22. Shortcuts and SettingsWelcome to One-on-One| 00:00 |
(music playing)
| | 00:04 | Hello! I am Deke McClelland, welcome to
Illustrator CS6 One-on-One Advanced,
| | 00:10 | part three in a series of four video courses
devoted to your ultimate mastery of the world's
| | 00:16 | most powerful vector-based drawing software.
| | 00:19 | This course and the larger One-on-One
series is all about project-based learning; that
| | 00:25 | is to say you learn by doing.
| | 00:27 | And by actually experiencing Illustrator
firsthand, you'll be better equipped to create your own
| | 00:32 | artwork in the future.
| | 00:35 | In this course I will show you how to create custom
gradients and color fountains using blends and masks.
| | 00:40 | I'l show you how to create custom logos,
wrapp, type around the circle, and even make
| | 00:46 | photorealistic neon text.
| | 00:47 | I'll show you how to recolor your artwork
in a matter of minutes using one of the most
| | 00:52 | powerful features in
Illustrator, Recolor Artwork.
| | 00:55 | I'll show you everything you need to
know about transparency and blend modes.
| | 01:01 | I'll show you how to combine multiple fills
and strokes to create extraordinary effects
| | 01:05 | in the Appearance panel.
| | 01:07 | And I'll introduce you to be honestly
breathtaking world of Dynamic Effects.
| | 01:13 | The result is a contextualized learning
program; Illustrator's features make sense because
| | 01:18 | you apply them to a clearly defined task, and you
leave each chapter with a real sense of accomplishment.
| | 01:25 | I hope there are moments where you
feel I rule, I did this and I can do more.
| | 01:31 | Now that you're an advanced student, you
are ready to move through Illustrator without
| | 01:34 | anything getting in your way.
| | 01:37 | This means three things.
| | 01:38 | First, you need some new shortcuts, ones
that will call up Illustrator's most essential
| | 01:43 | features without you
having to fumble through menus.
| | 01:46 | Second, you need to know how to adjust a few
preference settings to make the program behave.
| | 01:52 | And third, you need to take advantage of the
best color settings that Illustrator and the
| | 01:56 | larger Creative Suite have to offer.
| | 01:59 | In this first movie I'll introduce
you to my custom keyboard shortcuts.
| | 02:03 | After that I'll show you how to
make Illustrator the best that it can be.
| | 02:07 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Introducing my custom keyboard shortcuts| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll walk you through the various shortcuts
that will be available to you if you install
| | 00:05 | my dekeKeys custom keyboard shortcuts, and that
way you have a sense for what you're getting into.
| | 00:10 | And then in the next movie I'll show
you how to install those shortcuts.
| | 00:13 | I've got a couple of HTML files here.
| | 00:16 | They're both available in the 22_settings
folder; one is called dekeKeys-AIcs6-Windows.htm
| | 00:21 | and the other is the same thing, Macintosh.htm.
| | 00:24 | And these tables document every single shortcut
that's available to you in Illustrator, whether
| | 00:30 | I created the shortcut or not.
| | 00:32 | So the black shortcuts are the default
shortcuts, the red ones are the ones that I've added.
| | 00:37 | For the most part where the menu Commands
are concerned, I didn't change a single one
| | 00:41 | of the Illustrator
shortcuts, I just added my own.
| | 00:44 | Now on the Mac things start
off with the Illustrator menu--
| | 00:46 | there is no illustrator menu on the PC--
| | 00:48 | and it contains all of the Preferences commands as
you can see here, which have these default shortcuts.
| | 00:54 | But the thing I want you to notice is that Hide
Application command right here, Hide Illustrator,
| | 00:58 | which normally in other applications has a
keyboard shortcut Command+H, that has no shortcut
| | 01:03 | inside Illustrator, instead,
Command+H hides the selection edges.
| | 01:08 | But you do have Command+Option+H in
order to hide all the other programs.
| | 01:11 | All right, I'm going to scroll down here to
the File menu so that you can see the first
| | 01:16 | of the shortcuts that I've added here.
| | 01:18 | I've given the Place command a shortcut of
Command+Option+D or Ctrl+Alt+D on the PC, and
| | 01:23 | that's based on a very ancient shortcut
that's available inside other applications, which
| | 01:28 | is Command+D or Ctrl+D.
