All the trace setting is applied to
| | 00:54 | when the artwork is actually converted
into vectors. Another way to think of
| | 00:57 | this is, Photoshop on the
left, Illustrator on the right.
| | 01:01 | Now the View settings here on the
bottom is something you already know about.
| | 01:04 | These pop ups for Raster here, and for
Vector here, are the same as these two
| | 01:08 | buttons that appear in the control panel.
They simply control what you see here
| | 01:12 | on your screen. So let's take a look at
some of the settings that are here. Let
| | 01:15 | me go ahead and click on the Preview
button, so that I can see my changes as I
| | 01:18 | make them We'll begin with the first
setting here called Mode. Basically when
| | 01:21 | you are working with Live Trace inside
of Illustrator, you can convert artwork
| | 01:24 | into Color, Gray scale or Black and White.
| | 01:27 | For example, I'm going to choose black
and white for now, and you'll see that
| | 01:30 | this is the same setting that happens
by default when you first click on the
| | 01:33 | Live Trace button. Now if you choose
the black and white option, this setting
| | 01:36 | here called Threshold becomes
available. If you think about it, I'm asking
| | 01:40 | Illustrator to take a full color image
and convert it to just black and white
| | 01:43 | pixels. There is a setting in
Photoshop that does that. A setting called
| | 01:47 | Threshold. Well, what is Threshold? If
you think about Photoshop for a moment,
| | 01:51 | the digital image is made up of channels.
For example, in an RGB image it will
| | 01:55 | be red, green and blue channels.
| | 01:58 | Or if you have a gray scale image,
that also has the single channel. In fact,
| | 02:01 | the channel itself was really just a
simple gray scale image. So the first
| | 02:05 | thing that Illustrator does when it is
presented where a Live Trace for color
| | 02:08 | image is it turns into a single channel.
You may also know that a channel has
| | 02:12 | 256 different levels of gray. But I
can't do anything with those gray pixels.
| | 02:17 | I need to end up with
either black or white pixels.
| | 02:19 | So what the Threshold setting allows
me to do is it determines what kind of a
| | 02:23 | gray pixels becomes white, or what
type of gray pixels becomes black.
| | 02:26 | You'll notice that the Threshold setting
goes from one, all the way up to 255.
| | 02:31 | Wherever this slider is, that's the
midpoint or the determinator between white
| | 02:35 | pixels and black pixels. For example,
at the default setting, which is really
| | 02:39 | right in the middle. Any pixel up to
this particular point here, any pixels
| | 02:43 | that's completely white, or gets up to
about 50% gray, will all turn into white
| | 02:47 | pixels. Anything to the right of
this slider will turn into black pixels.
| | 02:51 | For example, if I want to see more
detail, and more pixels become black in my
| | 02:54 | image, I'll simply move the slider up a
little bit. In doing so, I'll see more
| | 02:58 | darker areas up here. If I want to see
less detail, or more white areas in my
| | 03:02 | trace, I'll move that slider to the
left. Again, the Threshold setting only
| | 03:08 | applies when you are working with
black and white traces, and you'll also
| | 03:11 | notice that the Threshold setting
appears conveniently inside of the control
| | 03:13 | panel when you have a
black and white trace applied.
| | 03:15 | I am going to set this back to 128, or
the default setting that it was at. Now
| | 03:18 | you'll notice over here that the
Palette and the Max color setting, which both
| | 03:22 | applied a color, are grayed out and
that's because I'm working with a Black and
| | 03:25 | White trace. However, if I choose color,
I'll see that Threshold is now grayed out.
| | 03:29 | That it no longer applies, and I
have the Palette and Max color settings
| | 03:33 | now available. The Max color settings
allows me to determine how many colors
| | 03:37 | I want Illustrator to use in the Live Trace,
and the Palette right now was set to Automatic.
| | 03:41 | That means that Illustrator will
automatically determine which 6 colors to use.
| | 03:45 | Now this is a pop up menu, but you'll
see that there is nothing else available
| | 03:47 | here right now. We'll talk more
about this particular Palette setting in
| | 03:50 | another movie, but I can easily
control the number of colors in my trace by
| | 03:54 | adjusting these values. For example, if
I want more detail in my artwork, I can
| | 03:57 | change this for example to 12 colors,
or if I want less detail, I may reduce
| | 04:02 | this to about 3 colors. There is a
check box here called Output Swatches, by
| | 04:06 | checking that Illustrator will now
take any of the colors that it had used in
| | 04:09 | the Live Trace, and actually
add them to my Swatches panel.
| | 04:14 | Now I have two remaining settings
here for the image. The first setting is Blur.
| | 04:17 | Because images themselves can
have noise inside of it, or dust and
| | 04:21 | scratches, a traced image may pick up
on those little nuances and trace those
| | 04:26 | elements as well. However, by
applying a Blur to the image itself, those
| | 04:30 | elements will not appear in the trace.
Applying a blur to an image can also
| | 04:35 | reduce the amount of detail that
you see in your image. For example, by
| | 04:38 | applying a Blur here of 2 full pixels,
I can see that the areas here that have
| | 04:42 | lots of detail have smoothed out.
| | 04:44 | Additionally, images with lots of
grain inside of it could benefit from
| | 04:48 | blurring upfront, to reduce the number
of anchor points that are used in the
| | 04:51 | trace at the end of the day. Finally
there is a setting here called Resample.
| | 04:55 | By checking this option right here,
I had been able to change the actual
| | 04:58 | resolution of my image. Now right now
I'm working with a low-resolution image,
| | 05:01 | 72 pixels per inch. However, if I'm
working with a high-resolution photograph,
| | 05:05 | like maybe 300 pixels per inch or more,
I may find that tracing that can take a
| | 05:09 | very long time. After all,
Illustrator has lots of pixels to crunch.
| | 05:14 | The funny thing is that you might be
surprised to know that I actually get
| | 05:17 | better tracing results from low-
resolution images than high-resolution images.
| | 05:22 | If you think about it, the more pixels
you have, the more room for error there is.
| | 05:25 | So rather then have to go into
Photoshop, and actually Resample images
| | 05:28 | inside of Photoshop, you can do that
right here inside of Illustrator. Now
| | 05:33 | remember that every image is different.
So there is no like one setting for any
| | 05:36 | of these particular features here on
the adjustment side of the tracing options
| | 05:40 | dialog box. One of the great things
about Live Trace is that it's live. And now
| | 05:45 | that you know how to control the
conditioning part of the Live Trace process,
| | 05:48 | you are ready to start tweaking the
actual tracing setting themselves.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Tracing with fills, strokes, or both| 00:00 | As we know Illustrator objects are
made up of vector path, and we can control
| | 00:05 | the appearance of a path by applying
fill and stroke attributes. Now with Live
| | 00:09 | Trace we are taking a photograph, and
we are converting that to vector artwork,
| | 00:13 | but do those paths have fill or stroke
attributes applied to them? The answer
| | 00:17 | is that it's up to you. Let's take a
look at the example over here. This is an
| | 00:20 | image that I brought in here into
Illustrator. We'll go ahead and zoom in just
| | 00:23 | on that so we can see it a little
better. I'm going to go ahead and click on
| | 00:26 | the Live Trace option.
| | 00:27 | We will just use a regular default,
Black and White trace, and I'll click on
| | 00:30 | this button over here to open up the
trace options dialog box. Now you can see
| | 00:34 | over here that by the Trace settings
options, remember these are the vector
| | 00:37 | settings, or the settings that are
basically applied to how Illustrator traces
| | 00:40 | the object, I can see two check boxes
here, fills and strokes, and currently
| | 00:44 | the fills option is chosen. What that
means is that Illustrator actually draws
| | 00:47 | paths around the parameter, and the
interior of the objects here, and then
| | 00:51 | fills them with, in this case with black.
| | 00:53 | In fact, when you choose some of other
options like Gray scale or Color, you'll
| | 00:56 | notice that the strokes and fills
option that turned off, because then in that
| | 00:59 | particular case, Illustrator always
uses fills. However, when you work with the
| | 01:03 | Black and White option, you have more
options available. To see exactly what I
| | 01:06 | mean here, I'm actually going to go
ahead and accept the trace here. I'm going
| | 01:08 | to click on the Expand button. As you
can see the paths here are created along
| | 01:12 | the outside of the object, and then
it's filled with that color. If I go into
| | 01:16 | Outline modem you'll see
exactly how that's build.
| | 01:18 | Let me go back to the Preview mode.
I'm going to click Undo to go back to my
| | 01:22 | Live Trace. Now let's see what happens
when I use the strokes option. I'm going
| | 01:26 | to go ahead and again open up the
dialog box here to see my tracing option, and
| | 01:30 | instead of fills, I'm actually going
to choose the stroke option. Let's turn
| | 01:33 | off fills here. I'll click on the
Preview button, and now you'll see a
| | 01:36 | different result. Notice that
Illustrator now used paths with a stroke
| | 01:40 | attribute on them to draw the objects.
Notice the consistent weight here
| | 01:43 | amongst these paths.
| | 01:45 | Now if I choose trace for example, and
then expand it, again, going to Outline
| | 01:49 | mode, I'll see that these are simply
drawn with a regular path that has a
| | 01:52 | stroke applied to it. Let's go back
into regular preview mode, let me zoom out
| | 01:56 | for a second, so we can see this
photograph. You can also apply the stroke
| | 01:59 | attribute to photos as well. Again,
I'll choose Live Trace here. I'll go over
| | 02:03 | here to the Tracing option setting, and
then instead of going and choosing the
| | 02:07 | fills options, I'll choose strokes.
| | 02:09 | Notice that right now, by the way I'm
going to click on the Preview button
| | 02:12 | here, is that I have both fills and
strokes checked on it. That's because
| | 02:15 | Illustrator now has the ability to, on
choice, choose to actually trace objects
| | 02:20 | using filled objects or strokes. For
example, you can see that in certain areas
| | 02:24 | like here for example, the mouth, this
part over here on the upper lip, maybe
| | 02:27 | on the neck over here, are all drawn
using strokes, instead of filled path.
| | 02:32 | You can get some wild results by only
using strokes on photographs as well.
| | 02:36 | I'll click Cancel here to go back to the
original trace. Now at the end of the day
| | 02:39 | it all comes down to what you
need to get out of your trace.
| | 02:42 | If you just want to work with strokes,
you can easily do that, but you might
| | 02:45 | lose those thick and thins of the
small nuances that appearance that are
| | 02:48 | redesigned. If you want to pick up all
the elements that appear inside of the
| | 02:52 | photograph, obviously the
fills option is the way to go.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making vector-based adjustments| 00:00 | We know that by using the Live Trace
feature inside of Illustrator, we can
| | 00:04 | trace objects using the fill tracing
method, the strokes tracing method or
| | 00:08 | combination of fills and strokes. But
whether you use fills or strokes, when
| | 00:13 | you trace your objects, there are
many other settings that apply to how
| | 00:16 | Illustrator precisely converts the
pixels into paths. So let's take a look at
| | 00:21 | some of these vector adjustments. I'm
going to start off by selecting this
| | 00:24 | object right over here. Let me zoom in
on really close, so we could see what we
| | 00:27 | are doing, and I'll position that
just over here on the left side of the screen.
| | 00:31 | With the object selected, I'll simply
go ahead and open up my Tracing Options
| | 00:34 | dialog box, and I'll click on the
Preview button so I can see what's happening here.
| | 00:37 | Now because I'm using the default
tracing right now, which uses a fills
| | 00:41 | option, you can see that these two
options here, Maximum stroke weight and
| | 00:45 | Minimum stroke length, are currently
grayed out. That's because these settings
| | 00:48 | only apply when you are
using the strokes option.
| | 00:51 | So I'll go ahead and I'll turn
strokes on. Let's turn off fills now for a
| | 00:54 | moment, so that we can see what
these two settings do. The Maximum stroke
| | 00:58 | weight defines how thick of a stroke
or how heavy of a stroke Illustrator can
| | 01:02 | use when tracing the object. You'll
notice that it has some strokes that are
| | 01:05 | very thin in weight, and some that
are much heavier. This setting simply
| | 01:08 | determines how thick of a stroke
Illustrator can use. Sometimes I may reduce
| | 01:12 | this to a very low number, for example,
like 1 pixel, just so that they are all consistent.
| | 01:17 | At the same time in this case here,
it kind of does a trace where again the
| | 01:20 | exterior of the object is traced, which
doesn't really help me if all I want is
| | 01:23 | a centerline of an object. I also
have the ability to set a Minimum stroke
| | 01:27 | length, which gives me control over
how long each path will be that is drawn.
| | 01:32 | By setting a higher number here,
I'll ensure that I don't get all these
| | 01:35 | minuscule paths that are broken up
inside of my trace. In this particular
| | 01:39 | example, I really won't see a
difference by changing this value, because I have
| | 01:43 | one long continuous path. There are
three of those settings that are here. One
| | 01:46 | is called Path Fitting,
Minimum Area, and Corner Angle.
| | 01:50 | For now, let's take a look at the Path
Fitting and Corner Angle Settings. To
| | 01:54 | better illustrate what these settings
do, I'm going to turn the fill setting
| | 01:57 | back on, and turn off strokes. What the
Path Fitting setting does, it actually
| | 02:01 | controls how close the vector path
match the underlined pixels. In general,
| | 02:07 | using a low number for Path Fitting
will increase the number of anchor points
| | 02:10 | used in my trace. And I'll close the
trace to closely match exactly how the
| | 02:15 | pixels are positioned. Using a higher
number, it starts to reduce the number of
| | 02:18 | anchor points used and
also smoothes out the path.
| | 02:22 | Let me show you what I mean, if I
change my Path Fitting here for example to 0.
| | 02:26 | That means that the trace that I
create is actually going to match perfectly,
| | 02:29 | to the way the pixels are. Now
because this is a low-resolution image, the
| | 02:33 | trace is now simply drawing over the
exact edges of the pixel. Now if I'm going
| | 02:37 | ahead, and I'm looking for a nice,
smooth and clean path, this is certainly not
| | 02:40 | the way to go. In addition, take a
look at how many anchor points I have now.
| | 02:44 | By setting my Path Fitting setting to
0, I now have close to 20,000 anchor
| | 02:48 | points in my object.
| | 02:49 | By going to the default setting of 2
pixels here, now do I see a nice, clean
| | 02:53 | smooth path. I have also reduced the
number of anchor points to 323. Overall,
| | 02:59 | the Path Fitting setting is probably
one of the most dramatic effects on the
| | 03:02 | appearance of your trace. I use a
higher number, for example, 4 pixels, and you
| | 03:06 | will see that now the paths start to
smooth out even more, and also seem to
| | 03:10 | take on some kind of interpretation
on their own, rather than matching the
| | 03:13 | pixels perfectly, it's just using
them as a base to create some new type of
| | 03:17 | artwork. Let me set it back to the 2
pixel setting, which is the default
| | 03:20 | setting that's here, and let's take
a look at the Corner Angle setting.
| | 03:23 | Now right now in this trace I have
some points that are here, and then I have
| | 03:26 | some smooth areas as well. The Corner
Angle setting simply determines at what
| | 03:30 | point the paths anchor points become
smooth anchor points, rather than corner
| | 03:34 | anchor points. For example, focus on
these nice smooth lines that appear here
| | 03:39 | on the trace. I'm going to set my
Corner Angle here to 0, again to the extreme,
| | 03:43 | and you can see that now instead of a
smooth line, it kind of has a little
| | 03:46 | point here, and a point here as well.
| | 03:49 | Notice these other points that appear
here. By increasing the corner angle,
| | 03:52 | I'm telling some of those points to
convert into smooth curves. The higher of a
| | 03:56 | number I go, and I can go all the way
up to 180, the smoother or rounder the
| | 04:00 | edges of my artwork get, even these
areas that were pointy before, now have a
| | 04:03 | little bit of a roundness to them.
| | 04:04 | So now that we know what Path Fitting
and Corner Angle do, that leaves us with
| | 04:08 | two more settings here in the Trace
Settings area and the Tracing Options
| | 04:12 | dialog box, and that's Minimum Area and
Ignore White. Let's cancel out of this
| | 04:16 | particular object here, I'm going to
zoom out for a second here, then focus on
| | 04:20 | this piece of artwork right here, and
move up towards the top of the screen
| | 04:22 | here, and once again, I'll open up my
Tracing Options dialog box, and click on
| | 04:26 | the Preview button.
| | 04:27 | The Minimum Area setting determines the
size for how bigger region needs to be
| | 04:31 | in order for your Illustrator to trace
it. In other words, if I have a really
| | 04:35 | small little spec or little area of
pixels in my original image, the Minimum
| | 04:39 | Area setting might allow me to ignore
that particular area, and not trace it at all.
| | 04:44 | In other words, the Minimum Area
allows me to control how much detail the
| | 04:47 | Live Trace feature actually pays attention to.
| | 04:50 | For example, take a look over here. I
have some highlights in this person's ear.
| | 04:53 | Right now these areas are more
than 10 pixels in size, so that's why
| | 04:58 | Illustrator traces them. But if I
were to increase this number to maybe 60
| | 05:01 | pixels for example, you will notice
that those areas start to disappear.
| | 05:05 | Because they are smaller in size than
60 pixels, Live Trace simply ignores them
| | 05:10 | and makes believe that they are not
there at all. If you have an image that has
| | 05:13 | a lot of detail inside of it, by
increasing your Minimum Area, you are telling
| | 05:17 | Illustrator to ignore those smaller
areas of detail and not trace them.
| | 05:21 | If you want more detail in your image,
you would lower your Minimum area. For
| | 05:24 | example, if I set my Minimum area to 4
pixels, I'll start to see more area show
| | 05:29 | up over here than it is here. When
using a Black & White trace inside of
| | 05:32 | Illustrator, you will see that the
Minimum Area setting also appears in the
| | 05:35 | control panel.
| | 05:37 | Finally, there is the Ignore White
setting that's right over here. Now we
| | 05:40 | specified a Black & White trace. That
means that Illustrator is taking a color
| | 05:44 | photograph and converting it to black
& white objects. But let's say I don't
| | 05:48 | want white object. Let's say I want
some kind of background to show through in
| | 05:51 | these areas. By choosing the Ignore
White option, Illustrator actually sets
| | 05:55 | these areas to None instead of White.
Allow me to place my Live Trace artwork
| | 06:00 | on top of a colored background, and
having that colored background show through
| | 06:03 | where the areas are white.
| | 06:05 | Now that you know what each of these
vector adjustments do, you have the tools
| | 06:08 | that you need to get the result
you are looking for from Live Trace.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting colors in Live Trace| 00:00 | The Live Trace feature inside of
Illustrator allows you to trace your objects
| | 00:04 | using three methods. Those are
Black & White, Gray Scale and Color.
| | 00:09 | But when you are using the Color option,
Illustrator itself chooses the colors that are used.
| | 00:13 | For example, in this case here,
I'll select this photograph, and I'll
| | 00:17 | apply the Color 6 preset. Notice that
the colors that are used in this trace
| | 00:21 | here are picked up directly from the
image. But I as a user don't really have
| | 00:24 | any control over those colors.
| | 00:26 | For example, maybe I want to use a
different shade of color for this guy, or
| | 00:30 | maybe I have a specific palette of
colors that I want to use, maybe they are
| | 00:33 | corporate colors, or some of that I
have chosen on my own. So let's take a look
| | 00:36 | at how I control colors that are used
inside of a Live Trace. Let me move the
| | 00:40 | image just a little bit over here to
the side, I'm going to go ahead and expand
| | 00:43 | this panel here, so we can see our swatches.
| | 00:46 | Now right now we have tons of swatches,
which are the default settings here
| | 00:49 | inside of Illustrator, but let's get
rid of those. You can delete them simply
| | 00:52 | by dragging them into the Trash icon
here, or you could choose this option here
| | 00:56 | called Select All Unused, and then
delete them all at once. Choose Yes for that.
| | 01:02 | When you do that method though,
there maybe some swatches that's still
| | 01:05 | remaining, and those might be used in
graphic styles or symbols or other things
| | 01:09 | that exist inside of Illustrator.
| | 01:10 | So I'll just drag these over here to
delete them manually. I'll even get rid of
| | 01:14 | the black and white swatches that exist
here as well. So now we have absolutely
| | 01:18 | no swatches whatsoever. I'm going to
go here, my object here is selected.
| | 01:22 | I'm going to simply click on this button to
open up my Tracing Options dialog box.
| | 01:26 | I'm going to click on Output to
Swatches, and then I'm going to go, click on
| | 01:28 | the Trace button.
| | 01:30 | Notice that now I have six swatches
that appear inside of my document, those
| | 01:34 | are the six colors that Illustrator is
using for the Live Trace, and they have
| | 01:39 | also been defined as global colors.
Even though I can actually click or select
| | 01:44 | any of these paths or regions that are
here, because this is still a Live Trace
| | 01:47 | object, I haven't expanded it yet. I
can make change to the swatches that are
| | 01:52 | used to draw those objects.
| | 01:54 | You don't even need to have the
object selected at all. Let's go ahead and
| | 01:56 | deselect this right here, and say I
wanted to change the color over here using
| | 02:00 | the skin, maybe I want to lighten that
up a little up. I'll go over here to the
| | 02:03 | Swatches panel, and I'll double-click
on that swatch. That brings up the Swatch
| | 02:07 | Options dialog where I can make changes
for that particular color. So let's say
| | 02:10 | I go ahead and I lighten it up just a
little bit. I click OK, and now you can
| | 02:14 | see that those changes are
made globally inside the trace.
| | 02:17 | Even though when I click on the trace,
I can't even select those regions. So
| | 02:20 | this is one way to modify the colors
that are applied in a Live Trace. Once I
| | 02:24 | have traced the object, I can make
adjustments to the colors that were used
| | 02:28 | when tracing that object, but
let's say I want to be proactive.
| | 02:30 | Let's say I want to feed in colors
that I want Live Trace to use. I know in
| | 02:34 | advance maybe, I have a palette of
colors that I want to use, and when I create
| | 02:38 | the Live Trace, I want Live Trace to
use only those colors. Well, you can
| | 02:41 | easily do that, but the first step is
to actually load those libraries first
| | 02:45 | into your document. For example, I come
here to the Swatches panel, I click on
| | 02:49 | this lower icon here on the lower left
called Swatch Libraries menu, and I'll
| | 02:52 | bring up some other libraries.
| | 02:54 | For example, there is something here
called Earthtones. Maybe I want to use
| | 02:56 | some Earthtone colors. I'll go ahead
and I'll load some additional libraries as
| | 03:00 | well, let's do Celebration. Then
I'll go ahead and I'll bring some nature
| | 03:04 | colors, like maybe beach. That might be
really appropriate for this type of an
| | 03:07 | image. And the reality is that if I
had my own palettes that I have created
| | 03:10 | maybe using Kuler or on my own for
example, I can load those libraries as well.
| | 03:15 | Once these all appear inside of my
documents, I'll now simply go back to the
| | 03:18 | trace itself. I'll select the object,
open up the Tracing Options dialog box,
| | 03:23 | and if you will notice over here on the
adjustment side of a dialog box, there
| | 03:26 | is a setting here called Palette. Let
me click on the Preview button here. Now
| | 03:30 | until now this particular setting has
always been set to Automatic. That's
| | 03:33 | because Illustrator was automatically
selecting six colors from the image to
| | 03:36 | use in the trace. But since I have
loaded these three libraries, the Earthtone,
| | 03:42 | Celebration and Beach libraries in my
document, you will notice that now the
| | 03:45 | pop-up list shows them here as well.
| | 03:47 | So I could choose Celebration, for
example, Earthtone, or Beach colors. When I
| | 03:55 | choose this specific palette, the
Live Trace feature can only trace objects
| | 03:59 | using any of the colors that are
present in the chosen palette. Now these
| | 04:03 | palettes that I have loaded actually
have lots of colors inside of them.
| | 04:06 | For example, here for the Beach one,
Illustrator is using 57 colors from that
| | 04:10 | palette. Switching back to the
Earthtone one for example, it's using 44 colors
| | 04:15 | from that palette. I'll click on the
Trace button here to accept that in my
| | 04:18 | trace. But here you can see easily that
I could actually feed colors into Live
| | 04:22 | Trace to use in the traced object.
| | 04:25 | So when it comes to using your own
colors in a Live Trace, you have two
| | 04:27 | options. You can either use the Trace
Option settings as they are and then
| | 04:31 | modify the colors afterwards, or you
can load customized palettes and have the
| | 04:36 | Live Trace feature use those palettes directly.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Photoshop with Live Trace| 00:00 | Live Trace is a great feature to use
when you are trying to create stylized
| | 00:04 | vector artwork based off of an
original image, and we have already learned
| | 00:07 | there are many tweaks, and functions,
and settings that you can apply to
| | 00:11 | basically get your trace to look just
the way that you want it. That being
| | 00:14 | said, Illustrator still is a vector
based application, and there may be times
| | 00:18 | when certain edits that you can make
to a photograph are better off made in a
| | 00:21 | program like Photoshop.
| | 00:22 | Now obviously Photoshop and
Illustrator has some really great integration
| | 00:25 | between them, and when you are using
the Live Trace feature, it's important to
| | 00:29 | realize that you do have Photoshop to
go back to when you are trying to make
| | 00:32 | certain edits. So with that concept
in mind, let me show you how I use
| | 00:36 | Photoshop and Illustrator together
to get just the trace that I want.
| | 00:40 | I'll start off here inside of
Illustrator by creating just a web document.
| | 00:43 | It happens to be that I find that
whenever I create RGB documents, I get better
| | 00:47 | tracing result than working in CMYK.
It's also a little bit faster, because the
| | 00:51 | Live Trace feature actually works
natively in RGB. So I'll start by placing a
| | 00:55 | photograph on to my document. I'll go
to the File menu, I'll choose Place, and
| | 00:59 | on my Desktop I have an image here
called surfer_dude.psd. It's a native
| | 01:03 | Photoshop file, but really it can be any image.
| | 01:06 | But before I place it, I'm going to
come down over here where it says Link,
| | 01:09 | I'm going to make sure the Link option is
checked. Rather than embed the image when
| | 01:13 | I place it now into Illustrator, the
Link option will ensure that the actual
| | 01:16 | photograph exists outside of the file.
That means if I make change to that
| | 01:20 | photograph at any time, those
changes will update inside of Illustrator.
| | 01:24 | So I'll click on the Place button.
Now I'll go over here to the Live Trace
| | 01:27 | option, and I'll choose to apply the
Color 6 preset. So let's take a look at
| | 01:31 | our result. Say over here on his
forehead, we have some of the sky color that's
| | 01:35 | being introduced, same thing also with
some of the highlights in his nose and
| | 01:38 | over here on his face. Now why is that
happening? Well, remember, Illustrator
| | 01:42 | is taking now a full color photograph,
and reducing it just to six colors.
| | 01:46 | If I press Undo, so we can see the
original photograph, it could be that the
| | 01:50 | highlights are being reduced close
enough to the same that are being used here
| | 01:54 | on the sky. So when I go back to the
tracer, I can see that that's exactly
| | 01:58 | what's happening. Now in reality, I can
do one of several things here, I could
| | 02:01 | choose to expand my artwork, which
would now release all these as vector
| | 02:04 | shapes, and then I can start to
select the areas that are blue, and I can
| | 02:07 | change the colors manually.
| | 02:09 | Now maybe here in this example where
I only have like one or two or small
| | 02:12 | little areas that exist, that may not
be that big of a task. But sometimes they
| | 02:16 | may have just too many areas to count.
Even more so, I may not want to expand
| | 02:20 | my trace at all. I may want to keep it
in a live state so that I can experiment
| | 02:23 | with other settings.
| | 02:24 | Now we know if I option up the Tracing
Options dialog box that I can adjust the
| | 02:28 | raster based settings, or the vector
based settings of that trace. But even on
| | 02:32 | the raster based side, these are
settings that apply to the entire image
| | 02:35 | overall. I can't target specific
pixels, and make a change to them. For
| | 02:39 | example, I can't tell the photograph to
look at this particular area and change
| | 02:43 | the color of those pixels.
| | 02:45 | After all, Illustrator only works with
vectors. It doesn't allow me to actually
| | 02:48 | edit pixels in any way, but Photoshop
does. In fact, I found that working with
| | 02:53 | Photoshop makes my life so much easy
when working with a trace. I can perform
| | 02:57 | certain types of adjustment inside of
Photoshop much fast than I can ever do
| | 03:01 | inside of Illustrator.
| | 03:02 | So let's see how that works. I'm going
to go to the Window menu. I'm going to
| | 03:06 | open up my Links panel. The Links
panel basically identifies all the images
| | 03:10 | that are placed into my Illustrator
document. Notice over here, I have the
| | 03:13 | surfer_dude.psd file. I'll come to
these icons here on the bottom, and the one
| | 03:17 | on the far right over
here is called Edit Original.
| | 03:20 | By clicking on this button,
Photoshop will now launch and open up that
| | 03:23 | photograph. So now let's go ahead and
make some change to this photograph here
| | 03:27 | inside of Photoshop. Let me zoom in
just on his face area right here, and I'll
| | 03:30 | use my Regular Clone tool to simply
sample some area from his forehead here,
| | 03:35 | and basically kind of clean it up, or
darken I guess you can say that highlight
| | 03:39 | area, maybe even get rid of it
completely. I'll do the same thing for his nose,
| | 03:42 | let me sample this area from his nose
right here, and I'll simply touch up that area.
| | 03:46 | Now I'm not doing a cover for Vogue
Magazine or something else for that where I
| | 03:50 | need to worry exactly about how this
looks. What I simply need to do is just
| | 03:53 | remove those areas. Remember at the
end of the day, all these areas will be
| | 03:57 | converted to vectors. So I'll sample
an area let's say from over here his
| | 04:00 | cheek, and let's kind of cover up that
highlight area, and maybe I have these
| | 04:04 | splotches here on his nose, just to
make sure those don't get picked up.
| | 04:07 | I'll delete those areas as well.
| | 04:08 | So now what I have done is I have made
some very simple and basic pixel changes
| | 04:12 | here inside of Photoshop. I have
gotten rid of those hot areas, or those hot
| | 04:15 | spots that appear on his face. I'll
simply save the image, and now I'll return
| | 04:20 | to Illustrator. In doing so,
Illustrator will inform me that the image has now
| | 04:23 | been updated. Would I like to
update it? And the answer is Yes.
| | 04:26 | Now remember when I apply a Live Trace
inside of Illustrator, the actual image
| | 04:30 | is still inside of Illustrator. That's
what makes this that Live Trace. So the
| | 04:34 | photograph is still there. As soon
as I update the photograph behind the
| | 04:37 | scenes, Live Trace will automatically
update to trace as well. In doing so
| | 04:42 | those areas that were blue, because
they were hot before in that particular
| | 04:45 | area of the highlight of his face, now
have been converted to the same color
| | 04:48 | that appears in the rest of his face.
| | 04:51 | What's great about working in this
way is again I don't need to worry about
| | 04:53 | making precise adjustments or
complex retouching techniques inside of
| | 04:56 | Photoshop. In this case, all I need to
do was change the tone in those areas to
| | 05:00 | make sure they were close to the face,
so they all got merged into the same shape.
| | 05:04 | So when you are working with Live Trace,
it's really easy to kind of get caught
| | 05:07 | up and actually worrying about how
the vectors have formed here inside of
| | 05:10 | Illustrator. But don't forget that
you have this incredibly powerful tool
| | 05:14 | Photoshop in your arsenal as well.
| | 05:16 | Using these two applications together,
you can just the right trace that you
| | 05:19 | need in a very little time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Releasing and expanding Live Trace artwork| 00:00 | One of the greatest benefits of the
Live Trace feature is the fact that it's live.
| | 00:04 | That allows me to apply tweaks
or changes to my trace to get it just right
| | 00:08 | at any time. But there may be
times when you want to do something that
| | 00:12 | the Live Trace feature does not allow
you to do. For example, edit the actual paths
| | 00:16 | that are used in the trace.
| | 00:18 | Likewise, there may be times when you
decide you don't want the Live Trace
| | 00:21 | after all and you want to go back to
the original image. That's where the Expand
| | 00:25 | and the Release settings come into play.
So I'll start off here, I'll apply
| | 00:28 | a Live Trace to this image. Let me go
ahead and choose the regular Color 6 preset
| | 00:31 | to this particular image and now
I have applied a Live Trace to this image.
| | 00:36 | Now I know that I can't access the
individual paths that are used for this trace
| | 00:39 | until I expand it. To do so, I could
simply click on the Expand button
| | 00:43 | here on the control panel. Doing so now,
makes the object no longer alive.
| | 00:48 | In fact, the image is not even a part of
this document anymore and all I'm left with
| | 00:51 | are these vector paths.
| | 00:53 | Paths for that matter are really no
different than any other paths that I draw
| | 00:57 | inside of Illustrator. Let me press
Undo and I'll show you that you can also
| | 01:00 | access this very same feature by going
to the Object menu, choosing Live Trace,
| | 01:04 | and then choosing the Expand option.
In fact, one of my favorite reasons for
| | 01:08 | using this feature is simply to expand
it and then hit the D key for default.
| | 01:12 | That simply draws these outlines here
and I can create my own paint by number schemes.
| | 01:15 | Then I'll press Undo to go back
to my original image, before I had
| | 01:20 | applied the Live Trace. Now like I
said before, when we have a Live Trace,
| | 01:24 | we know that the photograph and the
traced artwork exist inside of my document.
| | 01:28 | When I expand my artwork, the image
goes away and all I'm left with are
| | 01:32 | the vector paths.
| | 01:33 | But let's look at a different
scenario. I go over here with the object
| | 01:36 | selected and I choose the Color 6
preset. Now I show this to my client and
| | 01:39 | he really doesn't like it. Maybe I wanted
to sell him some idea where I'm creating
| | 01:43 | some stylized version and some artwork,
but he really wants me to use the photograph.
| | 01:47 | So rather than expand it, which of
course just gets rid of the image and leaves me
| | 01:51 | the vectors, I want to get rid of
the vectors and just be left with
| | 01:54 | the photograph itself, the original
photograph that I have used. To accomplish that,
| | 01:57 | I'm going to release the Live Trace.
I'm going to go again to the Object menu,
| | 02:01 | I'm going to choose Live Trace and
then I'm going to choose the Release option,
| | 02:05 | and this brings me back to my
regular photograph. It's the same as if
| | 02:08 | I had just placed it now inside of
Illustrator. There is now no trace that exists
| | 02:12 | inside of my document.
| | 02:13 | So finally let me show you one other
option, which I think is actually pretty cool
| | 02:16 | with the way that Live Trace works.
If I go ahead and I apply a trace here,
| | 02:19 | and again, I'll use the Color 6 preset here,
besides a regular Expand command,
| | 02:23 | I could also choose the Live Paint
option, which will expand my artwork and
| | 02:27 | also convert it to a Live
Paint group at the same time.
| | 02:30 | In doing so I can immediately use my
Live Paint Bucket tool to mouse over
| | 02:34 | regions and apply fill colors to them.
So these are basic options for expanding
| | 02:38 | and releasing Live Trace objects, but
know by the way that if you are going to
| | 02:41 | print your artwork and you're really happy
with the trace that you have created
| | 02:44 | you don't need to expand it. Illustrator
will be able to print and process your files
| | 02:47 | just fine while keeping
your trace in a live state.
| | 02:51 | However, if and when necessary,
you now know how to expand and release
| | 02:55 | your Live Trace objects as well.
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| Saving and exporting Live Trace presets| 00:00 | The Live Trace feature inside of
Illustrator comes with a variety of presets
| | 00:04 | that you can apply. However, don't
think that's all that you can do with Live Trace.
| | 00:08 | You can create your own presets.
For example, maybe you have gone ahead
| | 00:11 | and you have experimented with all
the settings inside of Live Trace and
| | 00:14 | you have found just the right settings
that you want for a particular task and
| | 00:17 | maybe you repeat that task often.
Rather than having to memorize each of
| | 00:20 | the settings and continuously apply them
over and over again, you could simply
| | 00:24 | create a preset to memorize those settings.
| | 00:26 | To do so, you don't even need a
document open inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:29 | Just go over to the Edit menu and choose
Tracing Presets. That opens up the Tracing
| | 00:34 | Presets dialog box where you see a list
of all the preset that come with Illustrator.
| | 00:38 | To create your own, start
with one as a base. For example,
| | 00:40 | I'll start with Color 6 and then I'll
click on the New button. It opens up
| | 00:44 | the Tracing Options dialog box. Anything
that's grayed out is something that cannot
| | 00:48 | be saved within a preset.
| | 00:49 | But let's change some of the settings
here. First I'll change the name.
| | 00:52 | Let me call this one Loosy Goosy for example.
And we want one that doesn't really match
| | 00:57 | the exact paths that I have. So
I'll change the Path Fitting to like
| | 01:00 | maybe something like 4 pixels and the
Minimum Area I'll crank up to around 20 pixels,
| | 01:06 | and I'll set a Corner Angle
as well to about 120. I'll choose
| | 01:10 | the Ignore White option, for example here.
I'll also set a Blur to around maybe 1 pixel blur.
| | 01:15 | That will just kind of help things out,
basically to reduce the number
| | 01:17 | of anchor points that are there.
| | 01:19 | Then what I'll do is I'll click on the
Done button and now I have defined my preset.
| | 01:22 | Now this preset is great for the
computer that I'm on right now, but if
| | 01:26 | I want to now save this and export it
so that other people can use it, I could
| | 01:29 | simply go over here and click on the
Export button and then maybe throw it on
| | 01:32 | my Desktop here. It doesn't pick up
the name itself. But I can name it what
| | 01:35 | I want to here and then click on
the Save button. That just saves it as
| | 01:38 | a text based file, which also
happens to be a cross platform file.
| | 01:42 | So I can easily import that particular
preset using the Import button here and
| | 01:47 | I can do that on a Mac or a Windows
computer. Once I'm done, I'll simply click OK,
| | 01:50 | and now that preset lives here
inside of Illustrator. Let me show you
| | 01:54 | one interesting thing about these
particular presets though. I'm going to hide
| | 01:57 | Illustrator for a second. I'll go to
my Desktop where I have that file that I just saved.
| | 02:01 | Notice that the text that appears in here,
it's just regular text. Again, like I said,
| | 02:04 | it is a cross platform file.
I can easily import this on both Mac and
| | 02:07 | Windows based computers. But there is
also an option down here called canEdit
| | 02:11 | and canDelete. These are currently set
to 1. If you change these to 0, you can
| | 02:15 | also adjust whether or not these can be
edited or deleted from those computers.
| | 02:19 | Now even if the presets themselves
don't give you the exact results that
| | 02:22 | you are looking for, by getting the
settings down right and saving your own presets,
| | 02:26 | at least you can put yourself in
a position where you can quickly
| | 02:28 | apply one of your customized traces,
and then all you need is just a little bit
| | 02:31 | of tweaking for each individual image.
| | 02:33 | So go ahead and create your own
custom presets. After all, they are free.
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| Tracing in Batch mode with Adobe Bridge| 00:00 | There is no question that the Live
Trace feature inside of Illustrator can be
| | 00:03 | incredibly fun to use. However, there
may be times when you are working that
| | 00:07 | you need to apply a Live Trace to many,
many objects and it can be somewhat
| | 00:11 | tedious to have to open up each
individual file and apply a Live Trace setting
| | 00:14 | to it and you just wish that there
was some way to automate that process.
| | 00:17 | Well, the good news is that there is
inside of Adobe Bridge. I'm going to
| | 00:22 | switch over to Bridge, which is a
completely different application I can use to
| | 00:25 | visually browse my files, and I'll
point to my desktop here. I can select
| | 00:29 | any image that I want to. In this case,
I'll actually select four images on my desktop.
| | 00:32 | Next, I'll go to the Tools menu and
I'll choose Illustrator, and then I could
| | 00:36 | choose an option here called Live
Trace. This launches a Bridge script that
| | 00:40 | allows me to apply Live Trace to
multiple images at one time. Here I can choose
| | 00:44 | a Tracing Preset. Notice by the way
that some of the ones that I have created
| | 00:47 | appear here as well.
| | 00:49 | Let me choose for example, the Color
6 one. I can choose to take all these
| | 00:52 | images and turn them into one document
with multiple layers or by leaving this
| | 00:56 | option unchecked I'll simply create
four different files for the four files
| | 00:59 | that I have selected. I'll choose a
Document Profile for each of those new documents.
| | 01:02 | For example, maybe I'll choose Web
profile and I can choose a Destination of
| | 01:06 | where I want these files to go.
I'll leave them at my desktop here and then
| | 01:10 | I'll click Choose. When I click OK,
Bridge will automatically communicate with
| | 01:13 | Illustrator, create the necessary files,
perform the Live Traces and then save
| | 01:17 | and close them. The great thing about
this is that while this is happening,
| | 01:21 | I can go out for lunch, walk away from
my desk, and when I come back everything
| | 01:24 | is automatically done for me.
| | 01:26 | As you can see, I now have four
Illustrator files, which I have created with
| | 01:29 | very little effort. Even if you don't
use Adobe Bridge that often you still
| | 01:33 | might find use in this particular script.
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| Turning an image into mosaic tiles| 00:00 | We already know that you can use Live
Trace inside of Illustrator to get a
| | 00:03 | really cool stylized vector
illustration based on a photograph. However,
| | 00:07 | you may be surprised to learn that Live
Trace is not your only option. You can also
| | 00:11 | take advantage of a
feature called Object Mosaic.
| | 00:14 | Using a photograph as its base, Object
Mosaic creates a series of rectangles of
| | 00:19 | tiles to create a stylized version
of your photo. In order to use Object
| | 00:23 | Mosaic, you first must place a
photograph into Illustrator and embed it.
| | 00:27 | That means either unchecking the Link
button when you place it or once you placed
| | 00:30 | the photograph, click on the
Embed button in the control panel.
| | 00:33 | In this file I'll select this picture,
which has already been embedded. Notice
| | 00:36 | the Embed button is now grayed out.
I'll go to the Object menu and I'll scroll
| | 00:40 | down to where it says Create Object
Mosaic. Here in the dialog box, Illustrator
| | 00:45 | tells me the Current Size of my
artwork right now and allows me to specify a
| | 00:48 | new size. But I'll leave that right now
and I'll go over here to where it says
| | 00:51 | Tile Spacing.
| | 00:53 | Tile Spacing is the amount of space
that's added in between the mosaic tiles or
| | 00:56 | the rectangles that are created. With
a value of zero, each of the tiles will
| | 01:00 | butt up right against each other. But
I'll specify a value here of 1 pixels for
| | 01:03 | both the Width and the Height. As for
the number of tiles, I want the width of
| | 01:07 | my image to basically turn into 100 tiles.
| | 01:09 | Now I want all of my tiles to be
perfectly square in shape. So what I'll do is
| | 01:13 | I'll now click on the Use Ratio button
to have Illustrator automatically figure
| | 01:16 | out how many tiles in height I'm going
to need. That works because right now,
| | 01:20 | I have the Constrain Ratio set to
the Width setting. If I know how many
| | 01:23 | rectangles I want in the Height
setting, I might use the Height for
| | 01:25 | my Constrain Ratio.
| | 01:27 | Specify the number here I want in the
Height and then click on the Use Ratio
| | 01:30 | button to automatically figure out
how many I need in the Width. Next, I'll
| | 01:34 | make sure that Illustrator
generates a color version, not a gray version of
| | 01:37 | my file, and I'll also have Illustrator
delete the raster image when it's done
| | 01:40 | creating the Object Mosaic.
| | 01:42 | The Resize using Percentages option
would allow me to specify a new size using
| | 01:46 | percentages instead of absolute values
like pixels here. Once I'm done with my
| | 01:50 | settings, I'll simply click OK and
watch Illustrator turn this photograph now
| | 01:54 | into a series of mosaic tiles.
| | 01:56 | Now it's important to realize that
the Object Mosaic command inside of
| | 01:59 | Illustrator is a filter, meaning that
once I apply it there is no Live feature
| | 02:03 | that allows me to go back and tweak
the settings. If I not happy with the
| | 02:06 | results, I would need to press Undo
and then reapply the settings and see if
| | 02:10 | that gets me the results that I'm looking for.
| | 02:11 | I will deselect the artwork here and I
can see now that my photograph, which
| | 02:14 | turned into a series of rectangles
simulating Mosaic Tile effect. In fact,
| | 02:19 | you will find that Object Mosaic gives
you really cool results on a variety of
| | 02:22 | different types of artwork, try it on
photographs, rasterized text, logos and more.
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| Tracing an image manually| 00:00 | Live Trace is a great feature inside
of Illustrator but it's not prefect for
| | 00:04 | every task. For example, Live Trace
excels at stylizing photographic content.
| | 00:10 | But if you are trying to turn a low-
resolution image, maybe that of a graphic
| | 00:13 | or a logo for example, you may find it
easier to just redraw the artwork from
| | 00:17 | scratch by yourself.
| | 00:18 | So I would like to share a few
pointers in how to get that process started.
| | 00:22 | I'll start by creating a print document,
I'll click OK, just take the regular
| | 00:26 | settings here and I'll choose File >
Place and I'll place the image that I want
| | 00:30 | to work with here on my artboard. I'll
choose here this logo.gif file. It can
| | 00:34 | be linked or embedded, well this
doesn't make a difference here in this case,
| | 00:36 | I'm just using it as a base in my artwork
and I'll click on the Place button here.
| | 00:40 | Let me zoom in a little bit close over
here, so you can see what we are dealing
| | 00:43 | with and I'll go over here to my Layers
panel and I'll double-click on Layer 1.
| | 00:46 | Now let us do the setting here called
Template. Template basically allows me to
| | 00:51 | automatically lock my particular
layer and you will see that it also dims
| | 00:55 | images to 50%. I'm actually going to
change that here to 30%. I want my image
| | 00:59 | to be just a little bit lighter in the
background, so it doesn't get in the way
| | 01:01 | of the artwork that I'm going to create.
| | 01:04 | Next, I'll click OK and you can see
that right now, the image is here for me to
| | 01:07 | look at but I can't touch it or
select it in anyway. Next, I'll come to my
| | 01:10 | Layers panel and I'll create a brand
new layer on top of that Layer 1. Here is
| | 01:14 | where I'll create the new artwork.
Doing things in this way really lets me be
| | 01:18 | precise, I can draw the exact
objects that I need rather than worry about
| | 01:21 | having Live Trace interpret that artwork for me.
| | 01:24 | For example, I see here that the logo
is round. While in Illustrator I can use a
| | 01:27 | very primitive tool, the Ellipse
tool to create a perfect circle. So I'll
| | 01:31 | choose my Ellipse tool right here
inside of Illustrator, I'll position my
| | 01:35 | cursor right here in the middle, I'll
hold down the Option key to draw it from
| | 01:37 | the center, the Shift key to constrain
through a circle and I'll draw my circle here.
| | 01:41 | I'll change the fill Setting to
None, so that I can see the artwork that
| | 01:45 | exists inside of it. And I'll change
its stroke weight to about 2 point.
| | 01:50 | In this way, I'm drawing my new
artwork but I'm using the image that's behind
| | 01:54 | it as a basis for that. Now by taking
a quick look over here at the letters
| | 01:57 | lynda.com, I can see that the
typeface used is Avant Garde. So I'll take my
| | 02:01 | Type tool here and I'll start typing
the actual letters themselves. I'll select
| | 02:06 | the text and then I'll switch
that typeface to Avant Garde.
| | 02:09 | I will make this typeface just little
bit bigger using the keyboard shortcuts,
| | 02:14 | Command+Shift+> or Command+Shift+<, to
reduce the point size. I also see that
| | 02:19 | the letters, lynda itself here, is set
in a bold weight. So I'll again use my
| | 02:22 | Type tool here to just select the
actual letters that I want to change and I'll
| | 02:26 | change it to maybe Demi and I'll
position this text right on top of it.
| | 02:30 | Since I'm not exactly sure what size it
should be, by positioning in this way I
| | 02:34 | can make my typeface just a little
bit smaller and maybe also open up the
| | 02:37 | kerning just a little bit. And I'm
using the Option key and the Right Arrow to
| | 02:40 | do that. If you are on a PC that
will be the Alt key and the Right Arrow.
| | 02:44 | And again, you can click in certain
areas and just adjust the kerning as I need
| | 02:47 | to, to get it just the way that I need
it to be. In general, when I'm working
| | 02:51 | with logo type, once I know that I
have my character set the way that I need them,
| | 02:54 | I'll convert them to outlines.
In this way, if I ever need to send
| | 02:57 | this logo out to somebody else, I don't need
to worry about them not having the right font.
| | 03:00 | I will go to the Type menu here and
I'll just choose over here Create Outlines.
| | 03:05 | You will also notice that the
registered trademark symbol that need to go here.
| | 03:07 | Again, I could that very easily by
using my Type tool. And if I'm not really
| | 03:11 | sure where the registered trademark
symbol is, I can go to the Type menu choose
| | 03:15 | to open the Glyphs panel. In doing so,
I could actually see every single
| | 03:19 | character in this typeface. So I'll
use the scrollbar here to kind of go down
| | 03:22 | the list, until I find that particular
character, it's right over here, I'll
| | 03:25 | double-click on it and you will see
that it automatically appears where my
| | 03:27 | cursor was, on my artboard.
| | 03:29 | I will close the Glyphs panel,
because I'm done using it and I'll take this
| | 03:33 | typeface. Right now, it's set to Demi
but I'll reduce it back to maybe the Book
| | 03:36 | weight and I'll also scale it down in
size, just the way that I need it, and
| | 03:41 | position it just where it has to go.
And I'll basically continue on this
| | 03:45 | process until I redraw the logo
exactly the way that I need it. In this case
| | 03:49 | here, for this artwork here, I'm
going to have to use the Pen tool because
| | 03:51 | there is no way to create this
type of customized artwork otherwise.
| | 03:55 | However, instead of worrying about
trying to get it straight, keep in mind the
| | 03:58 | Live Paint feature, which will allow
you to draw in a more intuitive fashion.
| | 04:01 | If you are not already familiar with
the Live Paint tool, check out the chapter
| | 04:04 | called the Joy of Live Paints down
elsewhere in this title. What's great about
| | 04:08 | working in this way is that at anytime
you can go over to your Layers panel and
| | 04:11 | simply click on the Preview button
here to see what the artwork looks like
| | 04:14 | without the image behind it.
| | 04:16 | Once you have created your logo, simply
take this entire layer, drag it to the
| | 04:19 | trash and save your file.