| | 01:30 | And then for the Export command you have a shortcut of
Command+Shift+Option+X or Ctrl+Shift+Alt+X on the PC.
| | 01:37 | The next custom keyboard shortcuts aren't
available until we get to the Object menu.
| | 01:41 | So notice that each one of the menus
appears in gray inside of this list.
| | 01:46 | And then the sub menus have little
greater-than signs ( > ) after them.
| | 01:49 | And I've given you a bunch of keyboard
shortcuts inside of the path submenu.
| | 01:54 | So for Outline Stroke, we've got Ctrl+\, you can
see them all here, but Simplify, a very useful command,
| | 02:00 | I have Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Z or Command+Shift+
Option+Z on the Mac. And then for Add Anchor Points,
| | 02:05 | Ctrl+Shift+Alt+A or Command+
Shift+Option+A on the Mac.
| | 02:09 | And then Divide Objects Below, which allows
you to take a line and use it to cleave for
| | 02:15 | example a circle in half if you like, is Ctrl+
Shift+Alt+\ or Command+Shift+Option+\ on the Mac.
| | 02:21 | To make a Tile Pattern is
Ctrl+M or Command+M on the Mac.
| | 02:26 | Believe it or not, Ctrl and Command+M go
unused otherwise inside of Illustrator, and I think
| | 02:32 | that is an extremely useful feature.
| | 02:35 | We've got some additional commands that you
can take a look at here if you have a desire to.
| | 02:39 | The Glyphs panel, you can bring it up by pressing
Ctrl+Shift+Alt+G or Command+Shift+Option+G on the Mac.
| | 02:44 | I've also given all the
Change Case commands a name.
| | 02:48 | So this is to change the
case of some selected type.
| | 02:52 | So you can make it all UPPERCASE or lowercase,
this is different than All Caps by the way.
| | 02:57 | In that you're actually changing out the
characters for uppercase characters or lowercase or Title
| | 03:03 | Case or Sentence case, which again is something I
do a lot, so I went ahead and threw those in here.
| | 03:08 | This is the Select menu right there; I'll go
ahead and scroll down to it on the Mac side as well.
| | 03:14 | And I really like those Select Same
features, which allow you to select one blue object
| | 03:17 | for example and then select all
the other blue objects as well.
| | 03:21 | And I've gone ahead and
given some of these commands.
| | 03:24 | Keyboard shortcuts that all involve Ctrl+Alt
or Command+Option on the Mac and I just took
| | 03:29 | advantage of shortcuts that
were available, essentially.
| | 03:32 | So for Fill Color, if you want to select things
with the same Fill Color, it is Ctrl+Alt+,(comma)
| | 03:36 | or Command+Option+,(comma) on the Mac.
| | 03:38 | For Stroke Color, it's Ctrl+Alt or Command+Option+.(period
) and for Stroke Weight, it's Ctrl+Alt or Command+Option+\.
| | 03:45 | And then we've got some other ones, just
some numbers that happen to be available there.
| | 03:49 | And I figured, for direction handles, to
select all the control handles--that is inside of
| | 03:53 | an object--all the curving segments
independently of the anchor points, a nice curving numeral
| | 03:58 | would do the trick, such as Ctrl+Alt
+8 or Command+Option+8 on the Mac.
| | 04:02 | Next, we'll move down to the Effect menu and
notice that I have given the Transform command,
| | 04:07 | which is so very useful as a dynamic effect.
| | 04:11 | The keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+E or on the
Mac we have Command+E, again, that's a keyboard
| | 04:16 | shortcut that otherwise goes unused, and so
it's Ctrl+E or Command+E for Effect, essentially.
| | 04:23 | And then the other great effect, which is Drop
Shadow, has a keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+Alt+E
| | 04:27 | or Command+Option+E on the Mac.
| | 04:29 | For Round Corners I have given you Ctrl+Shift
+Alt+R or Command+Shift+Option+R on the Mac.
| | 04:34 | All right, I don't want to belabor this too
much, because you can look through this list
| | 04:37 | on your own, but I am going to go ahead and
scroll quite a bit down the list, where you'll
| | 04:43 | see that there is this other category
called Other (with menu Commands), and what that's
| | 04:47 | telling you is these are other features that
don't have menu Commands associated with them,
| | 04:52 | but they're organized along with the menu
Commands in the keyboard shortcuts dialog box.