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|
|
3. Adding Dimension with 3DIntroducing 3D| 00:00 | Back in Illustrator CS, Adobe
introduced the Live Effect called 3D.
| | 00:04 | In reality this one little effect inside of
Illustrator is actually a entire program
| | 00:09 | called Adobe Dimensions. And there is
a tremendous amount of functionality in
| | 00:13 | this 3D feature here inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:15 | Now we can have a lot of fun with 3D,
but it's also important to realize that
| | 00:19 | 3D inside of Illustrator is not the
same as 3D that you might find inside of
| | 00:22 | Photoshop or Flash or
After Effects for that matter.
| | 00:25 | So with that in mind, we'll take a
look at some of the powerful things
| | 00:28 | you could do and especially from the creative
side with the 3D effect inside of Illustrator.
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| Setting expectations: 3D in Illustrator| 00:00 | Before we start learning about the
3D effect inside of Illustrator, it's
| | 00:03 | important to set a few expectations.
Once we understand exactly what the
| | 00:07 | capabilities of 3D inside of
Illustrator are we can use that to our advantage.
| | 00:11 | The first thing to realize about 3D
inside of Illustrator is that it's real 3D
| | 00:15 | rendering. So it isn't some kind of a
cheesy effect, at the same time, because
| | 00:19 | it's real 3D rendering, it does take a
lot of computer processing power and as
| | 00:23 | such based on the complexity of your
graphics, you may find yourself waiting a
| | 00:26 | little bit for Illustrator to render the 3D.
| | 00:28 | While 3D is real inside of Illustrator,
it's also a vector-based implementation
| | 00:33 | of 3D. Now if you have seen those 3D
movies, like for example by Pixar, those
| | 00:37 | are pixel-based renderings, not vector-
based, and as such they have different
| | 00:41 | types of shading capabilities that
are not present inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:45 | At the same time, there are certain
benefits of using vector based rendering,
| | 00:48 | one of those being that your artwork
is infinitely scalable. Speaking of
| | 00:52 | artwork, Illustrator supports
something called artwork mapping and that's the
| | 00:55 | ability to take two-dimensional artwork
and wrap it around the surface of a 3D
| | 00:59 | object. This is actually a very cool
feature inside of Illustrator and it
| | 01:02 | allows you to create mock-ups of
packages, labels on a bottle, and it also
| | 01:06 | opens up an entire world of creative options.
| | 01:09 | Now when it comes to the 3D inside of
Illustrator, the 3D effect is actually
| | 01:13 | applied as an attribute to a
particular object. In other words just like in
| | 01:17 | Illustrator you can apply a fill to an
object, you can apply a 3D effect to an
| | 01:21 | object. But because of that multiple
objects don't share the same 3D effect. In
| | 01:26 | other words, Illustrator's world
is a two-dimensional world, not a
| | 01:29 | three-dimensional world and as
such there is certain limitations.
| | 01:33 | For example, I can't pierce one object
through another, I can't a sphere and
| | 01:37 | then have a rod go through the
center of that sphere. Likewise, multiple
| | 01:42 | objects will not share the same
axis or the same vanishing point.
| | 01:46 | Throughout the coming chapter though
we'll learn a variety of techniques to get
| | 01:49 | around some of these issues. The 3D
feature in Illustrator is also proprietary
| | 01:54 | and in that I mean that there is no
integration from a 3D perspective between
| | 01:58 | Illustrator and other programs. As
we'll quickly see inside of Illustrator,
| | 02:02 | when I apply 3D, the 3D applies
strictly inside of Illustrator, so I have no
| | 02:06 | way to export that 3D geometry to
other programs, for example, like Photoshop
| | 02:10 | or Maya or any other 3D applications.
| | 02:13 | The only artwork that I can export
out of Illustrator is always going to be
| | 02:16 | two-dimensional. Likewise, there
is no way to import 3D geometry into
| | 02:20 | Illustrator either. For example, I
can't go to Google Warehouse and maybe
| | 02:24 | export something from SketchUp and
then bring that into Illustrator.
| | 02:26 | Finally, Illustrator's 3D effect is
applied as a Live Effect inside of
| | 02:31 | Illustrator, and as such it lives by
the rules of Live Effects, which actually
| | 02:35 | opens up a whole bunch of options to me.
First of all, I can apply it to Live
| | 02:38 | text, I can apply the 3D effect to
fills or strokes independently and once I
| | 02:43 | apply a 3D effect that I like, I can
save it as a graphic style to easily apply
| | 02:47 | it to other objects.
| | 02:48 | So keeping all these things in mind,
let's have some fun with using 3D in Illustrator.
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| How fills and strokes affect 3D artwork| 00:00 | In Illustrator we have basic rules.
For example, we know that we have vector
| | 00:04 | paths and then we apply appearances
to those vector paths by the fills and
| | 00:08 | strokes and then we can also apply
effects. Now the 3D feature inside of
| | 00:12 | Illustrator is a Live Effect and hence
it abides by all these rules. So at a
| | 00:16 | very basic level, it's important to
realize how 3D works with fills and strokes.
| | 00:21 | So let's take a look, I have two
objects that appear over here. Very simple
| | 00:25 | objects, one is just a regular live
text object and here is just a regular
| | 00:28 | basic path. Both of these have fill
and stroke attributes applied to them.
| | 00:32 | I have the identical objects over here.
However, in this particular case, there
| | 00:37 | are no strokes, there are only fills
applied to the same objects. So I'm going
| | 00:40 | to apply a basic 3D effect to all of
these objects so we can see a difference
| | 00:44 | between objects that do or do
not have stroke attributes applied.
| | 00:47 | So I'm just going to press Command+A or
Ctrl+A to select all the objects on my
| | 00:51 | artboard here. I'm now going to go over
to the Effect menu, I'm going to choose
| | 00:55 | 3D and then I'll choose Extrude & Bevel.
We'll just do a basic Extrude here.
| | 00:59 | We'll click on the Preview button, and
now what I'm going to do is I'm going to
| | 01:02 | come down here to the Extrude Depth
just to make it a little bit more, so you
| | 01:04 | could see it. Make it about 100 points.
| | 01:07 | Now I'm going to simply click OK and
let's see what we have on the artboard.
| | 01:10 | Let's first take a look at the ones on
the right here. These are the objects
| | 01:12 | that do not have strokes applied to
them. Here you will see that the actual
| | 01:16 | fill attribute has been extruded. So
the Extrude Color that's over here is
| | 01:21 | actually red, the same as the red
that I have used for the fill. The only
| | 01:25 | difference out here is that obviously
I see a shaded area. This red over here
| | 01:28 | is darker due to the lighting
that's applied to that object.
| | 01:31 | The same thing is down here. I have
a regular path. That path was filled
| | 01:34 | purple; the extruded area is also
colored in purple. Now let's take a look at
| | 01:39 | what we have here on the left, notice
that over here the Extrude color is not
| | 01:42 | the fill color but it's the stroke
color. So at first when you look at this,
| | 01:46 | you might say to yourself, well,
obviously whenever I have a fill and a stroke
| | 01:50 | attribute, if I have a stroke
applied to an object, Illustrator uses that
| | 01:54 | stroke color as the color that is used
for the extruded area of that object,
| | 01:58 | for example, this area right here.
| | 02:01 | But in reality there is more going on
behind the scenes. In order to apply a 3D
| | 02:05 | effect to an object inside of
Illustrator, the 3D effect breaks an object down
| | 02:09 | to its very basic parts. In fact, the
way that Illustrator actually does that
| | 02:13 | is it uses the flattener code, which
is used for flattening transparency. So
| | 02:17 | when I have an object that has just a
fill, that's already at a very basic
| | 02:20 | level, but an object that has a fill
and a stroke are actually broken down into
| | 02:25 | two separate objects. The stroke is
outlined and turned to its own object and extruded.
| | 02:29 | So in reality, if you take a look at
this example right over here, this is two
| | 02:33 | objects that are extruded. One is the
fill. The stroke is actually expanded and
| | 02:38 | then extruded as well. So you can
really think of this as two objects being
| | 02:42 | extruded. You can see this clearly by
doing the following, when I click on this
| | 02:46 | one object right here, I'm actually
going to set its fill attribute to None and
| | 02:50 | you can actually see now that the
stroke has been extruded and you can see
| | 02:52 | right through the object, it's hollow.
| | 02:54 | In fact, if you think of an object that
has both a fill and a stroke attribute,
| | 02:58 | what Illustrator does is it creates
two separate objects, the fill and the
| | 03:02 | stroke and you could think of the
stroke that basically includes or surrounds
| | 03:06 | the entire exterior area of the fill.
Let me press Undo to bring that back to
| | 03:10 | where it was before. So if you think
about it, anytime that you apply a 3D
| | 03:14 | effect to an option that has both a
fill and a stroke attribute applied,
| | 03:18 | Illustrator has to do double the
work to apply that 3D effect and that's
| | 03:21 | because it's applying the 3D effect
to two distinct objects, not just one.
| | 03:25 | Now on a basic shape like I have right
over here, doesn't really make that much
| | 03:28 | of difference but if I had a very
complex shape it would take twice as long for
| | 03:32 | Illustrator to render that graphic.
More so, if I have a different fill and
| | 03:36 | stroke color applied to an object,
I'll obviously see different results.
| | 03:40 | For example, take a look at the two
words that I have here and these are the
| | 03:43 | same words but this one has a stroke
and this one does not. Here the Extrude
| | 03:46 | Color is red which is the fill color,
here the Extrude Color is the purple
| | 03:50 | which is the stroke color. Now, in a
case over here with text I may want the
| | 03:54 | Extrude Color to be different and
in that case I would apply a stroke
| | 03:57 | attribute. But if you will take a look,
you can actually see the thickness of
| | 04:00 | the stroke that appears here
on the front face of the object.
| | 04:02 | So here it probably makes the most
sense to use a very, very small stroke
| | 04:05 | amount. I'll click on this text here
and instead of a two point stroke I'll
| | 04:09 | reduce that to half a point. But at
the end of the day, here is how I look at
| | 04:12 | 3D in working with fills and strokes.
For the most part whenever I'm working
| | 04:16 | with 3D objects, I do not use stroke
attributes. In doing so, I get better
| | 04:20 | performance and I'll have more control
over the objects that I'm working with.
| | 04:23 | The only exception to that is when I
specifically want my Extrude Color to be a
| | 04:27 | different color. Such as this example
over here with the text. And only in
| | 04:31 | those cases where I'll actually add a
stroke attribute to my artwork. So now
| | 04:35 | that we have a good understanding of
how fills and strokes work with 3D, we can
| | 04:39 | dive right into the 3D feature
and learn about all of its settings.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying the 3D Extrude & Bevel effect| 00:00 | Illustrator supports three different
types of 3D effects. If I select an object
| | 00:04 | and I go to the Effect menu, I'll see
underneath 3D there at list Extrude &
| | 00:08 | Bevel, Revolve and Rotate. In this movie,
we are going to explore the Extrude &
| | 00:13 | Bevel option.
| | 00:14 | Now Illustrator itself is a 2D program.
So what I'm seeing right now on my
| | 00:17 | artboard is a two-dimensional object,
two dimensions meaning it has an X and a
| | 00:23 | Y value, which if you think about it on
the terms of an object itself, you can
| | 00:25 | think of them as width and height.
| | 00:27 | Working with Extrude gives you a
third option or what we call now the third
| | 00:31 | dimension, and that's the depth of an
object. That's also referred to as the Z axis.
| | 00:36 | So you would have X, Y and Z. So
the Extrude object right here, it takes
| | 00:40 | this regular plain flat object and
extends it back into space giving it some depth.
| | 00:45 | Notice that right over here it says
Extrude Depth, which is set to 50 points.
| | 00:48 | So I click on the Preview button so we
can actually see that. Notice that now
| | 00:51 | the object has not just a front basically,
but it also has some depth to it as well.
| | 00:56 | Now we are also not looking at this
object head-on, because if we were,
| | 00:59 | we wouldn't be able to see the actual
depth of the object, we would just see the
| | 01:01 | front face of it. So what Illustrator
has done here is it's actually rotated
| | 01:05 | the object just a little bit. That's
what we refer to as Off-Axis Front and in
| | 01:10 | fact, this cube that appears right here
is representative of the way that this
| | 01:13 | object appears on the screen.
| | 01:15 | Now we can control the depth of that
extrusion how far back into space it
| | 01:19 | actually goes, by changing this value
right here. For example, if I type in 200
| | 01:23 | points right over here, I notice that
my object has a far larger depth than it
| | 01:27 | did before. A little keyboard shortcut,
if you hold down the Shift key while
| | 01:30 | you click on this little slider that
appears right over here, you will actually
| | 01:33 | see that depth changing in real time.
In fact, just about any of the settings
| | 01:37 | inside of the 3D dialog box are applied
in real time if you hold down the Shift
| | 01:41 | key at the same time.
| | 01:42 | For now, just to explore these options,
I'm actually just going to set this
| | 01:45 | Extrude Depth to about 100 point. So
again, we are looking at this object right
| | 01:49 | now, this object is living now in this
3D world and that's because we have the
| | 01:52 | 3D Extrude & Bevel Options dialog box
open and I'm looking at it Off-Axis Front.
| | 01:57 | So again, in Illustrator it's
important to realize that I don't have like a
| | 02:00 | camera that's looking at the object
what I might have in other 3D applications.
| | 02:04 | Instead, the object itself is
now living in that 3D space.
| | 02:08 | So think of that right now as that
badge that exists in my artboard right now
| | 02:11 | is kind of just rotated just a little
bit so I can see some of the depth. But
| | 02:15 | you notice that there is a Position
popup over here where it says Off-Axis
| | 02:18 | Front and I can actually change that to
some other options. For example, let's
| | 02:21 | look at it straight from the front.
| | 02:23 | Now as I said before, since I'm
looking straight at it right now, I don't see
| | 02:27 | any of the depth. And again, this
square or this cube that appears right here
| | 02:31 | is giving me a representation of
that. So let's change the position to
| | 02:33 | something else. For example, let's look
at Off-Axis Left. So now I'm looking at
| | 02:38 | the left side of the object which is a
little bit off axis so that I also see
| | 02:41 | the 3D dimensions of the object.
| | 02:44 | There are also some Isometric settings
down here on the bottom as well. But let
| | 02:47 | me go back over here to the Off-Axis
Front because I want to talk more about
| | 02:50 | what this cube represents right over
here. Now imagine this object really
| | 02:53 | existed and you are able to basically
hold it in your hand and you are able to
| | 02:57 | kind of rotate it or look at
it from all different sides.
| | 03:00 | Well, this cube allows you to do just
that with the object. In fact, we refer
| | 03:03 | to this as the track cube, it's really
supposed to be a trackball, but it turns
| | 03:07 | out that with a sphere, it's very
difficult to identify the front or backsides
| | 03:11 | of an object. So a cube
metaphor works much better right here.
| | 03:14 | What I can do is I can simply click on
the cube, click anywhere on it, let's
| | 03:17 | say over here on this particular face
right here and then drag. As I do so,
| | 03:21 | I actually see that I'm changing the
way that I look at that object on the
| | 03:26 | artboard. So again, if I can imagine
myself holding that piece of art in my
| | 03:31 | hand right now and rotating it around
in my hand, I'm doing the same thing by
| | 03:34 | moving this track cube around.
| | 03:36 | Now you will notice that I can easily
identify the front face of the object by
| | 03:40 | over here at this blue area. In fact,
if I click and I drag to view the back of
| | 03:44 | the object, you will see that the
back of the object is shaded with a much
| | 03:46 | darker gray. Light gray areas
identify the sides and the top and bottom.
| | 03:50 | Let me position it just so like this
right over here and I want to show you
| | 03:53 | that once you went ahead and you
actually got a nice position of your artwork,
| | 03:56 | you will notice that if you mouse over
just the edges of the cube over here,
| | 03:59 | they highlight. Clicking and dragging
on the edge of a cube when these edges
| | 04:03 | are highlighted will allow you to constrain
the rotation of the object just on that axis.
| | 04:09 | So if I got the right position of it,
I just want to rotate it just a little
| | 04:11 | bit, I can click over here and I can
rotate it just on that axis alone. Now I
| | 04:15 | also have the ability to come right
over here to the actual edge of the circle
| | 04:18 | itself and then click-and-drag and
rotate the entire object as a whole. At any
| | 04:24 | time I can go back to the Custom
Rotation popup over here and to go back
| | 04:27 | Off-Axis Front or any of
the other presets as well.
| | 04:30 | There were two other important
settings when working with Extrudes as well.
| | 04:33 | Come down over here where it says Cap.
Cap simply refers to the fact that
| | 04:36 | whether I want a solid appearance of my
object or a hollow appearance, which is
| | 04:41 | almost as same as applying a stroke to
an object without a fill and then simply
| | 04:45 | applying a 3D effect to that stroked object.
| | 04:47 | But I'll go back and choose this
option here. You also have the ability to
| | 04:51 | apply a Perspective to your object.
Now this is the same thing as if you have
| | 04:54 | an actual object in front of you and if
you would, for example, take a look at
| | 04:58 | it through the lens of a camera. As we
get closer and closer to the object,
| | 05:02 | you would start to see some natural
distortion applied to that particular object.
| | 05:05 | Think of it like a lens
perspective or a lens distortion.
| | 05:08 | When it comes to perspective, you can
click on this little button over here and
| | 05:11 | actually get a slider and go all the
way up to 160 degrees. Again, holding down
| | 05:15 | the Shift key while you are holding the
slider will allow you see that in real time.
| | 05:18 | Now you'll notice by the way that the
actual artwork is changing in color as
| | 05:21 | you're applying a perspective to that.
See how it gets darker as I add my
| | 05:25 | perspective here. Well, the reason
why that's happening here inside of
| | 05:27 | Illustrator is because, remember this
is real 3D rendering that's happening
| | 05:31 | inside of Illustrator, and the way that
Illustrator defines the actual shade in
| | 05:34 | the object is by actually shining a
light on that object. In fact, in a future
| | 05:39 | movie we'll talk more about the actual
lighting options of how you can shade your object.
| | 05:44 | But for now imagine that you actually
had a light shine on the object from
| | 05:46 | let's say on the upper right-hand edge.
In that way you see highlights that
| | 05:49 | over here but you see shadows in
this area over here. Now as I'm adding
| | 05:53 | perspective, like I said before, it's
almost like taking a camera lens and
| | 05:56 | bringing it closer and closer to the
object. Well, as you bring that camera
| | 05:59 | close to the object you are eclipsing
the light source and hence the actual
| | 06:03 | artwork gets darker.
| | 06:04 | You can, of course, correct this by
adding additional lights by moving a light
| | 06:07 | source around which we'll get to in a
later movie. But for now I'll go ahead
| | 06:11 | and I'll change the Perspective back to
zero and I'll click OK to apply the 3D
| | 06:14 | effect inside of Illustrator. You
may find at times, by the way, that
| | 06:18 | Illustrator 3D effect leaves some kind
of artifacts on the screen, which are
| | 06:21 | simply removed by using a refresh
or by zooming into a different level.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying a bevel| 00:00 | In Illustrator, the Extrude effect is
also referred to as the Extrude & Bevel
| | 00:05 | effect. So what we have done so far is
we have actually explored the Extrude
| | 00:08 | effect but we didn't talk about Bevel.
So let's take a look at exactly what a
| | 00:12 | Bevel is inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:13 | I have a regular object here, a
regular plain flat 2D object. I'm going to
| | 00:17 | select it and then I'm going to the
Effect menu and choose 3D > Extrude &
| | 00:21 | Bevel. Now I'm going to click on the
Preview button so we could see what we can
| | 00:24 | do over here. Notice by the way you
will always have to click on the Preview
| | 00:27 | button. Illustrator does this as a precaution.
| | 00:29 | Obviously, like we said before,
Illustrator is doing real 3D rendering here,
| | 00:33 | let's say by accident, you hit Command+
A and selected all the artwork in your
| | 00:37 | file, and then you chose to open up
the 3D Extrude dialog box, Illustrator
| | 00:40 | would now wait forever basically to
generate a preview for all that artwork.
| | 00:45 | So to prevent that from happening, the
Preview checkbox is always turned off,
| | 00:48 | basically allowing you to click on
it manually to generate a preview. The
| | 00:51 | reality is that the 3D effect was
actually added back in Illustrator CS when
| | 00:55 | computer power wasn't
nearly what it's at right now.
| | 00:57 | So if you do have a modern computing
system, I don't think it's that much of a
| | 01:00 | problem but still the Preview button
is something you will have to manually
| | 01:03 | check on each time you open the dialog.
Now before we apply the Bevel effect,
| | 01:07 | I'm actually going to change my Extrude
Depth to about 200 point. I want to be
| | 01:10 | able to actually see the depth of my
extrusion here and that will give us a
| | 01:13 | much better idea of
understanding what the Bevel actually is.
| | 01:16 | Now in order to understand what a bevel
is we have to really understand what is
| | 01:19 | happening when this object is extruded.
For example, if you take this shape
| | 01:23 | right over here, I know that I have a
regular flat shape here on the front and
| | 01:27 | if I want to actually do this manually,
what I would do is I would probably
| | 01:29 | make a copy of this and actually
bring it to the back and then connect the
| | 01:33 | front and the back with straight lines
over here in these areas. Actually, the
| | 01:37 | Extrude effect is doing
something very similar to that.
| | 01:39 | But notice that over here the Bevel is
currently set to None. If you look over
| | 01:43 | here I have a straight line. Think of
the line that connects this point and
| | 01:47 | this point right over here as the
Bevel setting. Since it's set to None, that
| | 01:51 | is now a straight line.
| | 01:53 | What a Bevel is, is it's actually my
ability to tell Illustrator don't connect
| | 01:56 | these two points with a straight
line, but connect these points with a
| | 01:59 | different type of a line, maybe a curve
line or some other line that has kinks it.
| | 02:04 | For example, where it says over
here Bevel, let's choose the Classic
| | 02:07 | option. Notice that right over here,
it looks like I have a little bit of
| | 02:11 | chiseled edge on the front of my
object and on the back of it as well.
| | 02:14 | So instead of me connecting this over
here from this point to this point with a
| | 02:17 | straight line, Illustrator, it takes
over here and look at the Classic line
| | 02:21 | which is a little bit up and then
straight and then a little bit down again.
| | 02:24 | I have the exact same thing here, a
little bit up, straight across and a little
| | 02:27 | bit down again.
| | 02:28 | In fact, to get a really good idea of
exactly what's happening when I apply a
| | 02:31 | Bevel, let's look at my piece of
artwork from a completely different angle.
| | 02:35 | Let me set my Bevel back over here to the
None setting and I'll change my position
| | 02:39 | over here to be let's say from the Left.
So now I'm looking at the left side of
| | 02:42 | my object. Because my Bevel is
currently set to None, you can see that the
| | 02:46 | front and the back of my object
are connected with a straight line.
| | 02:49 | But I'm going to go ahead, I'm going
to choose now the Classic option. Notice
| | 02:52 | that now I have a line that goes up,
straight across and then back down again.
| | 02:57 | In fact, it's easier to see it over
here where I don't have a straight line
| | 03:00 | connecting the ends of the object, I
have a line that kind of comes out a
| | 03:03 | little bit here, goes straight
across and then back down again.
| | 03:06 | Let's take a look at some of the other
Bevel Settings that Illustrator has as well.
| | 03:08 | For example, one called Complex 1.
This is a straight line that then goes
| | 03:13 | up and then back down again. If I
choose Complex 1 here, I can see that exactly
| | 03:17 | happens here on the shape. If I view
it from Off-Axis Front again, I can see
| | 03:22 | exactly how that Bevel applies to my artwork.
| | 03:24 | Let's take a look at one of the other
Bevel setting here as well. I'm going to
| | 03:27 | choose this option over here called
Complex 3. Take a look at that line that
| | 03:31 | appears right over here. It, kind of,
goes up as three humps and I can see that
| | 03:35 | I now basically have three humps that
apply in that area that is extruded on my object.
| | 03:40 | Again, if I look directly at the left
side of my object, I can see exactly how
| | 03:43 | that bevel is applied. It's a
straight line before and now it's a line that
| | 03:47 | curves in these three areas.
Illustrator comes with 13 different types of
| | 03:51 | bevels and I urge you to experiment
with a lot of these. But one of them that I
| | 03:54 | find that I use a lot is this one here
called Rounded. Instead of a straight
| | 03:57 | line Illustrator actually connects the
front and the back with a round curve.
| | 04:01 | This actually gives your
shape a nice rounded edge.
| | 04:04 | In fact, when I switch back over here
to the Off-Axis Front setting here and
| | 04:08 | instead of me having my Object Extrude
at 200 point, I'll change it to around
| | 04:12 | 30 point. In doing so, you can see that
now it looks like the object has a bit
| | 04:16 | of a rounded edge instead of a square edge.
| | 04:19 | So let's go back over here. My Bevel
over here is set to None, has a pretty
| | 04:23 | much of flat straight edge that's
over here, but if I choose the Rounded
| | 04:26 | option, I can see that I now have a
much softer transition and a nicer shaped
| | 04:31 | object here inside of Illustrator.
| | 04:32 | In addition, because this surface is
now rounded, I do see a nicer shadow and
| | 04:37 | highlight area that I normally would
not have on a regular object without a
| | 04:40 | Bevel applied. So there are two other
settings you need to know about when
| | 04:43 | applying a bevel. The first one over
here is the Height or how big the bevel is.
| | 04:46 | Then the other option over here is
do you want the bevel actually added to
| | 04:49 | the actual shape itself meaning it
makes the shape bigger, it takes the
| | 04:53 | original shape and then adds the bevel
stroke on top of that? Or do you want
| | 04:57 | the actual bevel taken away from the object?
| | 05:00 | Now with any of these settings at the
end there is no right or wrong, it's
| | 05:02 | simply a matter of finding what works
best for your particular object in hand.
| | 05:06 | For example, I do find when I'm working
with text, I find this particular Bevel
| | 05:10 | option better because this option just
adds too much weight, especially when
| | 05:13 | I'm dealing with typefaces that
have some kind of a serif in it.
| | 05:16 | Now remember, one of the great things
about working with 3D as a live effect is
| | 05:19 | that you can make changes at any time.
Because of the added complexity that
| | 05:23 | bevels bring, for example, if I rotate
the object, now you will see that there
| | 05:26 | is a lot more pass in shapes than it
were before working with bevels to get
| | 05:29 | them to look just right may take
little bit more of work on your behalf.
| | 05:32 | Likewise, they will also take more
time to render. But once you have got a
| | 05:36 | bevel to look just the way that you
want to, there is no question. It's
| | 05:38 | definitely worth the effort.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Showing the hidden faces of a 3D object| 00:00 | There is somewhat of a paradox that
lives inside of Illustrator. If you think
| | 00:03 | about it, Illustrator itself is a
two-dimensional program, but yet
| | 00:07 | the 3D feature allows you to create 3D
objects and somehow on an Illustrator artboard
| | 00:12 | these 2D and 3D worlds collide.
| | 00:15 | Let me explain to you exactly how this
works. I'm going to create just a simple
| | 00:18 | print document. Choose regular basic
settings. I'm going to use my Rectangle tool
| | 00:22 | to click once on my artboard,
because I want to draw a rectangle.
| | 00:25 | Let's say I choose specifically 3"x3".
I'm going to click OK to accept that value.
| | 00:30 | One of the things that I really love
about working with 3D in Illustrator is
| | 00:33 | that it allows me to be as precise with
3D as I am with anything else inside of
| | 00:36 | Illustrator. I'm going to fill my
objects here with a red fill and I want to
| | 00:40 | give it no stroke at all. I'm going
to select the piece of artwork,
| | 00:43 | go to the Effect menu, let's move it to
the side just a little bit here, so we can see
| | 00:46 | this better. Click on the Effect menu,
choose 3D > Extrude & Bevel, and because
| | 00:51 | I want to create a perfect cube, I
can actually change my Extrude Depth
| | 00:54 | to exactly three inches.
| | 00:56 | By the way the default setting here is
always going to be in points, but I can
| | 00:58 | type in any other value, by typing
let's say 3 in for inches, or mm for
| | 01:03 | millimeters, cm for centimeters, so on
and so forth. Hit the Tab key to accept
| | 01:07 | that value and click Preview, and
I can see that I have created a cube.
| | 01:10 | Now here is the important distinction
inside of Illustrator. What I'm seeing in
| | 01:13 | my artboard right now is a two-
dimensional object that looks like it's 3D,
| | 01:18 | because Illustrator's artboard
itself is two dimensional, not three
| | 01:21 | dimensional. However, when I have the
3D Extrude & Bevel options dialog box open,
| | 01:25 | I'm now living in this real 3D
environment and I can actually click and
| | 01:29 | spin on this particular track cube to
change the rotation or to see how
| | 01:33 | my artwork looks like
when I rotate it in 3D space.
| | 01:36 | But each time that I change a
different position of my object, Illustrator
| | 01:39 | takes that and creates a two-
dimensional object that appears on my artboard
| | 01:44 | that looks like it's 3D according to
the settings that are defined here.
| | 01:47 | Now I know that sounds somewhat complicated.
But let me show you exactly what's happening
| | 01:51 | and you will understand.
I'm going to change the Position back to
| | 01:53 | the Off-Axis Front. We'll just leave it
as a regular cube. I'm looking straight
| | 01:56 | at it over here. I'm going to click OK
and I'm going to go over here to
| | 01:59 | the Object menu and I'm going
to choose Expand Appearance.
| | 02:02 | Now what that does is it basically breaks
apart the 3D shape as a regular plain object;
| | 02:07 | it's no longer a live effect.
And you can see here that I have
| | 02:11 | this object that is now two-dimensional.
It's look like a 3D, but it's only 2D.
| | 02:15 | In fact, it's made up of these sides.
| | 02:17 | But you see the back of the cube is
not even here. All I see are the three faces
| | 02:21 | that are part of my object. I'm going
to press Undo two times to go back
| | 02:24 | to my original shape. Now my live
effect is still in effect. I'm going to
| | 02:27 | go now to the Appearance panel.
I'm going to go ahead to Extrude & Bevel
| | 02:30 | to click on it to edit it. Preview it so
I can see it. And now I'm going to click
| | 02:34 | on this button here called More Options.
| | 02:36 | Illustrator is very much aware that
when I go ahead and I adjust the rotation
| | 02:40 | of my object, that right now I'm in a
3D space, but it knows that eventually
| | 02:44 | my artwork is going to need to be
displayed on this two dimensional artboard.
| | 02:48 | Now a cube, a 3D cube for that matter,
always has six sides. It has a top, a bottom,
| | 02:53 | a front, a back, a left, and a right side.
But in the world of 2D, at any one time,
| | 02:57 | I'll only be able to view up to
three of those sides. I can't see
| | 03:00 | the other sides.
| | 03:02 | Illustrator is a very smart program.
It knows that rendering 3D artwork can
| | 03:05 | take some computing power and
therefore since it knows it will never see
| | 03:09 | three of those sides of the object,
Illustrator to save rendering time never renders
| | 03:13 | those sides. That's why when I expand
my object, I only see the three surfaces
| | 03:17 | that I'm looking at right now. It
doesn't bother to draw the other parts of
| | 03:21 | the artwork because it knows I'll never see it.
| | 03:22 | However, if I take a look over here at
the bottom of this dialog box, because
| | 03:25 | I clicked on the More Options button,
I now see some additional options here,
| | 03:29 | including this option called Draw
Hidden Faces. That particular setting allows me
| | 03:33 | to force Illustrator to actually draw
and render all the sides of the cube.
| | 03:37 | In this case here it would be six sides,
not just three. Even though I will not
| | 03:42 | be able to see it.
| | 03:43 | So if I click on the Draw Hidden Faces
option right now, I don't see any change
| | 03:46 | at all in my artwork over here
because again, in this world of 2D I can only
| | 03:50 | see three sides. Illustrator has drawn
and rendered the three objects that are
| | 03:54 | at the back of this option. To prove
that, I'll click OK and now I'll go
| | 03:58 | choose Object and I'll expand the
appearance and you can now see that
| | 04:01 | Illustrator actually rendered all of
the side to that object, not just
| | 04:04 | the front three, but the back three
as well. Why is this important? Well,
| | 04:09 | two things come immediately to mind.
First of all, we know that in Illustrator
| | 04:12 | I do have the ability to apply
transparency attributes to an object.
| | 04:15 | Well, if I were to make the cube
transparent, if Illustrator doesn't draw the
| | 04:19 | back sides, I won't be able to
actually see a true transparent cube where
| | 04:23 | I can through the front of the cube
to the back of the cube. The reason is
| | 04:26 | because if Illustrator doesn't
draw or render the back of the cube,
| | 04:29 | how do I see it through the front of the object?
| | 04:31 | So if I am working with transparency,
I do want to make sure that the Draw
| | 04:34 | Hidden Faces option is chosen. Secondly,
I may be using the 3D effect so that
| | 04:39 | I can later on expand it and work with
the shapes like I have done over here.
| | 04:42 | In that case if I want to make sure
that all the geometry for the 3D object is here,
| | 04:45 | I want to make sure that the
Draw Hidden Faces option is turned on.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying the 3D Revolve effect| 00:00 | So we have already applied a 3D effect
called Extrude to an object. An extrude
| | 00:04 | basically take a two-dimensional
object and extends it back into space adding
| | 00:08 | depth to it. Another type of 3D effect
in Illustrator was called Revolve and
| | 00:13 | that basically adds a third dimension
to an object by revolving or rotating
| | 00:16 | this particular object around an axis.
| | 00:19 | So to describe this feature I'll
show you one of very basic shape, like a
| | 00:22 | regular rectangle first, and then
we'll quickly move into a much more complex
| | 00:25 | shape. Using my Rectangle tool, I'll
simply draw out a small rectangle about
| | 00:29 | this big. I'll set its stroke weight to
None, and I'll go ahead and I'll change
| | 00:33 | the color over here to red.
| | 00:35 | Now with my object selected, let's move
it again just over to the side here, so
| | 00:38 | that we should be able to have some
room to look at the dialog box here, and
| | 00:41 | I'll choose Effect > 3D and then I'll
choose Revolve. I just want to focus on
| | 00:47 | this section here on the top here. So
I'm going to click on the Fewer Options
| | 00:49 | button. I'll also check on the Preview button.
| | 00:51 | Now you will see what happened here. I
took my regular rectangle and instead of
| | 00:55 | extending it back into space it
basically defined the left most side of my
| | 00:59 | object as an axis and then it revolved
that shape around that axis to create a
| | 01:04 | 3D shape. To be able to visualize this
more clearly, I'm going to change this
| | 01:08 | Angle setting right here. Currently it
is set to 360, but I could change this
| | 01:12 | by just dragging this around over here.
| | 01:14 | Now you will notice that you only see
a section of that particular area. For
| | 01:16 | example, you can see over here that
part of that is cut away. So it didn't
| | 01:20 | revolve a full 360 degrees around the
axis; it only revolved a certain amount,
| | 01:25 | in this case, 229 degrees.
| | 01:27 | I could also choose just like I was
working with the Extrude setting, I could
| | 01:30 | either choose a cap for a hollow
appearance, where I can see the inside there.
| | 01:34 | Basically it just closes off the area
that will be here, or it makes it hollow
| | 01:37 | so that I can see to the inside of it.
I'll choose the Cap option to close it
| | 01:40 | here, and I'll set my angle back to
360 degrees to create a full revolve.
| | 01:45 | As with Extrude, I also have the
ability to use the track cube to adjust how
| | 01:49 | that object sits in the 3D space. I
can click on the edges of the cube to
| | 01:53 | basically rotate an object locked to
particular axis and I can go back to any
| | 01:57 | basic rotation, like I see
over here, using this pop-up menu.
| | 02:01 | I also have the ability to change
Perspective, and again, here I'm holding the
| | 02:03 | Shift key down, as I do this so I can
see this happening in real-time, as I
| | 02:07 | adjust the perspective on this
particular shape. But only let's set it to zero
| | 02:10 | for now. As we'll see more and more
with the 3D Revolve setting, one of the
| | 02:14 | most important aspects of
the 3D Revolve is the axis.
| | 02:17 | Now we don't see the axis, but as I
said before, the axis is defined by default
| | 02:21 | as the left most part of your object,
and you can see that clearly from this
| | 02:25 | setting. It says here the Offset is
set to zero points from the Left Edge. So
| | 02:29 | that means my axis or the point where
my object is revolved around, now lives
| | 02:34 | at exactly zero points from the
left edge, which is the left edge.
| | 02:37 | Now the reason why the Offset is
important is because I could change that
| | 02:40 | value, and by doing so adjust exactly
where that axis is. For example, if I
| | 02:46 | were to increase this value, then what
would happen is it would take my object,
| | 02:50 | but moves the axis further away.
| | 02:52 | Now the object would revolve around
that axis, but the object itself wouldn't
| | 02:55 | change in shape or size. So if my axis
was say somewhere at over here, and yet
| | 03:00 | I would revolve the shape, this
particular shape would go all the way around
| | 03:03 | that area, basically creating a hollow
center. To see that, I'm going to change
| | 03:07 | the Offset value here to around 50
points. I'll hit the Tab key to accept that,
| | 03:11 | and now you could see that I have
created a hole right now in the middle.
| | 03:14 | That's because my shape exist here,
but yet my particular offset exists 50
| | 03:19 | points away from that edge of the
shape creating this particular hole.
| | 03:23 | If I click over here on the track
cube, and I rotate this object, you can
| | 03:26 | clearly see right through the center of
the object. Illustrator also allows me
| | 03:30 | to choose a left edge or a right edge,
as the point from my axis should be, but
| | 03:34 | my suggestion is to always use the
left edge, because again, it's easier to
| | 03:37 | visualize in your mind where that axis
is as almost to keep a consistent idea
| | 03:41 | in your head of what that is.
| | 03:42 | If you're constantly moving between
Left Edge and Right Edge you may become
| | 03:45 | confused. So now that we see exactly
what Revolve setting does, let's Cancel
| | 03:49 | out of this and I'm going to switch to
a much more complex example. I have here
| | 03:53 | a file called revolve.ai. What I have
created here is the profile of a Frisbee.
| | 03:59 | You know, our whole theme over
here is working with surfing.
| | 04:01 | So they were on beach. What better
thing can there be to do on the beach than
| | 04:05 | toss around the Frisbee? So what I
have done over here is I basically
| | 04:08 | visualized the profile of what a
Frisbee would be if I would slice it through
| | 04:12 | the middle, and then I would cut it in half?
| | 04:14 | Remember that when we create a revolve
we have an axis on the left hand side of
| | 04:17 | the object. What I have done here is
I have actually drawn a guide in my
| | 04:20 | document, just to help me visualize
where that particular axis is going to be.
| | 04:24 | I have simply drawn a regular shape
here and I have given it a fill with stroke.
| | 04:28 | So now what I'll do is I'll go ahead
and I'll move this let's say over here.
| | 04:31 | I'll go to the Effect menu, choose 3D,
and then Revolve. And I'll click on the
| | 04:35 | Preview button, and I can see that now
I have turned that regular plain little
| | 04:38 | shape that I had before, into a real
Frisbee. It's taken that object that I
| | 04:42 | created, and revolved it around the
axis to create this shape. Using the track
| | 04:47 | cube, I can adjust exactly how that
particular Frisbee sits in 3D space.
| | 04:51 | Again, just to show you if I were to
actually add an Offset value, maybe 100
| | 04:55 | point for example, I would be cutting
out a circle out of the middle of that
| | 04:58 | particular Frisbee. But in this case,
let's return the Offset to zero, so we
| | 05:02 | get a nice Frisbee without a
hole in it, and I'll click OK.
| | 05:05 | So the Revolve setting is incredibly
powerful. It's different than the Extrude
| | 05:09 | setting. The Extrude setting lets me
take a regular plain flat object and give
| | 05:13 | it some depth, whereas the Revolve
effect allows me to take a regular plain
| | 05:17 | profile flat object, and
completely revolve it to create a 3D shape.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Visualizing the revolve axis| 00:00 | When using the 3D Revolve effect
inside of Illustrator, it's really important
| | 00:04 | to be able to visualize exactly where
the axis is going to be, and that's why
| | 00:08 | whenever I work with 3D Revolve, I
always draw a guide in my document. I don't
| | 00:12 | need to, the guide does not act to the
axis itself, it's simply a way for me to
| | 00:16 | identify, in my head, where that
particular axis is going to be, and that's
| | 00:20 | because I always draw the profile of
my object on the right-side of that
| | 00:24 | particular guide, and doing so on my
head I can easily see where the object is
| | 00:28 | going to revolve around.
| | 00:29 | So I'm going to click on this object
right here. I'm going to go to the Effect
| | 00:32 | menu, choose Revolve, and I can see
that right away, if I click on the Preview
| | 00:36 | button, that I create that frisbee
look. Now, I'm going to click OK here,
| | 00:40 | because I really want to bring home
the point that Illustrator itself is
| | 00:43 | working with a two-dimensional artboard.
That means that what I'm working with
| | 00:47 | on the artboard itself is always 2D.
If I want to revolve or rotate or do any
| | 00:51 | kind of adjustments in the 3D space, I
need to have my artwork selected, and I
| | 00:55 | need to, from the Appearance panel,
choose the Edit to 3D Revolve Effect.
| | 01:00 | As soon as this dialog box is open,
I'm now able to use these settings to
| | 01:04 | adjust how the artwork looks in a 3D
space. For example, I can rotate it or I
| | 01:08 | can adjust how it looks in this particular area.
| | 01:10 | But I'm going to click on Cancel for
a second here, go back to where it was
| | 01:14 | before. Let's not use the Appearance
panel, let's say I actually rotate or make
| | 01:18 | a change to the object on my artboard.
Now remember, Illustrator's artboard is
| | 01:22 | 2D, so any change that I make inside
of Illustrator now on the artboard is
| | 01:27 | happening to the 2D artwork that
appears right here, and specially in the case
| | 01:31 | of Revolve, where I make changes, it
may also adjust where that axis is.
| | 01:36 | So for example, right now I know that
my axis is on the left most part of the
| | 01:39 | object, which creates this really nice
frisbee effect. But what would happen if
| | 01:43 | I ask you, rotate this piece of artwork
here on my artboard, say maybe I wanted
| | 01:47 | to do the same effect, I wanted to
rotate the frisbee a little bit? Well, let's
| | 01:50 | see what happens.
| | 01:51 | I am going to switch to my Rotate tool.
I'm actually going to click once and
| | 01:54 | drag to go ahead and change the
rotation of this frisbee; maybe I want to have
| | 01:57 | it on an angle. As soon as I
release the mouse however, Illustrator
| | 02:01 | automatically reapplies the live
effect and I get this cone shape.
| | 02:05 | Now, it may look pretty cool what I'm
seeing here inside of Illustrator, but
| | 02:08 | it's obviously not the shape that I
intended, and that's because what I have
| | 02:11 | done here is I have actually adjusted
the two-dimensional underlying artwork
| | 02:15 | that adjusts how the 3D artwork looks.
| | 02:17 | Additionally, because I have rotated
the object, I have also now changed where
| | 02:21 | the axis is. Remember, the axis is
always going to be the left most part of the
| | 02:25 | object. Well, where is that point
right now? If I were to use my Arrow tool
| | 02:29 | right here to drag on a new guide, I
could see that the left most part of the
| | 02:32 | object is right here. Here is the
center right now of where that cone is created.
| | 02:36 | So by rotating the artwork on the
artboard itself what I have done is I have
| | 02:39 | changed the dynamic of what my object
looks like, and by doing so I have also
| | 02:44 | redefined where the axis is
in that particular object.
| | 02:47 | So the key to getting a full grasp over
the capabilities of the Revolve effect
| | 02:51 | inside of Illustrator is to really be
able to visualize and understand exactly
| | 02:55 | where that axis is. Once you have
defined the axis, once you know where that
| | 02:58 | axis is going to be, it's very easy
for you to also extrapolate outwards from
| | 03:02 | that, and create the 3D shapes that you need.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying the 3D Rotate effect| 00:00 | As we know when it comes to 3D in
Illustrator there are three possible effects
| | 00:04 | that you can apply. One of them is
called Extrude, one of them is called
| | 00:07 | Revolve, and the final one is called
Rotate. Out of the three, the Rotate
| | 00:12 | setting is actually the most basic in
function. In fact, the Rotate effect
| | 00:16 | doesn't make your object look 3D at all.
It doesn't extrude it or revolve it,
| | 00:20 | so no depth is applied. But what it
does do is it takes your two-dimensional
| | 00:24 | artwork and it makes it look like
it's actually sitting in 3D space.
| | 00:27 | So let's take a closer look. I'm going
to click on this object here to select
| | 00:30 | it, I'll go to the Effect menu, and
I'll choose 3D Rotate. I get the same
| | 00:35 | dialog box like some of the others,
but you notice that there are really no
| | 00:38 | other settings here at all. There is
no setting for Extrude or Bevel or even
| | 00:41 | Revolve for that matter.
| | 00:42 | I am going to click on the Preview
button, and I'll see that I can rotate that
| | 00:46 | artwork in 3D space. Notice again, I'm
not adding any depth to that particular
| | 00:49 | object, all I'm doing is making it
look like it's sitting on a 3D plane.
| | 00:54 | I'll click OK over here, and I'll do the
same exact setting to the text here, and
| | 00:57 | I'll show you that by using the 3D
Rotate effect also I have the ability to
| | 01:02 | also go ahead and change
some of its perspective.
| | 01:04 | So let me go back over here to the
Appearance panel, and I have applied it.
| | 01:07 | Click on the 3D Rotate option here,
click Preview, and not only I can change
| | 01:12 | basically its rotation here in 3D space,
but I could change its perspective as well.
| | 01:16 | Again, I'll hold the
Shift Key down as I do this.
| | 01:18 | So there are different uses for Rotate,
but obviously again, it doesn't make
| | 01:21 | the object look like its 3D, it makes
it look like it's actually living on a 3D plane.
| | 01:26 | So think more of 3D Rotate as
positioning, and think of the 3D Revolve and
| | 01:31 | 3D Extrude settings as actual rendering in 3D.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting surface settings| 00:00 | I was once talking with a friend of
mine who happens to be a photographer and
| | 00:03 | he was telling me that one of the most
important aspects of photography is not
| | 00:06 | necessarily the camera or the subject,
but the lighting. And in reality
| | 00:10 | the same can be said about working
with 3D inside of Illustrator. In fact,
| | 00:14 | we're going to talk about two different
settings here that control the final result
| | 00:17 | of what your artwork looks like. One of
them is the surface properties, meaning
| | 00:20 | what materials your object is made up.
Is it a very shiny or glossy or highly
| | 00:24 | reflective material? Is it a matte or
flat surface that doesn't reflect light so much?
| | 00:28 | Things like that. And also ultimately
the light that you shine on your object.
| | 00:32 | To better demonstrate these
particular features, I'm going to be using this
| | 00:35 | Frisbee example and I'm going to be
using a Revolve setting, just because it
| | 00:38 | happens to be that this shape has lots
of curves and settings that really show off
| | 00:42 | some of the settings that you can't
really see when you use an Extrude setting.
| | 00:45 | But everything that we learn
here with lighting and shading that
| | 00:48 | applies to the Revolve effect also
applies to the Extrude effect as well.
| | 00:52 | So I'm going to start by selecting
this object. I'm actually going to move
| | 00:55 | my artboard a little bit to the left here,
so I have some room to see the dialog box.
| | 00:58 | I'm going to choose Effect > 3D
and then I'll choose Revolve. I'll click
| | 01:02 | on the Preview button and now you can
see my Frisbee right here. Now you can
| | 01:06 | see over here in the bottom where
it says Surface, right now it's using
| | 01:09 | something called Plastic Shading.
| | 01:10 | In fact you will find four options
for shading inside of an Illustrator.
| | 01:14 | One called Wireframe, No Shading, Diffuse
Shading and then the final one, which is
| | 01:18 | being used right now called Plastic
Shading. But these four settings are really
| | 01:22 | just the tip of the iceberg. I'm going
to come over here to this button that
| | 01:25 | says More Options. I'm going to click
on it to reveal the entire surface area
| | 01:29 | that I can see here for controlling the
shading of my 3D objects inside of Illustrator.
| | 01:34 | Let's start with the basic option here
called Wireframe. Wireframe basically
| | 01:37 | just gives me the actual wireframe
that was created to create the geometry of
| | 01:41 | that 3D shape. It's pretty cool and
there can be many cool graphic applications
| | 01:46 | for using these wireframes. Now you
can't actually change the actual stroke
| | 01:50 | width of these objects, in order to do
so you will need to actually apply the
| | 01:53 | 3D Revolve effect and then expand it.
In doing so you will get all the strokes
| | 01:56 | that you could change to anything you
want to, just like you can adjust regular
| | 01:59 | artwork inside of an Illustrator.
| | 02:01 | However, by default Illustrator always
uses the quarter point's width for this
| | 02:04 | particular stroke that is using to
draw these wireframes. When you choose
| | 02:07 | the Wireframe option, there are no
other additional options available.
| | 02:11 | Let's take a look at the next one.
It's called No Shading at all.
| | 02:13 | Now, No Shading just simply uses just the
regular plain solid fill that you have used
| | 02:17 | to apply it overall to the entire object.
Now it looks like nothing here, but
| | 02:20 | again if I go and I click OK right now
and I expand my artwork, I'll have all
| | 02:25 | the geometry that I could use to shade
on my own. Again, this option might be
| | 02:28 | useful if I wanted to maybe bring this
artwork into Flash or I want be able to
| | 02:32 | apply shading using gradients
or something else for that matter.
| | 02:35 | However, the two settings that you
use most often are probably going to be
| | 02:38 | these two right here: Diffuse Shading
and Plastic Shading. If you think about this,
| | 02:42 | for example, the Diffuse Shading
is simply a matte object or an object
| | 02:45 | that has a flat surface or I would
say not a reflective surface. And then
| | 02:49 | the Plastic Shading basically refers to
an object that has a reflective surface.
| | 02:53 | Think of plastic or glass or
metal or something like that.
| | 02:57 | So let's first take a look at the
Plastic Shading, which happens to be
| | 02:59 | the default setting inside of Illustrator.
The first thing you will notice is
| | 03:02 | this little box here on the left side over
here which actually controls the light
| | 03:06 | that you are shining on to your object.
Notice that you have this sphere which
| | 03:10 | represents your object. Again, think
of the same thing as this cube that you
| | 03:13 | have right here, but in this case it's
a sphere. And you have a single light
| | 03:16 | that is now shining from the upper
right-hand corner of the object directly
| | 03:19 | on to the object itself.
| | 03:21 | The settings for this light appears on
the right side over here. For example,
| | 03:24 | right now, where it says Light
Intensity, it's set to 100%. But if I wanted to
| | 03:28 | kind of pull back some of that light,
I wanted to make it that the light was
| | 03:32 | not as bright but maybe a little bit
more dim than it is right now, I could
| | 03:35 | change the Intensity down to maybe 50%.