| | 04:56 | So, most of these are shortcuts that are
included along with Illustrator by default, which are
| | 05:02 | pretty interesting, because there is an
awful lot of stuff you can do from the keyboard.
| | 05:05 | I went ahead and added a shortcut for
creating a new swatch, which is Ctrl+Shift++(Plus),
| | 05:10 | essentially it appears as equals, but it's
the Plus key, Command+Shift++(Plus) on a Mac.
| | 05:15 | And then if you scroll down to the tools list,
you'll see that I've added a bunch of shortcuts--
| | 05:20 | now we did modify a few of these
shortcuts back in the Fundamentals course.
| | 05:24 | You may recall that we went ahead and
switched out the Blob Brush and gave it a keyboard
| | 05:29 | shortcut of B and then turned around and gave
the Paint Brush a keyboard shortcut of Shift+B.
| | 05:35 | So there's a few of those here, the Eraser
tool has keyboard shortcut of E, whereas the
| | 05:38 | Free Transform tool has a keyboard shortcut
of Shift+D and then the Ellipse tool has a
| | 05:42 | keyboard shortcut of Shift+M, whereas the
Shape Builder tool has keyboard shortcut of L.
| | 05:47 | So I switched all those around. Otherwise
they're just additional shortcuts, like Shift+A for
| | 05:51 | the Art tool; and for the Rectangular and Poly
Grid tools I added shortcuts of Shift+Y and Shift+C.
| | 05:57 | For the Polygon tool we have a keyboard
shortcut of Shift+G for Gone, and for the Start tool
| | 06:02 | Shift+T for the second letter in
star, and so forth throughout the list.
| | 06:06 | And then the final shortcuts
appear for the various opacity levels.
| | 06:10 | So in Photoshop for example, you can just tap
the 1 key to change the opacity of a layer to 10%.
| | 06:15 | I thought that might be a little bit too
dangerous just to give a shortcut of 1 and 2 for 20%
| | 06:21 | and 3 for 30%, because it's very possibly
you might tamp one of those keys and change
| | 06:25 | the opacity of an object to not really be
paying attention and mess up your artwork.
| | 06:30 | So instead, I gave shortcuts of
Shift along with the Number Key.
| | 06:35 | So Shift+1 is 10% all the
way up to Shift+0 for 100%.
| | 06:40 | And that friends is what you have to look
forward to, if you install my dekeKeys custom
| | 06:44 | keyboard shortcuts.
| | 06:45 | In the next movie I'll show you how to install shortcuts,
so that they're available to you in Illustrator CS6.
| | 06:50 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Installing my dekeKeys shortcuts on Windows| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you how to install my
Custom Keyboard shortcuts if you're working on the PC.
| | 00:05 | I'll show you how to install my
shortcuts on the Mac in the next movie.
| | 00:09 | Now I have gone ahead and laid up precise
instructions for installing these shortcuts
| | 00:12 | here inside this file, but because it's a
tricky process I am going to go ahead and
| | 00:16 | show you exactly how to install the
file, so there's no room for confusion.
| | 00:21 | So, the first thing I want you to do go up to
the Edit menu and choose Keyboard Shortcuts,
| | 00:26 | or you can take advantage of its
Shortcut, which is Ctrl+Shift+Alt+K.
| | 00:29 | Now this set here, Deke keys, that's the
one that I created when we were discussing the
| | 00:34 | Blob Brush and the Eraser tool
back in the Fundamentals course.
| | 00:38 | But whether you have created any shortcuts
of your own or not, I want you to click on
| | 00:41 | the Save icon, the one that looks like a little
hard drive, and what you're doing here is creating
| | 00:46 | a File; and to make that file easy to find,
we should give it a distinctive name.
| | 00:51 | I am going to call my zzz_test, just so it's
late in the alphabet and it'll appear at the
| | 00:57 | end of the list, and that will allow us to
verify that we are in the right location.
| | 01:02 | Now I'll click OK and then click OK
again, in order to exit the dialog box.
| | 01:07 | Now I'll press the T key to get the Type tool
and go ahead and select everything from this backslash (\)
| | 01:13 | through and including the word Settings.
| | 01:15 | Don't select the next two items, because they
may or may not be applicable to your system,
| | 01:21 | then go up to the Edit menu and choose
the Copy Command or you can press Ctrl+C.
| | 01:25 | Now I'll Escape (Esc) out of the Text Entry
mode and I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift+A
| | 01:29 | on the Mac to deselect my text.
| | 01:32 | Now I'll minimize Illustrator to switch to
the Desktop, and you can see that I already
| | 01:36 | have the 22 settings folder open, which
contains a Macintosh and Windows version of my Keyboard
| | 01:42 | Shortcuts. Naturally you
want the Windows version.
| | 01:45 | Now I'll tab the Star key your keyboard, or
somehow otherwise bring up the Start menu,
| | 01:50 | and then select your Name, where the name
that you're logged in as from the top right
| | 01:54 | corner of the menu.
| | 01:56 | Now you may or may not see these same
subfolders, it really doesn't matter.
| | 02:00 | What does matter is that
you're seeing the hidden folder.
| | 02:03 | And in order to see it, press the Alt key to
bring up this additional menu bar near the
| | 02:07 | top of the folder, then click on
tools and choose Folder options.
| | 02:12 | Now switch to the second tab, which is View,
and notice this little subfolder here called
| | 02:17 | Hidden files and folders.
| | 02:19 | You want to select the second option,
Show hidden files-folders and drives.
| | 02:23 | You also what to make sure that hide
Extensions for known File types is turned off. Then go
| | 02:28 | ahead and click OK and you'll see at
least one new folder called AppData.
| | 02:33 | The next step is to click up here in the
Navigation bar and click again to set the Location of
| | 02:38 | your blinking insertion marker after your
Name and then press Ctrl+V or Command+V on
| | 02:43 | the Mac in order to paste in the Path
Information that you copied in Illustrator.
| | 02:48 | Then press the Enter key in
order to Navigate to this location.
| | 02:52 | Now depending on what country you're working
in, you may see some other folders; here in
| | 02:57 | the States you need to click on en_US.
| | 03:01 | Now you may or may not see these subfolders;
if you see a bunch of files then you're probably
| | 03:05 | in a right location, but if you see subfolders
like these, you probably want to double-click
| | 03:10 | on S64, which indicates that you're
working with a 64-bit Operating System.
| | 03:15 | And that's what I'll do in my case, and
then you want to scroll down the list inside of
| | 03:18 | this folder and you should see that file that
you saved a moment ago, in my case zzz_test.kys,
| | 03:26 | which indicates it is a
keyboard shortcut file.
| | 03:29 | Now you want to go back your 22 settings
folder there and assuming that you want to copy the
| | 03:33 | file instead of move it, then drag it into
that System folder and press and hold the
| | 03:38 | Ctrl key and you'll see a little Plus sign
under your cursor along with the words Copy
| | 03:43 | To, and that'll let you copy
the file to the New Location.
| | 03:47 | Now let's switch back to Illustrator and then
go up to the Edit menu and choose the Keyboard
| | 03:51 | Shortcuts command again, and go up to the
Set option, click on it and you should see
| | 03:56 | Deke keys AICS6 Win, and go ahead
and select it to switch to my shortcuts.
| | 04:02 | Now by default you should see tools listed
in the upper left corner of the dialog box,
| | 04:07 | in which case go and scroll down the list
and you should see the Art tool now has a
| | 04:11 | short Shift+A, the Grid tools have shortcuts
of Shift+Y and Shift+C, the Polygon tool has
| | 04:17 | a shortcut of Shift+G and so forth.
| | 04:20 | In which case you'll successfully install
my shortcuts. Go ahead and click OK and you
| | 04:24 | and I are now working with the same set of
Custom Keyboard Shortcuts, which should hopefully
| | 04:29 | make for a more efficient
experience here inside Illustrator.
| | 04:33 | Now that you're done with this movie,
you'll want to skip the next two movies, which is
| | 04:36 | specifically geared toward Macintosh users,
and join me in the movie after that, when
| | 04:41 | we discuss how to modify a
few Key Preference Settings.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Installing my dekeKeys shortcuts on the Mac| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you how to install my
custom keyboard shortcuts if you're working on a Mac.
| | 00:05 | If you're working on a PC, you can
skip this movie as well as the next one.
| | 00:09 | Now this second bullet item contains all the
instructions for installing dekeKeys on the Mac.
| | 00:14 | But I am going to walk you through the
process because it can be a little confusing.
| | 00:18 | So the first thing I would like you to do
is go up to the Edit menu and choose Keyboard
| | 00:22 | Shortcuts, or you can take advantage of its
shortcut, which is Command+Shift+Option+K.