If you take a look over here, I hit
| | 03:38 | the Tab key to accept that value.
I no longer have a bright object;
| | 03:42 | my object kind of got a bit darker, notice,
because I don't have a bright enough light hitting
| | 03:46 | that particular object. Let me change
the Intensity here back to 100% to bring
| | 03:50 | it back to where it was before.
| | 03:51 | Now you also have the ability to
control the brightness of all surfaces
| | 03:55 | uniformly or what we call the
Ambient Light. For example, choosing 100%
| | 03:59 | brightens up the entire object
overall, but doesn't let me really see
| | 04:02 | the detail of the shading. Again, I'll
return the Ambient setting back to 50%.
| | 04:05 | Now the Highlight Intensity over here
basically determines how intense that
| | 04:10 | highlight is on the shape itself. If
you want to think about a light that
| | 04:13 | I'm shining on the object, do I have
a light that basically expands a lot?
| | 04:17 | Or think about the difference between maybe
a floodlight and a spotlight. A floodlight
| | 04:22 | might throw the light across the
entire surface of my object, but a spotlight
| | 04:25 | might aim light directly in a certain area.
| | 04:28 | A high Highlight Intensity would act
more like a spotlight where as a low
| | 04:32 | Intensity would actually act more
like floodlight. I can also control
| | 04:35 | the Highlight Size, which would again
control how big that highlight is or
| | 04:39 | if I look at a Frisbee over here, this area
that's being seen right here as the highlight.
| | 04:43 | Finally, at the bottom of the list here is
something called Blend Steps. This is an
| | 04:46 | incredibly important setting when using
3D inside of Illustrator. Now if I take
| | 04:50 | a look at the shading that's going on
over here, I might think that Illustrator
| | 04:53 | is using gradients to be able to create
those areas, but in reality Illustrator
| | 04:57 | is using blends and that's because some
of the contours that you create in your
| | 05:01 | objects, it's much easier and more
realistic for Illustrator to use blends.
| | 05:05 | However, the way that blends work
inside of Illustrator is I have a specified
| | 05:08 | number of steps in those blends. I start
off with one shape and then I gradually
| | 05:12 | morph that into another shape to create
this shading. The higher the number of
| | 05:16 | steps in my blend, the smoother that
my blend appears, but there is a catch.
| | 05:20 | The more steps that you have in your
blend, the more complex your file is.
| | 05:24 | And likewise, the longer it takes to render
your 3D artwork, which is really why by default
| | 05:28 | Illustrator uses a value of 25
for the blend steps. But I'll tell you
| | 05:32 | that in real production,
25 blend steps is simply not enough.
| | 05:36 | In fact, if you take a close look at
that Frisbee that's right over here,
| | 05:39 | you can see that in this area where the
highlight is and in this area as well,
| | 05:42 | you start to see these distinct areas or
these steps where the color shifts or changes.
| | 05:47 | To get a better looking 3D object,
you will want to change that Blend Steps
| | 05:50 | setting to something upwards of
200. And you will notice that now
| | 05:54 | the color is far smoother. The downside
is that it's going to take a lot longer
| | 05:58 | to render this artwork and
work with my 3D shapes in general.
| | 06:01 | So what I generally do is I leave my
Blend Steps set to 25 as I'm working.
| | 06:05 | In this case here I get really zippy
performance but when it comes time to
| | 06:08 | actually export or print my document,
what I'll do is I'll then go into the 3D
| | 06:12 | effect and I'll crank that Blend
Steps settings up to like 225 or more.
| | 06:17 | In that way I know that I'll always
get the best possible results on output.
| | 06:20 | So let's take a closer look at what
the settings are of the actual light
| | 06:23 | itself. Now right now the light is
shining on the upper right hand part of
| | 06:26 | the object but because of the rotation that
I have I may want to shine the light on
| | 06:29 | a different part of the object. To do so,
I simply take the light itself and
| | 06:32 | click and drag on it to change its
position. When I release the mouse,
| | 06:36 | you'll see where the lighting updates. I could
hold down the Shift key as I drag this around,
| | 06:40 | but again depending on the
performance of your system, you may see
| | 06:43 | real-time results or you may have
to wait a while until it updates.
| | 06:46 | Now, Illustrator does have the
ability to add multiple lights to a single object.
| | 06:50 | See right now, I have a single
highlight in my piece of artwork, but
| | 06:53 | what I could do is I can click on this
button over here to add a new light.
| | 06:57 | Now I have two lights shine on my object.
I can actually have one light hitting it
| | 07:00 | from this side of the object and one
from this side of the object. As you can see
| | 07:05 | I now have a highlight on this side
and a highlight on this side of the object.
| | 07:09 | So I really have complete control over
how I light my object. I also have the
| | 07:13 | ability to click on any light and send
it to the back, behind the surface.
| | 07:17 | In this case if I rotate my artwork so
that I can see the back of the object,
| | 07:20 | I can see that I have a highlight in that
particular area because I have a light
| | 07:23 | shining to the back of the object. If
I realize I don't want the light that
| | 07:27 | I had added, I can simply click on it to
select it and click on the Trash Can to
| | 07:30 | delete that particular light.
| | 07:31 | Let me change this back to Off-Axis
Front setting. And we'll take a look at
| | 07:35 | this setting over here called Shading
Color. By default, Illustrator took my
| | 07:39 | regular color and simply created
darker areas by adding black to that red color.
| | 07:43 | However, I could choose to use a
different color for shading. Instead of black,
| | 07:46 | I could use any other color, I could
either choose None or I could choose Custom.
| | 07:51 | And when I do so I get a little
box that I can click on that brings up
| | 07:55 | a color picker that I could choose
another color for shading. Choosing a color
| | 07:58 | other than black is almost the same
as you were shining a different colored
| | 08:02 | light on your object. I'll click Cancel
though and leave it set to black for now.
| | 08:07 | So we have explored all these
settings for lighting, let's take a look over
| | 08:09 | here at the Diffuse Shading option.
So if you take a look over here on
| | 08:13 | the right side I have Light Intensity,
Ambient Light, Highlight Intensity and
| | 08:17 | Highlight Size. The really only
difference between the Plastic Shading and
| | 08:21 | Diffuse Shading is that Diffuse Shading
does not have a highlight at all, so
| | 08:25 | no intensity and no size. The result is
an object that appears to have a matte or
| | 08:29 | flat surface as opposed to a reflective
surface like the Plastic Shading does.
| | 08:33 | So finally there is one setting here
on the lower left-hand corner called
| | 08:36 | Preserve Spot Colors. Now if you are
working with an object, in this case here
| | 08:40 | I chose a regular CMYK red color for
the fill of my object, but say that was
| | 08:44 | Pantone 185. If I wanted to preserve
this artwork and I wanted to actually
| | 08:48 | print it using Spot Colors and I
wanted the red to print in Pantone 185,
| | 08:53 | what I can do is I can check on that box.
As long as my Shade Color is set to black,
| | 08:57 | the black that's added to create the
shading here will actually be defined as
| | 09:01 | overprint inside of Illustrator.
| | 09:03 | Now I'll need to activate the
overprint preview setting inside of
| | 09:05 | Illustrator to see that but when I print it
that will print correctly using two colors.
| | 09:10 | In closing, I'll tell you that
when I'm working inside of 3D inside of
| | 09:13 | Illustrator, based on my experience,
I spend the most time in this little
| | 09:16 | surface area controlling the lighting
and the settings of my surface of my object,
| | 09:20 | more so than anything
else in the 3D dialog box.
| | 09:23 | Between the lighting settings that
you use and even more importantly,
| | 09:26 | the number of Blends Step that you specify,
you could change a regular plain 3D object
| | 09:30 | into something truly spectacular.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding the importance of 3D and groups| 00:00 | When using the 3D feature inside of
Illustrator, it's important to remember
| | 00:04 | that it's a live effect, and that
means that 3D, which appears here in the
| | 00:07 | Effect menu, abides by the same rules
that all these other effects do, and this
| | 00:11 | is especially important
when you think about groups.
| | 00:13 | Let's take a look at the artwork that
I have here on my screen. It's the same
| | 00:16 | profile that we have been working on
over here to create a frisbee. But if I
| | 00:19 | zoom a little bit closer here, what I
have done here in this example, if I go
| | 00:23 | to Outline Mode, is I have actually
chopped it up into pieces, I have sliced it
| | 00:26 | in certain areas. If you think about
this as the profile of a frisbee, I can
| | 00:31 | imagine that maybe this is all colored
red right now, but if I colored this and
| | 00:35 | this area over here as a different
color, I might introduce the stripe of a
| | 00:39 | different color inside the frisbee.
| | 00:40 | So let's see exactly what I mean.
I'll go back into Regular Preview Mode.
| | 00:44 | I'll click on this object right here, and
also click on this object, let's say,
| | 00:47 | right over here. So now I have these
two objects selected, and I'll change them
| | 00:51 | to a different color, let's say yellow.
| | 00:53 | So now what I would like to do is l
would like to have the frisbee be red, but
| | 00:56 | have a yellow stripe around this part
of the frisbee, and a thin yellow stripe
| | 01:00 | around this part of the frisbee. So if
I go ahead now and I select all these,
| | 01:04 | again, I think I see over here where
my particular axis is going to be, I can
| | 01:08 | visualize how this will rotate around,
and I'll got those stripes that are there.
| | 01:12 | However, if I look over here in the
upper-left hand corner of my control panel,
| | 01:16 | it currently says my target is Path.
That means that each of these right now
| | 01:20 | are targeted on their own. When I'm
working with 3D, 3D applies to each path
| | 01:24 | individually, and that means that
each of these objects will get their own axis.
| | 01:28 | That won't help me, because
that will actually create four circular
| | 01:31 | objects, which I'll show you in just a
moment. What I really want to do though
| | 01:34 | is I want to create a group. By
creating your group, that will go ahead and
| | 01:38 | allow me to have this be treated as one
object. Let me show you exactly what I mean.
| | 01:43 | I am actually going to go ahead and
just select these four objects. I'll zoom
| | 01:45 | out a little bit so we can get a better
look at this, as we apply it. I'm going
| | 01:49 | to go to the Effect menu, I'm going
to choose 3D, and I'll choose Revolve.
| | 01:54 | Now, watch what happens when I click
on the Preview button. Each of these
| | 01:57 | objects because they are not grouped
together, they just are individual paths
| | 02:00 | that I have selected, each revolve
around their own axis, and again, this
| | 02:03 | happens because Illustrator treats each
object in their own 3D environment and
| | 02:08 | each of those get their own axis. If
I go ahead and I rotate them, they all
| | 02:11 | basically are rotating together, but
on their own axis, which really doesn't
| | 02:15 | help me out on this case, because I
want to create one cohesive frisbee shape
| | 02:19 | and what I end up getting
is four separate shapes.
| | 02:21 | So let's go ahead and click Cancel.
I'm going to take these same four shapes
| | 02:24 | that I have created, and I'll go to
the Object menu and choose to Group them.
| | 02:28 | Now take a look at what my target is.
My target is now my Group. Now when I
| | 02:32 | apply the 3D effect, the 3D effect
is not being applied to the individual
| | 02:36 | objects. Instead it's being
applied at the Group level.
| | 02:39 | So I'm now going to go ahead and choose
the same one. Effect > 3D and Revolve.
| | 02:43 | Now I move down the dialog over here,
click on the Preview button, and now you
| | 02:46 | could see that the frisbee that gets
rendered has the stripes the way that I
| | 02:50 | intend them to be, and now when I go
ahead and I rotate this, it's one object.
| | 02:54 | So again, this is happening
strictly because what I have done is I have
| | 02:57 | actually created a Group. What I'm
doing is I'm not applying the 3D effect to
| | 03:02 | each of the objects that are within
that group. Instead I'm applying the 3D
| | 03:05 | effect to the group itself.
| | 03:08 | When you grasp this concept, when you
really understand how you can actually
| | 03:11 | take several objects together and
group them and then apply this 3D effect at
| | 03:14 | the Group level, you can quickly see
that you can create extremely complex
| | 03:17 | graphics but without really working
too hard to get to that particular point
| | 03:21 | here inside of Illustrator with the 3D effect.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Preparing art for mapping| 00:00 | One of the coolest aspects, in my
opinion at least, of the 3D feature inside of
| | 00:04 | Illustrator is its support for
something called Artwork Mapping. Now as we
| | 00:08 | know, Illustrator itself is a two-
dimensional application; the artboard that we
| | 00:11 | are looking at right now is 2D.
| | 00:13 | We also know that 3D is applied as a
Live Effect. So that means that when I'm
| | 00:17 | inside of that Live Effect dialog box,
I'm living inside of this 3D world. What
| | 00:21 | Artwork Mapping allows me to do is
basically combine these two worlds together.
| | 00:25 | I can take a two dimensional piece of artwork
and wrap it around the surface of a 3D object.
| | 00:31 | Now, because we only live inside of
this real 3D world, when the 3D Effect
| | 00:34 | dialog box is open inside of Illustrator,
I'm only going to be able to do this
| | 00:38 | Artwork Mapping when I'm inside of
that dialog. Now, as we are soon going to
| | 00:42 | see, the only way for me to get two-
dimensional artwork into the 3D Live Effect
| | 00:45 | dialog box, I need to turn my
artwork into a symbol first.
| | 00:49 | So let's take a look at this example
right here. I happen to have these two
| | 00:52 | water bottles here. What I want to
do is I want to basically wrap a label
| | 00:55 | around the center part of this bottle
right over here. Also take a closer look
| | 00:59 | over here at the top of this bottle,
and you could see that I have this kind of
| | 01:02 | cap that exists right over here.
Right now this cap should really have some
| | 01:06 | kind of a thread on it. So what I
would like to do is simulate some kind of
| | 01:09 | thread effect on this particular cap
here to make it look that much more realistic.
| | 01:14 | By the way, take a look at this
transparent cap over here that I have on the
| | 01:16 | top of the bottle; I'll show you how
I created that in just a moment.
| | 01:19 | But first, I'm going to come over here,
open up my panels here and see what exists
| | 01:23 | inside of my Symbols panel.
| | 01:25 | I currently have two symbols here.
Let's look at the first one. I'm simply
| | 01:27 | going to double-click on a symbol.
We know that in Illustrator if you
| | 01:30 | double-click on a symbol in the
Symbols panel, it actually allows you to edit
| | 01:33 | that particular symbol. So what I have
created here is just a simple series of
| | 01:36 | lines, these are all stroke lines. What
I have done is I have basically colored
| | 01:40 | them just a shade darker than the color
that I have applied to that particular cap.
| | 01:44 | By wrapping this piece of artwork
around that cap, it would simulate the look
| | 01:48 | of some kind of thread or grip
that appears on that cap. I'm going to go
| | 01:51 | ahead and click on the arrow here
so I can go back to my artwork here.
| | 01:55 | I am also going to double-click on
this symbol. This symbol is actually the
| | 01:57 | label that I have created. I'm going to
zoom out just a little bit more so you
| | 02:00 | could see this. Again, it's just a
simple, regular piece of art that I have
| | 02:03 | created. There is nothing fancy or
different about this. It's regular artwork.
| | 02:06 | You can have Photoshop artwork. You
can really take anything at all that you
| | 02:09 | would ever want to create into a label.
| | 02:11 | What's important here is I have
actually created this label actual size. As we
| | 02:14 | are going to see, when you start
working with Artwork Mapping inside of
| | 02:16 | Illustrator, because we can create
our 3D shapes to begin with, with very
| | 02:20 | precise measurements, I'll always
create the artwork that I want to map with
| | 02:23 | the same measurements, so that way I
know that when I map it onto the surface,
| | 02:27 | I don't need to do additional scaling
or rotating or so on and so forth. It
| | 02:30 | just makes it that much easier for
you later on when you start doing the
| | 02:33 | Artwork Mapping itself.
| | 02:34 | Once again, I'll go ahead and simply
double-click on any blank area to exit the
| | 02:38 | Symbol Editing Mode and go back to my artwork.
| | 02:41 | Now, to define a symbol all you
need to do is create any art inside of
| | 02:45 | Illustrator, any piece of artwork, you
don't have to group it if you don't want
| | 02:48 | to, simply select all that artwork and
then go over to the Symbols panel and
| | 02:52 | click on this button right here to
create a new symbol. The keyboard shortcut
| | 02:55 | to define a symbol is the F8 key on
your keyboard, and that's
the same for both Mac and PC.
| | 03:00 | So that's all that you need to know
right now about how to create your artwork.
| | 03:03 | You now know that you have to define
your artwork as a symbol. Once you have
| | 03:06 | defined that it's a symbol, you will
be able to then wrap that artwork around
| | 03:08 | the 3D object, which
we'll get to in just a moment.
| | 03:10 | But let's talk for a minute more about
exactly how the Artwork Mapping feature
| | 03:15 | works inside of Illustrator. Now, as
you see over here, I have two bottles that
| | 03:18 | I have created. I have actually
created this with the same artwork but with
| | 03:21 | different attributes applied to them.
Let me explain to you exactly what I mean.
| | 03:24 | I am simply going to go ahead and
click on this object right here. It's a
| | 03:27 | group. I have been able to actually go ahead
and revolve all this as one united object here.
| | 03:32 | If you look over here in my Appearance
panel, I have here the 3D Revolve that I
| | 03:36 | have applied. But I'm going to simply
just turn off the eyeball. One of the
| | 03:38 | things that I love about the new
Appearance panel inside of Illustrator CS4 is
| | 03:41 | the fact that you can toggle these
effects on and off without actually having
| | 03:44 | to remove them and then reapply them.
| | 03:46 | So I'm just going to simply go ahead
and click on the eyeball here to remove
| | 03:48 | the effect, and see how I have
actually created the shape here. I used the
| | 03:51 | guide here as a visual reference to
know where that axis is going to be.
| | 03:55 | Then what I have done is I have
actually created this shape right over here,
| | 03:58 | one shape over here. I have created
another shape for the cap. I have another
| | 04:01 | shape over here. This is actually-- if
I click on this right here, I'm using my
| | 04:04 | Direct Selection tool, you will see
that I have a shape that's over here that
| | 04:07 | is actually filled white, but that
has an Opacity of 50%. That's why I have
| | 04:12 | been able to create this transparent
plastic looking cap, because what I'm
| | 04:15 | basically seeing is that shape there,
but I'm able to see through it because
| | 04:18 | its transparent.
| | 04:19 | Whenever you are working with
objects inside of Illustrator that you are
| | 04:22 | applying a 3D effect to, as long as
you are working with a group of objects,
| | 04:25 | you can basically assign an Opacity
level to any object within that group, then
| | 04:30 | that opacity will basically show
through in the revolved object.
| | 04:33 | But in this case, you can see that
all the objects that I have created have
| | 04:36 | fills but they have no stroke
attributes applied. I'm
actually going to go over
| | 04:39 | here to this shape. I'm going to click
on this one. I'm going to turn its 3D
| | 04:41 | effect off. You will see that I have
built the exact same shape, but in this
| | 04:45 | case, all the artwork is made up of
strokes but with no fills. I'll go ahead
| | 04:48 | and I'll click on this object, for
example. Right here, click the entire
| | 04:51 | object. Notice that I have over here
a stroke applied but I have no fill
| | 04:55 | applied at all.
| | 04:56 | This is an important thing to realize
about Illustrator. For some reason the 3D
| | 05:00 | effect does a better job at rendering
when you are working with strokes and not
| | 05:04 | filled objects. As we'll start to
see about how we create these complex
| | 05:07 | objects, a lot of self-intersection
starts occurring when you have filled
| | 05:11 | objects. Basically, the over
result just don't look nearly as good.
| | 05:15 | So for example, if I go back over here
to this object right here; let's turn
| | 05:18 | the 3D effect back on again; this is
actually a good example of how when you
| | 05:22 | start to get complex, this is all real
3D rendering that's happening, it takes
| | 05:26 | that much more time for
Illustrator to do its job.
| | 05:29 | I will go ahead and I'll click on this
object here and I'll go ahead and I'll
| | 05:30 | turn its 3D effect on. You notice that
the one on the left over here, where I
| | 05:33 | used the strokes, looks better. Take a
look over here at the transparency. This
| | 05:37 | looks better. There is some kind of
odd kind of reflection going on in this.
| | 05:40 | You see how it's kind of not really a
round shape but it's kind of like boxy as
| | 05:44 | opposed to this one, which is really smooth.
| | 05:46 | The overall effect in the appearance
of the stroked artwork looks far better
| | 05:51 | than the one that is currently working
with the fills. But this is kind of one
| | 05:54 | of those kind of things where you have
an either/or kind of experience. What I
| | 05:58 | mean by that is, as we'll soon see, the
Artwork Mapping feature takes a look at
| | 06:03 | my artwork and creates these surfaces.
What I can do is I can apply artwork to
| | 06:08 | a particular surface.
| | 06:10 | Now, when you are working with artwork
that is working with fills; in this case
| | 06:12 | here I have no strokes at all, because
the artwork is filled, the entire object
| | 06:16 | is solid, there is no inside, there
is just the outside of the bottle. But
| | 06:20 | because this has a stroke attribute
and not a fill attribute, Illustrator is
| | 06:23 | rendering both the outside and inside.
| | 06:26 | When I start thinking about how many
surfaces I have to work with; if you think
| | 06:29 | about this shape right here, because
there is no inside, its a solid fill
| | 06:33 | bottle, think of it as just made up of
one big piece of plastic, there is no
| | 06:36 | inside of it, I only have the outside
surface to work with, so that's just one
| | 06:40 | set of surfaces.
| | 06:41 | However, if we think about this
shape right over here; so this is hollow
| | 06:44 | inside, which means, even though I
really can't see it right now, Illustrator
| | 06:48 | will allow me to put artwork around the
outside of this bottle, or I could map
| | 06:51 | artwork along the inside surface of the bottle.
| | 06:54 | What does that mean to me? So let's
take a quick look and I'll show you. If I
| | 06:56 | click on this artwork first right
here, this is the one with the filled
| | 06:59 | objects, I'm simply going to click on
the 3D Revolve effect, open up the dialog
| | 07:02 | box, and I'll click on this button here
called Map Art. This is the area where
| | 07:06 | we are going to start applying the
artwork that can actually wrap around the
| | 07:09 | surface of these 3D shapes.
| | 07:11 | So you can see over here I have this
Surface setting. I currently have 1 of 28
| | 07:14 | different surfaces that I have, and
we'll talk about exactly what makes a
| | 07:17 | surface inside of Illustrator. But again,
because there is no inside or hollow
| | 07:21 | area of the shape right now, I
have 28 surfaces to work with.
| | 07:25 | However, I'm going to click on Cancel
here. Let's click on this shape that
| | 07:28 | appears right over here. I'm now
going to go ahead and click on the Revolve
| | 07:31 | effect here, click on the Map Art button,
and you can see that I now have 1 of
| | 07:35 | 95 surfaces. So I have that many more
surfaces to deal with, and that makes my
| | 07:40 | object a little bit more complex, and
as we'll soon see when we actually apply
| | 07:43 | the Artwork Mapping, it can make
my life a little bit more difficult.
| | 07:47 | So it's an either/or kind of thing,
what do you prefer, do you want to work
| | 07:49 | with fewer surfaces but not get as good
of a rendering result, or you can get a
| | 07:53 | much better rendering result but
have to deal with more surfaces?
| | 07:56 | Unfortunately, we really care at the
end of the day what our artwork looks like.
| | 08:00 | We don't really care about how we
get there. In my opinion, when you are
| | 08:03 | working with these kinds of shapes and
especially these kinds of complex pieces
| | 08:06 | of artwork, you really want to get the
possible result out of Illustrator. So
| | 08:10 | what I'm going to end up doing is
being forced to work in the world basically
| | 08:13 | of these stroked objects here; again,
without any fills inside of them.
| | 08:17 | I'll ultimately get a better result, but at
the same time, I'm going to have to work
| | 08:20 | that much harder to make sure
that my mapping is done correctly.
| | 08:23 | So finally, let's talk for one moment
about just the surfaces themselves.
| | 08:27 | We know that we can take now a symbol
that we have defined inside of Illustrator
| | 08:30 | and we are going to be able to wrap
that around an object, or better yet, let's
| | 08:34 | talk more about the terms that we are
speaking with here. We can actually apply
| | 08:37 | a symbol to a surface inside of Illustrator.
| | 08:40 | Now, you notice when I had this
particular object selected, it had about 28
| | 08:42 | surfaces. The way that it works inside
of Illustrator is that I can take one
| | 08:45 | symbol and I could map that one
symbol to one surface at a time.
| | 08:50 | Now, I can apply different symbols
or even the same symbol to multiple
| | 08:53 | surfaces, but at any one time I can
only take one symbol and apply it to one
| | 08:57 | surface. In other words, I can't have
two symbols or two pieces of artwork on a
| | 09:00 | single surface.
| | 09:02 | Now, if we think about this shape right
here, and I have here a surface, which
| | 09:05 | is the area that I have defined here
as a label, kind of an indented area in
| | 09:07 | the plastic. So this whole area
circled around the entire shape itself is
| | 09:11 | considered one surface.
| | 09:12 | So I couldn't have, let's say, two
labels; like a label that I put on the front
| | 09:16 | and a label that I put on the back. I
only have one label that I can work with.
| | 09:19 | I could create artwork that just
looks like two labels that are stacked
| | 09:22 | side-by-side and then wrap that
around my piece of artwork, but I can't
| | 09:27 | actually apply one label to the front
and then another label to the back as two
| | 09:30 | separate symbols. They would
need to live as one symbol.
| | 09:33 | Likewise, I cannot take a single symbol
inside of Illustrator and have it wrap
| | 09:37 | around multiple surfaces. For example,
as we are soon going to see, this area
| | 09:41 | of the bottle, this area of the bottle,
and this area of the bottle are three
| | 09:44 | separate surfaces. So I couldn't take
one piece of artwork or one symbol and
| | 09:48 | actually have it display across all
these three surfaces at once. What I would
| | 09:51 | need to do is I would need to
actually define three separate symbols; one
| | 09:54 | symbol that I would want to go in this
area, one symbol on this area and then
| | 09:57 | one symbol on this area, and then I
would map them all on to it individually.
| | 10:01 | So now that we have a better
understanding of what we need to create in order
| | 10:04 | to apply this Artwork Mapping feature,
and now that we have a better idea of
| | 10:07 | exactly what these surfaces are, we'll
now, in the next movie, talk about how
| | 10:12 | we actually apply these artwork to
these objects in a way that we can basically
| | 10:16 | turn this now to something truly spectacular.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Mapping artwork to a 3D surface| 00:00 | So we are ready to map some
artwork onto a 3D surface here inside of
| | 00:04 | Illustrator. We already know that in
order to map two-dimensional artwork onto
| | 00:07 | a 3D surface, you need to first
define that artwork as a symbol, which
| | 00:11 | we have already done over here.
| | 00:12 | We also know that when we are
working with filled objects inside of
| | 00:14 | Illustrator, objects that have no
stroke attributes applied, we end up with
| | 00:17 | fewer surfaces to work with. If you see
over here on the left side, this is the object
| | 00:22 | that has only stroke attributes
applied, which will result in more surfaces.
| | 00:26 | This one on the right over here
is working with filled objects, which
| | 00:29 | results in fewer surfaces.
| | 00:30 | For now, we are going to work with
the one that has fewer surfaces, just so
| | 00:34 | that we can just get our feet wet and
understanding exactly how we can easily
| | 00:37 | apply artwork to a 3D surface. Then
we'll dive into the world here of strokes,
| | 00:41 | which have far more surfaces and
we'll see how much more difficult it is to
| | 00:44 | apply it in that particular case.
| | 00:46 | Now, I'm going to go ahead and I'm
just going to move this over here to the side
| | 00:48 | so we have a full screen to work
with. As we are going to see,
| | 00:51 | we are going to have several dialog boxes
that we are going to have to navigate through
| | 00:54 | to make this happen, so I just want to
make sure we have some room to do this.
| | 00:56 | If you have a larger screen
or a high-resolution monitor,
| | 01:00 | you'll obviously have a lot
more of an easier time with this.
| | 01:02 | So what I'm going to do first is I'm
going to select this piece of artwork
| | 01:04 | right here. It's the group that I have
selected. Notice I have the 3D Revolve
| | 01:08 | effect already applied. The 3D Artwork
Mapping is simply another aspect or part
| | 01:13 | of the existing 3D effect that I have
already applied. Meaning, I don't need to
| | 01:16 | apply a new effect now. I just have
to edit the one that I have already applied.
| | 01:20 | So I'm just going to click on
the 3D Revolve setting here to bring up
| | 01:23 | this 3D Revolve Options dialog box.
| | 01:25 | I am going to click on the Preview
button, because obviously it's always best
| | 01:27 | to see what you are working with,
instead of just imaging it in your mind.
| | 01:31 | What I'm going to do is I'm going to
click on this button here called Map Art.
| | 01:34 | That's going to open up now another dialog box.
| | 01:36 | This dialog box is going to
immediately identify that my object that
| | 01:39 | I'm working with right now, or I should say
my group of objects that appear right over here,
| | 01:42 | currently consists of 28 different
surfaces. Illustrator tells me that
| | 01:47 | we are looking at now 1 of 28 surfaces.
That means that this surface right over
| | 01:51 | here that we are looking at is the
first surface. Illustrator helps me identify
| | 01:54 | where this surface appears in my
artwork by applying a little bit of
| | 01:58 | a red outline here or highlighting
it in red on the artboard itself.
| | 02:01 | Now, one thing to note. Illustrator
itself doesn't really match up or line up
| | 02:05 | that red outline exactly on the object.
I don't know exactly why but that's
| | 02:09 | just the way that it is. So it does
give me a pretty good idea. It's kind of near it,
| | 02:12 | but as we'll soon see as we
step through the different surfaces,
| | 02:15 | the red outline will be offset just
a little bit from the shape itself.
| | 02:19 | Let's take a look over here at exactly
what this represents. Remember, this piece
| | 02:22 | of artwork now consists of 28 different
surfaces, and remember that I can only
| | 02:26 | apply one symbol to a surface. What I
have over here is the actual flattened out
| | 02:32 | surface itself. The surface here
actually wraps completely around the bottle,
| | 02:36 | but here I see it in its flat form,
or think about this as the two
| | 02:40 | dimensional form of what I'm seeing
right over here of this 3D surface.
| | 02:44 | We refer to this as a UV.
| | 02:46 | What I'm looking at right now is you
can see that I have this kind of grid and
| | 02:49 | I also have lighter areas and darker
areas. This represents what the visible
| | 02:54 | areas are on the object. Any area
right now that's shaded in a darker gray
| | 02:59 | refers to parts of the bottle or parts
of the surface, I should say, that are
| | 03:02 | currently the back part of the bottle.
I cannot see them, they are hidden from view.
| | 03:06 | Whereas the areas that are now
in the lighter gray area reference
| | 03:10 | the parts of the label right now or I
should say parts of the surface that are
| | 03:13 | currently in view that I can see.
| | 03:15 | So if I look at this right now, if I
were to apply artwork in this particular area,
| | 03:20 | I would only be able to right now
see the area or the parts of the label
| | 03:24 | that exists in this area right here.
This part here would kind of wrap around
| | 03:27 | to the back of the bottle.
I wouldn't be able to view it.
| | 03:29 | One thing to note by the way, if I
go ahead and I click OK and I change
| | 03:32 | the rotation of the object, this obviously
updates. The way that I'm looking at
| | 03:36 | the bottle at this moment is basically
defining what I can or can't see, but
| | 03:39 | if I were to rotate it, obviously
other parts would come into view.
| | 03:42 | Now, in this case, it's pretty simple
because the surface that I really want
| | 03:45 | to map artwork onto is actually this
surface number 1. It's this part that's
| | 03:48 | right here, but before we do that let
me just kind of step through different surfaces
| | 03:52 | and we can explore what these
surfaces are and easily identify them.
| | 03:55 | So I'm going to go over here to these
arrows and I can click on this arrow
| | 03:58 | right here to simply go to the next
surface. Now, notice that over here right now,
| | 04:01 | Illustrator is identifying
this area as a second surface.
[00:04:054.65]
This is important to know about Illustrator;
and I can kind of go through a few of them
| | 04:07 | as well, for example, this one right here.
| | 04:09 | You can see that this is one area, this
is another area, this is another area,
| | 04:14 | all these three different areas. How is it
that Illustrator is defining those surfaces?
| | 04:18 | This actually comes down to
how I actually create the shape.
| | 04:21 | This is also, as we are soon going to see,
a major difference in how Illustrator
| | 04:25 | applies a 3D Revolve effect on three
surfaces differently between filled
| | 04:29 | objects and stroked objects.
| | 04:31 | Right now, you can see that my artwork
has these anchor points that are here.
| | 04:34 | In Illustrator, we have two different
types of anchor points. We have something
| | 04:36 | called a Smooth anchor point and
that's an anchor point that has control
| | 04:40 | handles that come out of both ends
of it. Then we have something called
| | 04:42 | a Corner anchor point. A Corner anchor
point does not have a control handle
| | 04:46 | coming out of the actual anchor point itself.
| | 04:49 | In Illustrator, when we talk about filled
objects that have 3D effects applied to them,
| | 04:53 | when I think about a surface,
a new surface is started any time I have
| | 04:56 | a Corner anchor point. But if I'm
working with a Smooth anchor point,
| | 05:00 | then that still stays
as a continuous surface.
| | 05:02 | So as you can see what I have done
here basically is I actually have a Corner point
| | 05:05 | that exists right here on the
bottom, and then I have another Smooth
| | 05:08 | anchor point, Smooth anchor point,
and then only a Corner anchor point here.
| | 05:12 | So that's why Illustrator treats
this entire area as one whole surface.
| | 05:16 | Likewise, over here, I was careful when
I actually created this shape to define
| | 05:20 | when I was working with Corner anchor
points or Smooth anchor points. Because
| | 05:24 | I knew that I wanted to wrap our label
around this midsection right over here,
| | 05:27 | I basically created a Corner anchor
point here and here, and that automatically
| | 05:32 | told Illustrator to define this as a
new surface. But from over here,
| | 05:36 | all the way to the top of the cap over here,
I only used Smooth anchor points, and
| | 05:40 | that ensured that this now
constitute as one entire surface.
| | 05:43 | Again, you will look over here and
you will see that there are lighted areas
| | 05:45 | and the shaded areas. Again, they are
not necessarily square because the way
| | 05:49 | that the shape is, if you flattened
it out, you would see basically that
| | 05:52 | Illustrator itself is identifying the
areas that are currently in view and
| | 05:55 | currently hidden from view.
| | 05:57 | So I'm actually going to go through a
few more of these areas. You can see
| | 05:59 | I have here at the top of this little
ring here, the cap itself. As I go through them,
| | 06:02 | I can identify the regions.
| | 06:04 | Now, this would be facing the bottom
part of the cap that you have over here.
| | 06:08 | That's the bottom because Illustrator
has told me that it's currently hidden from view.
| | 06:12 | I can't see that because it's dark.
| | 06:14 | Then I go ahead and I kind of go
around this. That would be the outside over
| | 06:16 | here of the cap itself, so on and so
forth. We are actually going to work with that
| | 06:19 | as well. So let's kind of remember
that was surface number 9 and
| | 06:23 | we can now work through this.
| | 06:24 | Now, if you remember also, when we
start working with objects that are working
| | 06:27 | with strokes, strokes can basically end
up in far more number of surfaces and
| | 06:31 | that's again because Illustrator
will also want me to paint artwork or
| | 06:35 | basically apply the symbols to the
inside surfaces of shapes, not just
| | 06:38 | the outside of them. We'll actually
go through that in just a moment.
| | 06:41 | So let's take a look at this object
right here. I'm simply going to go back to
| | 06:44 | my first shape. Let's go ahead and
just go back to surface number 1;
| | 06:47 | that's the part here that
I want to put this label onto.
| | 06:50 | Now that I have this surface selected,
I need to now tell Illustrator to map
| | 06:53 | a piece of artwork onto that surface.
Remember we had to create a symbol inside
| | 06:57 | of Illustrator. Notice that over here I
have a pop-up menu that identifies all
| | 07:00 | the symbols in my file. So remember,
this is exactly how the artwork gets into
| | 07:05 | the 3D effect. Before, we defined two-
dimensional artwork, we saved it as a symbol.
| | 07:09 | Once I have done that, I can
now bring that two dimensional artwork
| | 07:12 | here into this world of 3D.
| | 07:13 | I am going to choose the label over
here. The label, because I have actually
| | 07:17 | created the label at actual size,
the label fits perfectly here into
| | 07:21 | the surface that I have created. Now,
I could of course go ahead and use these
| | 07:24 | little handles over here to resize
or rotate it, but I'll tell you that,
| | 07:28 | remember, Illustrator is working with
3D rendering. Every little adjustment
| | 07:31 | that I make takes time for Illustrator
to re-render that artwork. Because of that,
| | 07:35 | it just becomes that much more
difficult to work with these mapped pieces
| | 07:39 | of artwork now as I'm trying to
get the perfect positioning there.
| | 07:42 | So I always find it easiest to
actually create my artwork and scale both
| | 07:46 | the actual 3D shape and the artwork that
I want to map to it as well. In this case here
| | 07:50 | I would make sure that the area
that I have defined here as the part for
| | 07:54 | the label was the exact same size to
scale as the label is going to be, and
| | 07:58 | that just made life a little bit easier for me.
| | 08:00 | So I have that particular piece of
artwork mapped here. You can see that
| | 08:03 | the artwork itself of the bottle has
the lighting and the shading going on.
| | 08:07 | So I have a lighter area here and a darker
area here. That's because in this piece
| | 08:11 | of artwork, with this 3D effect, I
actually have a light source that's kind of
| | 08:15 | hitting it from the upper-right hand
corner of the bottle here that's kind of
| | 08:17 | reflecting off of the surface. So this
part is naturally darker than this part.
| | 08:20 | But you can see that the artwork has
no shading whatsoever on it. Illustrator
| | 08:24 | does this by default. You can see over
here there is an option called Shade Artwork,
| | 08:28 | which right now says that it's
slower. That's because Illustrator
| | 08:31 | doesn't use gradients to create the
shading effects and the lighting effects to
| | 08:34 | 3D objects. Illustrator
actually works with blends.
| | 08:37 | In order to simulate the shading on
your artwork itself, Illustrator needs to
| | 08:41 | take your entire piece of artwork,
chop it into literally hundreds or thousands
| | 08:45 | or tens of thousands of shapes,
and apply blend to those as well for
| | 08:49 | the shading also. So if you thought the
actual rendering of the 3D object was intensive,
| | 08:53 | well, it's even more so when
you start mapping artwork and you want
| | 08:55 | the artwork to be shaded as well.
| | 08:57 | Now, of course over here, we really
want the artwork to be shaded. We want to
| | 09:00 | get that more realistic look to it.
So we can click on this button, and again,
| | 09:03 | we just wait for Illustrator to
process that, but as we'll see now that we do
| | 09:07 | have the shading applied to the artwork itself.
| | 09:10 | Now what I'm going to do is I'm going
to go over to the actual part of the cap here,
| | 09:12 | because I want to basically
simulate that threaded area, that grip,
| | 09:16 | that basically gets applied to the actual
exterior here of the cap. So I'll go back
| | 09:20 | to the settings here for the Surfaces
and we'll go back to surface number 9,
| | 09:23 | which was actually the area that we
are going to map around that particular
| | 09:27 | part of the cap.
| | 09:28 | Again, notice over here I have the
darker and the lighter areas. Again,
| | 09:30 | just showing me which part is visible or
hidden from view. Now I'm going to apply
| | 09:34 | the other one, which I call the cap
thread and apply that one again. Because
| | 09:38 | I have created it to scale, it's simply
going to just drop right into the place
| | 09:41 | where I need it. I'm going to click OK
and now I have applied that particular
| | 09:44 | texture to that particular part of the shape.
| | 09:47 | I am going to click OK and zoom in on
that area so we could see what I have
| | 09:49 | done here. It just applies that kind
of a look to the bottle to make it look
| | 09:53 | like I have the thread. I can't really
emboss them or make them look in that
| | 09:56 | particular way. All I'm simply doing is
taking flat two-dimensional artwork and
| | 10:00 | applying it onto a 3D shape. But at
least it does give me a little bit more of
| | 10:03 | a realistic look to what that particular
piece of artwork is really supposed to look like.
| | 10:07 | So now that we have seen how to apply
the artwork to a 3D shape using this
| | 10:10 | mapping feature, let me zoom out here
for a second and let's focus on this
| | 10:13 | bottle right here, which is the one
that was made up of strokes. I just want to
| | 10:16 | show you again how you would apply
mapped artwork to this particular example,
| | 10:21 | because while the rendering does look
a lot better, we already discussed that
| | 10:24 | it's going to be far more complex to work with.
| | 10:26 | So I'm going to go ahead and I'm going
to click on this shape right here;
| | 10:28 | I'm going to move it over just a little
bit to the left. I'll click on the 3D
| | 10:31 | Revolve effect. Let's click on the
Preview button so we can see what we are
| | 10:34 | dealing with here. What I'll also do is
I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to
| | 10:38 | click on this button here called Map Art.
| | 10:40 | Again, we'll just wait for Illustrator
to go ahead and resolve that. Beautiful!
| | 10:43 | Click on the Map Art button. Notice
that over here, instead of the 28 surfaces before,
| | 10:47 | we now have 95 surfaces.
| | 10:49 | I am going to start stepping through
these surfaces. Again, Illustrator does
| | 10:52 | identify with a little red area on the
artboard here what my surfaces are,
| | 10:57 | but notice how many more shapes and how
much more complex especially this area is.
| | 11:01 | Now, as I come down here towards the
bottom of the shape, I want you to really
| | 11:04 | kind of focus on what does or
does not become an area to work with.
| | 11:08 | Notice over here, this is the part of
the label. But take a look over here.
| | 11:10 | See how it's dark over here but lighter
on this part? What I'm looking at right now
| | 11:14 | is actually the inside of the bottle,
not the outside of the bottle. How do I know that?
| | 11:19 | Well, to be honest, I know it
from trial and error. Unfortunately,
| | 11:23 | Illustrator does not provide any clear
way to figure out if a surface is facing
| | 11:27 | the inside or the outside of an
object when using stroked artwork.
| | 11:31 | Let's go through other surfaces and
take a look. Remember in the previous
| | 11:34 | example, this entire area from here
all the way down to the bottom was
| | 11:38 | considered one surface, but now
Illustrator actually split this into several
| | 11:41 | different surfaces. That happens because
when you are working with stroked objects,
| | 11:45 | it does not make a difference
if you are working with Smooth anchor points
| | 11:47 | or Corner anchor points, because
either of those types of anchor points
| | 11:51 | define a new surface inside of Illustrator.
| | 11:53 | So not only am I now dealing with both
the exterior surface and the interior
| | 11:57 | surface of the bottle, I'm also dealing
with the fact that every single anchor point
| | 12:01 | defines a brand new surface.
| | 12:02 | So let's kind of go through a few more
of these right now. Kind of go over here
| | 12:06 | and now let's take a look at this part
of the label. If I now choose to apply
| | 12:09 | the label right here, it gets applied
to the actual surface, again because
| | 12:13 | I created it in actual size. It snaps
right into place where it needs to be and
| | 12:18 | using again this little red outline
helps me identify where that is. I can now
| | 12:22 | apply the Artwork Mapping to this shape.
| | 12:23 | The result of course is I can still
apply the Artwork Mapping to the shape, but
| | 12:27 | notice how many more steps it took me
to actually get there. Far more surfaces
| | 12:30 | to work with. A little bit more
guesswork in trying to get around to trying to
| | 12:33 | identify where that is. Once again,
I'll choose the Shade Artwork setting to
| | 12:37 | go ahead and apply that piece of artwork
and shade it as well, using the same
| | 12:41 | lighting settings that I
have on the overall object.
| | 12:43 | Now, once that particular piece is done,
I now know that I have to go to this
| | 12:47 | particular cap area and I guess it's
just a matter of stepping through all
| | 12:50 | different sides and identifying that
area. There is no way to kind of jump to
| | 12:53 | one area or not.
| | 12:54 | In fact, here is really good example.
Because of the way that I'm seeing
| | 12:57 | the shaded area right now, I have a
pretty good feeling that what I'm looking at
| | 13:00 | right now is actually the inside of
that cap, not the outside of it.
| | 13:04 | So applying this right now, I would be
able to apply it, but I wouldn't be able to
| | 13:07 | really see it because it's the inside
of the bottle. So I want to make sure
| | 13:10 | I step through all the different
areas to get to that particular shape.
| | 13:12 | One thing to note over here while I'm
here is that remember this shape that
| | 13:15 | I have created, that has come with the
plastic see-through cap? That's an object
| | 13:19 | that has a transparency setting
applied to it. Now, I could map artwork onto
| | 13:23 | that plastic area, but it's important
to realize that Illustrator treats mapped
| | 13:26 | artwork the same way as the surface
that it's applied to. Meaning if I took
| | 13:30 | artwork now and I mapped artwork onto
that plastic surface, that artwork would
| | 13:34 | be also be set back to 50% Opacity
level. So I would actually be able to see
| | 13:38 | through the artwork itself. There is
no way to put opaque artwork onto a
| | 13:41 | transparent surface inside of Illustrator.
| | 13:44 | So once I go ahead and I apply that,
I can click OK. I now know that I have
| | 13:47 | that applied,. I'm going to click OK
again. That's how I'm able to apply
| | 13:50 | Artwork Mapping to artwork here inside of
Illustrator. It's very cool. Again, depending
| | 13:54 | on how you have built your objects,
using fills or strokes, you can really
| | 13:57 | define how easy or difficult it is to
apply, but then when it comes down to it,
| | 14:01 | remember the stroke settings actually
give you a better looking render than
| | 14:04 | the filled objects do. So at end of the day,
you really do want to work with strokes here.
| | 14:08 | It takes a few more steps
but you do get a much better result,
| | 14:11 | and there you have a wonderful looking
3D shape that now once you apply that 3D shape,
| | 14:15 | you can rotate it or change
its rotation from any view and see that label
| | 14:19 | as it's wrapped around the surface.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Hiding geometry with 3D artwork mapping| 00:00 | The 3D feature inside of Illustrator
is incredibly deep. Lots of different
| | 00:04 | settings and sometimes just a little
checkbox or one setting in one place can
| | 00:07 | really change the overall look of your
3D object. I would like to show you one
| | 00:11 | such setting, because it really also
allows you to be totally creative about
| | 00:15 | using the 3D feature in general.
| | 00:16 | I am going to work with this bottle
that I have created using filled shapes.
| | 00:19 | I'm going to move it over just to
this side here so we can see what we are
| | 00:21 | doing. I'll go ahead and I'll click on
the 3D Revolve effect here inside of the
| | 00:25 | Appearance panel, click on the
Preview button, and let's go to the Map Art
| | 00:29 | dialog box, so we can work
with the Artwork Mapping here.
| | 00:32 | Now, we know right away that the
surface here is selected. I can now map a
| | 00:35 | symbol onto that surface; and I'll
choose this one here called Label. I have
| | 00:38 | created that label to actual size, it
now appears correctly in place. I'll also
| | 00:43 | choose the Shade Artwork setting over
here, because I want the shading to also
| | 00:47 | apply to the artwork that I have just mapped.
| | 00:49 | Before we click OK, I want you to
focus your attention on this checkbox right
| | 00:52 | here, its called Invisible Geometry.
It's a really cool and funky name, but it
| | 00:57 | actually does something very
interesting to your 3D shape. We know that my
| | 01:00 | artwork right now is made up of two
elements. I have my 3D shape, which is
| | 01:03 | really working with three dimensions
here. Then I have my two dimensional piece
| | 01:07 | of artwork, which is my label, that's
now been wrapped around that surface. So
| | 01:11 | again, I have two distinct elements here;
I have 3D artwork and then 2D artwork.
| | 01:15 | What I could do is I could tell
Illustrator to turn this 3D object and make it
| | 01:21 | invisible, and that would basically
leave me with just the mapped artwork
| | 01:25 | around this invisible 3D shape.
Basically, it would allow me to take a 2D piece
| | 01:29 | of artwork and distort it in 3D space
without having an object. So let's take a
| | 01:34 | look at how that works.
| | 01:35 | I am going to click on the Invisible
Geometry button, and Illustrator will now
| | 01:38 | go ahead and hide the bottle. So now
all I have is the label itself, and in
| | 01:42 | fact, if I go ahead now and I click OK,
I can now choose to rotate this bottle
| | 01:46 | and I can actually see that label
itself that kind of lives in this 3D world,
| | 01:50 | but is not really wrapped around anything.
| | 01:52 | The creative things that I could do
with this are really unlimited. If I have
| | 01:56 | some piece of artwork that looks like
its wrapped around the ring or that's a
| | 01:58 | ring itself, I could simply just
create any kind of oval or any kind of shape
| | 02:03 | for that matter; cylinder, wrap some
artwork around it, and then simply go
| | 02:07 | ahead and choose to hide the geometry.
In doing so, I'm just left with the label itself.
| | 02:12 | I can do this with many, many different
types of things, and I want to show you
| | 02:14 | another creative way, one
example of possibly using this.
| | 02:17 | I am going to click Cancel over here.
I'm simply going to go ahead to my
| | 02:20 | artboard itself and I'm just going to
create a brand new shape. I'm just going
| | 02:23 | to take a rectangle over here. I'm
going to do this along the side over here.
| | 02:26 | So I'm going to create just a rectangle.
I want to just create a cylinder, and
| | 02:29 | I'll give this any color, it doesn't
make much of a difference here, because
| | 02:31 | I'm going to end up hiding it anyway.