| | 00:26 | Now you can see that I currently have
dekeKeys selected--those are the shortcuts that we
| | 00:31 | modified when we were taking a look at the Blob
Brush and Eraser tools back in the Fundamentals course.
| | 00:36 | But whether you have modified your keyboard
shortcuts or not, I want you to click on the
| | 00:40 | Save icon, one that looks like a hard drive--
that's going to create a file on your hard
| | 00:45 | drive, so that we know we
are in the proper location.
| | 00:48 | And I am going to give it a
distinctive name, like zzz_test.
| | 00:52 | That will also ensure that it's at the
end of the File list in alphabetical order.
| | 00:56 | Now I will click OK, and then
click OK again, to exit the dialog box.
| | 01:01 | Now press the T key to switch to the Type
tool and go ahead and select this text, starting
| | 01:06 | with the forward slash all the way
through and including the word Settings.
| | 01:10 | Don't select his final subfolder,
because it may or may not apply to your system.
| | 01:15 | Then go up to the Edit menu and choose
the Copy command or you can press Command+C.
| | 01:20 | Now I will Escape out of the Text Edit mode and
press Command+Shift+A in order to deselect my text.
| | 01:25 | And then I will go up to the Illustrator menu and
choose Hide Illustrator in order to switch to the finder.
| | 01:31 | Now you can see in the background here I have
opened the 22_settings folder which contains
| | 01:36 | the file that you will want to
install, which is dekekeys AIcs6isMac.kys.
| | 01:42 | Now if I right-click on the Title bar here--
you can see that I've got Hide toolbar selected--
| | 01:47 | what that does is it ensures that the
next command I choose opens a new window,
| | 01:52 | so I can keep this window open as well.
| | 01:54 | Now I will go to the Go menu and choose
Home in order to switch to your personal folder
| | 01:59 | and then return to the Go
menu and choose Go to Folder.
| | 02:03 | And that will bring up this little window here.
| | 02:05 | Now in your case it will probably be blank,
you probably won't see anything there.
| | 02:09 | What you want to do is whether you see
something or not, you want to replace it with this.
| | 02:14 | Go ahead and enter a tilde sign. The tilde
key is the one in the upper left corner of
| | 02:19 | an American keyboard, right next
to the 1 key and above the Tab key.
| | 02:23 | You need to press Shift along with to
make sure you get the tilde character. And
| | 02:27 | then go up to the Edit menu and choose the
Paste command, or press Command+V, and that
| | 02:32 | will paste in that text that
you just copied from Illustrator.
| | 02:36 | Then click on the Go button and that
should take you to this folder right here.
| | 02:40 | Now depending on what country
you're in, you may see different results.
| | 02:44 | Here in the States there
is a subfolder called en_US.
| | 02:48 | Go ahead and double-click
on it to enter that folder.
| | 02:50 | And then you should see this file that you just
created inside of Illustrator, in my case zzz_test.kys.
| | 02:57 | All right, now go ahead and bring back your
22_settings folder, grab that dekeKeys file
| | 03:04 | for the Mac--not the one for the PC--
and then drag it into the other folder.
| | 03:09 | And assuming you want to copy this file to
the new location, as opposed to move it, press
| | 03:13 | and hold the Option key and
then drop the file into place.
| | 03:17 | All right, now switch back to
Illustrator; the final step is to go ahead and load the
| | 03:22 | shortcuts that you've installed, by returning to
the Edit menu, once again choosing Keyboard Shortcuts.
| | 03:28 | And then change the set from whatever it is to
dekekeys AIcs6Mac and that will load my shortcuts.
| | 03:35 | Now to confirm that everything is copacetic
here, make sure that tools is selected from
| | 03:40 | this pop-up menu, as by default.
| | 03:42 | And then scroll down the list and you should
see that the Arc tool now has a shortcut of
| | 03:47 | Shift+A, the two Grid tools have shortcuts
of Shift+Y and Shift+C, the Polygon tool has
| | 03:52 | a shortcut of Shift+G, and so on.
| | 03:55 | Assuming that's a case, go ahead and click OK.
| | 03:58 | And now you and I have both loaded my
custom keyboard shortcuts, which should make for
| | 04:02 | a more efficient
experience here inside Illustrator.