So I just want to be able to see it as
| | 02:34 | I'm working with it.
| | 02:35 | Now, I'll simply go ahead and select
that object. I'm going to apply the
| | 02:38 | Revolve 3D effect; I'll choose
Effect > 3D > Revolve. This will give me a
| | 02:42 | cylinder. Click on the Preview button
here. And again, I can kind of rotate
| | 02:45 | this, kind of see however I want to
work with it. But I'll click on the Map Art
| | 02:49 | button over here, and I'll go ahead and
I'll choose the surface that I want to work with.
| | 02:53 | Notice over here I have three surfaces;
I have the bottom face, the top face,
| | 02:56 | and then I have the whole side that exists
over here; that's what I want to work with.
| | 03:00 | I will now choose to, let's say, do
this thread over here that I have applied
| | 03:04 | to it. Notice how it kind
of wraps around that area.
| | 03:06 | What I'm going to do is I'm going to
actually rotate it on an angle. In this
| | 03:09 | case here, basically it kind of starts
over here and it kind of wraps its way down.
| | 03:12 | If I go ahead now and I turn
the Invisible Geometry setting on, and
| | 03:15 | I click OK, I have created some very,
very cool artwork over here. We really
| | 03:19 | can't see the cylinder, but this is a
regular plain straight line that's been
| | 03:23 | wrapped around invisible cylinder and
I get a very, very cool looking result.
| | 03:28 | I urge you to kind of think about the
3D effect in a more creative way. Think
| | 03:32 | about how you can actually use 3D, not
to actually create bottles and packages
| | 03:36 | and so on and so forth, but create
some kind of a shape that you can actually
| | 03:39 | now wrap two dimensional artwork around,
but then hide the shape, now you are
| | 03:43 | left with some pretty cool effects.
Think of like birthday streamers, so on and
| | 03:46 | so forth, you could do. You could
actually wrap around this object. Create
| | 03:49 | backgrounds, create really cool
abstract art. The options are limitless.
| | 03:53 | So have fun with this particular feature.
The geometry is incredibly cool with
| | 03:57 | 3D inside of Illustrator and
who knows what you will find.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Extending the use of 3D in Illustrator| 00:00 | One of the greatest things about
working with Illustrator is that you can be as
| | 00:03 | creative as you would like. In fact,
there are so many features available to you.
| | 00:06 | We have already seen how deep the
3D feature is alone, but that's only one
| | 00:09 | part of Illustrator. So what really
gets me excited about thinking about
| | 00:13 | Illustrator is how I can actually tie
all this creative features together.
| | 00:16 | So in this particular movie, am going
to offer you one example of how you could
| | 00:19 | take the 3D feature and begin to
extend or build upon that. Particularly,
| | 00:23 | I want to show you how you can
animate 3D inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:26 | So notice I have a file here open and
its called the animation, and even though
| | 00:29 | you can't really see to my artboard,
if I mouse over it, you can see that I
| | 00:32 | have created an outline of this badge,
and I want to be able to use this.
| | 00:35 | Remember, this is a sign that we are
using in all of our materials here for the
| | 00:38 | Groundswell website. I actually want
to go ahead and create some kind of a
| | 00:41 | rotating badge that I could have
displayed somewhere on my web page to kind of
| | 00:44 | attract the attention, to draw it
maybe towards some particular aspect of my site.
| | 00:48 | So what I have here is just a regular
plain shape. I have also already defined
| | 00:51 | two symbols, and this symbol over here
is simply this artwork here that would
| | 00:55 | be put onto that particular face of
that particular sign. Then if I go ahead
| | 00:59 | and I exit this particular symbol and
I look at this symbol, it's the exact
| | 01:02 | same sign but it's the reverse. And
in a minute I'll explain to you why I
| | 01:05 | created these two.
| | 01:06 | Now I'm just going to exit over here.
I'm going to take this regular object,
| | 01:09 | its filled white, and what I'm going to
do is I'm simply going to go over here
| | 01:12 | to the Effect menu, I'm going to
choose 3D, and we are going to apply the
| | 01:15 | Extrude & Bevel setting.
| | 01:17 | I will click on the Preview setting
here so I could see what's happening.
| | 01:19 | I have my shape here. The Extrude Depth
is perfect for me, but what I want to do
| | 01:23 | is I want to kind of round the edges
a little bit, to kind of soften it up
| | 01:25 | somewhat. So I'm going to apply the
Rounded Bevel settings. I'm going to scroll
| | 01:29 | down over here and let's go
ahead and choose the Rounded setting.
| | 01:32 | I am going to leave the Height set to
4 point. Now I have this nice smooth
| | 01:34 | setting. Instead of the Plastic
Shading, I'm simply going to use Diffuse
| | 01:38 | Shading. I don't need to have any
highlights. I just want to create this badge
| | 01:41 | that kind of rotates. That looks kind of cool.
| | 01:42 | So now what I'm going to do is I'm
going to go over here and I want to map some
| | 01:46 | artwork to my shape. So I'm going to
go to the Map Art setting right here. It
| | 01:49 | brings up the Map Art dialog box.
| | 01:51 | Now, one of the things to note, I
now have 38 different surfaces. This is
| | 01:54 | because I have applied the Bevel, and
the Bevel kind of blends this into many,
| | 01:57 | many different shapes. So I have a
front and I have a back, and instead of just
| | 02:00 | having a side over here, I actually
have many, many different gradations of
| | 02:04 | sides that are here as well.
| | 02:05 | I don't even need to go there, because
I'm simply going to map artwork to the
| | 02:08 | front face of the object, which is
right here. I'll choose the Front setting,
| | 02:12 | and notice that now gets applied very
nicely. I'll choose the Shade Artwork
| | 02:15 | setting to make sure that I get the
shading that I want on my artwork.
| | 02:18 | Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going
to go to the back surface, which is the
| | 02:21 | next side, over here. Notice over here
it's shaded dark, which means that it's
| | 02:24 | currently hidden from view. It's in
the back of the shape, and I'll apply the
| | 02:28 | Back one here.
| | 02:28 | Now, the reason why I created a
Back one that's backwards is because
| | 02:31 | Illustrator, when its working with a
shape in the back over here, even though
| | 02:35 | its applying it to the back surface,
it always applies the artwork facing
| | 02:38 | towards you right here. So that would
mean that the artwork, when I display it
| | 02:42 | and I rotate it would appear the wrong
way. So what I have done is I have kind
| | 02:45 | of created a backwards piece of art
that I'm going to map to the back surface,
| | 02:48 | so that when I do rotate it into view,
it will appear correct. So this is again
| | 02:52 | something you should think about when
you are creating your symbols as well.
| | 02:55 | For example, a cube. If you create a six
-sided cube, the artwork that you would
| | 02:59 | want to put on the back face of the
cube should actually be done backwards,
| | 03:02 | because that way it will appear
correct when you rotate it into view.
| | 03:05 | So now I'm going to choose OK; and
before I click OK, I'm going to change the
| | 03:09 | position so that I can view it straight
from the front. I'm going to click OK,
| | 03:13 | and now I'm viewing this particular
symbol here, this nice 3D shape that I have
| | 03:16 | created from the front.
| | 03:17 | Now what I'm going to do is I'm
actually going to create a duplicate of this
| | 03:20 | object, because what I want is I
actually want to create a blend. One of the
| | 03:23 | cool things about Illustrator is that
you have this feature called Blend that
| | 03:26 | allows you to blend one object into
another, but when you are working with 3D
| | 03:29 | effects, Illustrator not only just
blends the shapes to each other, it actually
| | 03:33 | morphs the 3D effect, which will
allow us eventually to create the steps
| | 03:37 | necessary for an animation.
| | 03:38 | So what I'm going to do over here, if
I look at my Layers panel here, I see I
| | 03:41 | have one path that I have created.
That's all that's right here. Remember it's
| | 03:44 | a single path that has that symbol
mapped onto its surface. Now what I'm going
| | 03:47 | to do is I'm going to go to the Edit
menu, I'm going to choose Copy, and then
| | 03:52 | I'm going to choose
something here called Paste in Front.
| | 03:54 | So now I have basically created a
copy directly here in front. The keyboard
| | 03:58 | shortcut to do this a little bit
faster would be Command+C and Command+F for
| | 04:02 | Command copy and paste in front. On the
Windows machine, it will be Ctrl+C and
| | 04:05 | then Ctrl+F. Important keyboard
shortcuts to know because you will probably use
| | 04:08 | it quite often.
| | 04:09 | So now I have two symbols, and they
are both kind of stacked on top of each
| | 04:13 | other. If I move one away here, you can
actually see that I have this one here.
| | 04:16 | Then press Undo. I'm going to select
both of them. I now have two regular plain
| | 04:20 | paths, which have a 3D effect applied
to them, and Artwork Mapping as well, and
| | 04:24 | I'm now going to take those two
shapes and blend them together.
| | 04:27 | I am going to go to the Object menu.
I'm going to choose Blend, and then I'll
| | 04:30 | choose to make a blend. Now,
Illustrator is going to go ahead and take those
| | 04:34 | two symbols and blend them into each other.
| | 04:37 | Now, what I'm going to do is basically
go ahead here and highlight just this
| | 04:40 | top object. I'm just going to
select the top object right now on this
| | 04:44 | particular path and I'm going to edit
its 3D effect. Because right now both
| | 04:48 | these objects, we are looking at it
straight from the front. What I'm going to
| | 04:51 | do is I'm going to say I want to look
at this particular one from the back.
| | 04:53 | I'm going to click OK. Now,
the blend will update itself.
| | 04:58 | I can actually go ahead here and close
this particular layer here, so that I
| | 05:01 | just see the blend itself. What
Illustrator is doing basically now is its
| | 05:06 | actually creating a blend from the
front to the back. I haven't changed the
| | 05:09 | position of this, so it's basically
staying in place, but I now have a blend
| | 05:12 | that has the artwork as it appears
in the front and then any of the steps
| | 05:16 | basically that needs to get to the back.
How many steps? Well, I can actually
| | 05:19 | define that when I actually work with the Blend.
| | 05:21 | Again, I'll just select right now this
artwork. I'll go to the Object menu, and
| | 05:25 | I'll choose Blend, Blend Options. Now,
you could see I have 12 steps in my
| | 05:29 | blend, which is perfect for here. If I
wanted to have a smoother animation,
| | 05:32 | I would add more steps to my blend, but
that again would also increase the file size.
| | 05:35 | So I'm going to leave it set to 12,
I'm going to click OK, and now
| | 05:39 | I'm ready to create my animation.
| | 05:40 | Now, Illustrator itself does not have
any animation capabilities. A program
| | 05:44 | like Flash, for example, does, but
Illustrator itself doesn't. In fact, the
| | 05:48 | program Flash creates animation with a
timeline, and you have these frames in a
| | 05:52 | timeline. Illustrator doesn't have any
timeline, doesn't have any frames, but
| | 05:56 | Illustrator does have layers. So
Illustrator does offer the option basically,
| | 06:00 | when you save your file, to make
believe that all of your layers are actually
| | 06:03 | going to be turned into frames, and in
doing so, Illustrator can create a Flash
| | 06:07 | animation directly out of Illustrator.
So let's take a look at how we do that.
| | 06:11 | I am going to go to my Layers panel.
I'm actually going to deselect my artwork.
| | 06:14 | What I'm about to do right now is a
function of the layers; it's not a function
| | 06:18 | of the artwork itself. I'm simply going
to go out and highlight the blend in
| | 06:21 | my Layers panel.
| | 06:22 | From the Layers panel menu, I'm going
to choose an option here called Release
| | 06:25 | to Layers; again, because I have now
highlighted the blend in my Layers panel,
| | 06:29 | I could choose to basically take every
step of that blend and put them onto its
| | 06:32 | own layer, and now that I'll have my
own layers, I'll be able to turn those
| | 06:35 | into frames for an animation.
| | 06:37 | So I'm going to choose to Release
to Layers as a Sequence. A Build will
| | 06:40 | basically add each one in the frame.
Sequence would make it appear as if it's
| | 06:43 | actually moving. So we are going to go
ahead and choose the Sequence option.
| | 06:46 | Notice that now every step that was my
blend now got turned into its own little
| | 06:49 | layer. So now I'm ready to go ahead and
actually export my animation. I'm going
| | 06:53 | to go to the File menu, I'm going to
choose Save for Web & Devices, and from
| | 06:57 | their Preset Settings right over here,
instead of choosing the GIF option,
| | 07:01 | I'm going to choose to export my file in
the SWF or Flash file format. In doing so,
| | 07:06 | you could choose to have your entire
Illustrator file exported as a single
| | 07:09 | Flash file, or as we were discussing
before, I could tell Illustrator to
| | 07:14 | basically turn all of my layers into
individual Flash frames. That would now
| | 07:18 | generate an animation.
| | 07:19 | I can loop that animation. I'll
leave the Frame Rate set to 12 frames per
| | 07:22 | second, and now I'll simply go click on
this button over here, which is called
| | 07:25 | Preview in Browser; that's actually
going to launch my web browser and show me
| | 07:28 | what this animation would look like.
I can now see that I have created this animation.
| | 07:32 | Again, I had to actually take the
artwork that I mapped onto the back surface
| | 07:36 | and reverse that, as I showed you,
because otherwise I would see one side
| | 07:40 | that's completely backwards. Now I
basically have this badge that rotates.
| | 07:44 | That looks really cool here.
| | 07:46 | But again, this is just a simple way
and one idea of how you can take the 3D
| | 07:50 | effect and build upon it inside of
Illustrator. Think about how you can work
| | 07:53 | with transparency, think about
enveloping effects, distortion effects. There is
| | 07:57 | all kinds of things that you can do
inside of Illustrator with 3D, but this is
| | 08:01 | one really great and cool example that
you can do, by animating a 3D object for
| | 08:05 | putting on your website.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Advanced Transformations and EffectsIntroducing transformations and effects| 00:00 | There are certain features that
you use every once in while inside of
| | 00:03 | Illustrator, maybe once a month or
something like that, but then there are
| | 00:06 | certain basic functions, things like
transformations, scaling, rotating, moving
| | 00:11 | across your screen. You do those many,
many times throughout a single day.
| | 00:15 | Those are the things that really make
you efficient when you learn how to
| | 00:18 | use them correctly.
| | 00:19 | Now, in this chapter here I want to
explore on an advanced level how to
| | 00:22 | actually apply these transformations
throughout your artwork. Now,
| | 00:25 | these features have been around forever.
However, when you really learn how to apply them
| | 00:29 | you will see how
much time that you can save.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Transform panel| 00:01 | When it comes to being precise inside
of Illustrator nothing is more important
| | 00:04 | than the Transform panel. I'm to go
here to the Window menu. I'm going to
| | 00:08 | choose Transform to open up the
Transform panel. And let's take a few moments
| | 00:12 | exploring the settings that exist
within it. It's important to realize that the
| | 00:16 | Transform panel at first glance may
seem very simple. It simply maps out the X
| | 00:20 | and Y values or the coordinates of
where object sits on an Artboard and then
| | 00:24 | likewise it also gives you the width
and height values of your selection.
| | 00:27 | But in reality, there is a lot of depth
to the Transform panel. There are also
| | 00:30 | many settings that may be buried in the
flyout menu over here that we'll get to
| | 00:33 | in a moment. So to get started here,
let's start working with a regular plain rectangle.
| | 00:38 | I'm going to simply use my
Rectangle tool to draw out a rectangle.
| | 00:41 | It can be any size. And I have it
filled right now with a yellow fill and have
| | 00:44 | it set to a 10 point black stroke.
| | 00:46 | Now I'm going to go ahead here, use my
regular Selection tool to click on this
| | 00:50 | object and you will notice that
because in the View menu here I have my
| | 00:53 | Bounding Box option turned on. Notice
over here it says Hide Bounding Box. That
| | 00:57 | means that currently my bounding box is
being shown. And I can see that I have
| | 01:01 | the bounding box so the handles
that appears on the corners here.
| | 01:05 | So let's first take a look over here at
the Transform panel. You notice in the
| | 01:07 | far left there is an icon here, which
is referred to as the Reference Point.
| | 01:12 | The Reference Point shows me 9 handles
and right now one of them is currently
| | 01:15 | selected which is the centre one.
These 9 handles refer to the 9 handles that
| | 01:20 | appear on the Bounding Box of my
current selection. If I were to go ahead now
| | 01:24 | and select this object, this object
has lots of anchor points on it, but you
| | 01:28 | will notice that again I have the
handles that appear around the parameter of
| | 01:31 | my selection. These handles here
represent the same that these icons do here,
| | 01:36 | in this Reference Point icon.
| | 01:38 | Now I'll go back and I'll select this
rectangle, the reason why it's important
| | 01:41 | to know this is because when I see the
values in here, for example the X and Y
| | 01:45 | coordinates, those X and Y coordinates
obviously refer to one single aspect or
| | 01:50 | point of my selection. So which part
of my selection did I represent? Well,
| | 01:55 | right now because the centre button
shows in my Reference Point, that means
| | 01:59 | that the X and Y values that I'm
seeing right here, X being along this way, Y
| | 02:04 | being along this way, so the values
that I'm seeing right here are now showing
| | 02:08 | me this exact center point of my object.
Whereas if I were to go ahead now and
| | 02:11 | click on the upper left-hand corner
over here, the values that I'm seeing here
| | 02:14 | which have just changed, now represents
this point on my Bounding Box, not the
| | 02:19 | center anymore.
| | 02:20 | Now this is important because when I'm
using the Transform panel to work with
| | 02:23 | objects precisely I need to control
exactly one part of my object. So, let me
| | 02:28 | give you an example. I'm going to go
ahead and click on the centre point right
| | 02:30 | here, if I wanted to manually align
this object to the centre of my page,
| | 02:34 | I know that right now my Artboard here is
set to eight and a half inches wide, so
| | 02:37 | the centre of that would be four and a
quarter. So what I can do is I can now
| | 02:41 | go to my X value and because the
centre point is now highlighted which is the
| | 02:45 | centre point of my object I can now
change that X value, type in 4.25 and tap
| | 02:50 | the Tab key to accept that value.
And then my object moves exactly to the
| | 02:54 | centre of the page.
| | 02:55 | Yes, of course there are aligning
tools to be able to do that, what I'm doing
| | 02:58 | is I'm trying to give you some
examples of where, when you work in the
| | 03:01 | Transform panel, you can position
objects exactly where that you need them
| | 03:05 | using this particular icon right here
to make sure that you do it the way that
| | 03:08 | you want. For example, if I wanted now
to align this all the way to the upper
| | 03:12 | left-hand corner, if I don't pay
attention to the Reference Point here, I might
| | 03:15 | say, okay, I want the X value to be 0
simply by typing in 0 and typing in the
| | 03:20 | Tab key will not do what I want to,
align the centre of my object to that
| | 03:25 | particular X value.
| | 03:26 | So I'm going to go ahead here and click
on the upper left-hand corner, I'm now
| | 03:29 | going to go ahead and type in 0 and now
my object snaps where I want it to be.
| | 03:33 | Now I also want it to be able to snap
to the top and normally when you are
| | 03:36 | working with regular page layout
applications. The (0,0) point is usually the
| | 03:41 | upper left-hand corner, but with
Illustrator its not. With Illustrator the 0
| | 03:45 | point for the X value appears over here
in the upper left-hand corner, but the
| | 03:49 | 0 point for the Y value appears down on
the lower left-hand corner, right over here.
| | 03:54 | Now why did this happen? I don't have
a good answer; I know that Illustrator
| | 03:57 | has always been this way. As we know
Adobe Illustrator is one of the first
| | 04:01 | graphic applications that were out there,
it was heavily mired in the way that
| | 04:05 | PostScript was created. So all this
means that you have to pay a little bit
| | 04:08 | more attention to the values that you
are working with. So, for example, I know
| | 04:10 | that right now my page is 11 inches
tall. So at this point over here it would
| | 04:14 | actually be 11. I can specify for my Y
value 11, hit the Tab key to accept in
| | 04:19 | my object when I'll snap to that
point that's right there. And if you are
| | 04:22 | working with web designing, working
with pixels, it would be the exact same
| | 04:25 | thing. You just have to always know
that the 0 point for the Y axis starts here
| | 04:29 | on the bottom and then moves upwards.
| | 04:31 | So now take a look at the Width and the
Height values. So again, the Reference
| | 04:34 | Points still comes in the play here,
when I go ahead and I choose to adjust a
| | 04:38 | value, the value basically gets
adjusted from that anchor point. Let me
| | 04:42 | explain, right now, the upper left-
hand corner is currently chosen. If I go
| | 04:46 | ahead now and I want this to expand
the entire page, which would be eight and
| | 04:49 | half inches, I could type in that value,
8.5, hit the Tab key to accept it. And
| | 04:54 | notice that this point will basically
stay and the shape will simply grow in
| | 04:57 | this direction. I'll hit Tab
key and we'll see that happen.
| | 05:00 | Now I'm going to press Undo for a
second. If I have the centre point selected
| | 05:04 | right here and I type in that same value,
8.5 and hit the Tab key to accept it.
| | 05:08 | Notice that the object was enlarged
but from the center point, not from the
| | 05:12 | upper left-hand corner, which was maybe
what I was expecting. We press Undo for
| | 05:16 | a moment here; again the same
concept applies to rotating and skewing my
| | 05:20 | object. Wherever I have my Reference
Point chosen, that will be the origin
| | 05:24 | point for where the rotation or the
skew or in this case here Illustrator
| | 05:27 | refers it as the shear,
basically takes place from.
| | 05:31 | So there's one other icon in the
Transform panel that's important to know and
| | 05:34 | that's this little lock icon right here.
Now if I wanted it to change the Width
| | 05:37 | of my object right now, notice that
when I go ahead and I enter that value,
| | 05:40 | let's say eight and a half inches, the
Height basically stays the same. But if
| | 05:43 | I want the Height to change
proportionately to the amount that I'm actually
| | 05:46 | changing the Width, I would click on
the lock icon and that would basically
| | 05:50 | constrain the Width and
Height settings together.
| | 05:52 | So let me go ahead here and click on
the upper left-hand corner Reference
| | 05:54 | Point. Let me go ahead and click on
this lock icon right now. So now if I
| | 05:58 | choose eight and a half inches here,
notice that the Height will also adjust
| | 06:01 | likewise. So now I basically have
locked the Height and Width together which
| | 06:06 | also means that if I change the Height
setting, the Width will also change in
| | 06:09 | proportion as well. So you would use
little lock icon here to make those
| | 06:12 | changes. I'm going to turn that off for now.
| | 06:14 | But I want to point out one extremely
important thing with the Transform panel.
| | 06:18 | You will notice when I went ahead
and I aligned my object to the upper
| | 06:21 | left-hand corner over here, what
actually got aligned to the page was the path
| | 06:25 | itself and not the stroke. So I'm
actually going to zoom in a little bit close
| | 06:29 | to here on this corner here and we'll
take a look at what's happening here. Let
| | 06:32 | me move my object down just a little bit,
you can see that the path itself was
| | 06:36 | aligned perfectly to the edge of the
page. However, the stroke value, which we
| | 06:40 | know is always applied to the centre
line of a path, and that's the default
| | 06:43 | setting inside of Illustrator. So I
have here a 10 point stroke, I now have
| | 06:47 | five points of that stroke extending to
the left and five points of that stroke
| | 06:51 | to the right or in this case here the
better term would be the outside and
| | 06:55 | inside of the path. So I have a 10
point stroke total, but five points on this
| | 07:00 | side and five points on that side.
| | 07:02 | Now here's something that's very
interesting. The value that I'm seeing right
| | 07:05 | here in the Width of my object, the
Illustrator again is very precise, it's a
| | 07:08 | computer application. It's giving me
the exact value of the path that's used to
| | 07:13 | define this object, but not the
appearance of the path. That's the default
| | 07:17 | setting inside of Illustrator. But
there is a setting that we could use to
| | 07:20 | change that. So right now my artwork is
eight and a half inches wide, but then
| | 07:24 | again that's the path that I see here
not including the actual amount that the
| | 07:28 | stroke is adding to the outside of this path.
| | 07:31 | Now if I were a person who were
designing a piece of artwork and I needed to
| | 07:34 | create something that was a precise
size, this size would now be a little bit
| | 07:38 | bigger and it wouldn't fit with the
size that I might be asked to provide. This
| | 07:42 | is again an important setting here.
I'm to go into my Preferences inside of
| | 07:45 | Illustrator. If you are on a Mac, you
would go over to the Illustrator menu and
| | 07:48 | choose Preferences and I'm going to
choose just the general setting here. If
| | 07:51 | you are on a Windows machine, you can
simply go to the Edit menu and then from
| | 07:54 | the bottom you would choose Preferences
as well. The keyboard shortcuts to open
| | 07:58 | up Preferences are Command+K or Ctrl+K.
| | 07:59 | There is an option here called Use
Preview Bounds. That's a very important
| | 08:05 | setting. By default when you open up
Illustrator that setting is turned off.
| | 08:09 | What this setting does is it tells
Illustrator to honor the appearance of a
| | 08:14 | path and not the actual path itself.
So again right now the Width of the path
| | 08:18 | that I'm working with this is exactly
eight and a half inches. If I turn on the
| | 08:22 | Use Preview Bounds setting inside the
Preferences panel and I click OK. Watch
| | 08:26 | what happens to the Width down in the
Transform panel. It now shows us 8.639
| | 08:31 | and that's because now the Width of the
path is also compensating or giving me
| | 08:35 | the value for the stroke itself.
| | 08:38 | In fact you can even see where the
Bounding Box now lies, Illustrator before
| | 08:42 | had the Bounding Box on this particular
anchor point. But now the Bounding Box
| | 08:46 | moved out to over here and that's
because Illustrator is now taking into
| | 08:49 | account the width of the stroke or
more precisely the appearance of the path,
| | 08:54 | not just the path itself.
| | 08:56 | So now if I go ahead and I change the
Width to be exactly 8.5 and I hit the Tab
| | 09:00 | key and I also adjust the X coordinate
over here to be assigned to 0. Now you
| | 09:05 | can see that this particular anchor
point now does measure up exactly with the
| | 09:09 | edge of the page. So I want to
actually show you, I'm going to zoom out of
| | 09:12 | here, leave that object for a moment,
how important this is when you are
| | 09:15 | dealing with other types of
artwork inside of Illustrator.
| | 09:17 | I have this badge that I have created
and this badge now has a Drop Shadow on it.
| | 09:21 | Now because I went ahead and I
actually turned on the Use Preview Bounds
| | 09:24 | setting, when I go ahead here and I
ask Illustrator to show me the width
| | 09:28 | particular object, notice that the
Bounding Box doesn't kind of match up
| | 09:31 | exactly to the anchor points of the
path here. The Bounding Box is actually
| | 09:34 | extended out just a little bit here
and that's because this object has a Drop
| | 09:38 | Shadow applied to it, take a look at
my Appearance panel here. I have a Drop
| | 09:41 | Shadow. So the Drop Shadow always adds
a couple of extra pixels to my object
| | 09:45 | that I don't see, like a clipped edge
from my Drop Shadow so that this way I
| | 09:48 | know that the Drop Shadow kind of
blends smoothly to that background.
| | 09:52 | So notice that the Width here is 4.
093, if I were to go ahead back to the
| | 09:56 | Preferences panel and I were to turn
off Use Preview Bounds, I would see that
| | 10:00 | object now is 3.792 because now the
Drop Shadow was not included in the value
| | 10:05 | that's being shown in the Transform
panel. So when I'm working inside of
| | 10:08 | Illustrator, I always want to make
sure that when I'm working with the
| | 10:11 | Transform panel that I can choose to
see the exact value of the path or
| | 10:16 | the value of the appearance of the path by
turning that setting, Use Preview Bounds, on and off.
| | 10:19 | If I go to the flyout menu here, I can
see there is an option here called Scale
| | 10:23 | strokes & Effects. And all this
simply means that when I'm working and I'm
| | 10:26 | scaling an object, does the stroke
width itself also scale along with the
| | 10:30 | object. And likewise if I have
different effects, for example, right now this
| | 10:33 | object has a Drop Shadow applied and
that Drop Shadow has a certain blur
| | 10:37 | setting and a certain offset setting.
Now when I go ahead and I scale this
| | 10:40 | object to be larger or smaller, do I
want that effect to also scale along with
| | 10:44 | the object? Usually I do, so I
sometimes want to make sure that the Scale
| | 10:48 | strokes & Effects is turned on. Again,
when you first launch Illustrator for
| | 10:51 | the first time, by default
this setting is turned off.
| | 10:54 | Now likewise there is also the
ability of using the Transform panel to
| | 10:57 | transform both any patterns and the
object inside of a regular shape that you have.
| | 11:02 | And if you do have a shape that
does have a fill of a pattern inside of
| | 11:06 | it, you could choose this Transform
Pattern Only option. And doing so,
| | 11:11 | basically if I now have an object
that has a pattern inside of it, any
| | 11:14 | adjustment that I make here to the
Width and the Height, for example, I could
| | 11:17 | change the size of just the pattern
or the repeat inside the shape without
| | 11:21 | changing the shape. So if I have a
shirt outline with a print of some kind of
| | 11:25 | pattern on the inside of the shirt. If
I want to see, let's say, smaller prints
| | 11:28 | inside of it, I could just simply
scale only the pattern and not the object
| | 11:32 | itself, again using this
particular setting here.
| | 11:34 | So these are the some of the settings
that you have in the Transform panel,
| | 11:37 | it's incredibly useful to work with.
You will also notice that many of the
| | 11:41 | elements in the Transform panel
appear in the control panel. So notice that
| | 11:44 | right over here on the top of your X,
Y and then I have Width and Height
| | 11:47 | values, I do had the Reference Point
indicator, I also have the lock icon. And
| | 11:52 | by clicking on any of these underlined
blue areas, I can simply go ahead and
| | 11:55 | access the entire Transform panel even
its flyout menu from this side with all
| | 12:00 | of its settings. So you don't
necessarily need to have the Transform panel open
| | 12:03 | at all times, although that's up to you,
depending on how you want to manage
| | 12:07 | your screen space.
| | 12:08 | So one final thing that I'll point out.
If you go to Preferences for a moment,
| | 12:11 | again, I'll press Command+K or Ctrl+K
on the Windows machine; I'll simply go
| | 12:14 | here and see that the Scale strokes
& Effects option does appear here in
| | 12:18 | Preferences as well along with Use
Preview Bounds. Whatever I choose here
| | 12:22 | simply is reflected in the Transform
panel as well. So notice if I choose Scale
| | 12:26 | strokes & Effects and I turn that
option on, I click OK. I'll see that now that
| | 12:29 | option is turned on here in the
Transform panel as well. So you can turn it on
| | 12:33 | from either of these locations, from
here or the Preferences setting as well.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Repeating transformations| 00:01 | In Illustrator, anytime that you move
or make an adjustment to an object using
| | 00:05 | any of the following settings, for
example, the Rotate, Scale or if you look
| | 00:09 | beneath these tools, there is a
Reflect tool as well and also the Share tool.
| | 00:14 | These are called Transformations.
| | 00:15 | So the most common transformation is
simply like moving or copying an object or
| | 00:20 | rotating or scaling an object for
example. Well, in Illustrator there is also a
| | 00:24 | command called Transform Again,
which allows you to repeat the last
| | 00:28 | transformation that you made which
depending on how you are working could be
| | 00:31 | incredibly useful. Let me
give you a couple of examples.
| | 00:34 | I have this file, I'm going to use my
regular Selection tool to select this
| | 00:36 | group of objects, and so I need to make
several of these. So what I can do is I
| | 00:40 | can select it and then hold down the
Option key and then click-and-drag this
| | 00:45 | particular object. So again if I'm on
a Mac right now I'm holding the Option
| | 00:47 | key, which copies an object, and the
Shift key, which constrains the movement
| | 00:51 | of this. If you are on a PC we would
hold down the Alt and the Shift keys to do
| | 00:55 | the exact same thing.
| | 00:56 | Now what I'll do is I'll drag it just
about over here and I'll let go. So what
| | 01:00 | I've just as I have created now a copy
of that artwork and that's a standard
| | 01:03 | transformation side of Illustrator, the
Option or the Alt key simply copies the
| | 01:07 | object that you are moving instead
of just moving the object itself.
| | 01:09 | But now that I have just applied that
transformation what I can do is I can
| | 01:13 | tell Illustrator that transformation
that we just did right now, we copied,
| | 01:16 | we moved it all in one motion, I want you
to do that again. And what I'll do is
| | 01:19 | I'll press the Command+D key on my
keyboard or if you are on a PC there will be
| | 01:23 | Control+D and that will
repeat the last transformation.
| | 01:25 | So see now I have a third copy here. If
I have to press the key again I'll get
| | 01:29 | a fourth one. I'll show you where that
command exists inside of the menu. If I
| | 01:33 | go over here to the Object menu, I
can choose Transform and then Transform
| | 01:38 | Again. Here we can see
what the keyboard shortcut is.
| | 01:40 | So I can also likewise take these four
groups right now. Again hold down the
| | 01:44 | same keys, I'm on the Mac here so
Option and then Shift drag down and constrain
| | 01:48 | in a straight line, again if you are
on a PC, there will be Alt and Shift.
| | 01:52 | I release the mouse. Now I have a whole
bunch of copies here. Again, Command+D
| | 01:55 | or Control+D. We continue to make more
copies that way. So that's one easy way
| | 02:00 | to simply take one object
and make multiple copies of it.
| | 02:03 | Now let me show you another example
here which really makes the Repeat
| | 02:06 | Transform or the Transform Again
feature very, very useful. I'm going to delete
| | 02:10 | all these objects right here. I'm
going to take this little surfboard that I have.
| | 02:13 | Let's say I want to create some
kind of design where I have surfboard,
| | 02:16 | it's kind of fanning out in a
circular motion. What I'm going to do is I'll
| | 02:18 | actually draw a guide right
down the center of this object.
| | 02:21 | One of the great things about working
with Illustrator is that the guide snaps
| | 02:24 | to anchor point inside of Illustrator.
So I have this object, when you select
| | 02:27 | it there is an anchor point right,
smack here at the top of surfboard, so what
| | 02:30 | I have just done now is I've drawn a
guide that now aligns directly to the
| | 02:35 | center of the surfboard. I don't really
care where the ruler sits over here.
| | 02:38 | I just know that I wanted to snap directly
to the center of this particular surfboard.
| | 02:42 | Now we know that when we are working
inside of Illustrator we want to use
| | 02:44 | transformations, for example, say the
Rotate command. We have the ability to
| | 02:48 | set an origin, of where that
particular rotation takes places from. So for
| | 02:52 | example right now if I take my Rotate
tool here or I just tap the Alt key on
| | 02:55 | the keyboard to do this, you will see
this little icon here in the middle which
| | 02:58 | identifies that origin point right
there. So if I were to just click-and-drag
| | 03:02 | you see how it rotates around that
center point, press Undo for a second here.
| | 03:05 | If I were to click let's say on this
corner of the object right here, what I'm
| | 03:09 | doing is I'm now basically
redefining where that origin point is and if I
| | 03:12 | click-and-drag the object rotates from
that point right there. Now it's really
| | 03:16 | important to know that Illustrator is
that the origin point does not need to
| | 03:19 | even be on the object itself it could
be anywhere arbitrarily on the artboard.
| | 03:23 | So for example if I were to go
ahead and define an origin point by just
| | 03:26 | clicking once right over here, I can
now go ahead and drag this particular
| | 03:30 | piece of artwork and see how
it rotates around that center.
| | 03:33 | So I'll press Undo one more time and
what I can do, by that way, is I can
| | 03:39 | simply go ahead and again using that
as my origin point, I would say right
| | 03:41 | about over here, click once over here.
I can hold down the Alt key, right, or
| | 03:45 | the Option key to create a copy.
And now if I were to repeat the
| | 03:48 | transformation, because the
transformation had an origin point down over here
| | 03:53 | pressing Command+D or Control+D would
simply continue to rotate those objects
| | 03:57 | around in a circle.
| | 03:58 | Now notice if they don't really line
up exactly the way that they should and
| | 04:01 | that's because I just arbitrarily
rotated a certain amount. But of course when
| | 04:05 | we think about a circle it's 360
degrees so if I were to actually think of any
| | 04:09 | particular rotation value that I would
add, that would be an amount that would
| | 04:13 | divide directly into that 360 degrees.
Then I could get a bunch of surfboards
| | 04:19 | around in a circle, which would all
be precisely and perfectly distributed
| | 04:22 | around the circle.
| | 04:23 | So let me show you how I would do that,
I would actually use the Transformation
| | 04:27 | inside of Illustrator but doing so with
a specific amount. So what I'm doing is
| | 04:32 | I'm going to hold-down the Option key,
I'm going to click right over here where
| | 04:34 | I want origin point to be, and now in
doing so I get to Rotate dialog box. And
| | 04:40 | I'll specify any value that will be
able to divide even into 360. For example
| | 04:44 | I'll type-in 30 degrees. And instead
of just clicking OK we should rotate the
| | 04:48 | actual object itself, I'm going to
click on the Copy button. So now what I have
| | 04:51 | done is I have taken my regular
surfboard here and I have rotated a copy of
| | 04:54 | that exactly 30 degrees but
using this as my origin point.
| | 04:58 | So now that was my last
transformation if I were to choose Repeat
| | 05:01 | Transformation yet again I could simply
use that keyboard shortcut, and I get a
| | 05:05 | perfect circle, I basically get
these surfboards distributed around this
| | 05:09 | circular area in a very nice and even way.
| | 05:11 | So as you are working inside of
Illustrator don't forget that quick keyboard
| | 05:14 | shortcut Command+D or Ctrl+D to
quickly go ahead and repeat the last
| | 05:18 | transformation that you have applied.
It's a command, I'm sure you will be
| | 05:21 | using many times throughout your day.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Transform Each function| 00:00 | Illustrator's transformation
functions are incredibly powerful, but at some
| | 00:04 | point they seem to begin to break down.
For example, I have in this particular
| | 00:08 | document a whole bunch of objects.
These are actually groups. This here is a
| | 00:12 | single group that contains some text
and some other elements inside of it, some
| | 00:16 | of the shapes here, some drop shadows
and I have several of these lined up over here.
| | 00:21 | Now I know that I could actually set an
origin point for rotation. For example,
| | 00:25 | if I wanted to rotate these and now I
wanted to rotate all of them about 45
| | 00:29 | degrees, so what I could do is I can
basically select them all and I could
| | 00:33 | double-click on my Rotate tool and
specify a value of 45 degrees. And I click
| | 00:37 | on the Preview button because you are
going to see what's going to happen here.
| | 00:40 | All of them are going to rotate
around the single origin point.
| | 00:43 | However, what I really want to have is
I want each object to rotate along their
| | 00:47 | own origin point. I want them to all
basically remain in place, but I'll rotate
| | 00:51 | 45 degrees. And what's happening here
is that they are all being treated as if
| | 00:54 | there are one large group of objects,
they are not, they are individual groups
| | 00:58 | and now they are being rotated with one
single origin point, but I really need
| | 01:02 | them to each rotate on their own. So I
don't want to have to actually select
| | 01:05 | each object, perform a rotation and then
select the next object so and so forth.
| | 01:09 | So what I'm going to do I'm going to
click on the Cancel button here. I'm going
| | 01:11 | to use a different command inside of
Illustrator, something called Transform
| | 01:15 | Each, what Transform Each allows you to
do is select multiple objects or groups
| | 01:20 | in this case and apply a single
transformation to each of them individually.
| | 01:24 | Watch this! I'm going to select them
all over here, I'm going to go over here
| | 01:27 | to the Object menu and choose
Transform, and then I'm going to choose this
| | 01:31 | option here called Transform Each.
| | 01:33 | Now this brings up a dialog box, which
actually allows you to perform all kinds
| | 01:37 | of transformation. Scales. Moves. We
are going to do the Rotate one for now.
| | 01:41 | I'm going to click on the Preview
button so that we can see what's happening as
| | 01:43 | we apply it. I'm going to
change here the angel to 45 degrees.
| | 01:47 | Now watch a different result here each
of the groups on their own have rotated
| | 01:51 | 45 degrees, instead of everything
rotating I now have a single rotation that's
| | 01:56 | applied to each individual object.
Now in this case here I'm dealing with
| | 02:00 | groups and it's important to understand
that where Transform Each is concerned
| | 02:04 | a group is considered to this same as
a single object, so if I have multiple
| | 02:07 | objects that are just individual
objects or if I have multiple groups each of
| | 02:11 | those individual objects or the groups
are treated as if they are one object
| | 02:14 | and they each have the transformations
applied all using their own origin point.
| | 02:19 | Now is that origin point in the center
of the object? Is it the left, is it the
| | 02:22 | right? Well, the answer is that right
here in the Transform Each dialog box we
| | 02:26 | have that Reference Point Indicator,
and where I click on the reference point
| | 02:29 | basically sets the origin point
for that particular transformation.
| | 02:33 | In fact the Transform Each dialog box
is really cool because this is the only
| | 02:36 | place in Illustrator where you can ask
to perform a Scale, Move and a Rotate
| | 02:41 | transformation all to same time which
would mean that if I now go ahead and I
| | 02:46 | apply all those transformations at
once the Repeat Transform command or the
| | 02:49 | Transform Again command, well, I'm
going to repeat all them at once.
| | 02:52 | Now there is another option here as
well which you don't find anywhere else
| | 02:55 | inside of Illustrator, it's actually
a Random button, and in doing so if I
| | 02:59 | wanted to basically rotate these
objects but each of them be just little bit
| | 03:02 | differently, what I can do is choose
the Randomize option which shows me that
| | 03:06 | they don't all rotate at exactly the same angle.
| | 03:09 | I will click Cancel here to come back
out of the Transform Each dialog box but
| | 03:13 | you can see here how useful the
Transform Each command can be. You may have
| | 03:16 | objects that appear all throughout
your document and maybe you want to scale
| | 03:19 | them all just a little bit smaller,
for example -- let's actually go to the
| | 03:22 | other way. Imagine you have some logos
that appear throughout an entire piece
| | 03:26 | and of course the client calls up
and -- well they want their logo to be bigger.
| | 03:29 | Well, instead of having to select
each of the logos on their own, you can
| | 03:32 | simply go ahead and select them all
at once and then use Transform Each to
| | 03:35 | scale them all maybe from their
centers, maybe enlargement about 110%, but
| | 03:40 | again you can do it all with one
particular command, very useful, very
| | 03:44 | powerful, and hopefully it will
save you lots of time in your work.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Convert to Shape effects| 00:00 | One of the most important panels inside
of Illustrator is the Appearance panel.
| | 00:04 | I'm actually going to drag that out
here on to the screen so we can take a
| | 00:07 | better look at this, because I want to
explore some of the effects inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:10 | Now you know that you can go over here
to the Effect menu, you can view some of
| | 00:13 | the effects and these are live effects
meaning that they are actually to change
| | 00:16 | the appearance of your artwork, they
don't ask you to adjust the underlying
| | 00:19 | vector path. Now you can also apply
effects directly by clicking on the button
| | 00:23 | here in the Appearance panel and you'll notice
that all those same settings are here.
| | 00:26 | So one that I want to explore
specifically here in this movie is something
| | 00:30 | called Convert to Shape. There is now
in effect, inside of Illustrator, which
| | 00:34 | is called Convert to Shape and you
can convert basically any shape to a
| | 00:38 | Rectangle, a Rounded Rectangle or an
Ellipse. Now when I first noticed, I was
| | 00:42 | like well if really wanted a
Rectangle or a Rounded Rectangle wouldn't that
| | 00:46 | just draw it that way from the
beginning. I mean I wouldn't be drawing a star
| | 00:49 | and then turn it into a rectangle.
| | 00:51 | Well it's really important to think
about this particular effect and how it
| | 00:54 | might apply to text object because
obviously if you type some letters on your
| | 00:59 | screen those take the forms of letters
but there are maybe times where I want
| | 01:02 | to turn those letter forms into other
shape, such as a Rectangle or Rounded Rectangle.
| | 01:06 | So let's explore one specific example.
I'm going to go ahead here, I'll just
| | 01:10 | deselect this right now, take a
regular type object over here and I'm just
| | 01:13 | going to type a word. Let me type in
the word SURF, for example. I'm going to
| | 01:16 | scale this up in size over here. So I'm
just going to go ahead and holding the
| | 01:18 | Shift key to make it a little bit
bigger so we can see this on the screen and
| | 01:21 | what I want to do, I want to create
some kind of artwork where I have a
| | 01:24 | background behind this particular
object and the reason why that might be
| | 01:27 | important is -- for several reasons,
first of all maybe I want to make some
| | 01:30 | kind of cool web button in the web or
what I find many times when you have text
| | 01:35 | that you need to overlay over other objects.
| | 01:37 | For example, maybe you have map and you
want to have some kind of call-out but
| | 01:40 | there is a lot of busy color and
textures going on in the background. So it
| | 01:44 | might be hard to read the text. So
what you would want to do is create some
| | 01:47 | kind of white box or some kind of
border or outline around the text, so that's
| | 01:52 | the text would be readable
on that noisy background.
| | 01:54 | So let's take a look at how that
might easily be done here inside of
| | 01:57 | Illustrator and I want to do so in a
dynamic fashion, meaning that, I'm never
| | 02:01 | sure when I type all my text in the
screen that is always going to be spelled
| | 02:04 | correctly or that it might not have an
accidental typo in there. So I want to
| | 02:07 | make sure that my text stays live and I
can always make changes and edits to my
| | 02:10 | text at any time. Now when I do so I
would want that outline, that other
| | 02:14 | background that I want to create to remain
in the live state as well and update accordingly.
| | 02:18 | So let's see how that is to do
working with this Convert to Shape command
| | 02:22 | inside of Illustrator. So first I'm
going to just change my text. Let's choose
| | 02:25 | the Bold option here, something a
little bit more substantial and I'm going to
| | 02:29 | go over here to my Appearance panel
and I'll first start off by adding a new
| | 02:33 | fill to my object. So now what I have
done is I have added a secondary fill, a
| | 02:38 | fill that is sitting above the
characters which are the letter S, U, R, F that
| | 02:42 | I typed earlier and I'll change the
fill Color to yellow just to allow us to
| | 02:47 | see it more clearly for now, and that
particular fill as you can see right now
| | 02:51 | is covering up the black
letter that I first typed.
| | 02:53 | Now what I'm going to do I'm going to
take that fill, I'm going to change its
| | 02:56 | stacking order. I'm going to simply
click on that particular fill and drag it
| | 02:59 | that it appears beneath the characters.
So now that yellow fill is kind of
| | 03:03 | hidden from view because the black type
that I have right now is kind of hiding
| | 03:07 | it because it's above the yellow fill
in the stacking order of the object.
| | 03:11 | Now remember when you are dealing
with the type objects, the type itself is
| | 03:14 | really kind of a group and just think
of each of the characters in that string
| | 03:17 | of text as how much of grouped objects
that are now in this one group which we
| | 03:22 | call a type object. I'm going to
highlight the fill to target just the fill
| | 03:26 | itself and now I'm going to apply that
effect. Let me go to the Effect button
| | 03:29 | right here, I'm going to choose
Convert to Shape and let's turn this into a
| | 03:33 | Rounded Rectangle. The dialog box
comes up here and I'll click on the Preview
| | 03:36 | button so we could see what happened.
What I have just done now is I have taken
| | 03:39 | the letters S, U, R, and F and I have
turned them into a Rounded Rectangle. Now
| | 03:44 | this is not something that I would
normally be able to do, I want to able to
| | 03:47 | keep the text but I have taken a
secondary fill of that particular text and I
| | 03:52 | have not converted it into a Rounded Rectangle.
| | 03:54 | So let's change some of the settings
that are here. Now Absolute over here,
| | 03:57 | you can see the setting here for Absolute
Width and Height. That would allow me to
| | 04:00 | basically define a Rounded Rectangle
that doesn't change. It's the exact same size.
| | 04:05 | What I would like to do is I
would like to make it so that if I ever
| | 04:07 | change that text SURF into something
else, maybe I would change it to Surfing
| | 04:11 | for example, I would like that background
to enlarge or grow with the text as well.
| | 04:15 | So that means that I'm going to
choose this option here called Relative.
| | 04:19 | Relative means that the Rounded
Rectangle that I'm creating is relative in
| | 04:22 | shape and relative in size to the
actual fill itself, which are the letters here.
| | 04:27 | So of course if I add more letters,
the fill will get bigger. If I would have
| | 04:31 | fewer letters then that particular
fill would reduce in size. So now I could
| | 04:35 | choose to add Extra Width or Extra
Height. If I were to set this to 0 right now
| | 04:39 | I would match the same slug size that
the text itself. But I'm going to go
| | 04:42 | ahead here and add just a little bit of
Extra Width, maybe around quarter of a
| | 04:46 | inch and then for the Extra Height
over there, I'm actually going to leave it
| | 04:49 | set to 0 right now.
| | 04:50 | Now, I'm also going to increase the
Corner Radius to about to about a quarter
| | 04:53 | of inch, instead of an eight of an inch,
just so I get that nice and rounded
| | 04:56 | edge that's there and with the Relative
option chosen I'm simply going to click
| | 05:00 | OK to apply that effect and now what
I have done is I have created a single
| | 05:03 | text object that has two fills inside
of it and one of those fills the bottom
| | 05:07 | most fill which is colored yellow has
been converted to Rounded Rectangle. If I
| | 05:11 | take my Type tool now I can still of
course edit my text and if I change it to
| | 05:16 | Surfing, notice now that background
has enlarged and grown as well with
| | 05:20 | the text itself.
| | 05:21 | So this becomes an increasingly
powerful way that I can add effects or other
| | 05:26 | things to my particular text objects
without having to actually convert my text
| | 05:30 | outlines or to create multiple objects
that will be difficult for me to edit.
| | 05:33 | Now, if I had some kind of
background here I could easily, now specify a
| | 05:37 | particular color here, maybe a Solid
Gray or a White instead of a Yellow here
| | 05:41 | that would always make sure that
my text is readable on any kind of a
| | 05:44 | background. So give this effect a try,
I think you will be surprised what you
| | 05:48 | will find that it can do for you.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Distort & Transform effects| 00:01 | So we have explored a command inside of
Illustrator called Transform Again. It
| | 00:05 | basically allows us to take the
transform that we have already applied and
| | 00:08 | simply repeat it again and again.
| | 00:10 | Now this particular effect is also
available as a live effect inside of
| | 00:15 | Illustrator. Let's see how
that can actually come into play.
| | 00:17 | I have basically a group of objects
right here. Instead of having to step up
| | 00:21 | several copies of this, what I can
do is, rather than have to manually
| | 00:24 | Option+Drag and then hit Command+D
to go ahead and make copies of those,
| | 00:29 | I'm going to press Command+Z or Ctrl+Z to
undo and I'm simply going to go ahead and
| | 00:32 | now and through the Effect menu, choose
Distort and Transform and then choose Transform.
| | 00:39 | Now this brings up the Transform
Effect dialog box, which actually looks very
| | 00:44 | similar to the Transform Each dialog
box that we have seen before with one main
| | 00:49 | difference. It has the
setting here for Number of Copies.
| | 00:52 | I am going to first click on the
Preview button so that I could see what I'm
| | 00:55 | doing as I'm working. My goal is to
basically create several copies of this
| | 00:59 | particular piece of art.
| | 01:00 | Now what I'm going to do is move this
over to the side just a little bit here.
| | 01:02 | I want to create one copy, just
so that I see what I'm doing here.
| | 01:06 | Now what I would like to do is I
would like to a copy of this basically and
| | 01:09 | move it over here to the right. So I'm
going to specify a horizontal move about
| | 01:13 | 2.5 inches. In doing so I now sort of
have created a copy of this piece of artwork.
| | 01:18 | But again this is an appearance. It's
an effect. I haven't actually physically
| | 01:21 | created new vectors inside of
Illustrator. I have simply told Illustrator
| | 01:24 | to apply that particular
effect as a live effect.
| | 01:28 | Now that I know exactly where it's
going to go, I'll add some more copies, for
| | 01:31 | example, let's do about 3 copies
which basically gives me my original plus
| | 01:35 | three others which give me a total of four.
| | 01:37 | So now I'm going to click OK and now
I have applied that. If you look at my
| | 01:40 | Appearance panel I see that I now have
a transform effect that is applied to that group.
| | 01:45 | Now of course, these are all copies of
this one here. So if I were to make any
| | 01:48 | changes for example, I'm going to
double click on this to isolate this group.
| | 01:51 | Maybe click on the letters here
Groundswell, which is currently colored white.
| | 01:54 | Maybe I want to change the color of
that to something different like maybe
| | 01:57 | black for example.
| | 01:58 | Notice that when I do so, all the
other ones, which are simply copies of this
| | 02:02 | as an effect, have been updated as well.
I'm now going to click over here to
| | 02:06 | select the original piece of art here.
Remember these if I go into Outline
| | 02:10 | mode, Command+Y or Ctrl+Y, I don't even
see anything right here. These are all
| | 02:14 | applied as an effect.
| | 02:15 | So now I'm simply going to go ahead
and take this particular object, which
| | 02:18 | already has a transform on it. I'm
going to go to the Effect menu. I'm going to
| | 02:23 | choose Distort and Transform and Transform.
| | 02:26 | Now Illustrator is going to tell me,
hey you want to apply actually a transform
| | 02:30 | effect. Well there is already a
transform effect applied to this object. So do
| | 02:34 | I want to edit the existing one? To do
so I would need to basically come over
| | 02:37 | here and click on the word
transform in the Appearance panel.
| | 02:40 | But what I would really like to do is I
want to actually apply a new effect. So
| | 02:43 | I'm going to click on this
button here to apply a new effect.
| | 02:46 | What I'm going to do is rather than
specify now horizontal move, again let's
| | 02:49 | specify just one copy here.
We'll click on the Preview button.
| | 02:53 | Now I'm going to specify a vertical
setting. So maybe I want to go ahead and I
| | 02:56 | want to add a vertical setting. But
instead of going in a positive direction,
| | 02:59 | I want to go in a negative direction.
Maybe let's do -2 inches for example.
| | 03:03 | Now I see that that's step downwards
in this direction. Now I'll go ahead and
| | 03:07 | I'll specify maybe have
three copies there as well.
| | 03:10 | By clicking OK what I have done is I
have now applied two transform effects.
| | 03:15 | The first transform effect takes this
group and makes copies of it this way.
| | 03:19 | Then I have taken another transform
effect and made copies of this entire piece
| | 03:23 | of artwork right here and its effect
here and duplicate it here. That gives me
| | 03:28 | a whole page of stepped up artwork.
| | 03:30 | It can be incredibly powerful because
again all I need to do is just edit one
| | 03:34 | piece of artwork right here and that
updates all of these as well. So that's
| | 03:37 | one way to use this Transform Live Effect.
| | 03:40 | But let me show you one another example
that you can, kind of, create things in
| | 03:43 | a more creative fashion. I'm going to
delete this particular object right here
| | 03:46 | and let's work with this surfboard here.
But I want to create some other kind
| | 03:49 | of interesting shapes. So what I'll do
is I'll apply another transform effect to this.
| | 03:53 | I am going to go to the Effect menu.
I'll choose Distort and transform and then
| | 03:56 | I'll choose Transform. Here again with
the Preview button on, let's focus on
| | 04:01 | using the Rotate setting.
| | 04:01 | Now in the past what we have done is
we have actually taken the surfboard and
| | 04:05 | we have, kind of, made them all,
kind of fan out in a circle.
| | 04:07 | Now we were able to do that because
when you are working inside of Illustrator,
| | 04:10 | you do have the ability to set an
origin point somewhere away from the actual
| | 04:14 | object itself. But in the transformed
effect though I can only work with this
| | 04:18 | reference point indicator to basically
decide where I want my transforms to happen from.
| | 04:23 | I am going to choose basically from
the bottom center right over here.
| | 04:26 | I'm going to choose to actually rotate
this about 30degrees and I'll specify a
| | 04:30 | number of copies. Maybe I'll do, let's
say, 20 copies for example. I'll hit the
| | 04:34 | tab key to accept that.
| | 04:36 | Now notice what I have done here is I
have actually created some kind of a
| | 04:38 | flower. I could add more copies or I
could specify the angle for example,
| | 04:41 | if I make it 12 degrees and I'll get
something that looks like that. I just need to
| | 04:45 | add more copies to fill out that circle.
| | 04:47 | But you can basically see that I could
use this particular transform effect to
| | 04:51 | really do lots of cool things inside
of Illustrator. I might be able to now
| | 04:54 | take that same object and apply a
different transform effect with a different
| | 04:58 | value. I can move them or scale them,
adjust the number of copies in them as well.
| | 05:02 | So definitely take a look at the
Transform effect. It's more than just moving
| | 05:05 | an object from one place to another.
It's actually taking advantage of that
| | 05:08 | Copies command to get some
really, really cool transformations.
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| Using the Path effects| 00:01 | There are often times inside of
Illustrator where a regular transformation just
| | 00:05 | isn't good enough. I'm just going to
draw a regular ellipse. Let's say I want
| | 00:08 | to actually scale a copy of this ellipse.
I have a kind of a flat oval shape over here.
| | 00:13 | So if I were to simply double-click on
my Scale tool here and I enlarge this to
| | 00:16 | about say 125% and I'll click on the
Copy button. You will notice that yeah it
| | 00:20 | did make the object 125% bigger but
because of the way that an oval shape, when
| | 00:26 | it gets scaled it's not necessarily
perfectly exact as far as getting the size
| | 00:30 | bigger because you an see that over
here the distance between here and here is
| | 00:34 | not the same as it is here and here.
| | 00:36 | Often whenever you are dealing with
shapes that are not perfectly uniform like
| | 00:39 | squares or circles, for example, there
are many times when you want, let's say,
| | 00:43 | to create some kind of an outline over
the same basic shape but you just want
| | 00:46 | it to be larger. Instead what you need
to do is you need to apply a half offset
| | 00:50 | effect inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:51 | The way to do that is I'm just going
to delete this object right here.
| | 00:53 | I'm going to select this shape right here.
I'm going to go to the Object menu.
| | 00:57 | I'm going to choose Path then I'm going
to choose an option here called Offset Path.
| | 01:00 | This is a very powerful feature
inside of Illustrator. Click on the
| | 01:03 | Preview button so you can see what's happening.
| | 01:05 | What it basically does is it takes the
value that you specify. Then it creates
| | 01:09 | a buffer or basically a space between
the shape that you have created and the
| | 01:13 | new shape here. It doesn't scale it up,
because again a scale would be wrong,
| | 01:16 | the scale would be like we
did so before with Ellipse tool.
| | 01:19 | But what it does is it creates an offset,
an exact copy of that path but offset
| | 01:22 | a different value. It is possible by
the way to specify negative values with
| | 01:27 | your offsets as well. So that now
it goes to the inside of the path.
| | 01:30 | I am going to cancel that for a moment
here because I want to show you that you
| | 01:33 | can also apply those as a live effect
inside of Illustrator. If you go to the
| | 01:36 | Effect menu, you will see a Path menu
and you will see something called Offset
| | 01:40 | Path and Outline Stroke, which is the
same that you will see here. If you go to
| | 01:43 | object and you go to path, you also see
the Offset Path and the Outline stroke.
| | 01:47 | But there is something that's
different here in the Effect menu, something
| | 01:49 | that's not found elsewhere inside of
Illustrator. Under Effect > Path, you have
| | 01:54 | something here called Outline Object.
I want to talk about that for a moment
| | 01:57 | here because it's incredibly powerful
and it also solves the problem that most
| | 02:01 | people have in a day-to-day
basis inside of Illustrator.
| | 02:03 | So let me explain, I'm going to delete
this shape right here, I'm going to just
| | 02:06 | return my view back to this photograph.
I have actually embedded this photo
| | 02:09 | here inside of Illustrator but the
technique I'm about to show you actually
| | 02:12 | works for linked images as well.
| | 02:15 | Now we know that in order to apply
fill and stroke attributes to objects,
| | 02:18 | you can apply them to vector objects
inside of Illustrator. But we also know that
| | 02:22 | Illustrator supports the ability to
place images into your document as I have
| | 02:26 | done here. But an image is not a
vector object. An image is an image. As such
| | 02:31 | it doesn't have the fill and stroke
properties that vector objects have.
| | 02:35 | So there are many times when you place
a photograph inside of Illustrator and
| | 02:39 | what you would like to do is you would
like to actually place some kind of an
| | 02:41 | outline or what's referred to as a
keyline, maybe a border around the
| | 02:45 | photograph itself.
| | 02:46 | Now how would you do that inside of
Illustrator? I can't simply go ahead and
| | 02:49 | choose to select image and then
apply a stroke. For example, I go to my
| | 02:52 | Swatches panel here or my Color
panel, I can't just simply go ahead and
| | 02:55 | highlight this and fill with a color.
In fact you can even see that I have a
| | 02:59 | black color applied to my stroke here.
| | 03:01 | But it obviously does not show up on
the object itself. That happens because
| | 03:05 | like I said an image doesn't have a
fill or stroke attribute. An image is not a
| | 03:09 | vector. It doesn't contain those. There
is no path that exists in order for me
| | 03:13 | to apply those attributes.
| | 03:15 | So what I really need to do is I need
to create some kind of a path. What many
| | 03:17 | people do is they go through the
extra steps of taking the Rectangle tool,
| | 03:21 | clicking and dragging to define a
rectangle and then applying a stroke
| | 03:25 | attribute to that shape which is fine
and then maybe you can group these two
| | 03:28 | together but then you are always
working with two objects. If you want to scale
| | 03:32 | it, you have to scale both of them
together. It just becomes more problematic.
| | 03:35 | On top of that it's extra work for me to do.
| | 03:37 | What I would like to do is I would like
to show you how to use the effect that
| | 03:40 | I was just talking about, the
Outline Object effect, to actually apply a
| | 03:43 | keyline or an outline or border to
an actual photograph here inside of
| | 03:49 | Illustrator. So I'm going
to delete this rectangle.
| | 03:50 | I am simply going to go ahead and click
on the photograph. I'll move it to the
| | 03:53 | side a little bit here because I'm
going to use the Appearance panel here
| | 03:56 | inside of Illustrator.
| | 03:58 | You will notice that right now, it
says here that I have stokes and I have
| | 04:01 | fills and I have a 4 point stroke
applied to this object which I have done
| | 04:04 | simply by clicking on this and
choosing it from the stroke panel here. But I
| | 04:08 | don't necessarily have any particular
path inside of this shape in order to
| | 04:13 | have that particular stroke have effect to it.
| | 04:15 | So let me just kind of back up and show
you where we are for now. I'm actually
| | 04:18 | going to hit the D key for default. So
right now, my object would have a white
| | 04:21 | fill and a black stroke. But again I
don't have an object, so that I have an
| | 04:24 | image selected. So right now you can
see over here where it says Image Pixels.
| | 04:28 | That's what the Appearance panel is saying
and these are my attributes that are applied.
| | 04:31 | So the problem though, like I was
saying before, I don't have a path to be able
| | 04:36 | to apply the stroke to. I'm going to
highlight the stroke right here. I have
| | 04:39 | now targeted the stroke. I'm now going
to go to the Effect menu. I'm going to
| | 04:42 | choose Path and then I'm going to
choose this here called Outline Object.
| | 04:46 | What this is going to do is it's going
to actually in the form of a live effect
| | 04:50 | find the boundaries of the object that
I currently have selected and create a
| | 04:55 | path at that particular boundary.
| | 04:57 | So in doing so I now will have a
defined path that I can apply the stroke to.
| | 05:02 | So by choosing Outline Object now, I
can see if I deselect the image here that
| | 05:06 | I do now have a keyline here. Just to
make it a little bit easier to see, I'll
| | 05:09 | crank that stroke back up to 4.0
without having to create a separate rectangle,
| | 05:13 | I was now able to go ahead
and apply a stoke to the image.
| | 05:15 | But again what I had to do is I had to
target the stroke and apply the outline
| | 05:20 | object. In doing so Illustrator created
a path at the boundary or the border of
| | 05:25 | this particular image here.
| | 05:26 | Now this is important to know because
I can apply additional effects as well,
| | 05:29 | specifically the Path effect. With the
strokes still targeted in my Appearance
| | 05:33 | panel, let' say I wanted to create the
look if there is some kind of a border
| | 05:37 | or kind of a white border like the old
fashioned photographs. I can actually
| | 05:40 | reduce the stroke weight down to about
1 point here. Again when the stroke over
| | 05:44 | here is still targeted I'll go to the
Effect menu, I'll choose Path and then
| | 05:48 | I'll choose Offset Path effect.
| | 05:50 | Now again here, instead of me
applying it to the Object menu, like I was
| | 05:53 | showing you before with the oval,
that was a one-time effect. Once I have
| | 05:56 | applied it the path was created and
that's it. But here it's actually being
| | 06:00 | generated as a live effect.
| | 06:01 | Now what path is it offsetting? It's
offsetting the path that I created or
| | 06:05 | defined with the Outline Object. I
don't see it because it's in the live
| | 06:08 | effect. But if I were to go ahead
actually choose to expand the appearance here
| | 06:11 | I would actually see that path. I'm
going to click on the Preview button here
| | 06:15 | and specify an Offset of about 0.25 inch.
| | 06:16 | So now what I have done here, if I
click OK, is that I have actually taken that
| | 06:20 | stroke and I have applied an outline
object, which now defines the path at the
| | 06:24 | border or the boundary of that image.
I can now of course apply a stroke
| | 06:28 | attribute to that particular path and
then I have applied the Offset Path Here
| | 06:32 | effect, which allows me to then take
that particular object or that path that I
| | 06:36 | created and offset it from the object
itself to create this wonderful border
| | 06:40 | for this photograph.
| | 06:41 | So if I close this right now, I can go
ahead and move this object around. I can
| | 06:44 | scale it just like any other object and
doing so all these things move with it.
| | 06:48 | This is a really useful way to work
with, not only embedded images but linked
| | 06:51 | images as well. If you want to add
borders or keylines to images, this is the
| | 06:55 | best way to do that here inside of Illustrator.
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| Using the Pathfinder effects| 00:00 | When it comes to performing path
calculations like subtracting objects from
| | 00:04 | each other or adding them to each other,
we find that the Pathfinder functions
| | 00:08 | are incredibly helpful. But you may
also notice that if you go to the Effect menu
| | 00:12 | inside of Illustrator you will
see that the Pathfinder functions also
| | 00:14 | appear as live effects. And you may
ask yourself, when would I ever want to
| | 00:18 | apply a Pathfinder effect as a live effect?
| | 00:21 | Well, let me show you an example of
where that might come handy. I actually have
| | 00:25 | some artwork here. It's the Groundswell
logo and just a regular group of objects here
| | 00:29 | and maybe I want to create
some kind of an outline around this.
| | 00:31 | Now we have already explored some of
the functions like for example Offset Path
| | 00:35 | that would help us to create such
an outline. Let's perform all these as
| | 00:39 | live effects and see how they can be
applied. I'm going to click on this logo
| | 00:43 | right here, this group, move it over
just to the side here and we can open up
| | 00:46 | the all-important Appearance panel.
| | 00:48 | What I'm going to do over here
immediately is simply add a new stroke to
| | 00:51 | this particular group. Now this stroke
sits right here above the contents of my file.
| | 00:55 | And right now it set to a 1 point
stroke. Well I'm going to change it to
| | 00:58 | 2 point just to get a little bit
more of that kind of beefier look to it.
| | 01:02 | And I'm now going to choose to apply
that Offset Path command. Instead of doing it
| | 01:07 | as a regular Path command, I'm
actually going to apply as Live Effect.
| | 01:09 | So I go over here to the Effects over here.
Let's go down to Path and then choose
| | 01:14 | Offset Path. We have got a little
Preview button here and let's offset it about
| | 01:17 | an eighth of an inch. There we go.
So now I see automatically that I have
| | 01:21 | created an Offset Path but look.
Even though I have your group that I have created,
| | 01:24 | each of the shapes themselves
do have their own offset and their path.
| | 01:28 | So what I get is an appearance that
may not be the one I'm trying to get.
| | 01:31 | I really want to get like one continuous
stroke that kind of outlines the entire object.
| | 01:35 | So I'm now going to go ahead
and click OK just to apply this Offset Path.
| | 01:38 | And another thing that I'm also
somewhat concerned about. How you always
| | 01:42 | try to get hooked up in the details here.
The little corners that are here
| | 01:45 | are pretty sharp and I might want to
round those to soften up the look of that
| | 01:49 | outline effect. So I'm going to apply
a Rounded Corners effect. So again,
| | 01:52 | with my strokes still targeted in my Appearance
panel, I'm going to go to the Effect menu,
| | 01:55 | choose Stylize and then I'll go
ahead and now choose Round Corners.
| | 01:59 | And here I'll just use a value of an
eighth of an inch. Click on the Preview
| | 02:02 | button and see how that kind of
rounds that off, makes it look a little bit
| | 02:04 | more pleasing to the eye. Click OK.
| | 02:06 | But I still haven't really addressed
the problem that I have here which is that
| | 02:10 | each of the individual shape of my
group got their own Offset Path applied.
| | 02:14 | Therefore I have all these overlapping
shapes and all these overlapping areas.
| | 02:17 | Well, let's forget about the Appearance
panel for a moment. If I were working
| | 02:20 | with regular shapes and a I have
whole bunch of overlapping shapes,
| | 02:22 | and I wanted to combine them altogether into
one shape, I could use the Pathfinder Add effect,
| | 02:27 | and that will actually
combine all the shapes into one.
| | 02:30 | Well, because I'm working here with
all these appearances, the stroke that
| | 02:34 | I have here I can't actually select it.
It's all applied as an appearance through
| | 02:37 | the use of the Offset Path and the
Rounded Corners effect. I could now add
| | 02:41 | a Pathfinder live effect to instruct
Illustrator to combine all the shapes into one.
| | 02:47 | So I'm going to do that, again with
the stroke here still targeted in
| | 02:49 | my Appearance panel. I can now go to
the Effect menu, I could choose Pathfinder,
| | 02:54 | then I could choose the Add effect
right there. Now I get the effect
| | 02:57 | I'm looking for. I get all those
combined into one shape, which I think
| | 03:01 | is incredibly useful.
| | 03:02 | Again this is really where the
Pathfinder effects as live effects really come
| | 03:07 | into play when you start working with
multiple objects like multiple strokes
| | 03:10 | and fills and a single appearance. Now
what I'll also do here is show you a few
| | 03:13 | of the other ones that I
think might be interesting.
| | 03:16 | So I'll click on Add to edit that
and I can actually click on the Preview
| | 03:19 | button here and see what some of the
other Pathfinder effects do. For example,
| | 03:23 | Trim does a very intersecting
effect that actually makes like each of
| | 03:25 | the letters are stack in front of each
other. But it basically gets rid of
| | 03:28 | the effect that I see through them. So
I get this really nice looking effect.
| | 03:31 | I have notice that here for this example
the Add one and the Trim one really
| | 03:35 | give me some great results. But that's
the way that you might edit or kind of
| | 03:38 | play around with and experiment with
the different Pathfinder effects that
| | 03:41 | you can apply through the Appearance panel.
| | 03:43 | Now finally because of the shapes that
we are dealing with over here, notice
| | 03:45 | that some areas here still exist.
There is really no way for me to select those
| | 03:49 | and delete them because right
now my appearance is a live appearance.
| | 03:52 | I could in theory choose to go to the
Object menu here and choose to expand
| | 03:55 | my appearance and delete those regions
manually or what I might decide to do is
| | 03:59 | simply go over here to the Offset
Path command and increase that somewhat,
| | 04:03 | maybe to 0.2 inches. And basically
make it large enough so that I don't see
| | 04:07 | those particular areas anymore.
| | 04:09 | And again that's just an
experimentation thing to kind of go through.
| | 04:12 | See what works well and then see how the
Pathfinder effects can really make a big
| | 04:15 | difference on some of the
artwork that you are creating.
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|
|
5. Using Graphic StylesIntroducing graphic styles| 00:00 | Graphic styles is what I like to
refer to as a Go Home Early feature.
| | 00:03 | And by that I mean if you use
the feature you get to go home early.
| | 00:07 | If you really think about it
graphic styles were first introduced in
| | 00:10 | Illustrator 9 and they are directly
linked with the powerful Appearance panel.
| | 00:15 | And because of the amount of time that
you could save by using graphic styles,
| | 00:18 | how could you not afford to use them?
Especially now where clients are making
| | 00:22 | constant changes, managers want to see
multiple versions, you really need to rely
| | 00:26 | on what graphic styles brings you.
So in this chapter over here,
| | 00:29 | we're going to look at exactly how to
use graphic styles to your advantage.
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| Applying graphic styles| 00:00 | Drawing can be a lot of fun when using
Illustrator. But if you have to draw the
| | 00:04 | same thing over-and-over again it can
get a little bit tiring. From a pure
| | 00:08 | business perspective it's always great
to be more efficient than the work that
| | 00:11 | you do that way you can get more work
done, and hopefully make more money.
| | 00:14 | One of the most powerful ways to
become more efficient in your work in
| | 00:17 | Illustrator is using graphic styles. In
a program like for example QuarkXPress
| | 00:22 | or InDesign where you are working
with a lot of text there is a concept of
| | 00:25 | paragraph or character styles. And by
using these styles you have the ability
| | 00:29 | to tag certain areas of text. That
way when changes need to be made across
| | 00:33 | through entire documents all you have
to do is update the style. Since all the
| | 00:37 | text is tagged and knows what it is,
it automatically updates as well.
| | 00:41 | Well, the same concept applies here
inside of Illustrator using something
| | 00:44 | called graphic styles. Graphic styles
is a way to memorize all the settings
| | 00:48 | that are applied two particular paths,
and using graphic styles gives you two
| | 00:53 | specific benefits. First, you can
easily apply complex styles with the
| | 00:56 | single-click of a button, and second,
once you have gone ahead and you have
| | 00:59 | applied those styles making changes
across your entire document is very easy to do.
| | 01:03 | Now in this movie specifically we are
going to talk about applying graphic
| | 01:07 | styles. You will find graphic styles in
the Graphic Styles panel right here.
| | 01:11 | We can't find the panel open. Simply go to
the Window menu and then choose Graphic Styles.
| | 01:16 | Now I'm going to over here. We have
this document that I'm working on.
| | 01:18 | It's called santa_cruz and it's simply a
map, but there is only not that much
| | 01:22 | interesting things going on here inside
of the map and I want to be able to add
| | 01:26 | some emphasis to certain areas. I want to
make it easy to read the map so on and so forth.
| | 01:29 | I actually got this map from Google Maps.
I just simply took a screen-shot and
| | 01:33 | I traced over many different areas,
the ones that were important to me.
| | 01:37 | This way, for example, I wanted to show
certain areas here I can get rid of the detail
| | 01:40 | that may not be important for the
people who need to actually view this map.
| | 01:43 | But you will notice if you look at my
graphic styles here in this document I
| | 01:46 | have here something called Main Road,
I have something called Train Tracks, and
| | 01:50 | I have a Highway. Then I have certain
areas here, for example, Park/Beach,
| | 01:55 | Land and Water. Now by simply defining these
styles I can click on any object in my document.
| | 02:00 | Let's say for example this water area
here. And I go over to my Appearance
| | 02:03 | panel, I see that right now
Illustrator is identifying the target as my path
| | 02:07 | but Illustrator is also telling me that
right now I have the Water style that's
| | 02:11 | applied to that path. The Appearance
panel can be very helpful in not only
| | 02:14 | telling you information about the
path itself but also about what graphic
| | 02:17 | styles have been applied to that path.
In fact, if I click on this area here we
| | 02:21 | can see that this one has the Land
style applied to it, and this area over here
| | 02:25 | has the Park/Beach style applied to it.
| | 02:27 | Now I want to point out some important
things about how I built this particular
| | 02:29 | document. If I use my Direct Selection
tool I can actually click on these, and
| | 02:33 | you can see that these are all
individual paths that I have drawn.
| | 02:37 | They are all basically contained with
an overall mask that exists here. I use
| | 02:40 | the layer mask so I could actually
have some objects here and some of the
| | 02:43 | layers inside of my document. But
you can see easily here that the paths
| | 02:47 | themselves are separate, they are
connected. What I did do though was I did
| | 02:50 | actually create a group of those paths.
So once I have drawn all these areas of
| | 02:54 | these roads, for example, I simply
selected them all and after using my regular
| | 02:58 | Selection tool, you will see that I
have a group that has now been selected
| | 03:01 | that contains all these. I'm not
actually worried about connecting these but in
| | 03:05 | the overall finished product here I do
wanted to appear as if all these roads
| | 03:09 | are somewhat connected, and as you
will see the way that I should define the
| | 03:12 | style using the Appearance panel by
applying a style to group level all the
| | 03:16 | paths will automatically intersect with
each other which actually looks really nice.
| | 03:19 | So here let's start off first of all
with just a High way here. I have Highway
| | 03:22 | one that kind of runs right over in
this part of Santa Cruz. I already have
| | 03:25 | created a little symbol here to
identify that, but what I want to do is I want
| | 03:28 | to apply the graphic style of highway
to instantly style this path the way that
| | 03:32 | it should look. So I'm going to go
over here to the Graphic Styles or need to
| | 03:35 | do is simply select that path and click
once on graphic style to apply it. And
| | 03:39 | you could see that what I have done
is I have actually built this using a
| | 03:41 | Complex appearance. It's made up of
several different stroke attributes. If I
| | 03:45 | go over here to the Appearance panel
I'll see that this path, which now has the
| | 03:48 | Highway style applied to it, has two
strokes. It has the 16 point purple
| | 03:52 | stroke, and then a 10 point red stroke
that's sitting on top of that. So that
| | 03:56 | gives this appearance here
of this particular Highway.
| | 03:59 | Now this thick line that runs through
over here is actually a train track. So
| | 04:02 | I'm actually going to click on that.
It's a route that the train uses to go to
| | 04:05 | there. I'm actually going to go to the
Graphic Styles panel. I already have a
| | 04:08 | style here that I have created for
train tracks I'm going to click on that and
| | 04:11 | now style that to be the look of the
train tracks. Now how did I build that
| | 04:15 | style? Well, in the next movie when
we talk more about how we define and
| | 04:18 | actually work with graphic styles
we'll get a better idea of how we actually
| | 04:22 | create more of these complex styles.
But it's really in this particular case,
| | 04:25 | again if I look at the Appearance
panel a simple way of me combining three
| | 04:28 | different strokes. The topmost
stroke has a dash pattern, which basically
| | 04:32 | allows me to define the
train tracks that are there.
| | 04:35 | So now finally let's go ahead and
create a look for the main roads. I'm going
| | 04:38 | to select this group right here, and
again, remember I have the group target
| | 04:41 | right now. So that means when I
apply a graphic style, the graphic style
| | 04:44 | doesn't go or get applied to the
individual objects or paths inside of my
| | 04:48 | group. They actually get applied to
the group which is the container for all
| | 04:51 | these paths. In doing so the
Appearances will kind of get melted together as if
| | 04:56 | they were one overall shape.
| | 04:58 | So I'm going to go over here. I have
this group targeted. I'm going to choose
| | 05:01 | some of the Graphic Styles panel to
apply the Main Road style. And now you
| | 05:04 | could see that all the roads kind of
connect with each other in this way.
| | 05:08 | So just a few clicks of a mouse. I was
able to turn what was kind of a simple
| | 05:11 | map now. It is something that's little
bit more interesting. More importantly
| | 05:15 | it allows me to now take these
particular styles and apply them to other
| | 05:18 | document as well. So that any time
I'm working on any type of map for
| | 05:21 | particular project I have these
styles with one click, I'm ready to go.
| | 05:25 | There are a few other things that are
important to know about graphic styles.
| | 05:28 | Normally when I apply a graphic
style it replaces all the contents of the
| | 05:33 | appearance of that particular object
that I have selected, let me explain. If I
| | 05:37 | were to go ahead now click on this
Highway one, right now if I look at my
| | 05:40 | Appearance panel I see that I have a
path which is targeted and I have the
| | 05:44 | Highway Style which is made up of two
strokes that are now applied to that
| | 05:48 | particular path.
| | 05:49 | Now if I wanted to change it for
example to the train tracks I can click on the
| | 05:53 | Train Tracks, and what it does that
actually now replaces whatever information
| | 05:57 | was on the path before with this new
information. So anytime that you apply a
| | 06:01 | graphic style it doesn't add that
information to the path. It actually replaces
| | 06:06 | any settings that are on the path now
with this new style. So before I had the
| | 06:10 | Highway style applied to it. Now I
have this Train Track Style applied to it.
| | 06:14 | And into the settings that were
on the path before get blown away.
| | 06:17 | Now in some cases that's good, but
there are other times when you may want to
| | 06:21 | apply a style in a purely additive
nature. That means I want to be able to add
| | 06:25 | certain effects to a style. I
don't want to actually replace them.
| | 06:28 | Illustrator CS4 now has the capability
to allow you to add graphic styles to a
| | 06:33 | path instead of replacing them. Let me
show you what I mean. I'm actually going
| | 06:36 | to go ahead and just go back to the
Highway setting right here. Let's first go
| | 06:39 | ahead and click on these paths right
here. This is now the main roads that
| | 06:43 | appear throughout this area. And you
will notice that it also have another
| | 06:46 | graphic style here. This graphic
style is called Shadow. In fact one of the
| | 06:50 | really cool things about graphic styles,
I'm going to pull out the Appearance
| | 06:52 | panel here so we can take a look at
this. I use the Appearance panel and the
| | 06:55 | Graphic Styles panel kind of side-by-
side. For me having them both in the same
| | 06:59 | window here, which is the way that it
appears in the Essentials workspace, that
| | 07:03 | doesn't really work for me. But I want
to show you that with nothing selected
| | 07:06 | at all. See over here, it says No
Selection. I can click on any style and the
| | 07:10 | Appearance panel identifies the
elements that are basically in that style. So
| | 07:15 | you can see that for the Drop Shadow
one there is no fill and no stroke but
| | 07:18 | there is a Drop Shadow effect. Now I
have created this space and if you want to
| | 07:21 | think about it, it's just an
empty style but has a Drop Shadow.
| | 07:24 | Now what would I want to just apply
Drop Shadow to an object without anything
| | 07:27 | else. The answer is that I may want to
apply this to an existing object that
| | 07:32 | already has a style and I want to
add to that style. I don't want to
| | 07:35 | necessarily replace the style. So let
me show you how I actually do that. Let
| | 07:39 | me click on this particular road right
here. Let's say my client decides that
| | 07:42 | they want to have some kind of a soft
Drop Shadow on these. After all everybody
| | 07:45 | wants Drop Shadows these days.
| | 07:46 | So I have now you can see my target
group and the main road is selected right now.
| | 07:50 | And if I go over here to my
Graphic Styles instead of just clicking on the
| | 07:53 | shadow, I have to remove the elements
that are applied to that path and apply a
| | 07:57 | Drop Shadow I don't want to kill those
yellow areas there. I'm going to press
| | 08:01 | Command+Z or Ctrl+Z to Undo. And
instead of just click on it I'm going to hold
| | 08:04 | down my Alt key or my Option key on
Mac. So again that's Alt on Windows or
| | 08:09 | Option on Mac, and then I'm going to
click on the Style. When you do so when
| | 08:13 | you Option or Alt-click on a Style
Illustrator adds that style to the existing
| | 08:17 | appearance of that artwork, it doesn't
replace it. So now you can see that I
| | 08:20 | have taken my style and I have now
added that particular Drop Shadow to it.
| | 08:24 | Now of course this no longer has any
style applied to it. I have removed the
| | 08:29 | fact of this path now has a style on
it because I have modified the overall
| | 08:32 | object. So right now there is no
more link anymore from this artwork to a
| | 08:35 | style. What I was able to do though
was I was actually able to now to add to
| | 08:39 | that existing style, if I wanted to
go back to the original style to simply
| | 08:42 | just reapply that original style again.
| | 08:44 | Now I have created a few graphic
styles in this document, but in reality
| | 08:47 | Illustrator ships with a whole bunch
of graphic styles. If you go here to the
| | 08:50 | pop-up menu, you can actually see
that Illustrator ships with things like
| | 08:53 | Textures, Scribble effects, Image
effects, even some 3D effects and really,
| | 08:58 | really cool stuff, and I certainly
suggest that you kind of go through these
| | 09:01 | and kind of experiment with them. For
example we just spoke about the ability
| | 09:04 | to actually apply graphic styles in an
additive nature. Meaning I can simply
| | 09:08 | add a Graphic Style to an object
without removing its existing attributes.
| | 09:11 | I am actually going to load this one
here called Additive and now you can see
| | 09:15 | if I move this down over here there
are a whole bunch of ones here, for
| | 09:17 | example, there is something here called
Roughen. Now again, if I were to simply
| | 09:20 | click and apply that style it wouldn't
do much, right, I would simply go ahead
| | 09:23 | and blow away everything on this path.
But if I want to roughen up this path I
| | 09:27 | can hold down the Option key and add
that now, and now I get that kind of rough
| | 09:30 | look to the path there. I feel bad if
anybody wants to drive on those roads,
| | 09:33 | and press undo for there.
| | 09:35 | But basically I do suggest you kind
of go to the Graphic Styles. Again it's
| | 09:39 | important to know that if I have
nothing selected at all I can easily click on
| | 09:42 | a graphic style and see the settings
that are applied to it. And the way the
| | 09:45 | Appearance panel works that if I
see the Transform I can click on it to
| | 09:48 | actually open up that dialog box and
see that this creates 9 copies and it
| | 09:52 | actually rotates them in an angle of 36 degrees.
| | 09:55 | So it is a really great way to
reverse-engineer all these styles that
| | 09:58 | Illustrator ships with, definitely
when you have some time kind of go through
| | 10:01 | them, experiment with them and see
what you can come up with to save a
| | 10:04 | tremendous amount of time when you
are working with graphic styles in Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Defining graphic styles| 00:00 | We know that you can save a tremendous
amount of time and become more efficient
| | 00:03 | when you start using graphic styles
inside of Illustrator, and you also know
| | 00:06 | that to apply a graphic style to a
piece of artwork, you can simply select any
| | 00:10 | path and then click on a
graphic style to apply it.
| | 00:12 | For example in this document I have a
style that I have created called Train
| | 00:15 | Tracks. And you could see that over
here if I click on the Main Roads here,
| | 00:18 | I could actually have them become Train
Tracks instantly with one click of a
| | 00:21 | button. Now I'll go ahead and I'll make
this back to Main Roads and I'll click
| | 00:24 | on this one right here which has the
Train Tracks applied to it and I'll make
| | 00:27 | that one a Main Road as well. The real
question then you have here is how do
| | 00:30 | you actually define the graphic styles
to begin with? So let's actually start
| | 00:33 | from scratch, let's create a Train
Tracks graphic style for this document.
| | 00:37 | I am going to start over here by
actually de-selecting this artwork. I'm going
| | 00:41 | to drag out my Appearance panel and
also my Graphic Styles panel, which I'll
| | 00:44 | snap to the bottom of it. I'm actually
going to close this dock here for now,
| | 00:48 | and kind of bring this right over
here. I'm actually going to expand the
| | 00:51 | Appearance panel a little bit.
| | 00:52 | By default in Illustrator's Essentials
workspace, the Appearance panel and the
| | 00:56 | Graphic Styles panel up here are
grouped together, which means you can only see
| | 00:58 | one at a time. However, when you really
understand what a graphic style is you
| | 01:02 | will realize that you really need to
see both the Appearance panel and the
| | 01:05 | Graphic Styles panel together, and in
fact I use them together all the time.
| | 01:08 | For example, if you want to actually
see what comprises of any graphic style,
| | 01:12 | you can click on the Graphic Styles
panel and the Appearance panel updates and
| | 01:15 | shows you the settings
for that particular style.
| | 01:18 | The reason why is because a graphic
style is simply a snapshot of your
| | 01:22 | Appearance panel. When you go ahead
and you select a piece of artwork and you
| | 01:25 | add some kind of a complex appearance
to it. If you now want to apply that
| | 01:28 | Appearance to other pieces of artwork
you don't have to start from scratch.
| | 01:31 | You can capture that appearance as a
graphic style and then simply apply that
| | 01:35 | graphic style to other pieces of artwork.
So all the graphic styles really is,
| | 01:39 | is it's memorizing what you have
actually selected or applied in the Appearance
| | 01:44 | panel. So knowing that we can
easily create our own appearances. So I'm
| | 01:47 | actually going to click on this
object right here, which currently has this
| | 01:50 | graphic styles called Main Road
applied to it. I can see that here easily,
| | 01:53 | I have path with a Main Road and I
want to start from scratch here.
| | 01:57 | I am actually going to go to the
Appearance panel to the panel menu. I'm going
| | 02:00 | to choose an option here called
Reduce to Basic Appearance. That's going to
| | 02:03 | take my object right now and kind of
bring it down to its most basic fill and
| | 02:06 | stroke, so before it had multiple
strokes on it, now it only has one stroke on it.
| | 02:10 | Notice that this one also no
longer has any graphic style applied to it.
| | 02:14 | I'm also going to change a
stroke weight down here 1 point.
| | 02:17 | So now that we know that let's take a
look at how we can actually define a new
| | 02:21 | graphic style for this particular path.
I wanted to have the appearance of
| | 02:24 | Train Tracks, so in order to do so
I'm going to use multiple strokes to get
| | 02:28 | that effect. I'll actually zoom a
little bit closely here just so we can get a
| | 02:31 | better idea of what's happening to this
path as you make changes to it. Now the
| | 02:34 | first thing I'm going to do is I'm
going to change the actual stroke weight here.
| | 02:37 | Let me do something like for
example around 10 point. So now I have a 10
| | 02:41 | point stroke. Now what I want to do is
I want to first create the two rails,
| | 02:45 | the left rail and the right rail that
kind of go along the track itself.
| | 02:48 | Let's forget about to actual ties that go
across them let's focus on the actual outer
| | 02:52 | edges here. So what I want to do is I
want to actually create now an additional
| | 02:56 | stroke that I'll put on top of this.
So I'm not going to go over here and
| | 02:59 | choose to create a new stroke, but I'm
going to change its stroke weight to 8
| | 03:03 | point instead of 10.
| | 03:04 | Right now with color black and I have
two basically black strokes on top of
| | 03:07 | each other. So I can't really see any
of a difference here, what I can do is
| | 03:11 | change this top stroke
over here to be called white.
| | 03:13 | Now in doing so, I can now see what I
have done. I have taken a black stroke
| | 03:16 | that was 10 points in weight. I have
now applied an 8 point white stroke on top
| | 03:21 | of it so I basically get 1 point black
edge on this side and this side of my
| | 03:25 | stroke. So now what I would like to
do is actually create the ties that go
| | 03:28 | across this. You can actually rotate a
stroke to go on a different direction
| | 03:31 | that a stroke goes. So I'm going to
use a Dash stroke to actually give the
| | 03:35 | appearance of the ties on these train
tracks. So once again I'll come back to
| | 03:38 | the Appearance panel, I select my path
targeted. I'm not going to add a third
| | 03:43 | stroke. Now I want the ties to
actually extend beyond the edge of this
| | 03:46 | particular part of the black stroke so
it needs to be heavier than 10 points.
| | 03:51 | If I wanted to extend just 1 point or
2 points beyond that I could choose to
| | 03:54 | increase the value from 10 to something higher.
| | 03:57 | So first what I'll do is I'll change
the color of that stroke to black. Next
| | 04:00 | I'll change the stroke weight to be a
little bit higher. For example, let's
| | 04:03 | start with 12 and if you want we can
always experiment doing more than that.
| | 04:06 | Well, that simply means I'm now going
to have one extra point on this edge and
| | 04:09 | one extra point on that edge. I'm going
to click on the stroke itself and turn
| | 04:13 | on the Dash Setting. So now let's see
what we have created here. By default
| | 04:17 | Illustrator chooses a 12 point dash. If
you don't choose a Gap Setting it just
| | 04:20 | simply repeats that as the original
value that you have here. So this means
| | 04:24 | that I currently have a dash of 12
and a gap of 12. So my stroke right now
| | 04:28 | basically is little bit bigger then the
one that was over here. It's sitting on
| | 04:31 | top of the two original strokes and
because it has dash pattern I'm basically
| | 04:35 | seeing through the areas that are here.
| | 04:37 | Now, in reality you may want to create
some kind of a stroke style that shows a
| | 04:40 | border or a boundary of a certain area,
which is fine. This might work just as well.
| | 04:44 | But in order to make these look
like ties on Train Tracks, I wanted to
| | 04:47 | match the weight that I'm seeing over
here. So I really want my Dash also to be
| | 04:50 | 1 point. So I'll change this to a 1
point dash and notice that they have the
| | 04:54 | space they are also 1 point apart.
May be I want to go ahead and I want to
| | 04:57 | space it out just a little bit more,
I'll change my Gap to 2 points.
| | 05:01 | So now I have created this complex
appearance basically for particular path,
| | 05:05 | which is made up of 3 strokes. If you
look at the Appearance panel here I have
| | 05:08 | a black stroke of 10 points in the
bottom, I have an eight point white stroke
| | 05:12 | that sits on tip of that and then I
have a 12 point Dash stroke which gives the
| | 05:16 | appearance of the Train Tracks.
| | 05:17 | Now in reality I can actually say this
is a style but there is really one thing
| | 05:21 | that bothers me about this. The
background of my artwork right here is actually
| | 05:24 | a different color, it's not white, and
in fact the Train Tracks go over water
| | 05:28 | or go over other areas as well, so I
really want the middle of this Train
| | 05:31 | Tracks here to be truly transparent,
not necessarily white. But unfortunately,
| | 05:36 | the dilemma here is because if I make
that white transparent I'm going to see
| | 05:38 | the black stroke that appears beneath
it. So to actually make this work I'm
| | 05:42 | going to use the setting that most
people overlook in the Transparency panel.
| | 05:45 | I am going to go back to my stroke here,
which is colored white. I'm actually
| | 05:47 | going to change its color to black. It
doesn't even need to be white at all.
| | 05:51 | What I'm going to do though is I'm
going to use that particular stroke and sets
| | 05:55 | its Opacity value down to 0, which
means that I can't really see it right now.
| | 06:00 | But like I said before I still have
the problem that I'm seeing the 10 point
| | 06:03 | black stroke that sits at the bottom
of the stacking order of this path.
| | 06:06 | So what I really wish I could do is
find some way to have this 8 point stroke
| | 06:09 | actually subtract itself from the 10
point stroke. That would leave that area
| | 06:14 | truly transparent. It just so happens
to be that inside the Transparency panel
| | 06:18 | there is a setting that allows you to
do that, and the way that it works is
| | 06:21 | that it looks for transparent
objects and it allows you to knock out all
| | 06:24 | transparent objects that appear within
the same shape. So before I apply those,
| | 06:29 | take a quick look at what we see here
in my Appearance panel. I have a 10 point
| | 06:32 | stroke, which is colored black. I now
have an 8 point stroke, which is colored
| | 06:35 | black but has an Opacity set to 0.
| | 06:38 | Finally on top of that I have a 12
point black stroke that has a Dash Setting,
| | 06:41 | which gives Appearance to the ties in
a Railroad Track. So now what I'm going
| | 06:45 | to do is I'm actually going to click on
the path because what I want to do is I
| | 06:48 | want to target the entire path. I
want to target all the attributes here.
| | 06:51 | I am now going to click on the word
Opacity here to open up the Transparency
| | 06:54 | panel and click on this option here
called Knockout Group. Right now it has
| | 06:58 | Lines tool, but I want to make it that
actually there is a check mark through it.
| | 07:00 | See what happened here? The actual
stroke here which is 8 points which have an
| | 07:04 | Opacity's value set up 0, now was
instructed to knockout the object beneath it,
| | 07:09 | not simply just appear if they were
transparent. So you can easily see there
| | 07:12 | right now the Train Tracks blends in
with whatever background that goes over.
| | 07:16 | So great, I have now applied a real
cool complex appearance to a particular
| | 07:20 | path to make it look like train tracks.
But I want to use that to easily apply
| | 07:24 | that to other paths as well.
| | 07:25 | So now that I have defined my Appearance,
I'm ready to create my graphic style.
| | 07:30 | Now let me zoom out for a second
here just we can see everything in our
| | 07:32 | document. There are three ways to
define a graphic style inside of Illustrator.
| | 07:36 | One way is to actually click on the
artwork and drag it right into the Graphic
| | 07:39 | Styles panel. I'm going to press Undo.
Another way to define a graphic style is
| | 07:43 | to click on the New Graphic Style
button on the Graphic Styles panel. If you
| | 07:46 | hold down the Option key or the Alt
key on Windows when you click on this
| | 07:49 | button, it actually brings up the
Graphic Style Options dialog box that you can
| | 07:53 | name that style as you apply it.
| | 07:55 | Now there is a third way to define a
graphic style, which personally is my
| | 07:58 | favorite and preferred method. If you
take a look at the Appearance panel you
| | 08:00 | can see that there is a top most area
here, I have something called Path. This
| | 08:04 | is my target, and to the left of the
target, I actually see what we refer to as
| | 08:07 | a thumbnail for that appearance. I
can actually click on that thumbnail and
| | 08:11 | drag it into the Graphic Styles panel
to define that as a style. The reason why
| | 08:16 | I like that method best is because it
really gives you this connection in your
| | 08:19 | brain between the Appearance panel
and the Graphic Styles panel. You are
| | 08:22 | actually taking all the settings for
your Appearance panel and you are bringing
| | 08:25 | it and capturing it as graphic style.
| | 08:27 | Now I'll go ahead and I'll double-
click on this to give it a name and let's
| | 08:30 | call this railroad tracks. I'll click
OK and now I can simply click on any
| | 08:35 | other path in my document and with
one click apply that particular style.
| | 08:39 | So defining your own graphic styles is
easy and simple and once you start doing
| | 08:42 | so you will finally become far more
efficient working inside of Illustrator.
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| Previewing graphic styles| 00:00 | When you're working with styles some
of them may be very complex and if you
| | 00:04 | don't really know what that file looks
like until you have actually applied it
| | 00:06 | to your piece of artwork you may have
to wait and through then press Undo so on
| | 00:10 | and so forth. So there is actually a
cute little way to actually preview your
| | 00:13 | graphics styles and see what your
artwork is going to look like before you
| | 00:17 | actually apply the style.
| | 00:18 | Now the way that you do this is
actually different between Mac and Windows. So
| | 00:22 | right now I'm on a Mac platform, what
I can do is I can click on a regular
| | 00:25 | object here and let's say I want a
preview of what it would look like to
| | 00:27 | actually apply this style, the
water style to this piece of land.
| | 00:31 | So I'll hold down the Ctrl button on my
keyboard, here I'm on a Mac right now.
| | 00:35 | I Ctrl-click on the particular
thumbnail right here and I can actually see now
| | 00:38 | a preview of what that particular piece
of artwork is going to look like with a
| | 00:42 | new style applied to it. Likewise I can
Ctrl-click on this particular style and
| | 00:46 | see what it looks like there.
Let's try some other styles as well.
| | 00:49 | I am actually going to go ahead and
click on this button here and open up some
| | 00:52 | of the effects that come with
Illustrator, for example, Artistic Effects. Here
| | 00:56 | again I can Ctrl-click on these
particular areas to get a preview of what it's
| | 00:59 | going to look like.
| | 01:00 | Now if you're on Windows, you
don't need to Ctrl-click at all, simply
| | 01:03 | right-click with your mouse on any
thumbnail and any piece of artwork that's
| | 01:07 | selected will show up as to preview
in that thumbnail inside of the Graphic
| | 01:12 | Styles panel. Now some of you on the
Mac platform may know that if you have a
| | 01:15 | two-button mouse, the right-hand
button pretty much does a same thing it's a
| | 01:19 | Ctrl key but that's not the case here.
If you're on a Mac, even if you have a
| | 01:22 | two-button mouse, you need to Ctrl-
click on these particular thumbnails to see
| | 01:25 | the preview. On Windows, you
can just simply right-click on it.
| | 01:28 | Now you can see that all the icons
here, all the thumbnails in the Graphic
| | 01:32 | Styles panel, all are basically square.
So it basically shows you what that
| | 01:35 | appearance is going to look
like when applied to a rectangle.
| | 01:38 | But there may be times when you want to
apply styles to text. In doing so,
| | 01:41 | you may want to go ahead to the panel menu
in the Graphic Styles panel, and instead
| | 01:45 | of choosing Use Square for Preview,
you could choose Use Text for Preview. In
| | 01:49 | this case over here a capital T will
appear and you can see your preview over
| | 01:53 | here for the thumbnail as it applies
to a particular character instead of to
| | 01:57 | just a regular square.
| | 01:59 | If you're working with a lot of text
styles, you might just prefer to actually
| | 02:02 | see a preview to you in this way. So
there you have a quick way to actually
| | 02:05 | preview what a graphic style is going to look
like before you actually apply to your object.
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| Modifying graphic styles| 00:00 | While it is easy to see the benefits
of working with graphic styles as you
| | 00:03 | apply them to artwork, the real and
true power of a graphic style is how you
| | 00:07 | can modify those styles long after you
have already applied the styles to your
| | 00:11 | artwork. In doing so you can make
changes globally across your document, with
| | 00:15 | just a few clicks of the mouse. And
in reality if your clients are anything
| | 00:18 | like mine, you know that you make
tons of changes on a day-to-day basis.
| | 00:21 | So let's take a look at how easy it is
to modify graphic styles. Once again in
| | 00:25 | this case I'm actually going to go
ahead and bring out my Appearance panel, my
| | 00:27 | Graphic Styles panel, because I used
them both together when I working with
| | 00:31 | styles. Again, because of the way
that the Appearance panel and the Graphic
| | 00:34 | Styles work with each other, it's
much easier to modify that when you are
| | 00:37 | looking at both of those panels at the
same time. But to position it just about
| | 00:40 | over here, I'm going to actually going
to ahead and expand my Appearance panel
| | 00:42 | just a little bit. And the
important thing to note here is that in this
| | 00:45 | document I have already applied my styles.
| | 00:47 | So I don't even actually need to
select in my artwork, and this can be again
| | 00:50 | incredibly helpful. When you are
working with graphic styles and you want to
| | 00:53 | modify those styles, you don't have to
worry about clicking to select all the
| | 00:56 | objects that have them. All you
need to do is modify the style and then
| | 01:00 | everywhere else that style used in the
document gets updated automatically. For
| | 01:03 | example, let's say we send this out to
the client, and they come back, and they
| | 01:06 | go, we really loved the way that the
map looks, but the yellow is a little bit
| | 01:09 | too bright for us. So they are
requesting that any area that right now has that
| | 01:12 | yellow road inside of it
should become a white road.
| | 01:15 | But I still want to be able to keep
that black outline around it. Now if I go
| | 01:18 | ahead and I click on the graphic style
which is the main road, I can see that
| | 01:21 | right now that style is made up of two
strokes. A black stroke, which is set to
| | 01:25 | 12 point, then right on top of that I
have 10 point yellow stroke. So all I
| | 01:29 | really want do is I want to change this
yellow stroke here to white. So again,
| | 01:32 | notice over here my Appearance panel,
it says no selection. And right now I'm
| | 01:36 | seeing the settings for the main road
style. So what I'm going to do now is
| | 01:40 | over here by the stroke, click on the
yellow square, and I'm going to change
| | 01:43 | this particular stroke color
to white, instead of yellow.
| | 01:46 | Now nothing of course has changed
in my file, because I have no artwork
| | 01:49 | selected. But Illustrator also knows
that I just was looking at the settings
| | 01:53 | for this particular graphic style,
and I have now made a change. So if I go
| | 01:57 | ahead now to the Appearance panel and
I go to the panel menu, I can see there
| | 02:00 | is an option down over here called
Redefine Graphic Style, main road. Again,
| | 02:05 | Illustrator knows that the last stuff
I did was actually was previewing, or
| | 02:08 | seeing what the settings were for the
graphic style. I have now made a change
| | 02:12 | in the Appearance panel.
| | 02:14 | So Illustrator, again kind of thinking
ahead, says maybe you want to actually
| | 02:17 | redefine your graphic style. So this
setting now becomes active. Redefine
| | 02:21 | Graphic Style main road. By selecting
that, I now modify the existing style,
| | 02:25 | which lives here in the Graphic
Styles panel, and as you can see on my
| | 02:29 | artboard, that artboard now has
automatically changed. So let's try this with
| | 02:32 | one more style right now. Again, I
don't want to select, anyway I have worked
| | 02:35 | my document. I want to modify this
particular Highway one. Instead of having
| | 02:39 | red and purple over, I actually want to
add a drop shadow to it. Because I want
| | 02:43 | that to stay a little bit more.
| | 02:45 | So I'm now going to add a drop shadow
to that style. I'm going to come to the
| | 02:48 | Graphic Styles panel. Click on that
style. I see all the settings that
| | 02:51 | currently exist for that highway style.
Again, no selection is here, but I'm
| | 02:55 | now seeing the values for that
particular style. I'm now going to go to the
| | 02:59 | Effect menu, and choose stylize drop
shadow. I'm going to just choose the
| | 03:04 | regular default settings here, and
click OK, and now they have been applied to
| | 03:08 | that particular appearance. But again,
I have nothing selected. But Illustrator
| | 03:11 | knows I was just looking at that graphic style.
| | 03:13 | So I can go over here to the flyout
menu. I can choose Redefine Graphic Style
| | 03:17 | Highway, and in doing so, that highway
now gets a drop shadow applied to it. So
| | 03:22 | it's really easy, modifying a graphic
style takes just a few clicks of the
| | 03:25 | mouse. I'm sure that once you get the
hang of it, you'll be creating graphic
| | 03:28 | styles for all of your work.
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| Understanding graphic styles for text| 00:00 | One of the great things about
working with graphic styles is that you can
| | 00:03 | easily apply them to objects and text
objects alike. However, when you are
| | 00:07 | working with text, there is a certain
consideration you need to keep in mind.
| | 00:10 | For example, let's take another look
at this map. I have here some text which
| | 00:13 | appears in certain areas but as you
can see, the text is colored black. But
| | 00:17 | depending upon where it appears in the
map, it goes over some different colored
| | 00:19 | backgrounds and that sometimes makes
the text difficult to read. Now many times
| | 00:24 | you might see this in other maps as well.
| | 00:25 | What I'd like to do is create some kind
of a graphic style that will instantly
| | 00:29 | create some kind of an outline or
some kind of background behind my text so
| | 00:33 | that I can easily read it no matter
what background it goes over. In fact, one
| | 00:36 | of the easiest ways to do this is to
create a stroke that will now appear
| | 00:39 | beneath the characters in my text
stacking order. So that will instantly create
| | 00:43 | some kind of a white background that
are border behind the text that I can
| | 00:45 | easily read it. So let's quickly define
a graphic style and see exactly what we have to do.
| | 00:50 | So I'll come here and I'll select this
text here, Monterey Bay, and I can see
| | 00:54 | that in my Appearance panel right
now, I have a type object that's been
| | 00:56 | targeted and I have my characters which
are now inside of that type object and
| | 01:01 | again, the type characters in this case
are filled black. What I'm going to do
| | 01:04 | is I'm simply going to add a new
stroke. That stroke now is only going to
| | 01:06 | change the color of it to white and
I'll also increase the weight of that
| | 01:10 | stroke to around 4 point. The white
stroke is covering the black text that
| | 01:14 | appears inside the characters there. So
I now want to take the stroke and drag
| | 01:18 | it that appears beneath the characters
in my stacking order. So if I de-select
| | 01:22 | the text, now you can see that I kind
of have created some kind of a white
| | 01:24 | boundary behind the text.
| | 01:26 | It's a very simple and
straightforward appearance. You are simply going to
| | 01:28 | click on it and now I want to define
this as style. So to do so, I'm simply
| | 01:32 | going to take this thumbnail from my
Appearance panel and drag it down into the
| | 01:36 | Graphic Styles panel. I'll double click
on it and I'll call this one, text with
| | 01:41 | background. I'll click OK and now I
have created the style that I need. But
| | 01:46 | watch what happens when I now try to
actually apply this style to other text.
| | 01:50 | Now this is the same text that's over
here and actually, before I even apply
| | 01:53 | it, it's important to realize that all
I have done by creating a graphic style,
| | 01:56 | I have captured the appearance; not
the actual text based setting. In other
| | 02:00 | words, the font, point size those
are things that are not included in the
| | 02:03 | actual appearance. So they don't appear
in the graphic style. That's important
| | 02:07 | to know because in these cases, I do
want to preserve the appearance, for
| | 02:10 | example, the point size of my text here;
I just want to change its appearance.
| | 02:14 | But watch what happens now when I
click on the state of Santa Cruz text and I
| | 02:17 | apply that graphic style.
| | 02:18 | See how the actual black letter
disappears? Yes, it did apply the style but the
| | 02:23 | text color also changed to white.
Now why did that happen? That happened
| | 02:27 | because of a setting that you actually
set inside of the Graphic Styles panel.
| | 02:31 | By default, if I go over here to the
flyout menu or the panel menu here for the
| | 02:34 | Graphic Styles panel, I'll see there's
a setting here called Override Character
| | 02:38 | Color, which is currently set on. Again,
that's the default setting. So that
| | 02:42 | means when I apply the style, it's also
going to change the color of the text.
| | 02:45 | But in this case, I simply want to add
the additional stroke; I don't want to
| | 02:48 | really change any of the fill colors here.
| | 02:50 | So I'm going to un-check that option.
Now if I go ahead and I press Undo to get
| | 02:55 | rid of that, I can click on this
particular style and see that it simply adds
| | 02:59 | that white stroke that appears behind
it without changing the character color
| | 03:02 | itself. Now I can click on this text
object here, hold down the Shift key to
| | 03:06 | select both of these text objects and
now again, I'll click once to apply the
| | 03:09 | graphic style and with one click of
the button, I can now easily make my text
| | 03:13 | readable across my entire document.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Advanced Masking TechniquesIntroducing advanced masking techniques| 00:00 | One of the best ways to be
efficient inside of Illustrator is to create
| | 00:03 | nondestructive files and by that I mean
files that can easily be edited at any time.
| | 00:07 | One of the best ways to create
nondestructive files is through the use of masks.
| | 00:11 | Now there are three types of
masks inside of Illustrator. There are
| | 00:15 | clipping masks, layer clipping masks,
and also an opacity mask, which is almost
| | 00:19 | the same as an alpha channel inside of
Photoshop. Incredibly powerful but also
| | 00:23 | very difficult to learn how to use
inside of Illustrator. So in these movies,
| | 00:27 | we'll learn about all that power and
how to create non-destructive files easily
| | 00:30 | inside of Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding clipping masks| 00:00 | When working inside of Illustrator,
there may be times when you want to hide
| | 00:04 | portions of your artwork without
physically deleting them from your file.
| | 00:08 | That may be because you want to maybe
adjust them later on or you only want to be
| | 00:12 | able to see certain parts of a file
right now, but at any point may want to
| | 00:15 | readjust the positioning of it.
| | 00:17 | The functions we use to accomplish
this task is something called masking. Now
| | 00:21 | in Illustrator, when you want to
create a mask, you do so by creating a new
| | 00:24 | vector shape and that particular shape
then clips or basically decides which
| | 00:29 | parts of the image can or cannot be seen.
The most classic case of working with
| | 00:33 | masks in Illustrator is when they're
applied to photographs. For example,
| | 00:37 | you can't really change or adjust the
actual shape of a photograph. All photographs
| | 00:41 | are rectangular in nature.
| | 00:43 | However, if you only want to see
certain parts of a photograph, you would
| | 00:45 | create a mask to go ahead and do that
for you. For example, let's take a look
| | 00:49 | at this file right here. I have a file
here called clipping_masks and I have a
| | 00:52 | photograph that's placed into this
particular document. I'll zoom out a little
| | 00:56 | bit here so we can see the actual
boundaries of the photo and if I click on it,
| | 00:59 | I see that right now I have
this one image that's selected.
| | 01:02 | Now I may want to crop or just come
and close on this part of the photograph
| | 01:05 | and I may not be interested in seeing
the rest of the photograph here. Because
| | 01:08 | you can actually edit pixels inside
of Illustrator, what I need to do is
| | 01:12 | basically define another shape that
allows me to only see the pixels within a
| | 01:16 | certain area.
| | 01:17 | For example, I'll choose my Rectangle
tool and I'll simply draw a rectangle
| | 01:21 | over this area of the photograph.
With my regular Selection tool, and that
| | 01:25 | particular rectangle selected, I'll now
hold down the Shift key to also add the
| | 01:30 | image to my selection. So now I have
two objects selected, both the photograph
| | 01:34 | and the rectangle. I can now go to
the Object menu. I could choose Clipping
| | 01:39 | Mask and then choose Make.
| | 01:41 | Now, I only see the photograph inside
of the boundaries of that rectangle.
| | 01:45 | I'm going to press Undo twice to actually
remove the rectangle from my file also.
| | 01:48 | I want to show you that there is
another way that Illustrator also creates
| | 01:51 | clipping mask in a very simple fashion.
You'll notice that any time you have an
| | 01:54 | image selected inside of Illustrator,
there is a button in the control panel
| | 01:57 | called Mask.
| | 01:59 | Clicking on that button actually does
two things; first of all, it creates a
| | 02:03 | rectangle that's the exact same size of
your photograph itself. Second, it uses
| | 02:08 | that as a mask for the photograph. Now
once I've gone ahead and I've adjusted that mask,
| | 02:13 | I haven't deselected the image yet.
I can now simply grab the corners
| | 02:16 | here and adjust how that
particular rectangle looks.
| | 02:19 | In doing so, I now have basically
defined a mask and cropped my image the same
| | 02:24 | way that I might crop an image, for
example, inside of InDesign using a frame.
| | 02:29 | Now the reason why that happened is
because once I clicked on the Mask button,
| | 02:32 | Illustrator not only created a
rectangle and defined it as a mask, but it also
| | 02:37 | adjusted these two buttons over here.
| | 02:39 | Right now, I'm basically toggling
between two modes. I have right now a mode
| | 02:43 | called Edit Clipping Path, which is
the rectangle that's used to define the
| | 02:46 | mask and I have the ability to also
change modes to go to edit the contents. In
| | 02:51 | doing so, I'm now having the ability
to actually edit the photograph or the
| | 02:55 | contents that are inside of the mask.
| | 02:57 | For example, if I wanted to make the
picture a little bit smaller, but I want
| | 03:00 | to leave it the rectangle of the size
that it was, now that I'm editing the
| | 03:03 | contents or the image itself, I can
now scale this down in size and the
| | 03:07 | photograph adjusts inside
of that particular shape.
| | 03:10 | Now I'm going to press Undo a few times;
I want to go back to my original part
| | 03:13 | where I basically just have the image
inside of my file. Notice that I see the
| | 03:16 | Mask button is now active, but I want
to show you yet another way that we could
| | 03:20 | actually work with the actual mask or
the contents of the mask, independently
| | 03:24 | of each other.
| | 03:25 | At the same time, I also want to use a
technique to show you how you could use
| | 03:27 | another shape such as anything other
than a rectangle to use that as a mask.
| | 03:32 | For example, maybe I want this to fit
into a different type of shape. If I go
| | 03:35 | here to my Layers panel, I'll see
that inside the Image layer I have a path
| | 03:39 | here that I've created. If I go ahead
and I turn that path on, I could see that
| | 03:42 | it's this kind of a shape that's right
over here. Maybe I want the photograph
| | 03:45 | to be masked inside of this shape.
So what I'll do is I'll click on that
| | 03:49 | particular shape to select it. I'll
also hold down the Shift key to select the
| | 03:53 | image itself.
| | 03:54 | So now I have two objects selected; I
can now go to the Object menu, I can
| | 03:58 | choose Clipping Mask and Make and now
I've made a mask using an image that's
| | 04:03 | not rectangular in shape but any custom
at all. It's important to realize when
| | 04:07 | you create a mask, the object that's
at the topmost of your stacking order is
| | 04:10 | the object that becomes the mask.
| | 04:12 | So you'll notice that here when I
selected my artwork, I have the image
| | 04:15 | underneath that particular object. But
let's also take a closer look at exactly
| | 04:19 | what Illustrator did here. If I look
at my layer right now, I can see that in
| | 04:22 | the image layer, whereas before I had
an image and a path, I now have a group
| | 04:26 | that was created and the image and
the path were put inside of that group.
| | 04:30 | The topmost object which was the path
here now became a clipping path and you
| | 04:34 | can easily identify clipping paths in
the Layers panel because they always
| | 04:37 | appear with an underline. So now let's
take a look at how to actually edit or
| | 04:40 | work with the objects on my artboard.
| | 04:43 | Now, I'm going to de-select this right
now. If I want to move the mask around,
| | 04:45 | I could simply click on it and move it
and notice that the image and the mask
| | 04:49 | both move together. You'll see that
both of these elements here are gray, but
| | 04:52 | now watch what happens when I go
ahead and I double-click on it.
| | 04:55 | I've now entered Isolation mode.
Remember, we're dealing with a group here. So
| | 04:58 | I've now isolated the group as you can
see here with the breadcrumbs at the top
| | 05:01 | of my document window. So now I have
the ability to click over here and now I'm
| | 05:05 | selecting the image that's inside of
the group. Because I've isolated the group,
| | 05:08 | I'm inside the group right now,
I can move this image around
| | 05:11 | independently of the mask.
| | 05:13 | By clicking on it, I can now move the
picture and center it just where I want it.
| | 05:16 | I can scale to make a little bit
smaller and basically position the image
| | 05:19 | just where I need it to be. Likewise,
they can also click on just the mask
| | 05:23 | itself and move the mask around
without moving the picture around. When I'm
| | 05:26 | done with my editing, I'll go ahead
and I'll double-click to exit Isolation Mode.
| | 05:30 | Now in these examples, we're using an
image and of course a vector shape to
| | 05:34 | define the mask for that image. But
masks don't have to be used specifically on
| | 05:37 | images; masking can be done on any
kind of object inside of Illustrator
| | 05:41 | including vectors. So let's
take a look at such an example.
| | 05:43 | I'm going to go ahead and I'm going
to hide the Image layer in my document here.
| | 05:46 | I'm going to turn on this layer
called Logo. Inside of this particular
| | 05:49 | layer, you can see that I have a Path
and I have a Group, which is basically
| | 05:52 | meant for how much of different rays.
I want to clip these rays inside of this
| | 05:56 | particular shape.
| | 05:57 | So the first thing I'll do is I'll
just simply adjust the position exactly
| | 06:00 | where I want this shape to be right
on top of the rays that are right here.
| | 06:03 | Remember, the mask itself needs to be
at the top of the stacking order of the
| | 06:07 | objects that are going to appear inside
of the mask and now I can simply click
| | 06:10 | and drag to select all the elements here.
| | 06:11 | I'll go to the Object menu and I'll
choose Clipping Mask > Make. The keyboard
| | 06:16 | shortcut is Command+7 on a Mac or Ctrl+
7 on Windows. Now you can see that the
| | 06:20 | artwork that I've created, which is
vector artwork, has now been clipped
| | 06:24 | successfully inside of that path. Just
as before, I can double-click on this to
| | 06:27 | isolate it and be able to see all the
artwork that's here as well. Let me go
| | 06:31 | over here and click on the
arrow here to exit Isolation mode.
| | 06:33 | If you want to release the mask, what
you can simply do is go ahead and click
| | 06:37 | over here on this particular mask
itself. Go to the Object menu and choose
| | 06:41 | Clipping Mask > Release. In doing so,
I'm now back to my regular shapes as
| | 06:45 | before. One thing that's interesting to
note is that once you turn a path into
| | 06:49 | a mask, it loses all of its attribute.
So any fill or stroke that was there
| | 06:52 | suddenly becomes set to None. But as
you can see here in the Layers panel, my
| | 06:56 | path is still there.
| | 06:57 | So whether you're working with images
or artwork itself inside of Illustrator,
| | 07:00 | if you ever want to hide portions of
a particular piece of artwork, using a
| | 07:04 | mask is the best way to do so as it's
nondestructive. Meaning, at any time, if
| | 07:08 | you want to reposition that artwork or
you want to extend some of the areas,
| | 07:11 | you can do so without worrying about
actually cutting the paths themselves.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using layer clipping masks| 00:00 | So we know that when we create a
clipping mask inside of Illustrator, the
| | 00:03 | topmost object becomes the mask for
all the selected artwork that appears
| | 00:07 | beneath it. The Illustrator
accomplishes this by taking all the objects and
| | 00:11 | putting them into a single group and
then turning the topmost object in that
| | 00:14 | group to become the mask.
| | 00:16 | Now the problem is that that starts to
break down when you start to have layers
| | 00:20 | in your document. For example, take a
look at what I have here in this file.
| | 00:23 | It's called layer_masks. I have
several layers that already exist. I have a
| | 00:27 | layer for the Logo type. I have a layer
for the Palm Tree that's here, for the
| | 00:30 | Border, and for the Rays
that appear in the background.
| | 00:33 | Now I want to use this object here in
this Mask layer which is the shape right
| | 00:37 | here, but if I were to simply select
now all of my artwork and remember, all
| | 00:41 | this artwork lives on separate layers,
Illustrator will create a group of
| | 00:45 | all these objects, and because the
way that groups work, you cannot have
| | 00:48 | objects within a single group
that live on different layers.
| | 00:51 | So if I choose now to go to Object >
Clipping Mask and choose, Make, you will
| | 00:56 | note that right now all of these
layers have been emptied. There is nothing
| | 00:58 | that appears in the Logo Type layer,
the Palm Tree layer, the Border layer or
| | 01:01 | the Rays layer; everything has been
moved up now into this new group that was
| | 01:05 | created and all of this artwork now lives here.
| | 01:07 | So what I have basically done is I
have lost my entire layer structure in my
| | 01:11 | document. Now depending on the artwork
that I'm working with, that may either
| | 01:14 | be catastrophic or it may not mean
much at all. But for example, if you are a
| | 01:18 | map maker and you have maybe hundreds
of layers inside of your document and now
| | 01:21 | you need to clip a particular part of
that map in a certain area, if you were
| | 01:25 | to blow away all of your layers, well
that could be days and days of work.
| | 01:29 | So for these types of tasks, where we
are dealing specifically with trying to
| | 01:32 | preserve our layer structure, we'll
start to employ a different type of mask
| | 01:36 | inside of Illustrator, something
called a layer clipping mask, not just the
| | 01:40 | regular clipping mask. So I'm going to
press Undo, I want to undo that aspect now.
| | 01:44 | All my layers are back to the way
they were before and we are going to try
| | 01:47 | something a little bit different here.
Let me go ahead and expand my Layer
| | 01:50 | panel just a little bit over here so
we could see the contents that I have here.
| | 01:53 | Inside of my Mask layer, I have a path
that exists. There is nothing else in
| | 01:57 | that Mask layer right now and of course
I have four additional layers here with
| | 02:00 | the artwork inside of it. So let me de-
select everything right now because I
| | 02:03 | want to show you that when you are
working with layer clipping mask, you don't
| | 02:07 | even need to access or touch any of
your artwork on the page; it all happens
| | 02:11 | directly to the Layers panel itself.
| | 02:13 | Now the same overall concept of
masking applies; the topmost object in our
| | 02:17 | selection is going to become the mask
for everything else that appears beneath it.
| | 02:21 | However, until now when we work
with the regular clipping mask, we know
| | 02:25 | that Illustrator creates a group and
the topmost object in that group becomes
| | 02:28 | the mask for everything
else inside of that group.
| | 02:31 | Well, what a layer clipping mask is, is
where you have a layer and the topmost
| | 02:35 | object in that layer becomes a mask
for everything else inside of that layer.
| | 02:38 | The reason why this is important to
know is because in Illustrator, we can have
| | 02:42 | sub-layers, we can have layers that
live within other layers. So if we build
| | 02:47 | our file correctly, we can actually
create a structure where we don't lose our
| | 02:50 | layers inside of our file.
| | 02:52 | So let's see how we do that. I'm
actually going to go ahead and click over here
| | 02:55 | in the Layers panel to select a Logo
Type layer. I'm now going to hold down the
| | 02:58 | Shift key and click on the Rays layer
to select all of these four layers. Now
| | 03:02 | they are all highlighted here, select
is really kind of a bad word because we
| | 03:05 | think about selections of
artwork on the artboard itself.
| | 03:08 | I haven't selected any objects, what I
have done is I have actually selected
| | 03:11 | just the layers in the Layers
panel. So now I refer to this as just
| | 03:14 | highlighting those layers instead of
saying select it, just to avoid that
| | 03:17 | confusion. What I'll do is I'll take
these four layers right now and click and
| | 03:22 | drag them so that they appear inside
the Mask layer. See how that line now
| | 03:25 | appears right now. What I'm doing is
I'm simply dragging it into the Mask
| | 03:30 | layer, so that it appears beneath the path.
| | 03:32 | So if we take a look now, my document
now has one overall layer. Inside of that
| | 03:36 | Mask layer, I have the path and I
have four additional layers. So my layer
| | 03:42 | structure still exists. I still have
the Rays on their own layer; the Border is
| | 03:45 | on its own layer. The same for the Palm
Tree and the Logo Type as well, but the
| | 03:49 | paths fit to the topmost
part of the Mask layer itself.
| | 03:53 | So now what I'm going to do is I'm
going to tell Illustrator to turn this path
| | 03:56 | into a mask for everything else inside
of the Mask layer. Again, I don't need
| | 04:00 | to select any artwork on the artboard
itself, this is actually pretty cool when
| | 04:03 | it comes to working with layer mask
simply because I don't have to worry about
| | 04:07 | accidentally selecting things or
having to lock or unlock objects in my
| | 04:10 | artboard. I can do all this
directly through the Layers panel itself.
| | 04:15 | So I'm going to go ahead and I'm
going to highlight the Mask layer itself.
| | 04:18 | Remember the layer clipping mask is
actually an attribute of the layer itself.
| | 04:22 | So by highlighting the layer here,
I'm basically identifying to Illustrator
| | 04:25 | that I want to work with that
particular layer. Now I'll move to the bottom of
| | 04:28 | the Layers panel, there is a button
here called Make/Release Clipping Mask.
| | 04:32 | By clicking on that button, I'm
basically telling that particular layer to turn
| | 04:35 | on its mask. So let me first identify
exactly what I mean by that, before I
| | 04:39 | actually apply it. Every single
layer inside of Illustrator has a mask
| | 04:44 | attribute. It means basically like a
light switch; I can turn the mask on and
| | 04:48 | off for any layer at any time. In
doing so, the layer simply identifies the
| | 04:52 | topmost object in that layer and makes
that the mask for everything else that
| | 04:56 | lives inside that layer.
| | 04:59 | So think of it as a toggle. At any time,
you can highlight a layer and turn its
| | 05:02 | mask on and off. So again, with the
Mask layer highlighted, I'm now going to
| | 05:06 | click on this button called Make/
Release Clipping Mask, basically telling that
| | 05:09 | layer to turn its mask on. Now look
what happens. The path that I had at the
| | 05:14 | topmost part of my particular layer now
has become a clipping path; you can see
| | 05:18 | that it's underlined.
| | 05:19 | And this mask now has clipped all the
layers that exist inside of that layer.
| | 05:23 | But I haven't lost my layer structure
here; it still exists inside of this
| | 05:26 | layer. What's great about working
with layer clipping mask is that they are
| | 05:29 | easy to turn on and off, because
they are just a toggle. So at any time,
| | 05:33 | without even having to select any
artwork on my page, I could just come down
| | 05:36 | here and click that on and off to just
see how that mask is applied to that artwork.
| | 05:41 | Now remember, every single layer in
Illustrator has a mask attribute.
| | 05:45 | That means that I could have any of these
particular sub-layers also have their own
| | 05:49 | masks. One important thing to know
though is that inside of Illustrator, there
| | 05:53 | is a bug. That is if you have nested
masks, inside of your layers structure,
| | 05:56 | inside of Illustrator, by going
ahead and toggling the overall mask, the
| | 06:00 | topmost mask in your document, all of
the other masks will get turned off as well.
| | 06:04 | So you may have to reapply those masks
if you went ahead and you toggle that
| | 06:08 | particular overall mask. For example,
this Rays layer actually had a mask as
| | 06:12 | well, by turning on its mask over here.
By turning on or toggling this mask
| | 06:16 | layer, this would also get turned off as well.
| | 06:19 | But in general, working with layer
mask can really help you a lot, especially
| | 06:22 | when you are trying to preserve layer
structure in a document. They are easy to
| | 06:25 | apply, they are easy to control,
and they can save you a ton of work.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating opacity masks| 00:00 | In Illustrator, we know that we can
clip the contents inside of a vector path
| | 00:04 | by using a mask. However, we are always
dealing with a vector path that becomes
| | 00:08 | that mask. As such, your masks will
always have clean sharp edges which you
| | 00:11 | might expect out of a vector application,
but there may be times when you want
| | 00:15 | to create a mask that has a soft edge
to it; either a feathered edge or you
| | 00:18 | want to create some kind of effect
like a vignette, for example. In those
| | 00:21 | cases, the vector
clipping mask just won't cut it.
| | 00:24 | Well, besides the clipping mask
and a layer clipping mask inside of
| | 00:26 | Illustrator, there is also a third
type of mask called an opacity mask. In
| | 00:31 | fact, an opacity mask in Illustrator
works the exact same way that alpha
| | 00:34 | channels work inside of Photoshop.
| | 00:36 | So before we actually see the
feature here of an opacity mask inside of
| | 00:39 | Illustrator, let's hop over to
Photoshop for a second and see exactly what an
| | 00:43 | alpha channel is. Now I have a
photograph here inside of Photoshop and I have a
| | 00:46 | layer, which is currently set to Layer
0, meaning that this layer can contain
| | 00:50 | transparency inside of it.
It's not a background layer.
| | 00:53 | Well, I know that I can go over here to
the bottom of the Layers panel and turn
| | 00:56 | on a mask for that particular layer. I
can then choose the Gradient tool here
| | 01:00 | inside of Photoshop and then simply
click-and-drag the final gradient. Right
| | 01:04 | now, I'm working inside of the mask
itself. So I'm now using that gradient as a
| | 01:08 | mask, but you can see really what happened here.
| | 01:11 | Photoshop is using this artwork here
as a mask for the photograph but because
| | 01:15 | this image itself is actually a
channel inside of Photoshop, it supports 256
| | 01:19 | levels of gray. So unlike the clipping
mask, which is either white or black,
| | 01:23 | meaning I can have two distinct modes.
Either I see artwork or I don't see it.
| | 01:27 | An alpha channel, which support for
the shades of gray, allows me to have
| | 01:30 | pixels that are somewhat see-through
or transparent. That's what allows me to
| | 01:35 | have these gray bearded effects as masks.
| | 01:37 | Of course, the benefit of working in
this way is that as a mask, I can still
| | 01:41 | continue to edit the contents out of
the mask or I can edit the mask itself.
| | 01:45 | For example, I'll hold down the Shift
key and I'll click on the mask itself to
| | 01:48 | disable the mask and I can see that the
image is still there. I haven't deleted
| | 01:51 | any of the contents of that mask; I
have simply hidden a portion of it.
| | 01:54 | Shift-clicking on the
mask again makes it active.
| | 01:57 | So now that we see that, let's go
back into Illustrator and apply that same
| | 02:00 | concept here using an opacity mask.
Now one of the great things about opacity
| | 02:05 | mask in Illustrator is how powerful
they are. The downside is that Adobe did a
| | 02:09 | really good job hiding this feature,
but don't worry, I'll tell exactly where
| | 02:12 | it is and how to take advantage of its power.
| | 02:15 | So let's take an example here. So I'm
going to use the regular Ellipse tool
| | 02:19 | inside of Illustrator to create a mask
for this photograph. I'm going to hold
| | 02:22 | down the Option key or the Alt key on
Windows to actually click-and-drag out to
| | 02:26 | define the shape from its center and
let's make a shape just about over there.
| | 02:31 | Now right now, I could use this as a
mask but my mask will actually get clipped
| | 02:34 | to this hard edge, but I
want to create a soft edge here.
| | 02:37 | So I'm going to go to the Effect menu,
I want to apply a feather. So I'm going
| | 02:40 | to choose Stylize > Feather. Let's go
ahead and click on the Preview button and
| | 02:44 | let's this being a little bit softer,
maybe around 30 points. Now I have a nice
| | 02:48 | soft transition here. I'll click OK.
| | 02:51 | Now here is the thing; if I were to go
ahead now and click on the actual image
| | 02:55 | in the background, so now I have both
the oval that I have created here that
| | 02:58 | has the feather effect on it and the
image behind it selected. If I were to
| | 03:02 | create a regular clipping mask right
now, Illustrator will use the path
| | 03:06 | itself. Even though right now I have
a feather effect, that gets ignored
| | 03:10 | because the path itself becomes the mask.
| | 03:13 | Instead, I want the appearance of
the path to become the mask. I want the
| | 03:17 | actual path with the feather to define
the mask for the photograph. So to do
| | 03:22 | so, I'm going to use an opacity mask.
Once the objects are selected, I'm going
| | 03:26 | to go over here to the Transparency
panel and you will notice over here that I
| | 03:29 | have a thumbnail, not much different
than the thumbnail that I see inside of a
| | 03:32 | layer inside of Photoshop. Right now,
the area that appears just to divide it,
| | 03:36 | this is blank, but that's
going to change in a moment.
| | 03:39 | I am now going to over here to the
flyout menu or the panel menu of the
| | 03:42 | Transparency panel and I'll click to
actually access its feature called Make
| | 03:47 | Opacity Mask. So this feature really
does not appear anywhere else, not inside
| | 03:50 | of a menu. There is no tools for it.
It's simply accessible only through the
| | 03:54 | panel menu of the Transparency panel.
I'll now choose Make Opacity Mask.
| | 03:59 | You could see now that anything that
was white allows me to see the image
| | 04:02 | through it and because the mask itself
is using an alpha channel or the values
| | 04:07 | of the actual effect that I have
applied to that object, that becomes the mask.
| | 04:11 | So my mask now has a soft
transition, not a hard edge.
| | 04:15 | Now for a moment here, let's take a
look at our Transparency panel. I now have
| | 04:19 | the artwork that I basically had
created before, which is the image. Plus,
| | 04:22 | you can see now that I have a new icon here
which is, again, very similar to what I
| | 04:26 | have seen inside of Photoshop.
Photoshop displays the mask just to the right of
| | 04:29 | the piece of artwork inside of the layer.
| | 04:31 | Now that I have actually created my
opacity mask, there are a few things that I
| | 04:34 | can do to edit that. First of all, you
will notice that right now, there is a
| | 04:37 | thick black line around this piece of
artwork right here but not around this
| | 04:41 | edge over here. That means that right
now my artwork is the part of the mask
| | 04:44 | that's selected, but if I click over
here on this part of the mask, notice now
| | 04:48 | the black line switches to this side.
Now, I can actually edit the mask itself.
| | 04:52 | So with a regular clipping mask, I had
the two icons that appear in the control
| | 04:55 | panel over here. Those actually now
are replaced by these two by clicking or
| | 04:59 | toggling between these two squares or
thumbnails in the Transparency panel. For
| | 05:03 | example, if I wanted my mask to have
more of a feather effect, I can simply
| | 05:07 | click on the mask itself. Now my oval
is selected, the path itself. Notice that
| | 05:12 | in my Layers panel, it says right now,
Opacity Mask. I don't even see anything
| | 05:16 | else in my file. The image is not even
currently available right now. I'm only
| | 05:19 | working or you can think about
an isolated just the mask itself.
| | 05:22 | So I can click on the Feather effect to
edit it and basically adjust it, maybe
| | 05:26 | I want to do 50 points. Now I can
adjust that feather at any time. Now I'll go
| | 05:30 | back to the image here and I'm working
with the artwork, I can move the artwork
| | 05:33 | around, but notice that the mask and
the image moves together. If I want to
| | 05:37 | reposition the artwork inside of a mask,
I can simply un-click this Lock icon
| | 05:41 | here and that allows me to move the
actual photograph around but notice that
| | 05:45 | the mask is staying still.
| | 05:46 | Likewise, if I now click on the mask
itself, I can move the circle around but
| | 05:50 | now the photo doesn't move. The photo
remains stationary as I move the mask
| | 05:53 | around. As soon as I'm happy with the
positioning, I'll go ahead and I'll click
| | 05:56 | on the artwork and toggle that Lock
icon back again. This way the artwork and
| | 06:00 | the mask will always move together.
| | 06:02 | Now there is one thing that I do
want to point out about opacity masks.
| | 06:05 | Sometimes when you are working inside
of Illustrator, it may be difficult to
| | 06:07 | find out where these opacity masks
exist. Well, if you look at your Layers
| | 06:11 | panel, you will see that over here,
this wave rider image has a dash line that
| | 06:15 | appears underneath it. Now we already
know that a solid line, an underline
| | 06:19 | inside of the Layers panel indicates a mask.
| | 06:21 | Well, anytime you see an entry in
the Layers panel with a dashed line
| | 06:24 | underneath it that indicates that
object currently has an opacity mask applied
| | 06:28 | to it. You will also notice that in
the Appearance panel, the group here also
| | 06:32 | appears with a dash line
underneath it, indicating the opacity mask.
| | 06:35 | At any time if you want to release the
mask, go back to the Transparency panel
| | 06:39 | and choose Release Opacity Mask. So
on review, it's really important to
| | 06:43 | understand that as opposed to a
clipping mask, which uses the actual vector
| | 06:46 | path as the mask itself, an opacity
mask uses the appearance of that path to
| | 06:51 | define its mask. Now it's important to
understand that because at the end of
| | 06:55 | the day, you can use anything in
Illustrator as an opacity mask, even a photograph.
| | 06:59 | So let me zoom out here for a second.
I'll delete this shape that I have
| | 07:02 | created here and I just have the
photograph itself. I'm going to use my regular
| | 07:06 | Rectangular tool. I'm going to draw a
rectangle of the exact same size as the
| | 07:09 | image here and I'm going to color it,
let's say, this purple color right here.
| | 07:13 | Now I'm going to take this color,
I'm going to send it to the back of my stacking order.
| | 07:16 | So now if I look over here, I have an
image in the front and I have this purple
| | 07:19 | color in the background. Let me press
Undo to move that back. I'm going to
| | 07:21 | simply click-and-drag to select both
elements. So if I were to create a mask
| | 07:25 | right now, remember that the mask is
always made out of the topmost object. So
| | 07:28 | if I were to choose to create a mask
right now, what becomes the mask? The
| | 07:32 | purple rectangle or the photograph?
The answer is that the photograph becomes
| | 07:35 | the mask and a photograph, of
course, has pixels inside of it.
| | 07:39 | Rather than using the overall shape of
the image, an opacity mask will use the
| | 07:43 | luminosity values of each pixel in
the file to define its mask. Because my
| | 07:48 | background image is purple, my result
is basically going to be a variety of
| | 07:52 | different shades of that purple.
| | 07:53 | So again, I have both objects selected:
a purple rectangle and the image on top
| | 07:57 | of it. I'll go to the Transparency
panel flyout menu and I'll choose Make
| | 08:01 | Opacity Mask. Here I'll choose to
actually invert my mask and now I can see
| | 08:05 | that I have kind of
created this monotone effect.
| | 08:07 | What I actually have selected in
Illustrator, right now is a regular plain
| | 08:11 | vector path. However, that path is
masked by a photograph. Again, think about
| | 08:16 | that photograph right now which is
acting as an alpha channel to mask the
| | 08:19 | rectangle itself. So you can see
easily see that there is a tremendous amount
| | 08:23 | of power hidden inside of these opacity masks.
| | 08:26 | Now that you know how to use them,
you could bring some of the power that
| | 08:29 | exists inside of Photoshop
right here inside of Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
7. Working with ColorIntroducing color| 00:00 | On a day-to-day basis, we spend a
tremendous time inside of Illustrator working with
| | 00:04 | and thinking about color. Be it trying
to find inspiration for colors that work
| | 00:08 | in our designs or trying to modify the
existing colors to fit within specific workflows,
| | 00:12 | it takes a tremendous amounts of work.
| | 00:14 | Now inside of Illustrator CS3,
Adobe completely revamped the color engine
| | 00:19 | inside of Illustrator. It allows us now
to do so many more things but there is
| | 00:22 | a caveat; it's not a very easy feature
to learn how to use. For example,
| | 00:26 | the Recolor Artwork dialog box has a
tremendous amount of buttons and switches
| | 00:30 | inside of it and they all do a lot of stuff,
but we have to learn exactly what they do.
| | 00:34 | Well, in these movies here, we are
going to learn exactly how to harness
| | 00:37 | the power of the new color
features inside of Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Considering three types of color swatches| 00:01 | There are two basic ways to apply color
to your artwork inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:05 | One way is what I would like to refer
to as the Bob Ross method. You use the
| | 00:08 | Color panel here to custom mix primary colors.
| | 00:11 | So as you need a color, you simply mix
what you need and then you apply it to
| | 00:14 | your artwork. However, when you do so,
it can be quite tedious if you want to
| | 00:18 | repeat and use the color in
multiple areas of your document.
| | 00:21 | So that's why there is a second method
of applying colors inside of Illustrator
| | 00:24 | and that's what I would call the
Crayola method or working with swatches. If
| | 00:28 | you think about that big box of crayons,
like 64 or 128 crayons, you already
| | 00:32 | have all these predefined colors.
Whenever you want to use, you just pick up
| | 00:35 | that color crayon and you go to town.
| | 00:37 | Now in the world of Illustrator, you
actually have three different types of
| | 00:39 | swatches that you can use. First, I'll
show you how to create a swatch and then
| | 00:43 | we'll identify the three
different types that you can create.
| | 00:46 | Using the Color panel, you can mix
your own particular flavor of color. When
| | 00:49 | you have the color, simply take that
color and drag it into your Swatches
| | 00:53 | panel. For now, I'm going to delete
this actual swatch. I'm going to work with
| | 00:56 | the ones that already exist in this document.
| | 00:58 | Now the first type of swatch that you
can create is what's called a process
| | 01:01 | color swatch. When I say process, it
doesn't mean print. It just means that the
| | 01:05 | colors that are used to define that
swatch are made up of a combination or
| | 01:09 | mixture of primary colors.
| | 01:11 | If you are in RGB document, that
means that color is made up of different
| | 01:14 | values of Red, Green and Blue. If you
are working in a print document,
| | 01:17 | you might use CMYK or Cyan,
Magenta, Yellow, and Black.
| | 01:20 | You can easily see the values of any
color swatch by just double-clicking on it.
| | 01:23 | Notice over here, the Swatch
Options dialog box opens up. By default,
| | 01:27 | Illustrator always gives the actual
values of the color as its name, but you
| | 01:31 | can change that if you would like to.
| | 01:32 | Notice over here that Color Type is
set to Process Color. I'll go ahead and
| | 01:35 | I'll click OK and let's see exactly
how we actually apply these colors. It's
| | 01:39 | simple as selecting artwork on your
artboard and just clicking on the swatch.
| | 01:42 | I'll select a few more flowers here.
We'll apply this color here because I want
| | 01:46 | to talk about an important aspect of
process color swatches in Illustrator.
| | 01:49 | Once you have applied the color to the
artwork on your page, there is no longer
| | 01:53 | any connection between the artwork
itself and the swatch that resides in the
| | 01:56 | Swatches panel. As an analogy, let's
think about this in the real world.
| | 02:01 | Let's say the Swatches panel here was
actually a real can of paint. What I'm seeing
| | 02:04 | here is some graphics that are
being painted on to the wall.
| | 02:07 | Now, I can actually mix the color of
yellow and my can of paint here and I
| | 02:10 | could dip my brush in that particular
can of paint and paint it on the wall,
| | 02:13 | but if I then come back to my can of
paint and I add a whole much of blue to it
| | 02:16 | to make it, let's say for example,
more of a green color, that doesn't change
| | 02:20 | the paint that I have already put on to
the wall itself. In other words, I have
| | 02:24 | no artwork selected now in my document,
but I can come over here to the swatch
| | 02:27 | itself and double-click on
it and I can change its value.
| | 02:29 | I will add more cyan to this to give
it to a green hue. When I click OK,
| | 02:34 | you can see that the swatch itself is
updated but any of the artwork that already
| | 02:37 | had that particular yellow color
applied to it, doesn't change to green. So a
| | 02:41 | regular process color swatch in
Illustrator is great for applying color but it
| | 02:45 | really has no way to manage that
color once you have already applied it.
| | 02:47 | So I'll press Undo to return our swatch
back to the yellow color. That takes us
| | 02:52 | to the next type of color that we can
create inside of Illustrator, which is
| | 02:55 | what we refer to as a global process
swatch. For example, let's take a look at
| | 02:59 | this color right here. I'm going to
double-click on this color and I'm now
| | 03:02 | going to simply go over here where it
says Color Type. Notice I'm still leaving
| | 03:05 | it set to Process Color, but I'm going
to check this box here called Global.
| | 03:08 | So now I'm defining the second type of
a swatch. Before it was simply a Process
| | 03:12 | Color, now it's a Global Process Color.
A global process color is a managed
| | 03:16 | swatch. It basically retains the
connection between the swatch itself and any
| | 03:21 | artwork that you applied that color to.
To demonstrate that, I'll click OK.
| | 03:25 | Notice that over here if I look at
the swatch itself, it has a little white
| | 03:27 | triangle in the lower right-hand
corner. That right away identifies that
| | 03:31 | particular color swatch
as a global process swatch.
| | 03:34 | So now I'll go ahead and I'll select
these particular flowers in my document
| | 03:37 | right here and I'll color them all
with this swatch. I'll de-select the
| | 03:41 | artwork. If I decide now at any
point that I actually want to adjust that
| | 03:44 | particular color, I can double-click
on the swatch to bring up the Swatch
| | 03:47 | Options dialog box. I can adjust the
values. So for example, let me pull out
| | 03:51 | some of the cyan. When I click OK, you
can see that all the artwork that was on
| | 03:55 | the artboard, even though it
wasn't selected, has now been updated.
| | 03:59 | So when you are working with colors,
you can see how much more powerful a
| | 04:02 | global process swatch is over a
regular process swatch. In fact, taking a
| | 04:07 | closer look at the Color panel will
reveal an additional benefit to working
| | 04:10 | with global process colors. Notice if I
click on this yellow swatch right over
| | 04:14 | here, I have the regular sliders here
for C, M, Y, and K. If I want to, let's
| | 04:18 | say, apply a particular value over here
of color, that I want just a little bit
| | 04:21 | of a lighter shade of this color, I
don't have to figure out what that
| | 04:24 | particular breakdown might be.
| | 04:26 | However, if I click on one of these
colors right over here, I can see that I
| | 04:29 | now have an actual tint slider instead
of a CMYK breakdown. So if I wanted a
| | 04:34 | lighter tint of the color applied in
this particular case, I might choose to
| | 04:37 | adjust that slider. I still have the
same exact CMYK breakdown defined as my
| | 04:41 | swatch here, but I have now calculated
a tint value for that color here on my artboard.
| | 04:46 | Finally, there is a third type of
swatch inside of Illustrator, which is called
| | 04:49 | a spot color swatch. For example, I
have this background here, which uses this
| | 04:53 | swatch right here. I'm going to double
-click on it and I'm going to choose
| | 04:56 | instead of Process Color for
the type, I'll choose Spot Color.
| | 04:59 | Spot colors are automatically global in
nature and spot colors simply refers to
| | 05:03 | the way that the color are actually
being processed upon print time. Now as you
| | 05:06 | may know on a printing press, colors
are broken down into their primary colors,
| | 05:09 | for example, C, M, Y, and K.
| | 05:11 | However, a spot color is a custom
mixed ink. In fact, the most common type of
| | 05:16 | spot color you might use are Pantone
colors. Those are predefined colors that
| | 05:20 | are both a designer and a printer can
choose by number. In doing so, they can
| | 05:23 | ensure that they will get the same
exact color. Spot colors are also used for
| | 05:27 | special print processes. For example,
metallic inks, magnetic inks that are
| | 05:31 | used on checks or to indicate
things like varnishes and die cuts.
| | 05:36 | I will click OK here and you can see
that spot colors are identified by a white
| | 05:39 | triangle with a little dot inside of it.
Now as I mentioned before, the most
| | 05:43 | common type of spot color that's
probably used is Pantone colors. You can
| | 05:47 | actually load a Pantone color by going
over here to the Swatches panel, to the
| | 05:50 | Swatch Libraries menu, choosing Color
Books and then loading one of the Pantone
| | 05:55 | libraries, one of the most common
and probably the Solid Coated library.
| | 05:58 | Now there is a whole bunch of colors
inside of the Pantone library. So that may
| | 06:02 | be very difficult to actually kind of
scroll through these and find something
| | 06:05 | this way. So I actually changed the
view of what I'm looking at here.
| | 06:08 | I'll click on the little panel menu here
and I'll choose to view this in a Small
| | 06:12 | List View. If I want to find a
specific color, I'll actually come here and
| | 06:15 | choose to also Show the Find Field.
| | 06:17 | For example, I may want to find
Pantone 185, which is a red. So I'll type in
| | 06:22 | over here 185 and that brings up the
Pantone 185 color, which I can then add to
| | 06:27 | my document by dragging it into my
Swatches panel. Now there happens to be one
| | 06:30 | annoying thing about the actual find
field here in the Pantone Solid Coded
| | 06:34 | library and that's it doesn't always
find the color that you are looking for.
| | 06:37 | For example, if I type in 485 right
here, you can see that Pantone 1485
| | 06:41 | actually comes up. That's simply a way
that Illustrator actually goes ahead and
| | 06:45 | searches for the colors. It searches
for a string of the numbers 485 and
| | 06:49 | sometimes the 1485 comes up first. The
way to get around that is if you want a
| | 06:53 | specific number type in space 485, and
in that case there you can avoid those
| | 06:58 | kinds of issues.
| | 06:59 | So there you have the three types of
swatches inside of Illustrator; process
| | 07:03 | swatches, global process
swatches, and spot color swatches.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Managing color groups| 00:00 | When you start to add more and more
color swatches to your document, you may
| | 00:04 | find it difficult to actually find
those color swatches because things get a
| | 00:07 | little bit messy here in the Swatches panel.
| | 00:09 | Now you can actually organize
the swatches themselves by just
| | 00:12 | clicking-and-dragging and then to move
them around, but that's still a tedious
| | 00:15 | process. Even more so, as you start to
get out more colors, you can't control
| | 00:19 | how they wrap around and go to the next line.
| | 00:21 | So one of the nice things about the
Swatches panel itself is that you do have
| | 00:25 | the ability to organize your swatches
in something called color groups. In
| | 00:29 | fact, whenever you create a new
document, I'll just create a new print
| | 00:32 | document, for example, right here.
You will notice that inside of that
| | 00:35 | particular file, your
document already has many swatches.
| | 00:38 | Now these are just lose swatches, kind
of, lying around in your Swatches panel.
| | 00:41 | However, you can notice over here, you
have like these folders and there are
| | 00:44 | certain colors that exist only inside
of that folder. So this is what we refer
| | 00:47 | to as a color group. You could
easily create your own color groups.
| | 00:50 | So let's go back to the other
document right here and let's say I want to
| | 00:53 | create my own colors here. I can
simply go over here and click on this little
| | 00:56 | folder icon with the plus sign called
New Color Group. In doing so, I can give
| | 01:00 | it a name. So let's call
this one, flowers. Click OK.
| | 01:03 | If I want to now add colors to that
particular group, I can hold down my Shift
| | 01:07 | key here to actually select different
colors or I can hold down the Command key
| | 01:11 | or Ctrl key on Windows to actually
select non-contiguous colors and then drag
| | 01:15 | those into that folder. Now I have
added a color to that group. If you want to
| | 01:19 | remove colors from a group, you can simply
click on a color and drag it out of the group.
| | 01:23 | As we learn more and more about working
with color inside of Illustrator,
| | 01:26 | we'll see that there are certain functions
that take advantage of colors that live
| | 01:30 | within groups. In fact, the
Illustrator ships with many different swatch
| | 01:33 | libraries that you can use. Simply
go down over here where it says Swatch
| | 01:36 | Libraries menu and choose something
here, for example, called Foods and
| | 01:40 | let's open up Beverages.
| | 01:41 | You will notice that all these colors
here that exists are all within groups.
| | 01:45 | So if you want to add, for example,
Martini, and who wouldn't, you want to take
| | 01:49 | this particular folder and click on it
and drag it into your Swatches panel to
| | 01:53 | bring that entire group now into
your Swatches panel to your document.
| | 01:56 | Now there are additional ways of
creating color groups as well. Let me go ahead
| | 01:59 | and close this panel here. Let's
say I actually apply some colors to my
| | 02:02 | document but you know something, maybe
I'm not careful about creating swatches
| | 02:05 | for each of these colors.
| | 02:06 | What I'm about to show you right now
is actually pretty useful for times when
| | 02:09 | you are getting files from other
people. Maybe they just created colors but
| | 02:12 | without actually creating swatches for
them which makes it difficult for you as
| | 02:16 | a designer to continue to make
modifications or use the colors that they have
| | 02:20 | already applied in the document.
| | 02:21 | So what you can do is use your regular
Selection tool to select some artwork.
| | 02:25 | For example, I'll select these pieces
of artwork right here and because I have
| | 02:28 | artwork selected, I'll now see a
different behavior with this same icon over here,
| | 02:32 | the folder icon with the plus sign.
Now instead of creating a new color group,
| | 02:35 | which would be blank because I have
artwork selected, I get a dialog box
| | 02:39 | which allows me to create a color
group based on a selected artwork.
| | 02:43 | I also have a helpful button here that
will allow me to automatically convert
| | 02:46 | all my process swatches to global
swatches in the process. I'll call this one
| | 02:50 | fun flowers and click OK. Now you can
see that Illustrator automatically create
| | 02:55 | a global colors for me
right here in a new group.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding the HSB color wheel| 00:01 | We know that we can create groups
inside of Illustrator for our swatches that
| | 00:04 | allows us to basically organize the
colors that we see here in our Swatches
| | 00:08 | panel, but in reality, there is
another benefit to creating a color group
| | 00:11 | because it allows us to edit the
colors in a different way than just working
| | 00:14 | with the Color panel here.
| | 00:15 | For example, I'm going to create a
color group of all the colors that currently
| | 00:19 | exist in my document. I'll click on
this particular swatch right here.
| | 00:22 | I'll hold down the Shift key and then
click on this swatch to select them all.
| | 00:25 | Then I'll click on this button over here,
New Color Group, to turn them on to a
| | 00:28 | color group. I'll call this one flowers for now.
| | 00:31 | Now I see that I have created basically
a single group that contains all these
| | 00:34 | colors. Now I know that I can click
on any of these individual colors and
| | 00:38 | double-click on them and bring up the
Swatch Options dialog box where I could
| | 00:40 | actually modify the colors here, but
I also have the ability to modify the
| | 00:45 | group as a whole.
| | 00:46 | So take a look at this. I'm going to
click on the Cancel button. I'm now going
| | 00:49 | to double-click on the actual folder
icon right here. In doing so, the Edit
| | 00:54 | Colors dialog box comes up. Right now,
you can see if I click on this little
| | 00:57 | twirl down, all that colors that
exist in that group and they are all now
| | 01:01 | mapped on to this color wheel.
| | 01:03 | Now there is also a tremendous amount
of information going on inside of this
| | 01:06 | dialog box but for this movie, I
want to focus specifically on the wheel
| | 01:09 | itself. You will notice that each of
the colors that exist right here are
| | 01:13 | little circles and they are basically
telling us the position of where those
| | 01:16 | colors lie on this color wheel which
is using the HSB method for displaying
| | 01:20 | color. HSB standing for Hue,
Saturation, and Brightness.
| | 01:25 | Now you will also see that there
are lines that connect each of these
| | 01:28 | particular colors to the center. That
means that the relationship between all
| | 01:31 | these colors is now locked. In other
words, if I click and I drag and I move
| | 01:35 | one of these colors around,
the other colors move with it.
| | 01:38 | But if I want to move these colors
around independently, what I could do is I
| | 01:42 | could simply click on this button to
unlock them. Notice now I have dash lines
| | 01:45 | between them and now I can easily move
these colors around independently of each other.
| | 01:50 | In fact, what I'm doing right now is
I'm actually modifying this color in the
| | 01:53 | group the same way that if I would
actually double-click on it and change its sliders
| | 01:56 | but now I'm actually modifying the color
in a visual way. Now as I said before,
| | 02:01 | the color wheel itself uses the Hue,
Saturation, and Brightness method
| | 02:04 | for displaying color. Once you
understand how the color wheel works, you will
| | 02:08 | find it easy to modify the colors on the wheel.
| | 02:10 | Now the wheel itself displays the
visual spectrum of color in a clockwise or
| | 02:14 | counter-clockwise way around the wheel.
For example, if I grab this color and
| | 02:18 | as I start to move it in this
particular direction, I'm adjusting the hue of my
| | 02:23 | particular color. For example, going
from reds to blues to greens to yellows
| | 02:27 | and so on and so forth.
| | 02:27 | So I'm moving my color in this way. In
fact, if I move my cursor just over the
| | 02:32 | dotted line here, I would be forced to
adjust only the Hue value. Notice over
| | 02:36 | here this slider on the bottom. Right
now, where I have Hue/Saturation and
| | 02:39 | Brightness, as I click over here and drag,
I'm only adjusting the Hue value of my color.
| | 02:45 | As I bring my color towards the
center or towards the outer edge of this
| | 02:48 | circle, I'm adjusting the saturation
of that color. The center is completely
| | 02:52 | desaturated, so I'd only have values of
whites, blacks, and grays. As I move my
| | 02:57 | color out towards the edge of the
circle, I have fully saturated colors.
| | 03:01 | Finally, this slider here that
appears beneath the wheel controls the
| | 03:04 | brightness of the wheel. As I go
ahead and I adjust this, I'll be getting
| | 03:07 | darker colors or brighter colors.
| | 03:09 | An additional way to modify colors that
appear mapped on to the wheel is simply
| | 03:14 | to double-click on them. In doing so,
the Color Picker shows up and you can
| | 03:17 | actually move these particular colors
around here as well. Let me click Cancel
| | 03:21 | here to go back to the color wheel
itself. It's really important to get
| | 03:24 | familiar and comfortable with the
color wheel because as we are going to find
| | 03:27 | out, there are a lot of features
inside of Illustrator that take advantage of
| | 03:30 | working with this wheel.
| | 03:31 | Now I have modified the colors inside
of my group right now. So I can do one of
| | 03:35 | two things; I can either click OK to
actually accept the changes to this group
| | 03:39 | or if I really want to keep my
original group but I want to now save these
| | 03:42 | changes as a new group, I can come over
here to the top of this dialog box and
| | 03:47 | click on this button to create a new
color group. In doing so, when I click OK,
| | 03:51 | I now see that I have basically
started out with one group, modified some
| | 03:54 | colors and created a
completely new group in the process.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding color harmonies| 00:01 | We know that we can arrange our
swatches inside of Illustrator into groups
| | 00:04 | and these color groups can be edited
either in the Swatches panel itself or
| | 00:08 | also working with the color wheel. For
example, I can basically create a new
| | 00:12 | print document. I'm going to click OK here.
| | 00:15 | Notice that my swatches already have
some color groups defined inside of it.
| | 00:19 | Let's go to this one over here. This
one is refereed to as the Brights color.
| | 00:22 | I'm going to simply double-click on a
folder here to actually bring up the Edit
| | 00:25 | Colors dialog box, where I see each of
the colors that are now defined in that
| | 00:29 | group mapped on to a color wheel.
| | 00:31 | Now, I also know that I have the
ability to basically move these particular
| | 00:33 | colors around the color wheel itself
and then click on this button here to
| | 00:37 | actually create a new color group. So
I can use the Edit Colors dialog box to
| | 00:41 | also generate new color groups if I
want to as well. Now the color themselves
| | 00:46 | that appear in this particular group
are all linked together meaning that the
| | 00:49 | relationship between those
colors are kind of locked.
| | 00:51 | If I move one color, the other colors
move as well. At a very basic level, the
| | 00:56 | relationship between colors is what we
refer to an Illustrator as a harmony. If
| | 01:00 | we understand that the color wheel
itself, in this case, uses HSB or Hue,
| | 01:05 | Saturation, and Brightness, I can also
think of this relationship as some kind
| | 01:09 | of as some kind of scientific
method or scientific way of defining the
| | 01:12 | relationship between colors.
| | 01:14 | In fact, Illustrator itself has 23
different harmonies that are programmed into
| | 01:19 | the application. Again, these
harmonies are simply a way to define the
| | 01:22 | relationship between colors. You can
access each of these harmonies by going
| | 01:27 | over here to the top of the Edit
Colors dialog box and clicking on this area
| | 01:30 | called Harmony Rules.
| | 01:32 | Let's start with the most basic one
here called Complementary. A color's
| | 01:36 | complement is one that appears in the
exact opposite side of the color wheel.
| | 01:39 | For example, I see one color right here
and then I see its complement, which is
| | 01:43 | on the other side of the wheel. They
are tied together by this relationship.
| | 01:46 | Meaning that whenever I move one of
these colors, that one obviously moves the
| | 01:49 | other side of the wheel as well.
| | 01:52 | So let's take a look at some of the
other harmonies that Illustrator comes with.
| | 01:55 | I'm going to go back to the
pop-up list here and let's choose
| | 01:57 | Complementary 2. This one uses the
series of six different colors; three that
| | 02:01 | appear on one side of the wheel and
three that appear on the other. Going back
| | 02:05 | to the pop-up here, let's take a
look at something here called Analogous
| | 02:08 | colors. These are colors that all
have the exact same saturation level.
| | 02:12 | However, they are different in
different values of the hue. In fact, something
| | 02:16 | somewhat similar would be Monochromatic
colors. Those are colors that all have
| | 02:20 | the exact same hue but vary in saturation.
| | 02:23 | Going further down this list, you will
actually see some of here called Triad.
| | 02:27 | Triads are ones that have the colors
basically split at three different parts
| | 02:30 | of the color wheel. Now again, these
harmonies themselves are simply scientific
| | 02:34 | ways to determine a relationship
between colors. There is no such thing as a
| | 02:38 | good harmony or a bad harmony; it's
just a way if you would identify how colors
| | 02:42 | might work. This can be extremely
helpful if you try to develop a palette of
| | 02:45 | colors that work well for a specific task.
| | 02:48 | As we'll soon see, working with color
harmonies in other areas of Illustrator
| | 02:52 | really allow you as a designer to
focus on your designs and get inspired by color.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the color guide| 00:00 | So you are cranking away at your
awesome illustration and there comes time to
| | 00:04 | actually apply some colors. Now you
may have some colors to start with, but
| | 00:07 | maybe you are looking for some
inspiration. You want to be able to actually add
| | 00:10 | additional colors and you also want to
make sure that there is new colors that
| | 00:13 | are used actually work well
with your existing colors.
| | 00:16 | Well, Illustrator has the perfect tool
for you. It's called the Color Guide.
| | 00:19 | Let me move my artwork just a little
bit over here to the side and I'm actually
| | 00:22 | going to pull out my Color Guide panel
right over here. I'll march the panel
| | 00:26 | just a little bit and let's take a
look and see exactly how this works here
| | 00:29 | inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:30 | First, let's identify a few basic
things or parts about the Color Guide itself.
| | 00:34 | There is a button here, which allows
us to set the base color to our current
| | 00:37 | color from a variety of Harmony Rules.
If I click on this button over here,
| | 00:41 | I can actually choose between
23 different Harmony Rules.
| | 00:44 | The Color Guide itself then displays a
variety of shades and tints of color,
| | 00:49 | based on the harmony that I have chosen.
So let's see exactly how this works.
| | 00:53 | Now what I can do is I can come over
to my Swatches panel and I can click on
| | 00:56 | any color here, for example, this
one right here. In doing so, it will
| | 01:00 | basically generate how much of the
colors based in the harmony that's chosen.
| | 01:03 | These colors which all exist now inside
of that harmony are actually displayed
| | 01:07 | here in the center of the Color Guide.
To the left of those colors are all
| | 01:10 | shades or darker versions of that
particular color and to the right are tints
| | 01:15 | or lighter colors of those colors as well.
| | 01:17 | If I like any of these colors, I can
simply click on them and drag them into my
| | 01:20 | Swatches panel to add them to my
swatches. Alternatively, I can hold down the
| | 01:24 | Command key and click on several of
them and then click on this button over
| | 01:27 | here to actually define a New Color
Group inside of my Swatches panel. For
| | 01:30 | example, let's say I want to work
with Complementary Colors. I'll actually
| | 01:34 | click from this list over here, Complementary 2.
| | 01:36 | Now, whenever I click on any color on
my Swatches panel, the color guide will
| | 01:40 | suggest colors that are complementary
to my color. Now there are also a few
| | 01:44 | various settings that I could use to
control exactly how the Color Guide
| | 01:47 | actually makes these suggestions. For
example, I'll come out over here to the
| | 01:50 | flyout menu or the panel menu over
here for the Color Guide and I'll choose
| | 01:54 | Color Guide Options.
| | 01:56 | Notice it over here where it says
Variation Options. It says for a number of
| | 01:59 | Steps 4. What that means is that for
each version of Tints and Shades, it gives
| | 02:04 | me four different steps in
that particular direction.
| | 02:07 | So remember here at the center area
of the swatches here are actually these
| | 02:11 | colors that appear in the harmony
itself. So the first color is actually the
| | 02:15 | color that I clicked on right over
here. The other colors are automatically
| | 02:18 | generated based on the harmony that I
choose and then all of these colors are
| | 02:21 | displayed down here in the center row.
Because I have my Step set to 4, I'm now
| | 02:26 | seeing four shades of each of those
colors and also four tints of each of those
| | 02:30 | colors as well.
| | 02:32 | Now the amount of variation that
appears between this particular color and this
| | 02:35 | one and this one are set to the More
value, but if I would adjust this slider
| | 02:39 | to be Less then I would see that the
variation from here to here is obviously
| | 02:43 | not as sharp and I could, of
course, adjust that as well.
| | 02:46 | So now the colors somewhat change
little bit more so in nature but as we'll go
| | 02:50 | towards the More area, they take a more
exaggerated approach as they move down
| | 02:54 | the line. Now if I want, I can reduce
the number of the steps here. Three is
| | 02:58 | the fewest number that you can use and
you can even go all the way up to #20.
| | 03:01 | In doing so, you generate lots of
different variations of your color.
| | 03:04 | I'll click OK and show you that if you
want to, obviously, there are lots little
| | 03:08 | tiny swatches here. What I can do is
stand my Color Guide this way to see more
| | 03:12 | variations of my colors.
| | 03:14 | Now the number of colors that you see
here is actually tied directly to the
| | 03:17 | numbers that appear inside of your
harmony. For example, if I were just to
| | 03:20 | choose the Complementary 1, which is a
harmony made of only two colors, I only
| | 03:24 | see two rows of colors here. But one of
the really nice things about the Color
| | 03:27 | Guide is that it also works for color
groups. Meaning if I go over here and I
| | 03:31 | click on not just a regular swatch
itself but the actual entire group, the
| | 03:34 | entire group gets loaded here into
this and variations of that group are also
| | 03:38 | offered as well.
| | 03:39 | In theory, I can have a group that
contains something like 50 colors and I
| | 03:42 | would definitely see a row of 50
colors here as well. So the color guide is a
| | 03:46 | great tool to use when you need to get
inspired around working with color. That
| | 03:49 | I'll tell you then in the next movie,
we are going to see how to take this
| | 03:51 | Color Guide to a whole new level entirely.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Limiting the color guide| 00:00 | The Color Guide is a great tool to use
to derive color inspiration inside of
| | 00:04 | Illustrator. But I'll tell you that I
had somewhat of a problem with working
| | 00:07 | with the Color Guide. And that's
because the color that it suggests, in other words,
| | 00:10 | when I click on any color here
in the Swatches panel, the colors that
| | 00:13 | are being suggested to me right here
are basically colors that exist in the
| | 00:17 | entire color spectrum or in the case,
you have Illustrator, anything within
| | 00:20 | that HSB color wheel.
| | 00:22 | Let's say I'm working in a print
document. For example, right here, I'm working
| | 00:25 | in the CMYK document. This may be
suggesting colors that are RGB in nature that
| | 00:29 | can never be reproduced in CMYK or
maybe I'm working on some kind of cloth
| | 00:33 | pattern here that I can only
work with a certain range of colors.
| | 00:37 | So while in theory it's nice that the
Color Guide suggests colors to me, it may
| | 00:40 | be suggesting colors that I may never
be able to use. It's almost like walking
| | 00:44 | through a restaurant that has every
single type of food appearing on the menu
| | 00:48 | but each time you want to choose one of
those items, you are told by the waiter
| | 00:50 | that they don't carry that type of food.
| | 00:52 | So what would really be helpful about
the Color Guide is if it suggested colors
| | 00:56 | to me that I knew that I could always
use. Well, guess what, you can do just
| | 01:00 | that with the Color Guide panel. In
fact, it all lies here in this single,
| | 01:04 | little, tiny icon that appears in the
lower left-hand corner of the panel.
| | 01:08 | This icon allows us to limit the
Color Guide to only work within a certain
| | 01:12 | range of specified colors. So like I
said before, when I go ahead and I click
| | 01:15 | on a swatch here, the colors that
I'm seeing generated here come from the
| | 01:19 | entire HSB color wheel. But if I went
out and click on this icon, I can see
| | 01:23 | that I can actually load a specific
set of swatches into my Color Guide. I do
| | 01:28 | so in this form of these libraries.
| | 01:29 | For example, let's say, I'm working
inside of web design. I know that I only
| | 01:33 | want to work with web-safe colors. By
choosing the Web-safe Color panel, now my
| | 01:37 | Color Guide is programmed to only
work within that particular palette of
| | 01:40 | colors. You can see over here that
right now the word, Web, is displayed. So
| | 01:44 | right now my Color Guide is limited to
only working within the web-safe color
| | 01:48 | palette. Now when I choose any of
these colors, the colors that are being
| | 01:52 | suggested are all web-safe colors.
| | 01:54 | Let me give you another example. Say,
you working on some kind of project
| | 01:57 | that's working with spot colors. You
know that you have to use Pantone colors.
| | 02:01 | Well, you may want to get suggestions
of colors to use, but obviously, those
| | 02:05 | colors can only come from the Pantone
color library. Again, come down to this
| | 02:08 | icon over here, click on Color Books,
choose Pantone maybe Solid Coated here
| | 02:14 | and every single color now that gets
suggested by this particular Color Guide
| | 02:18 | will always be Pantone colors.
| | 02:20 | In fact, here is a little secret.
Sometimes you may be working with colors and
| | 02:24 | you may find out from a client that you
need to process or print that job with
| | 02:28 | just a spot color. I may have actually
specified this particular color, which
| | 02:31 | is now made up of 4% magenta and 50%
yellow, but how do I find what the nearest
| | 02:36 | Pantone color is for that one color?
Well remember, when I click on a swatch
| | 02:39 | here, the Color Guide uses
that color as its base color.
| | 02:43 | So therefore, the first color that
appears right here is this actual color, but
| | 02:47 | since I have limited my Color Guide
to only work with Pantone colors, this
| | 02:51 | color in the center which is this color
right here is the closest Pantone color
| | 02:55 | match to that color. By simply
clicking and dragging the swatch now to my
| | 02:59 | Swatches panel, I can now find that
the nearest color to that is Pantone 127.
| | 03:03 | Now the Color Guide has a tremendous
amount of value to me as a designer. Not
| | 03:07 | only can I have it suggest colors to
me that work and that I can be inspired
| | 03:11 | with those colors, I can also feed
into the Color Guide the exact range of
| | 03:14 | colors that I want to work with.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modifying color with the Recolor Artwork feature| 00:01 | As a designer, having to change colors
constantly is simply part of the job,
| | 00:05 | and that can be also a very
difficult process in complex illustrations,
| | 00:09 | especially when there are many
different colors used in a variety of places.
| | 00:12 | Things like gradient stops inside of
symbols or patterns. Having to go in and
| | 00:16 | select those areas or those objects,
even those parts of different swatches or
| | 00:20 | colors can be very, very difficult.
| | 00:22 | Now, we've already discussed the
different types of swatches that you can have
| | 00:25 | inside of Illustrator. And we know
that using things like global process
| | 00:28 | swatches do help us make changes to a
document more easily than with regular
| | 00:33 | process swatches.
| | 00:34 | But designers are often called upon
make to complex edits. For example, on a
| | 00:38 | document like this called floral_design
_2, I may have a variety of different
| | 00:42 | colors that are being used, and I may
need to convert that entire piece of
| | 00:45 | artwork through using just one color.
| | 00:47 | So it's not just changing a blue to a
purple, or something like that, sometimes
| | 00:51 | modifying color can include working
with tints and shades of color as well. So
| | 00:55 | that's where this feature called
Recolor Artwork comes into play. No matter how
| | 00:59 | colors apply to your document itself,
the Recolor Artwork feature allows you to
| | 01:02 | modify those colors, even if you don't
even have any swatches defined for those colors.
| | 01:06 | So, let's take a look at that feature.
First I'm actually going to open up here
| | 01:09 | my panel, and I want to show you
that in my Swatches panel I already have
| | 01:12 | several groups of colors that I have
defined. I have actually pull all of these
| | 01:16 | from the Preset Libraries that
Illustrator ships with. If I go down over here
| | 01:19 | to Nature and to Flowers, so you'll
notice that I have things like Poppy, Iris,
| | 01:25 | Birds of paradise, so on and so forth.
| | 01:27 | So I have these swatches that
already exist inside of groups. And this is
| | 01:30 | actually important to note. When I'm
working with the Recolor Artwork feature
| | 01:33 | inside of Illustrator, colors that
appear within groups are more easily
| | 01:36 | accessible as we are soon going to see.
| | 01:38 | Now the first important thing to note
about the Recolor Artwork feature is that
| | 01:42 | it works on selected artwork. So that
means that you actually have to make a
| | 01:45 | selection. The good thing about this
is that it allows you to make targeted
| | 01:48 | changes to certain areas of your
document. For example, if you want to change
| | 01:51 | some colors on a foreground but not
on a background, you can lock those
| | 01:54 | background layers and then go ahead
and choose the artwork that you want to change.
| | 01:57 | The downside of course to this is that
you do have to unlock your objects and
| | 02:01 | select them if you want to work
with them. Now many times we may have a
| | 02:04 | document that has whole bunch of
different locked layers, or locked objects.
| | 02:07 | You would have to unlock them in order
to use this feature. But I'll show you,
| | 02:10 | by the way, that you don't have to
worry about the selection process at all.
| | 02:13 | When you choose to select all your
artwork later on we'll be able to define
| | 02:16 | exactly which colors will
change and which will not.
| | 02:19 | So I have nothing to lock in my
document right now, and I'm simply going to
| | 02:22 | press Command+A or Ctrl+A to select all
of my artwork. Now there are two basic
| | 02:26 | ways to launch the Recolor Artwork
feature. I can either go to the control
| | 02:29 | panel, and then click on this icon
right over here called Recolor Artwork, or I
| | 02:34 | can go to the Edit menu, then I could
choose Edit Colors, and then I could
| | 02:37 | choose here Recolor Artwork. This opens
up the Recolor Artwork dialog box, and
| | 02:42 | in fact we'll just take a quick look at
exactly what this dialog box offers and
| | 02:46 | we'll see how to use it.
| | 02:47 | Now at first glance you'll also notice
that there are two buttons at the top,
| | 02:50 | one called the Assign, one called
Edit. We've actually seen this Edit
| | 02:54 | functionality before when working
with editing the colors inside of a color
| | 02:57 | group. We have the HSB color wheel,
and we see that we have the ability to
| | 03:01 | actually move these colors around if we want to.
| | 03:03 | Now in reality, the Edit tab and the
Assign tab are showing us the exact same
| | 03:07 | information, but in two very different
ways. Think about right now the Recolor
| | 03:10 | Artwork button is simply showing to me
the colors that I currently have in my
| | 03:13 | active selection.
| | 03:14 | If we go to the Edit tab first, I
basically see my colors that are put on to a
| | 03:18 | visual map. Think about Google Maps,
I have those little pushpins that
| | 03:21 | basically identify different areas on
a map. So these circles are identifying
| | 03:25 | the colors that exist in my selection
right now. When I go to the Assign tab,
| | 03:29 | I'm basically seeing things as if I
were reading a phone book. I see a list of
| | 03:32 | all my colors.
| | 03:34 | Now it's interesting to note that
Illustrator list the colors in the order of
| | 03:37 | their Hue. So for example, if I go
back to the Edit tab here I can see that I
| | 03:40 | have this color right here, then
if I start to move around in this
| | 03:43 | counter-clockwise direction, I can see
that the colors over here are assigned
| | 03:47 | very much in that same way.
| | 03:48 | Now in reality when most people take a
look at this Recolor Artwork feature,
| | 03:52 | they jump to the Edit tab, they click
on this little button over here to lock
| | 03:55 | the relationship between the colors,
and then if they want to go ahead and
| | 03:58 | generate a variety of different ways
of working with these colors, they could
| | 04:00 | simply go ahead and create different
variations of those colors in their document.
| | 04:04 | Another way that you can change the
colors in your document is simply by
| | 04:07 | choosing another color group. By
clicking on any color group here on the right
| | 04:10 | side of the dialog box, I can replace
the colors that currently exist in my
| | 04:14 | document with the ones that exists in a group.
| | 04:16 | So for example, if I click on this one,
Hydrangea, all my color is now changed
| | 04:19 | to those colors. I click on these for
example and others. So if I've created
| | 04:23 | these groups of colors, again this
is one of the benefits of working with
| | 04:25 | groups, I could easily
swap one group for another.
| | 04:28 | Now there is one important thing to
note about the Recolor Artwork dialog box.
| | 04:32 | There is the no Undue button. So once I
go ahead and apply some kind of change,
| | 04:35 | I can't simply press Command+Z or Ctrl+
Z to undo that rest action. So if I go
| | 04:39 | here for example and I change to this
Hydrangea group, I have no way to press
| | 04:43 | Undo to go back to the
Iris group as I did before.
| | 04:45 | The one saving grace in the Recolor
Artwork dialog box is this button right here.
| | 04:48 | It basically resamples the artwork f
rom your original artwork that you
| | 04:52 | have selected and reloads those
colors back on to the color wheel. So
| | 04:56 | it's almost like a Reset button. So it's
not an Undo, you can't go back one step
| | 04:59 | backwards or a two step backwards, but
you could definitely start refreshing in
| | 05:02 | by clicking on this button. And now
that basically returns my artwork to the
| | 05:05 | original state that it was and maps
those colors back on to the color wheel.
| | 05:09 | Now we'll discuss this specific
functionality of both the Edit and the Assign
| | 05:12 | tabs in a different movie, but for
now you want to close with one important
| | 05:16 | aspect about the Recolor Artwork
dialog box, and that's this checkbox here on
| | 05:20 | the bottom called Recolor Art.
| | 05:22 | Now you'll notice as you go ahead
and you'll spin the wheel over here for
| | 05:24 | example to change or modify these
colors, or if you change between different
| | 05:27 | groups for example, you can see that
the artwork on my artboard is now being
| | 05:30 | changed. That's because the
Recolor Art button is now checked.
| | 05:34 | A lot of people just think that the
Recolor Art button is like a Preview
| | 05:36 | button, it's not. It's actually
telling Illustrator that you want to recolor
| | 05:39 | that artwork. Why is that important?
Well, that's because you can use the
| | 05:43 | colors mapped on to your wheel to
actually generate new color groups without
| | 05:47 | changing the artwork itself.
| | 05:48 | For example, I come here and I'll reset
the colors again, and maybe what I want
| | 05:52 | to do is I want to click on this Lock
button here, and I want to generate some
| | 05:55 | new interesting colors
using that kind of harmony.
| | 05:57 | But I want to come here and I want to
save that as a new group, but if I were
| | 06:00 | to click OK right now, I would now be
overriding those colors and changing the
| | 06:03 | colors of my selection. I may just
want to start over those colors and then
| | 06:06 | create a new group of modified colors.
By unchecking the Recolor Art button,
| | 06:10 | I'm leaving the colors of my document
alone but using them to generate new
| | 06:14 | color groups.
| | 06:15 | Now that we understand some of the
basic functionality of the Recolor Artwork
| | 06:18 | dialog box, we can begin to learn
about all the power that it bring to us as
| | 06:22 | designers through both the
Edit and the Assign tabs.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Edit tab to adjust color| 00:01 | The Recolor Artwork feature inside of
Illustrator is incredibly complex. To
| | 00:05 | launch the feature, I actually select
all of my artwork, I'll press Command+A
| | 00:08 | on the Mac, or Ctrl+A on Windows, and
then I'll click on the Recolor Artwork
| | 00:12 | button that appears here in the control panel.
| | 00:14 | Now between the Assign tab and the
Edit tab is a whole lot going on inside of
| | 00:17 | the dialog box. But in this movie I
want to focus specifically on working with
| | 00:21 | the Edit tab. So let's take
a look at what we have here.
| | 00:23 | First of all, I'm actually going to
click on this button here. I'm actually
| | 00:25 | going to choose to Hide the Groups. We
don't really need to see that, we don't
| | 00:29 | need to focus on that information right
now, we are not working with the color
| | 00:31 | group themselves, so let's
not get distracted by it.
| | 00:34 | Now as we know here, I'm looking at the
HSB color wheel. I'm seeing every color
| | 00:38 | that's currently in my illustration
that's been selected, and those colors are
| | 00:42 | mapped on to the color wheel. The
dashed line that I see here actually
| | 00:45 | indicates that I can move each of these
colors independently of each other. If
| | 00:49 | I go down over here to the bottom right,
and I click on this Link icon, I can
| | 00:52 | lock the colors or I can say I can
lock the relationship between the colors.
| | 00:56 | That way when I move one color,
all the other colors move with it.
| | 00:59 | As far as the color wheel itself,
as I move in a clockwise or a
| | 01:02 | counter-clockwise rotation around the
wheel itself, I can change the hue of
| | 01:07 | that color, I can change the
saturation of colors by dragging colors towards
| | 01:11 | the center to desaturate, or towards
the outside of the circle to saturate them.
| | 01:15 | And I can also drag this slider to
adjust the brightness levels of the color wheel.
| | 01:20 | However, I may want to work with the
color wheel in a different way, and if I
| | 01:23 | click on this icon right here I
basically swap the saturation or brightness
| | 01:27 | values. Right now, I have the hue and
the brightness settings here, and the
| | 01:32 | saturation values are now here on the
slider. So this button over here actually
| | 01:36 | toggles this slider to either be
Brightness or Saturation. Likewise, I have
| | 01:40 | three possible ways of looking at this color
wheel and the colors that are mapped to it.
| | 01:44 | Right now I'm seeing all of these
colors here around the wheel, but I can click
| | 01:46 | on this option over here to actually
display the wheel as a segmenting color
| | 01:50 | wheel. Alternatively, I can get rid
off the wheel altogether and just look at
| | 01:54 | my colors as if they were displayed by bars.
| | 01:56 | They go back to the original color
wheel, and you'll notice that when I go
| | 01:59 | ahead and I click any of these circles
to select those particular colors, I see
| | 02:03 | in the bottom here these HSB Sliders
which allow me to see the values for that color.
| | 02:08 | We've always been moving colors
around on the wheel, but that's really no
| | 02:11 | precise way of working with color. If I
know a specific value I want to go to,
| | 02:15 | it will be very difficult to eyeball
that on the wheel itself. So for example,
| | 02:18 | if I unlock my colors right here, I can
actually adjust these sliders here and
| | 02:22 | see that color changing on
in my particular color wheel.
| | 02:25 | Now if I don't want to work with HSB,
that's actually okay, because I can go to
| | 02:28 | this little icon right here and click
on it, and change my sliders to either
| | 02:31 | RGB, CMYK, a Web Safe RGB panel, or
I can work with Lab colors as well.
| | 02:38 | If these colors would have been global
or spot colors they would also be able
| | 02:41 | to adjust their Tint values here. For
example, here I'll choose CMYK and I'll
| | 02:45 | see that I have the CMYK sliders that
I can adjust the same way that I would
| | 02:48 | normally adjust colors, had I been using
the Color panels inside of Illustrator.
| | 02:52 | Now why wouldn't they just do that
inside of Illustrator with the Color panel?
| | 02:55 | Well remember, I actually selected
all of my artwork right here, but even
| | 02:58 | though all of my artwork is selected, I
can click on only one color to modify.
| | 03:02 | In Illustrator, there would be no way
for me to do that directly to the Color panel.
| | 03:05 | Now I made a few changes here, I'm
going to click on this button over here, to
| | 03:08 | actually reload my color wheel with
the original colors that were found in my
| | 03:11 | selection, because there is no actual
undo inside of the Recolor Artwork dialog
| | 03:14 | box, as I make changes to my artwork
here, and I make changes over here, as you
| | 03:18 | can see with the colors. I'll click on
the Recolor Art button, and if I want to
| | 03:21 | go back or reset or start from the
beginning again, I can simply click on this
| | 03:24 | button here to reload the color
wheel with the colors that come from that
| | 03:28 | particular selection.
| | 03:29 | Finally, you may remember that when
working with the color guide itself, we had
| | 03:33 | to the ability to limit the color guide
to only work within a certain range of
| | 03:36 | colors. Well, that same functionality
exists here inside of the Recolor Artwork
| | 03:40 | dialog box, and that could
actually make this incredibly powerful.
| | 03:43 | For example, the colors that I now have
selected are all being mapped onto this
| | 03:47 | color wheel. But let's say I want to
find the nearest Pantone colors to all
| | 03:50 | these colors that I'm working with.
Well, I can come to this icon right over
| | 03:53 | here, and actually load a specific
library. When I load a library, the color
| | 03:57 | wheel will only be allowed to use the
colors that are present in that library.
| | 04:00 | So for example, if I choose now
Pantone Solid Coated, notice the color wheel
| | 04:04 | itself will be limited to only
working with Pantone colors. I no longer see
| | 04:07 | those smooth variations of colors.
These are the colors that are available as
| | 04:10 | Pantone colors. In fact, if you look at
my selected colors, you'll see now that
| | 04:14 | they have all been
mapped depends on colors here.
| | 04:16 | If I wanted to capture this information,
let's expand this so that I can see
| | 04:19 | the groups that I'm working with, and
create a new group with the colors that I
| | 04:22 | have just specified. If I don't want to
actually change the colors here, but I
| | 04:27 | just want to see what those Pantone
colors look like, I can uncheck the Recolor
| | 04:30 | Art box. Now when I click OK, I'm
going to add up a new group inside of
| | 04:33 | Illustrator that contains all the
Pantone colors. But I haven't adjusted any of
| | 04:37 | the artwork on my page.
| | 04:38 | I'll give you another example of
where this might be helpful. Say you've
| | 04:41 | performed some kind of a Live Trace
or you have some piece of artwork that
| | 04:43 | somebody else created, and you now
need to modify the colors in that to match
| | 04:47 | just something specific. Well, all
you need to do is, go over here and make
| | 04:49 | sure that you sample your original
colors in the beginning of your artwork.
| | 04:52 | Come down here and limit your
particular color wheel to a specific library. For
| | 04:56 | example, let's say this Corporate
Library actually has lot of colors that I
| | 04:59 | want to use. By choosing that
library, I could only work within those
| | 05:02 | particular ranges of colors. And if I
click on the Recolor Art button here,
| | 05:05 | I can now see that all of the artwork
that I've created has now been removed
| | 05:08 | over, and only uses
colors found in that library.
| | 05:11 | I'll reload the colors once again here
from the original piece of artwork, and
| | 05:14 | I'll show that you can also double-
click on any color to bring up to actual
| | 05:17 | color picker where you could choose to
modify the colors manually in this way
| | 05:20 | as well. In fact, this is also a great
way to just simply copy and paste the
| | 05:23 | hex color that you might need for
working inside of HTML, or Dreamweaver, or
| | 05:27 | Fireworks, or Flash, or any
other web design application.
| | 05:30 | I'll cancel out of this, and you can
obviously see that the Edit tab here in
| | 05:33 | the Recolor Artwork dialog box, has
lots of functionality built into it.
| | 05:37 | Now it may seem like a lot, but remember
you don't need to use all these features
| | 05:40 | all the time, but just take things
one step at a time and you'll do just fine.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Assign tab to replace colors| 00:01 | Without a doubt, one of the most
powerful aspects of the Recolor Artwork
| | 00:04 | feature inside of Illustrator is its
ability to make precise color replacement.
| | 00:09 | This function is actually done
through the Assign tab found in the Recolor
| | 00:12 | Artwork dialog box. But before I open
that dialog box, I'm first going to add a
| | 00:17 | color or two to our Swatches panel,
and again it's important to realize that
| | 00:20 | when you are working with Recolor
Artwork, it's always best to prepare your
| | 00:23 | colors that you want to use in advance.
| | 00:25 | Once you're actually inside of the
Recolor Artwork dialog box, it's too late to
| | 00:29 | start messing around and trying to
find and create your color. So one of the
| | 00:33 | exercises that I want to explore in
this particular movie is converting this
| | 00:36 | beautiful full color artwork into like
a one color or a two color spot color
| | 00:41 | job, so maybe only using
two different Pantone colors.
| | 00:44 | So I'll go to my Swatches panel, and
I'll click on this button over here called
| | 00:48 | Swatch Libraries menu. I'll go to Color
Books, Pantone Solid Coated, and let's
| | 00:53 | just add a few colors arbitrarily. I
know I'm just going to take some regular
| | 00:56 | plain colors here. Let's do Reflex Blue,
and let's choose like a Red color here
| | 01:00 | as my Pantone Red 032.
| | 01:01 | So we have those two colors. Right now,
I'm going to close this panel and one
| | 01:05 | important thing that I'm going to
point out here is that, I did not put these
| | 01:08 | into a color group, I left these
basically floating free inside of the Swatches
| | 01:12 | panel and as we see we'll work now
inside of the Recolor Artwork dialog box.
| | 01:17 | I'll see why generally it's best to
put this into a group. But I just want to
| | 01:20 | be able to contrast and show you what
difference is between colors that live in
| | 01:23 | groups and colors that do not.
| | 01:25 | Now I'm going to hit Command+A or Ctrl+
A to actually select all the objects in
| | 01:29 | this particular document that's called
floral_design_2. And I want to change
| | 01:33 | all its colors. I want to convert
them by either using one or two different
| | 01:36 | spot colors to explore each
of those specific options.
| | 01:38 | So with my artwork selected, I'm going
to go over here to the Recolor Artwork
| | 01:42 | button and I'll now open up the
Recolor Artwork dialog box, and right away
| | 01:45 | Illustrator brings me here to the
Assign tab. I'll move it here just to the
| | 01:48 | right side over here, so that we can
see on the left side all the artwork that
| | 01:52 | we are looking at.
| | 01:53 | Now the first thing to notice,
remember that we created those new two Pantone
| | 01:56 | colors, but they were not added to any
group. As far as ease of accessibility
| | 02:00 | goes, I really can't see those Pantone
colors at all unless they were inside of a group.
| | 02:04 | So in order to find those Pantone
colors, we just have to go digging a little
| | 02:07 | bit deeper, but we'll get to that in a
moment. The first thing to notice that
| | 02:10 | right now inside of our documents
we currently have seven colors, and
| | 02:13 | Illustrator provides each of
those colors here in a list.
| | 02:16 | Well, these are each of the colors
that appear in the document, each of these
| | 02:20 | areas here. For example, these distinct
rows that exist here are referred to as
| | 02:23 | color rows. In fact, what these color
rows will actually represent is a formula.
| | 02:28 | Illustrator is letting me know that
right now this color exists in my document.
| | 02:32 | The arrow that appears here means
that that color will change, and then the
| | 02:35 | color here is kind of the end of
equation. That color will change into this new
| | 02:39 | color. So as we can see here we have
Current Colors and then we have New
| | 02:42 | Colors. And again, each row basically
tells me that this color here will change
| | 02:46 | into this color.
| | 02:47 | Now by default, the first time that I
launch the dialog box and I move to the
| | 02:51 | Assign tab here, Illustrator
automatically remaps each color to itself.
| | 02:55 | So in that way, no color changes here in my
artboard. But you can actually drag these
| | 02:59 | colors around. For example, say I
wanted all objects that were currently filled
| | 03:02 | with this yellow color, we fill with
this purple color. Well, I can click on
| | 03:06 | this color right here and drag it up
over here, and now what I specify is that
| | 03:09 | all objects that had this color,
now get changed into this color.
| | 03:12 | Now remember there is no Undo here
inside of the Recolor Artwork dialog box.
| | 03:15 | I'm just going to click on this button
right over here to basically re-bring
| | 03:18 | the colors back inside of the dialog
again. So as I discussed in the beginning,
| | 03:22 | my goal here is to actually turn all
these particular colors in this document
| | 03:26 | to just one color. I want, let's say,
to create just a one-color job. Maybe
| | 03:29 | we'll use that Pantone Reflex Blue.
| | 03:31 | Now obviously, if I simply just
choose Pantone Reflex Blue for all this
| | 03:35 | artwork, I'm just going to get one
solid block of blue. Instead what I would
| | 03:38 | like to do is I would like to have
Illustrator look at each of these objects
| | 03:42 | and convert them to different
values or tints of that Pantone color.
| | 03:46 | So what I can do is come over here
where it says Colors, and right now it's set
| | 03:49 | to Auto. That means that Illustrator
is automatically giving us the exact
| | 03:52 | number of colors that appear inside of
our document. But I'm going to change
| | 03:55 | that to one. In doing so, you could see
that Illustrator collapsed and took all
| | 03:59 | the colors of my document. Right now
there are seven colors, I see a black and
| | 04:03 | white and then I see the other five
colors here, and Illustrator now is
| | 04:06 | converting all of these colors to one new color.
| | 04:10 | Now, if I want that one new color
to be the Pantone Reflex Blue, I'll
| | 04:13 | double-click on this icon to bring up
the Color Picker. Then again I'll click
| | 04:16 | on Color Swatches, as I want to see all
the swatches in my document. I'll move
| | 04:20 | this particular arrow up towards the
top over here, where I have my Pantone
| | 04:23 | Reflex Blue. I'll click OK, and now
I've successfully told Illustrator to remap
| | 04:27 | all my color to Reflex Blue.
| | 04:29 | However, you may note before that it
says over here Current Colors (7), but I
| | 04:33 | now only see five colors here, and
then I see black and white here. In fact,
| | 04:37 | this really won't separate as a true
one-color job. That's because I now have
| | 04:41 | black ink here.
| | 04:42 | So the reason why this happens is
because, by default, Illustrator has the
| | 04:46 | ability to protect certain colors. The
default setting inside of Illustrator is
| | 04:50 | to always protect black and white. That's
because usually you want those colors to stay.
| | 04:54 | For example, let's see you have lots of
text in your file, and that text is all
| | 04:57 | colored black. When you want to go
ahead and change colors you may want to
| | 05:00 | leave that text to be Black, or if you
have illustrations that use ink lines or
| | 05:04 | outlines and those are colored black,
you may want to leave those inking lines
| | 05:07 | black, while changing all the colors
inside of them. But we can actually change
| | 05:10 | that by just turning on
the arrow for that color.
| | 05:13 | Now see where it says two colors, I'm
actually going to change that now back to
| | 05:16 | one, and I'll see that the black was
now incorporated in that and now the job
| | 05:19 | is completely remapped to a new color.
I'm going to reload the original colors
| | 05:23 | again because I want to show you now
an alternative method of doing that.
| | 05:26 | In fact, let's say right now I want to
reduce my document to only use two spot
| | 05:29 | colors. So the first task that I'm
going to have is first identifying where
| | 05:32 | those particular colors exist in my
document. Now this is a fairly simple
| | 05:36 | document, but you may have a document
that may have lots of different colors
| | 05:38 | inside of it.
| | 05:39 | So to easily identify where a color is
used in your document, you can use this
| | 05:43 | icon here on the bottom, this
magnifying glass, which allows you to identify
| | 05:46 | where a color is used. For example, I'm
just going to click on this color right
| | 05:49 | over here. Notice that right now it's
highlighted, it has a gray background.
| | 05:53 | I'm going to click on this magnifying
glass, and you'll see that right now
| | 05:56 | Illustrator grays out everything
except for that color background.
| | 05:59 | This magnifying glass is really kind of
like a toggle. So once I turn it on, it
| | 06:02 | stays on until I turn it off. But I can
now click on other colors to see where
| | 06:06 | those colors exist. Each time I click
on a color row it identifies where those
| | 06:09 | colors are inside of the artwork.
| | 06:11 | Now I'll click on the magnifying glass
again to turn that off. And now let's
| | 06:14 | say I want to leave the particular
background the same, but I want to change
| | 06:18 | all the colors of the flowers to
something else. So rather than specify a value
| | 06:22 | here in the Color field, I can
simply go over here and click-and-drag to
| | 06:25 | combine these colors manually. For
example, I'll click on this color here and
| | 06:28 | bring this one up. I'm now telling
Illustrator, "take these three colors in my
| | 06:31 | document and convert them to one new color."
| | 06:34 | Now I want this color to be on its own.
So I'm now going to take this color and
| | 06:37 | bring that into this one as well. I'll
even bring the black into this one as well.
| | 06:40 | So now I'm obviously working with one set
of colors here and one set of colors here.
| | 06:46 | Now here is one of the reasons why
working with groups is so important inside
| | 06:48 | of Illustrator. If I want to now
specify those Pantone Colors as well,
| | 06:52 | I'm going to actually double-click on this
one, click on Color Swatches, go up to
| | 06:56 | the list, choose let's say the Reflex
Blue for this one, then double-click on
| | 06:59 | this one right here, again click on
Color Swatches, roll up again, click on the
| | 07:03 | Red 032 and now apply that one. And now
it has basically applied my blue and my
| | 07:08 | red colors to my document.
| | 07:10 | However, it would have been much
easier if I would have created a color group
| | 07:12 | inside of Illustrator that just
contained those two colors inside of it.
| | 07:17 | Because then I can simply just
click once on that group and it would
| | 07:19 | automatically map those
two colors to the objects.
| | 07:21 | In fact, to show you what I mean, I'm
actually going to click on this button
| | 07:24 | over here to reload the colors again.
I'm now working with seven colors.
| | 07:27 | Let's say I want to remap them to a
different color group. For example, this Poppy group,
| | 07:31 | this Poppy group only has four colors.
| | 07:33 | So by clicking once over here,
Illustrator will automatically find colors and
| | 07:37 | kind of combine them together and
allow me to reduce my document to only use
| | 07:40 | the colors found in this particular
color group. So it just saves a lot of
| | 07:43 | manual work and a lot of extra clicking
when you use color groups in Illustrator.
| | 07:48 | Now, in reality, you can see how
Illustrator remapped all these colors here.
| | 07:51 | It probably would have made a lot more
sense to remap this color to this color
| | 07:54 | right here. Now Illustrator
unfortunately has no way to analyze the colors in
| | 07:58 | that kind of way. So there is the
button here on the bottom that allows you to
| | 08:00 | randomly change the color order. In
doing so, you can start to experiment with
| | 08:04 | different ways of how those colors
get replaced throughout your document.
| | 08:07 | So at the end of the day, the Recolor
Artwork dialog box, specifically here in
| | 08:11 | the Assign tab really allows you to be
very precise about how you want to swap
| | 08:15 | or change your colors, once you
understand what these icons represents. In
| | 08:18 | other words, these are the colors that
currently exist in your document, this
| | 08:22 | is indicating that those colors will
actually change and this indicates the
| | 08:25 | color that those colors will change into.
| | 08:27 | So gone are the days of digging into
your document to try and select different
| | 08:30 | objects, ingredients and patterns, the
Recolor Artwork dialog box does all that
| | 08:34 | for you in just a few simple clicks.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making global color adjustments| 00:00 | You know there are all types of
ways for modifying color. Now, in the
| | 00:04 | Illustrator universe where you have
objects, you are used to clicking on an
| | 00:07 | object and then adjusting it's color,
but when you look at a program like
| | 00:10 | Photoshop, for example, there are many
times you will use curves or levels to
| | 00:14 | adjust the color across an entire
document. Well, one of the interesting things
| | 00:18 | about the Recolor Artwork feature
inside of Illustrator is that it does have
| | 00:21 | some of those types of adjustments as well.
| | 00:23 | For example, I'm going to press Command+
A or Ctrl+A on Windows to select all of
| | 00:27 | my artwork, I'm going to open up the
Recolor Artwork dialog box by clicking on
| | 00:30 | the Recolor Artwork button here in the
control panel. And I'll take a look at
| | 00:33 | my colors from the Edit panel here
because I want to see the color wheel here.
| | 00:37 | Now, you know that for any color that
I have in my document, I can click on
| | 00:39 | that color and I can see those colors
in these color sliders down here. And now
| | 00:43 | that I could also make adjustments in
those colors very easily. But if I click
| | 00:46 | on this little pop-up menu here on
the side, I can choose between RGB, HSB,
| | 00:50 | CMYK, Web safe RGB, Lab colors or
something here called Global Adjust.
| | 00:56 | I'm going to choose the Global Adjust
setting because that gives me sliders for
| | 01:00 | Saturation, Brightness,
Temperature and Luminosity.
| | 01:04 | Now, it's important to realize that
these sliders don't affect any specific
| | 01:08 | colors; they actually adjust all the
colors that you have selected at once. For
| | 01:11 | example, with this particular
Saturation slider there is no way to adjust, if
| | 01:15 | there is just one color in my document.
However, if you think about the things
| | 01:18 | in the Photoshop view like where I
have levels or curves, I can actually make
| | 01:22 | these adjustments across the entire
document. For example, I can adjust the
| | 01:25 | Temperature in this way; I can
choose to adjust the Luminosity values,
| | 01:30 | Brightness values and Saturation values.
| | 01:33 | You will actually notice that this
entire area that appears kind of beneath
| | 01:37 | this box over here remains the same
whether I'm in the Edit tab or in the
| | 01:41 | Assign tab. However, I find that when
I'm in the Assign tab here, I really
| | 01:44 | don't get any feedback for what this
looks like on the color wheel. So that's
| | 01:47 | why I like to make these
global changes using the Edit tab.
| | 01:50 | I find these Global Adjustment sliders
really useful when I just want to add an
| | 01:53 | extra punch to my color maybe I'm
working on a business presentation that will
| | 01:56 | be displayed online and I want to
overly saturate the colors or maybe I just
| | 02:00 | want to adjust the
temperature of my artwork overall.
| | 02:03 | But as you can see with these global
settings, the Recolor Artwork feature
| | 02:06 | really allows me to interact with my
colors on a variety of different levels.
| | 02:09 | I can either precise modifications to
colors or I can adjust them globally
| | 02:13 | overall almost the same way
that I can inside of Photoshop.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Recolor options| 00:00 | When using the Recolor Artwork
feature inside of Illustrator to modify the
| | 00:04 | colors in your document there are whole
bunch of these little different buttons
| | 00:07 | that exist in that dialog box and
sometimes a little button can make a whole
| | 00:11 | big of a difference with what your
output is going to be. So with that in mind,
| | 00:15 | I want to show you some of the hidden
features that you might find in a Recolor
| | 00:19 | Artwork dialog box.
| | 00:20 | Now, I have this document here called
floral_design_3 and if you look at my
| | 00:23 | Swatches panel, you will see that I
have a group here that I have created has
| | 00:26 | one Pantone color inside of it, its
Pantone Purple C and my goal here is going
| | 00:31 | to be to actually convert this entire
document with all of its colors to print
| | 00:35 | as a one color job on that purple spot color.
| | 00:37 | So, I'll close the Swatches panel,
I'll hit Command+A or Ctrl+A on Windows to
| | 00:42 | actually select all my artwork and I'll
click on the Recolor Artwork button to
| | 00:45 | open up the Recolor Artwork dialog box.
Now, there is a button here that right
| | 00:49 | now is called Color Reduction Options,
now I obviously want to take all of
| | 00:52 | these seven colors and reduce them to
only use the one Pantone color. So before
| | 00:57 | we actually perform the reduction, I'm
going to go over here and click on this
| | 01:00 | button to open up this
Recolor Options dialog box.
| | 01:03 | Now, there are some Presets here Color
library, 1 color job, 2 color job, if I
| | 01:07 | were you I would just ignore those
particular settings because we want to
| | 01:10 | define exactly what a 1 color or 2
color job means by some of the settings that
| | 01:14 | we are going to discuss right now. For
example, if I want a one-color job,
| | 01:17 | I can just go over here and choose,
just type in 1 value for that particular
| | 01:21 | color. This value right here by the
way, it's the same as this value that
| | 01:24 | exists over here. But when we think
about the colors here and the number that
| | 01:27 | we actually choose, we also have to
pay attention to this area here called Preserve.
| | 01:31 | Now, the default setting in Illustrator
is actually to Preserve both Black and
| | 01:34 | also White. So if I move this even
further over here to the left, you can see
| | 01:38 | exactly what's happening here. Both
Black and White will remain existing in my
| | 01:42 | document and they won't change at all.
There are no arrows here. Since that's a
| | 01:45 | default setting by choosing one color
over here, I'm really still ending up
| | 01:49 | with a two-color job because black
still exists in my document. In fact if you
| | 01:53 | were printing to workflows that also
print white as a color, for example, maybe
| | 01:57 | packaging or screen printing. I
would really be ending up here with the
| | 02:00 | three-color job; I have these
colors plus white and black.
| | 02:04 | Now, most likely I want my white to be
protected. If there are areas that are
| | 02:07 | knocking out, I want those areas to
remain knocked out. So when I'm thinking
| | 02:11 | about reducing the number of my colors
in a document to just be one color, I'll
| | 02:14 | probably want to come here and uncheck
the Preserve Black option. So as such
| | 02:18 | you can now see that all my colors
are now being reduced to a single color.
| | 02:21 | Now, in this process when Illustrator
is defining what that new color will be,
| | 02:25 | I have the ability to limit that
color to a particular library. Now in this
| | 02:30 | case, I'm reducing all my colors to
one color which I'm going specify so I
| | 02:33 | don't need this option, but there may
be times when I have, let's say, 300
| | 02:36 | colors in my document then I'll reduce
them to 20 colors that all are within a
| | 02:40 | certain particular library. This
particular feature could come in handy. But
| | 02:43 | I'll go ahead and I'll leave this set
to None right now. And again if I was
| | 02:46 | working with more than just one color,
this setting might also come into play,
| | 02:49 | the Sort option. By default
Illustrator uses something called Hue - forward.
| | 02:53 | As we know when Illustrator assigns new
colors to a document it doesn't really
| | 02:57 | look at the colors themselves and
tries to match with the best fit. It simply
| | 03:00 | takes all the colors that exist inside
of your group or the colors that you are
| | 03:04 | using as replacement and puts that in
order of their Hue, either forward or
| | 03:07 | backward or you could also sort them
by Lightness, either dark to light or
| | 03:11 | light to dark.
| | 03:12 | But again in this case here we only
have one color that we are dealing with one
| | 03:14 | Pantone color, so we don't have to
worry about sorting colors. It's just one
| | 03:18 | color. But by far one of the most
important settings in this particular area
| | 03:21 | right here is something called the
Colorize Method and as we see here, we have
| | 03:24 | different options, we have Exact,
Preserve Tints, Scale Tints, Tints and Shades
| | 03:29 | and Hue Shift. The default setting
for Illustrator is Scale Tints. We are
| | 03:32 | actually going to see what this
setting does when I get here inside of the
| | 03:35 | dialog box because I'll show that I
can access this from a different area.
| | 03:38 | So really I usually come to this
particularly dialog box for only one reason
| | 03:42 | and that's to choose which colors I
want to preserve. Again in this case here I
| | 03:45 | want to make sure that I'm only
preserving white but not black or grays, I'll
| | 03:48 | click OK. And now you can see that all
of my colors have now been remapped to a
| | 03:52 | single color. Because I haven't
specified a new color yet Illustrator just
| | 03:55 | choose one of the colors that already
existed in my document. But I can easily
| | 03:59 | change that just by coming over here
and clicking on this group. Again, this is
| | 04:02 | one of the benefits of creating groups
of color. Instead of me having to double
| | 04:05 | click on this icon and then basically
dive deeper and deeper into other dialog
| | 04:09 | boxes, one click of a button will
automatically remap all my colors to that
| | 04:13 | color that exists in that group.
| | 04:14 | Again, I can see the exact Pantone
number by clicking on this particular
| | 04:17 | triangle to reveal the colors that
appear inside that group. In fact because
| | 04:21 | these settings here are sticky,
meaning that, this value over here where the
| | 04:24 | black colors are now not preserved, I
don't even need to go that far at all.
| | 04:27 | I'm going to click Cancel and start
over again. I'm not going to simply choose
| | 04:31 | with all my artwork selected to
recolor my artwork and with one click of a
| | 04:34 | button here, it automatically remaps
all of my colors to that one color. So I
| | 04:38 | don't need to go here, I don't need to
specify the number of colors, one click
| | 04:41 | because my group is already set, my
group has one color. I'm basically telling
| | 04:45 | Illustrator take my group right over
here which only has one color and remap
| | 04:49 | all colors including black to that one color.
| | 04:52 | However, you will notice that in the
process, Illustrator took all the objects
| | 04:55 | that existed in my file which were
colored different color before and converted
| | 04:59 | them to be different shades of that
Pantone color. Notice that these are
| | 05:02 | different lighter tints of that same
Pantone Purple and even the gradient
| | 05:06 | itself goes from a dark version of
that purple to a lighter version of it.
| | 05:09 | Again, if I would have remapped all
those colors manually to a single Pantone
| | 05:13 | color they would all be solid purple.
| | 05:15 | So, what really makes the Recolor
Artwork feature work is something called the
| | 05:19 | colorization method. Now, we saw that
here in this particular dialog box right
| | 05:22 | over here the Colorize Method. I'm
going to click on the Cancel button; I want
| | 05:25 | to show you another place to access
that. If I come to the far right side of
| | 05:29 | the color row, a little icon appears,
if I click on that a little pop-up shows
| | 05:33 | that I now have five different
Colorize Methods to choose from. Something
| | 05:37 | called Exact, Preserve Tints, Scale
Tints, Tints and Shades and Hue Shift.
| | 05:41 | Now, just to the left over here I
actually see a preview of what that's going
| | 05:44 | to mean. For example, if I choose the
Exact option, right now Illustrator is
| | 05:48 | going to convert all of these colors
exactly to solid purple. So if now go
| | 05:53 | ahead and accept that you can see
what the difference is now inside of my
| | 05:55 | document, doesn't look that great. But
there may be times when you want to turn
| | 05:59 | a whole bunch of different colors into
one new solid color. In such cases, the
| | 06:03 | Exact color method might be the right choice.
| | 06:05 | But I'm going to go back up here to
the Colorize Method and choose the Scale
| | 06:08 | Tints option, which happens to be the
default setting inside of Illustrator.
| | 06:12 | That's what makes this feature
sing each time that you use it.
| | 06:14 | Now, as far as some of the other
options here, Preserve Tints will basically
| | 06:17 | take objects that currently have a tint
value inside of them and preserve those
| | 06:22 | tint values. The final two options here
Tints and Shades and Hue Shift are not
| | 06:26 | available when I want to preserve to
spot colors, but if I uncheck that option,
| | 06:30 | I could choose to go through a Hue
Shift or basically adjust the tints and
| | 06:34 | shades at the same time in my document
making certain things darker and certain
| | 06:37 | things lighter. I can also choose to
apply these to all color rows or just to
| | 06:41 | the color row that I'm working in. Let
me turn this setting back on again and
| | 06:45 | I'll accept that value.
| | 06:46 | So when you are working inside of
Illustrator and you want to work with Recolor
| | 06:49 | Artwork, by default the Scale Tints
option is selected and that allows you to
| | 06:53 | automatically see various different
versions of tints of your artwork when you
| | 06:56 | recolor them. However, depending on
the needs for each particular project you
| | 07:00 | may want to adjust those
colorization methods as needed.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Converting artwork to grayscale| 00:00 | In an ironic twist, one of the most
common types of color adjustment that
| | 00:04 | designers need to make inside of
Illustrator involves the removing of color.
| | 00:08 | For example, when we need to take a
full color document like I have right here
| | 00:11 | and convert it to grayscale. Now, if
your document contains gradients or
| | 00:15 | patterns or symbols, that may be a
very tedious process. However, with the
| | 00:19 | Recolor Artwork feature inside of
Illustrator that only can we do in one step,
| | 00:22 | but we have a variety of different
ways to make that process happen.
| | 00:25 | In this video, I'll show you three
specific ways to do that. First, I'm going
| | 00:28 | to select all of artwork, I'm going to
choose Command+A on the Mac or Ctrl+A on
| | 00:32 | Windows. I'll go to the Edit menu, I'll
choose Edit Colors and then I'll choose
| | 00:37 | over here Convert to Grayscale. So there
it is just one step, pretty simple, pretty easy.
| | 00:42 | Now, I want to show you the other two
possible methods as well only because it
| | 00:45 | gives you the ability to control
different aspects of that conversion.
| | 00:48 | So, I'm going to press Undo, go back to
our full color version here and with all
| | 00:52 | my artwork selected, I'm now going to go
and choose to open up the Recolor Artwork
| | 00:55 | feature by clicking on the Recolor
Artwork button here in the control panel.
| | 00:58 | Now, I don't need to worry about
colors and so on and so forth because I'm
| | 01:01 | simply going to convert all this to
grayscale and I'll do that by using one of
| | 01:04 | the Global Adjust settings. So I'll
click on this little pop-up down over here
| | 01:08 | and I'll choose Global Adjust, it
doesn't make a difference if I'm in the
| | 01:10 | Assign tab or the Edit tab because
those are both available at the bottom of
| | 01:15 | the Recolor Artwork dialog box. Now
what I want to focus on here is the
| | 01:18 | Saturation slider, by reducing the
saturation of my document I'm actually
| | 01:22 | removing the color and I'm turning
everything into a neutral color till it grays.
| | 01:25 | So, I'll just click on this slider
right here and drag it all the way to the
| | 01:28 | left where it's -100. In doing so when
I release the mouse you will see that
| | 01:31 | everything becomes black and white.
Now depending on your artwork you may see
| | 01:35 | better results in this method as
opposed to the other method we have done so
| | 01:38 | far which simply use that one click
option of converting things to grayscale.
| | 01:42 | Let me click Cancel here and I'll show
you one other way that you could use the
| | 01:45 | Recolor Artwork feature inside of
Illustrator to convert your artwork to
| | 01:48 | grayscale. This way while it's little
bit more complex, it does give you more
| | 01:52 | control of what you can get with
this conversion. I'll start over here by
| | 01:55 | opening up the dock here and I'm going
to focus on the Swatches panel here,
| | 01:58 | I actually want to load some
additional color groups to my document.
| | 02:01 | Now, if I'm working with a regular
plain document by default Illustrator adds a
| | 02:05 | grayscale version of a group. Since
I don't have that in this particular
| | 02:08 | document, I'm going to go over here
to this button called Swatch Libraries
| | 02:11 | menu, I'll chose to load Default
Swatches and I'll choose Basic CMYK. You can
| | 02:16 | see over here there is a color group
which is called Grays. I'm going to take
| | 02:19 | that entire folder right here, click
and drag it here to add it to my document.
| | 02:24 | So now you can see that the Grays
color group has been added to my Swatches
| | 02:27 | panel. I can close this panel right now.
I don't need it anymore. I just needed
| | 02:30 | to make sure that these got
into my particular document.
| | 02:32 | So, now what I'll do is with all my
artwork selected, I'll choose once again to
| | 02:36 | open the Recolor Artwork dialog box
and I'll have Illustrator remap all my
| | 02:40 | colors to that gray color group. Now,
the reason why I have more control over
| | 02:43 | this is because now I'm able to map a
specific color to a specific shade of
| | 02:46 | gray and I can click on the button over
here to randomly change the color order
| | 02:50 | so I could experiment with different
possible ways this can be converted to
| | 02:53 | grayscale. Likewise I can click and
drag on any color to adjust specifically
| | 02:57 | how that she gets switched.
| | 02:59 | So, there you have it, three possible
ways to convert your full color artwork
| | 03:03 | into grayscale version. And it doesn't
make a difference what your artwork is
| | 03:05 | made of with of course the sole
exception of placed images. However, if you are
| | 03:09 | working with artwork created inside of
Illustrator, you can easily convert it
| | 03:12 | to these different shades of gray
always by going to the Edit menu and choosing
| | 03:15 | to Convert to Grayscale, by
desaturating your image or by converting all of
| | 03:20 | your colors to a specific group
made up entirely of gray colors.
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| Simulating artwork on different devices| 00:01 | Just because you see a color in a
certain way on your own computer screen,
| | 00:04 | it doesn't necessarily mean that it's
going to appear that way on a different
| | 00:07 | device. That device could be another
computer monitor, it could be inkjet
| | 00:11 | printer that sits next to your computer,
or it could be a printing press that's
| | 00:15 | somewhere else in the world. But as a
designer it may be incredibly helpful for
| | 00:18 | you to be able to preview those colors
as they might appear on those other devices.
| | 00:23 | Illustrator does give you the ability
to proof your colors as they might appear
| | 00:26 | on different devices. You can do that
by going to the View menu and choosing
| | 00:30 | the Proof Colors option. Now, by
default though proofing colors themselves
| | 00:34 | won't help you until you first tell
Illustrator what device you want to
| | 00:37 | simulate. So I'll first choose Proof
Setup. Now, by default Illustrator has it
| | 00:42 | set to my working space, which is CMYK
: U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2. But I'm
| | 00:47 | going to go down here to where it
says Customize. I'm going to choose a
| | 00:50 | different device that I want to simulate.
| | 00:51 | For example, I have an inkjet printer
made by Canon, so I want to click over
| | 00:55 | here and because I have installed these
drivers and these Color Profiles in my
| | 00:58 | computer, they automatically show up
in this list. For example, I'll choose
| | 01:02 | this one here called Canon
MP460 SP2 and I'll click OK.
| | 01:06 | So, now you can see that the color
changed on my screen. If I go to the View
| | 01:10 | menu, I'll uncheck Proof Colors; this
is what it would look like on my screen
| | 01:14 | working with my own on screen RGB
profile. But based in the color profile of my
| | 01:18 | printer Illustrator, when I turn Proof
Colors on, is simulating to me what this
| | 01:22 | artwork is going to look like when
it gets printed out of my printer.
| | 01:25 | An interesting way to work with this
Proof Colors setting is actually to use
| | 01:29 | two different windows, one window that
displays the artwork as you are working
| | 01:32 | inside of Illustrator and another
window that simply gives you a preview of
| | 01:35 | what artwork is going to look like
using one of the Proof Colors settings.
| | 01:38 | For example, I'm going to go back to
the View menu here and turn off the Proof
| | 01:41 | Color setting. I'll choose Window
and choose this option here called New
| | 01:45 | Window. So now you can see that I have
floral_design_3.ai and then I have here
| | 01:50 | 1 and then I have 2. It's the exact
same document, but I'm able to view it in
| | 01:54 | two separate windows. I'll also click
on this icon here in the Application Bar
| | 01:58 | called Arrange Documents. By clicking
on that, I can choose the two-up version,
| | 02:02 | so now I could click on this window
here and position it this way and then I'll
| | 02:05 | position the same document here. So
I'm really looking now at the exact same
| | 02:09 | file but in two separate windows.
| | 02:11 | Now, in this window, I'm going to leave
the regular preview set on, but on this
| | 02:14 | window here I'm actually going to
choose to turn on View > Proof Colors. Now,
| | 02:19 | because this was set actually to a new
window it defaulted to my working space,
| | 02:22 | which is the U.S. Web Coated (SWOP).
I'm now going to change that by going to
| | 02:26 | View and we choose Proof Setup >
Customize and I'll choose again my Canon
| | 02:31 | printer here. Now when I click OK, I
now see the preview what it's going to
| | 02:35 | look on my printout here, while I can
tune the work in my document here. What's
| | 02:39 | really interesting about the Proof
Color settings is also that you can simulate
| | 02:41 | what your artwork is going to look
like when it gets converted to a grayscale profile.
| | 02:45 | For example, I go back to this document
here and I'll change the Proof Setup to
| | 02:48 | something else. I'm going to go to
the View menu, I'll choose Proof Setup,
| | 02:52 | Customize and I'll scroll down the list
over here to where it says Generic Gray
| | 02:56 | Profile. In doing so, I could now see
a grayscale version of my artwork even
| | 03:00 | while I go ahead and click and edit a
color version of it. In this way I can
| | 03:04 | assure that as I'm working and as I
specify colors in my artwork maybe for some
| | 03:08 | artwork developed here both in color
and also in black and white. I can always
| | 03:12 | make sure that I'm using a high enough
contrast in my colors so that it will
| | 03:16 | also look good when it
gets converted to grayscale.
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| Accessing Kuler directly from Illustrator| 00:00 | When it comes to finding inspiration
around color we know that we can use the
| | 00:04 | Color Guide panel inside of
Illustrator. By clicking on any of the colors
| | 00:07 | already that exist inside of my
Swatches panel the Color Guide will
| | 00:10 | automatically generate harmonious
colors based on the color harmony that I
| | 00:13 | choose. In this way I can easily
find colors that may work inside of my
| | 00:17 | Illustration. But in reality, the
technology that Adobe developed for this
| | 00:21 | particular color guide feature is
something that Adobe also put into an online
| | 00:25 | feature called Kuler.
| | 00:26 | Now you may already be familiar with
the Kuler website, you can find it at
| | 00:30 | kuler.adobe.com and Kuler is spelled K-U
-L-E-R. In fact, I'll jump over here to
| | 00:35 | my web browser and show you that right
now I'm logged into Kuler, it's a free
| | 00:38 | service to use and you can see that I
can go ahead and I can create my own
| | 00:41 | color themes almost the same that I
was using with the Edit tab inside of the
| | 00:45 | Recolor Artwork dialog box.
| | 00:47 | I could choose a different rule or
harmony and I can also spin these colors
| | 00:50 | around the wheel to generate a
whole bunch of interesting colors.
| | 00:52 | One of the great things about Kuler
being a website is that other designers can
| | 00:56 | also create colors and publish them so
that we can find them. In fact, if I go
| | 01:00 | back to the Themes tab here for a
minute, I can go to the Search field and
| | 01:03 | let's say I'm trying to look for
colors for a particular floral illustration.
| | 01:06 | So I'll type in flowers here and then
I'll search on that and I could now find
| | 01:10 | colors that other designers have
created using those tags. But here is the
| | 01:14 | really cool thing. You don't actually
have to be here in the Kuler website to
| | 01:18 | find those colors. We could find them
directly inside of Illustrator.
| | 01:21 | Let's switch back into Illustrator here,
I'm going to go to the Window menu and
| | 01:24 | choose Extensions, Kuler. That's
going to open up a panel here inside of
| | 01:28 | Illustrator which actually gives me
direct access to the Kuler website.
| | 01:32 | For example, if I wanted to search
for flowers, type in flowers in the Find
| | 01:35 | field, then click OK and now I'm simply
going to go ahead and get a result from
| | 01:39 | all designers in the world who have
published different color themes that have
| | 01:43 | used the tag of flowers.
| | 01:44 | For example, let's say I like this one
here called Lily flower, I can click on
| | 01:48 | it and then with one click of a button
I can now add it to my Swatches panel.
| | 01:51 | If I look at my Swatches panel I see
that I just added that particular color
| | 01:54 | group to my document. Now Kuler itself
has a whole bunch of extra functionality
| | 01:58 | inside of it that is beyond the scope
of this particular title, but I do have
| | 02:01 | another title called Kuler Essentials
Training and if you are interested in
| | 02:04 | learning more about Kuler
definitely check that out.
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| Ensuring high contrast for color-blind people| 00:01 | One of the challenges about working
with color as designer is trying to
| | 00:04 | visualize how other people are
going to see that color as well.
| | 00:07 | This is especially important in environmental
graphics or in creating artwork that is
| | 00:11 | going to be used in public places.
| | 00:13 | For example, things like infographics
and signage. While making sure that the
| | 00:17 | colors that you see on your screen do
reproduce correctly there is another
| | 00:20 | issue, which is how other people will
perceive those colors. Specifically there
| | 00:24 | are people in the world who are
colorblind or are deficient in seeing
| | 00:27 | certain types of colors.
| | 00:28 | Now while you certainly can't make
sure that if one sees the exact same color
| | 00:32 | you can at least ensure that you used
the correct contrast in your designs that
| | 00:35 | no matter how other people will
perceive it the information in your graphic
| | 00:38 | will still be transferred.
| | 00:40 | To make it easier for a designer to
create high contrast art that even someone
| | 00:44 | who is colorblind can still be able to
see, Adobe has added additional proofing
| | 00:47 | profiles inside of Illustrator.
For example, if I go here to the View menu and
| | 00:51 | I choose Proof Setup I see that
I have two Color blindness settings.
| | 00:54 | One for Protanopia and one for Deuteranopia,
both of these which are the most common
| | 00:58 | types of color blindness.
| | 00:59 | Now before I turn this proofing on I'm
actually going to setup my document in a
| | 01:03 | way where I could easily make
adjustments to make sure that I use the right
| | 01:06 | contrast in my design. I'll start up
by zooming out just a little bit and
| | 01:09 | I'm going to go to my Window menu and
I'm going to choose a New Window. And now,
| | 01:14 | I'll have created a second window for
my single file and I go here to the
| | 01:18 | Application Bar, I'm going to
choose this option for 2-Up.
| | 01:20 | So now I'm basically seeing the same
piece of artwork but in two separate
| | 01:24 | windows. So I click on this one here
and position my artwork just about right
| | 01:27 | over here and I'll do the same for
down over here. Now in this bottom window
| | 01:30 | I'm now going to choose to go to my
View menu, choose Proof Setup and
| | 01:34 | I'll set my proof setups for this Protanopia
type. What I'm seeing here in the window
| | 01:38 | below is exactly the way my artwork
would appear to a person with this type of
| | 01:42 | color blindness.
| | 01:43 | Now obviously the contrast is not high
enough for me to easily differentiate
| | 01:46 | between the rays here and the
background. So I'm going to go back to
| | 01:49 | my original design here in this window.
It's really the same file but without a
| | 01:52 | proofing profile, and I'll select my
artwork by pressing Command+A on the Mac
| | 01:56 | or Ctrl+A on Windows.
| | 01:58 | What I'm going to do is use the
Recolor Artwork feature to help me adjust
| | 02:01 | the colors so that they have enough
contrast in them. So I'll click on the Recolor
| | 02:05 | Artwork button here in the control
panel, which opens up the Recolor Artwork
| | 02:08 | dialog box, and I'll switch to the Edit tab.
| | 02:10 | Now I can click on this color right
over here on my color wheel and I see that
| | 02:13 | right now I'm using the Hue,
Saturation and Brightness sliders at the bottom.
| | 02:16 | By just moving the Saturation values of
some of my colors I can now introduce a
| | 02:20 | higher contrast version of my artwork.
For example, I'll just increase the
| | 02:23 | saturation a little bit that I have
increased the contrast enough, so even
| | 02:26 | a person with color blindness will
still be able to see those rays.
| | 02:29 | Maybe I'll bring up the saturation
just a little bit more and then I'll click
| | 02:32 | OK to apply it. So if you are in the
business of making graphics that a lot of
| | 02:36 | people in public are going to see
you may want to consider proofing
| | 02:39 | your artwork using these
particular color blindness profiles.
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|
|
8. Understanding TransparencyIntroducing transparency| 00:00 | Way back in Illustrator 9, Adobe
introduced the concept of transparency, which
| | 00:04 | gives designers the ability to add
soft drop shadows, glows, to use different
| | 00:08 | blend modes, so on and so forth.
| | 00:10 | However many designers have avoided
that traditionally only because they feared
| | 00:15 | whether or not that file would
actually print correctly. Well, in reality you
| | 00:18 | don't even have to transparency at
all. It does print well, but there are
| | 00:21 | certain concepts and best practices
that you should probably know about.
| | 00:24 | So if you are ever working with files
that do have transparency you will find
| | 00:28 | a tremendous amount of information in
these movies. For example, how does
| | 00:31 | transparency work, what are the file
formats to use, so on and so forth,
| | 00:34 | that will make sure that you sleep well
at night and you will know that your files
| | 00:38 | will always print correctly.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding transparency flattening| 00:00 | Before we get started on the topic of
transparency I want to take a few moments
| | 00:04 | to go over some important concepts
as they apply to transparency. Now,
| | 00:08 | transparency in its vector form was
first introduced in Illustrator 9,
| | 00:12 | Acrobat 5 and InDesign 2.
That's InDesign 2, not InDesign CS2.
| | 00:17 | So all the topics and the concepts and
the techniques that we cover here apply
| | 00:21 | to any of the versions of software
that have been released after those
| | 00:24 | versions. Obviously any versions of
software before those versions do not
| | 00:29 | support transparency.
| | 00:30 | PostScript or EPS, which stands for
Encapsulated PostScript, does not support
| | 00:35 | transparency and in fact, this is
going to be the reason why we have to deal
| | 00:39 | with these transparency issues
altogether. And that's simply because EPS is a
| | 00:43 | format that's universally used around
the world and just about all the printers
| | 00:47 | that are used in the professional
workspace are actually PostScript printers.
| | 00:50 | Now Illustrator itself has a fantastic
toolset for how to apply transparency
| | 00:54 | in your files but if we know at the
end of the day we are going to actually
| | 00:57 | print our file out on a PostScript
device we are going to need to find some way
| | 01:01 | to have that transparency translated
so that PostScript itself can understand
| | 01:06 | those kind of constructs.
| | 01:08 | Keeping that in mind we'll know that
Illustrator must flatten transparency when
| | 01:12 | printing your file to any PostScript
device or when you are saving your file to EPS.
| | 01:16 | Now you may be familiar with the
term flatten if you have used a program
| | 01:20 | called Adobe Photoshop. You may have
several different layers and by flattening
| | 01:24 | your document you are turning those
multiple layers into one single layer.
| | 01:28 | In addition, that layer has no transparent
pixels in it everything is completely opaque.
| | 01:33 | Well, in the world of vectors and
again this applies to Illustrator, Acrobat
| | 01:36 | and InDesign as well, flattening
transparency is somewhat similar to that,
| | 01:41 | although of course it
applies to the world of vectors.
| | 01:44 | Now don't worry. We are going to learn
everything there is to know about what
| | 01:46 | flattening means insides of
Illustrator but it's important to know what
| | 01:49 | transparency flattening can either be
done manually, meaning that you could
| | 01:52 | actually perform the steps on your
own, or Illustrator could handle that
| | 01:56 | flattening process automatically.
| | 01:58 | As we'll see it's far more beneficial
to have Illustrator handle this than to
| | 02:02 | have you do it yourself. But
throughout this particular training title
| | 02:06 | we are going to be employing some of the
methods manually and I'm only going to be
| | 02:09 | doing that so that you could actually
see what's happening behind the scenes.
| | 02:13 | But again I want to emphasize here that
we don't really need to do anything.
| | 02:16 | As long as we understand when this
transparency flattening is happening that would
| | 02:20 | be enough and that's simply because we are
going to let Illustrator do all the work for us.
| | 02:24 | So keeping these important concepts in
mind, let's get started learning about
| | 02:28 | transparency in Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exercising the two rules of transparency flattening| 00:00 | In this movie we are going to take a
closer look at exactly what happens during
| | 00:04 | the flattening process when
transparency flattening occurs.
| | 00:08 | Now I want to emphasize an important
part here before we get started. I'm going
| | 00:12 | to be using a manual flattening
process meaning that I'm actually going to go
| | 00:15 | ahead and flatten this artwork as
opposed to Illustrator doing it automatically.
| | 00:19 | Now obviously the reason why I'm doing
this manually is because I want to be
| | 00:22 | able to demonstrate exactly what
happens in the process. In the automatic way
| | 00:25 | when Illustrator is doing it by
itself we don't really see this happening
| | 00:28 | because it just happens in the background.
| | 00:30 | Keeping that in mind it's usually
beneficial to have Illustrator perform the
| | 00:33 | flattening automatically and as we get
towards the end of this particular video
| | 00:37 | I think you will understand why.
| | 00:39 | Now let's take a look at the objects
that I have right now on my artboard.
| | 00:42 | I have two shapes. Each of these shapes
are just simply regular plain vector shapes
| | 00:46 | and one is filled with this
blue color and one of them is filled with
| | 00:49 | this red color. Now I'm going to drag
the red on just about right over here, so
| | 00:53 | they overlap each other. Maybe I'll do
something just about like this. And what
| | 00:56 | I'm going to do now is I'm going to
take this red shape out here and bring it
| | 00:59 | to the front.
| | 01:00 | The keyboard shortcut for that is
Command+Shift+] on the Mac and Ctrl+Shift+]
| | 01:06 | on Windows. So now I have this shape
that overlaps this shape right here. What
| | 01:11 | I'm going to do is I'm going to
actually specify that this particular shape has
| | 01:15 | some level of transparency in it so
that I can see through it and actually see
| | 01:19 | the shape behind it right now.
| | 01:20 | So I'm going to go over here to my
Transparency panel, I'm going to specify a
| | 01:24 | blend mode of Multiply and that
basically will allow me to see this overlapping
| | 01:28 | area right here. Now this is
possible here inside of Illustrator because
| | 01:32 | Illustrator supports transparency.
But as we have discussed up until now
| | 01:36 | postscript does not know anything about
transparency at all. In fact everything
| | 01:39 | in the world of postscript is completely opaque.
| | 01:42 | I right now have two objects in my file,
one over here and then one over here.
| | 01:45 | The red object has a Multiply
attribute applied to it, which allows me to see
| | 01:49 | through it to the shape beneath it. So
the question that you ask yourself is if
| | 01:53 | postscript does not know about
transparency how will this particular part of
| | 01:57 | the file print when I print it to a
postscript device or when I save my file
| | 02:01 | out as an EPS file? The
answer is transparency flattening.
| | 02:05 | What we are going to do is we are going
to actually see that Illustrator breaks
| | 02:08 | this objects apart and makes them
all completely opaque. It may look
| | 02:12 | transparent but it really is not. And
the process that kind of causes that to
| | 02:17 | happen is transparency flattening
process if you will. Actually abides by two
| | 02:22 | rules. I like to refer to them as the
two rules of flattening. The first rule
| | 02:26 | is that whenever I'm sending my
particular artwork to a postscript device or to
| | 02:30 | an EPS file I need to first remove all
the transparency from a file and that
| | 02:35 | should be pretty obvious.
| | 02:36 | Obviously if I'm sending this to
postscript device that does not understand
| | 02:39 | transparency I need to remove that
transparency before that particular
| | 02:43 | construct or that artwork gets that
particular device. So the first rule is
| | 02:47 | clear. Get rid of all the transparency.
But I have a problem though. If I were
| | 02:51 | to take this object right now and get
rid of its transparency meaning I set its
| | 02:55 | blend mode back to Normal instead of
Multiply I no longer see that other shape
| | 02:59 | that was right over here.
| | 03:00 | I don't see through this artwork
anymore and the appearance of my artwork has
| | 03:04 | changed, which would mean that if
I was simply to just get rid of the
| | 03:07 | transparency what I see on my screen
inside of Illustrator would be very
| | 03:11 | different from what I actually see that
comes out of the printer. Now obviously
| | 03:15 | that's a bad thing. I want to be able
to actually print what I see on my screen
| | 03:19 | inside of Illustrator.
| | 03:20 | So changing the blend mode or removing
the transparency is not good enough.
| | 03:24 | I'm going to go back over here to the pop
up menu and change this back to Multiply.
| | 03:27 | What I'm going to do is I'm going to
now talk about the second aspect or the
| | 03:30 | second rule of transparency flattening
and that is while performing the first
| | 03:35 | rule, so while getting rid of the
transparency don't change the appearance of
| | 03:39 | my artwork. So now we have these two
rules basically that are in place when
| | 03:43 | dealing with transparency flattening.
The first rule is get rid of the
| | 03:47 | transparency. The second rule is while
getting rid of the transparency, don't
| | 03:51 | change the appearance of the artwork.
| | 03:53 | Now I reality some things got to give.
If I can't make the artwork truly
| | 03:56 | transparent but I want it to look
transparent I have to do something and the
| | 04:01 | answer is that in this particular case
here the editability of my artwork is
| | 04:05 | compromised. I'm actually going to
have to chop up this artwork into three
| | 04:08 | distinct areas. One over here that will
be red, one over here that will be this
| | 04:12 | combined color of an area and then
I'll have this area here which is blue.
| | 04:16 | So let's see how that works. I'm
actually now going to perform this flattening
| | 04:19 | step manually but again like I
specified before in the beginning of this movie
| | 04:23 | normally this kind of step would happen
automatically without you having to do
| | 04:26 | anything. I'm going to select both
of these shapes right here. I have two
| | 04:29 | shapes with the transparency applied,
I'm going to go to the Object menu and
| | 04:32 | I'm going to choose a setting here
called Flatten Transparency. Now this dialog
| | 04:36 | box will come over here and in a future
movie we'll talk more about the details
| | 04:40 | of what each and everyone of these settings do.
| | 04:42 | But for now I'm simply just going to
click on the OK button. And right now my
| | 04:45 | file has been flattened. There is no
more transparency in my file. It doesn't
| | 04:50 | look any different and that's because
rule number two states that Illustrator
| | 04:53 | is not allowed to change the
appearance of my artwork. However, all the
| | 04:57 | transparency has been removed from my
file. In fact if I go ahead and I use my
| | 05:01 | Direct Selection tool I'll see that
if I now move these objects around, my
| | 05:05 | artwork has been split into
three distinct opaque shapes.
| | 05:08 | Yes there is no more transparency in
my file. However at the same time I have
| | 05:12 | compromised the editability of my file.
If I want to now move one of the shapes
| | 05:16 | around, if my client for example
decided that they wanted that red shield to be
| | 05:19 | moved somewhere else I wouldn't be able
to do so because the shape has already
| | 05:23 | been chopped into pieces.
| | 05:24 | Or alternatively, let me just press
Undo a few times over here. If my client
| | 05:28 | decided that this instead of red
should be yellow, if I go ahead here and I
| | 05:32 | click on this, this area here does
not update and that's because it's a
| | 05:35 | completely separate shape. So I lose
the editability of my file once that
| | 05:39 | particular flattening process happens.
| | 05:42 | So here we come to the first
important concept when understanding what
| | 05:45 | Transparency Flattening is. It
actually breaks your artwork into many, many
| | 05:49 | different parts, each of those
parts are completely opaque, there is no
| | 05:51 | transparency in your file, but as we
have just seen now it becomes incredibly
| | 05:55 | difficult to edit your file after the
file has been flattened and this is why I
| | 05:58 | mentioned in the beginning of the movie
that it's rare that you would actually
| | 06:01 | want to manually perform this
flattening process, because in doing so you are
| | 06:05 | now saying that you can
longer edit your file anymore.
| | 06:08 | Now I'm actually going to hit Undo a
few times to back up to my original shapes
| | 06:11 | here. So now I have my artwork here,
if I click on this one and choose Normal
| | 06:15 | and go back to Multiply, I now have
my two overlapping shapes with the
| | 06:19 | transparency here. Normally when I'm
working inside of Illustrator if I wanted
| | 06:23 | to now print this file it would be
pretty bad if I would have to now manually
| | 06:27 | flatten this artwork just to print it
but then I'll no longer be able to edit my file.
| | 06:30 | So what Illustrator does is that when
I hit Command+P or Ctrl+P to actually
| | 06:35 | print my document, Illustrator makes a
copy of my file in its computer memory
| | 06:40 | and what it does it actually flattens
that copy of my file and it sends that
| | 06:44 | flattened information on to the printer
for processing. But my Illustrator file
| | 06:49 | as it exists right now does not get
changed at all. So the flattening happens
| | 06:53 | in the print stream. It doesn't
happen to my document and that allows me to
| | 06:56 | actually design something on my
screen and have it print and look the exact
| | 07:00 | same way. That flattening
process happens in the background.
| | 07:03 | Now you may be looking at all this and
say okay, Mordy, I get it, but why do we
| | 07:07 | even have to know about all this?
Basically Illustrator takes care of all the
| | 07:10 | flattening in the background and what I
see on my screen is eventually what I'm
| | 07:13 | also going to see when I print out
my document, why should I care how
| | 07:17 | Illustrator has to go through to jump
through all these hoops to make that process happen?
| | 07:20 | The answer is that what we are
looking at right now is a simply case.
| | 07:24 | I have two regular plain vector
shapes that overlap each other with some
| | 07:27 | transparency applied. However when I
start to introduce some other things
| | 07:31 | inside of my file I may begin to see
some side effects happening due to this
| | 07:35 | flattening process. Let's take a closer look.
| | 07:38 | Right now I still have my two shapes
here, this shape is filled with a solid
| | 07:41 | red, I'm actually going to change
these, instead of these filled with solid
| | 07:44 | colors, so I'll select this shape
over here and I'll fill this with maybe a
| | 07:47 | rainbow gradient and I'll click on this
shape here and fill that with a regular
| | 07:51 | plain black to white gradient and I'll
use my Gradient tool here to actually
| | 07:55 | change this particular gradient to go
on an angle. Maybe we'll go in the other
| | 07:59 | direction here so we get
kind of a darker area here.
| | 08:01 | So now we'll take a closer look at the
shapes that we have just created. I now
| | 08:04 | have the same two vector shapes but
instead of solid colors they are not filled
| | 08:07 | with gradients. So I know that when
I process this right now because this
| | 08:11 | object on top is set to Multiply,
Illustrator in the flattening process will
| | 08:15 | actually need to chop it into three
pieces. I'll have one piece over here, one
| | 08:19 | piece which is the transparent
overlapping area here and then another piece
| | 08:23 | over here as well.
| | 08:24 | Now this particular part of the shape
over here can definitely be filled with a
| | 08:27 | gradient as can this over here but
let's take a closer look at this overlapping
| | 08:31 | area right here. This is currently
made up of two overlapping gradients that
| | 08:35 | are traveling in different directions.
Now if for a moment we think about the
| | 08:38 | two rules of transparency flattening
that we have learned the first rule stated
| | 08:41 | that I must get rid of the transparency
that's fine, but the second rule stated
| | 08:45 | that I can't change the
appearance of my artwork when I remove that
| | 08:48 | transparency.
| | 08:50 | Now if I chop this piece of artwork
into three distinct areas what I'm going to
| | 08:53 | fill in this area here to maintain my
appearance, I already know that a vector
| | 08:58 | itself cannot contain a gradient that
travels in two different directions. So
| | 09:02 | because of this rule number two in
Transparency Flattening meaning I can't
| | 09:05 | change the appearance of my artwork
Illustrator is only left with one
| | 09:09 | possible solution and that's to
actually convert just this overlapping area
| | 09:13 | into an image because as an image or a
raster file I can actually create this
| | 09:18 | exact appearance. So let's take a
look and see exactly how that happens.
| | 09:22 | I am going to again select both of
these shapes right here, again I have two
| | 09:25 | vector objects and those objects are
filled with gradients and the top object
| | 09:30 | is set with a transparency blend mode.
I'm now going to go to the Object menu
| | 09:34 | and once again I'm going to choose
Flatten Transparency. I'll just click on the
| | 09:37 | regular settings over here, click OK
and again my file has now been flattened.
| | 09:41 | But let's take a look at it. I'm going
to use my Direct Selection tool here to
| | 09:44 | select this piece of the artwork and
move it over here, a regular vector shape
| | 09:47 | with a gradient. The same
applies for this shape right here.
| | 09:50 | However this shape is actually an image.
If I look at my Appearance panel I see
| | 09:54 | that I have image pixels here, which
has been placed inside of a vector mask.
| | 09:58 | So I'll press Undo a few times to
bring this back over here. While yes, my file
| | 10:02 | right now is actually flattened there
is no more transparency in my file,
| | 10:06 | that particular process has also forced
part of my file to become rasterized.
| | 10:10 | Now in the world of Illustrator
we are familiar with the concept of
| | 10:13 | scalability. We know that when we
create vector objects we can scale them to
| | 10:16 | just about any size. However as I have
just shown right here there may be times
| | 10:21 | when you are using transparency that
parts of your file become rasterized and
| | 10:24 | as such scaling them infinitely is not possible.
| | 10:28 | Now you may be asking yourself this
question, okay I understand that that
| | 10:30 | particular shape now has become
rasterized but what resolution is it?
| | 10:34 | Is it a high-res image? Is it a low-res image?
The answer is in this case right here if
| | 10:38 | I click on it I can see in my
control panel here that it is listed as 150
| | 10:41 | pixels per inch and that's a default
setting inside of Illustrator. What we'll
| | 10:46 | do in the future movie is talk about
how to modify those particular settings to
| | 10:49 | get the transparency flattening to be
just right for any need that we have.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding complex regions in transparency flattening| 00:00 | So we already know that when working
with transparency inside of Illustrator,
| | 00:04 | there may be times where during the
flattening process, Illustrator is forced
| | 00:08 | to convert some vector artwork into
raster artwork and that's mainly due to
| | 00:12 | this rule number two in flattening,
where Illustrator is not allowed to change
| | 00:16 | the appearance of our artwork.
| | 00:18 | So in cases, where Illustrator cannot
maintain the appearance in vector form,
| | 00:22 | it must choose to rasterize those
parts of the file. So if you want to think
| | 00:26 | about it in another way, Illustrator
kind of has its arms tied behind its back.
| | 00:30 | It cannot do anything. It must
convert those areas to raster region.
| | 00:34 | However it's important to note that
sometimes Illustrator does have the ability
| | 00:38 | to rasterize things just because it
feels like it. In fact, if a file is too
| | 00:43 | complex, Illustrator may choose to
rasterize parts of your file, simply for
| | 00:48 | performance reasons. Now I like to
refer to this as a second level of
| | 00:51 | rasterization. The reason why I
actually refer to as that is because there are
| | 00:55 | ways to prevent this from happening
altogether. So let's take a closer look at
| | 00:59 | how this actually happens.
| | 01:01 | I have an empty file open on my screen
and I'm now going to go to the Symbols
| | 01:04 | panel, and I'm actually going to
load some of the symbols that come with
| | 01:07 | Illustrator. When you go down over here
to the Nature library, and I have here
| | 01:11 | a symbol here called Trees 2. I'm
actually going to drag that here into my
| | 01:15 | Symbols panel to add it to my document.
| | 01:17 | After this I'm going to go ahead now
and close that panel and let's take a
| | 01:19 | closer look at what this symbol is
actually made up of. Just drag it here into
| | 01:23 | the screen here and let's zoom in on it.
I'll come up here to the Break Link
| | 01:27 | button here inside of the control
panel to actually see the anchor points of
| | 01:30 | this particular artwork.
| | 01:32 | Notice over here that the trees are
made up of a lot of anchor points. By the
| | 01:34 | way if you want a little tip to find
that how many anchor points you actually
| | 01:37 | have in a selection, you can go to the
Window menu and choose to open up the
| | 01:41 | Document Info panel.
| | 01:43 | Now the Document Info panel, by default,
works with selected artworks. So right
| | 01:46 | now I have it set to Selection Only.
So right now it's giving me information
| | 01:49 | about my selection. If I go down this
list over here, right now it's providing
| | 01:53 | information about my document, but I
would like information about my object.
| | 01:56 | I can see that now this artwork is made
up of 335 paths, all of them which are
| | 02:01 | closed, which is comprised of 2219
anchor points. I'm actually going to leave
| | 02:07 | this Document Info panel open here for
a moment. We're going to come back to it
| | 02:09 | soon. I'm going to delete this artwork.
I'm going to zoom out over here, and
| | 02:13 | what I'm going to do is I'm actually
going to switch over here in my Tools
| | 02:16 | panel to choose the Symbol Sprayer tool.
That's going to allow me to select a
| | 02:19 | symbol and spray those symbols out of my page.
| | 02:23 | So I'm going to go ahead and select
this particular symbol here that I've added
| | 02:26 | to my document Trees 2. I'm going to
start to click-and-drag and spray these on
| | 02:29 | my document. I'm going to do kind of
the barbarizing over here and make a
| | 02:32 | lovely little forest just about right
over here. I'm going to add just a few
| | 02:36 | more trees to make this even more
dense, lovely dense forest right here.
| | 02:40 | I'm going to switch to a different
symbolism tool, which is the one down here
| | 02:43 | called Symbol Screener. I'm actually
going to go ahead and click-and-drag a few
| | 02:46 | times to introduce some transparency
into these trees. Now switch back to my
| | 02:52 | Selection tool, let me just take a moment
to take a look out what we actually have here.
| | 02:56 | I have many overlapping symbols and we
know that each of those symbols are made
| | 02:59 | up of lots of anchor points and lots
of shapes. Now we also know when I have
| | 03:03 | transparency in my file, the
transparency flattening process will now simply
| | 03:07 | break down all those overlapping areas
into smaller parts. By the way we refer
| | 03:11 | to those small parts as atomic regions.
| | 03:14 | So maybe my particular file right now
has only about 50 or somewhat symbols
| | 03:17 | inside of them, but we know that each
of the symbols themselves are made up of
| | 03:20 | about 330 paths. Now I also know that
each of those little overlapping regions
| | 03:25 | will become their own new shapes. So
who knows how many paths we'll have now?
| | 03:28 | Will I have thousands or tens of
thousands of shapes to work with?
| | 03:32 | So I want to print this file before
Illustrator actually flattens the file
| | 03:35 | itself. It may look as a single, Wow!
We've got lots of objects here. It will
| | 03:39 | take me a long time to process all
that information. To speed up performance
| | 03:43 | Illustrator may decide to identify
really complex areas in my artwork and
| | 03:48 | rasterize those areas just to
be able to print them faster.
| | 03:52 | So in this case, it's not that
Illustrator is forced to convert areas to raster
| | 03:56 | images, because it has no other way to
represent them, instead it's choosing to
| | 04:00 | rasterize them, only because it will be
able to process those areas faster. Now
| | 04:04 | we may be able to appreciate getting
our printout faster out of the printer,
| | 04:07 | but at the same time you may want to
make sure that we have the utmost in
| | 04:10 | quality in keeping our file completely
vector, which also means if I save my
| | 04:14 | files in EPS file I want to be able to
scale it infinitely after I've already
| | 04:17 | created that EPS file.
| | 04:18 | Well, the good news is that I do
have some level of control over this
| | 04:22 | particular process. I do have the
ability to tell Illustrator not to rasterize
| | 04:27 | certain areas of my file simply
because of performance. How do we do that? If
| | 04:32 | you go to the Object menu here and
choose Flatten Transparency, we know that
| | 04:36 | the Flatten Transparency dialog box
comes up with all these settings, and these
| | 04:40 | settings here will be able to allow us
to control exactly how that flattening
| | 04:43 | process happen. We'll go into detail about
everything in this dialog box in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exploring the transparency flattener settings| 00:01 | So we've been talking about
flattening itself and how it happens and what
| | 00:05 | happens in that process, but what we
haven't focused on yet is exactly all the
| | 00:09 | settings that you have inside of
flattening. For example, when parts of your
| | 00:13 | artwork do need to get rasterized,
what resolution do those areas get
| | 00:16 | rasterized at? Or additionally, how
does Illustrator determine when artwork
| | 00:20 | becomes too difficult to work with and
for performance reasons it decides to
| | 00:23 | rasterize areas on its own? Let's take
a close took at the Flattener Settings
| | 00:27 | dialog box and see exactly where
all these settings come into play.
| | 00:31 | I'm actually just going to simply
create two regular shapes here that have some
| | 00:34 | kind of transparency in them, just so
that we can make that command active.
| | 00:37 | I'll change the opacity of these two
shapes to 50%. So now I have at least some
| | 00:41 | artwork that's selected and has some
transparency inside of it. I'll go to the
| | 00:45 | Object menu and I'll choose Flatten
Transparency to bring up the Flatten
| | 00:48 | Transparency dialog box.
| | 00:50 | Now let's take a look at what we
have here. I have first of all something
| | 00:53 | called a Preset. We're going to focus
on this in a few movies from now, instead
| | 00:57 | of choosing High, Medium or Low
Resolution settings here, I'm just going to
| | 01:00 | leave it right now set to the Medium
Resolution setting. The first thing we
| | 01:03 | have to look at over here is something
called a Raster/Vector Balance slider.
| | 01:07 | This is a slider here which on the
left side says Raster and on the right side
| | 01:11 | says Vector. I have a little triangle
here and notice that if I go all the way
| | 01:14 | to the left, I have a setting value of 0,
and if I go all the way to the right,
| | 01:18 | I have a value here of 100.
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