| | 04:06 | In the next movie I'll show you how to
remap a few OS level keyboard shortcuts here on
| | 04:11 | the Mac, so that both my custom shortcuts and
Illustrator's default shortcuts work as advertised.
| | 04:16 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Remapping your Macintosh OS shortcuts| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you how to remap a
few OS-level keyboard shortcuts on the Mac,
| | 00:05 | so that everything works as
advertised inside Illustrator.
| | 00:08 | And by the way, this movie is exclusively
for Macintosh folks; if you are working on
| | 00:12 | a PC, you can skip ahead to the next movie.
| | 00:15 | First step is to go up to the Apple menu
and choose System Preferences and then inside
| | 00:20 | the big System Preferences dialog box,
locate and click on the Keyboard icon.
| | 00:25 | Now we want to start with a keyboard tab here.
| | 00:28 | So go ahead and click on it,
if it's not already visible.
| | 00:31 | And then turn on this checkbox, Use all F1,
F2 key as standard function keys; that way
| | 00:36 | you don't have to the press that Fn key all
the time, except you will now have to press
| | 00:41 | the Fn key to do things like change your
monitor brightness, and change the volume and so forth.
| | 00:47 | So it's really up to you which way you decide
to work, but I prefer for this checkbox to be on.
| | 00:52 | Then switch over to Keyboard Shortcuts,
and you want to start with Launchpad & Dock.
| | 00:56 | And notice the side I am Turn Dock Hiding on and
off; its keyboard shortcut is Command+Option+D,
| | 01:02 | which is what I've set for the
Place Command under the File menu.
| | 01:06 | So if you want to work that way as well, you
need to change this shortcut by clicking on
| | 01:10 | it once and then twice, in
order to make that shortcut active.
| | 01:14 | And then press the Ctrl key along with D.
| | 01:17 | And you'll now see a ^ caret listed next to the D,
which is the Mac's way of showing you the Ctrl key.
| | 01:22 | All right, now I'll switchover to Mission
Control and from here things could end up
| | 01:26 | differing, depending on which version
of the Operating System you're using.
| | 01:30 | But what you want to do is hunt down any
function keys that are listed just by themselves, such
| | 01:36 | as F10 and F12 here, and change
them to Ctrl along with that key.
| | 01:41 | So for example, once I highlight F10, I will
press Ctrl+F10 and then I will highlight F12,
| | 01:47 | which is what I've been telling you is a
great keyboard shortcut for reverting the image
| | 01:51 | to its last saved appearance, but it's going to
switch you to the Dashboard the way things are.
| | 01:56 | So go and press Ctrl+F12 for that guy as well.
| | 02:00 | Then you can switch ahead to Spotlight.
| | 02:02 | Now both of these keyboard shortcuts interfere
with your ability to zoom inside of Illustrator.
| | 02:08 | So what I recommend you do is highlight
the first one and press Command+Ctrl+Spacebar
| | 02:13 | so that you still have a shortcut for Spotlight.
| | 02:15 | And then for the next one, press Command+Ctrl+Option+
Spacebar, and you'll end up seeing this little Option character.
| | 02:22 | All right, finally go ahead and
switchover to Universal Access.
| | 02:26 | And this is totally up to you; if you find
these options to be useful, then by all means
| | 02:31 | leave them turned on or switch them to
different keyboard shortcuts. so they don't interfere
| | 02:35 | with the ones that I added to Illustrator.
But if you don't rely on, for example screen
| | 02:40 | zooming, then just go ahead and click a
couple of times on that checkbox--once to turn all
| | 02:45 | the options on, and then to turn them all off.
| | 02:48 | And that way these shortcuts, Command+Option+8
and Command+Option+Backslash, will not interfere
| | 02:53 | with those that I added to the Select menu.
| | 02:56 | And that's it. Now you can close System
Preferences in order to save your changes.
| | 03:00 | And that's how you modify the Mac's OS-level
keyboard shortcuts, so they don't interfere
| | 03:05 | with Illustrator's default
shortcuts or my custom ones.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting a few key Preferences settings| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you how to adjust
a few key preference settings so that you
| | 00:04 | can get your work done more quickly and
with less frustration, especially as you begin
| | 00:09 | to assemble more complicated artwork.
| | 00:12 | To get to the Preference Settings, press Ctrl+
K or Command+K on the Mac, and that will bring
| | 00:16 | up the Preferences dialog box.
| | 00:18 | And this first item, Keyboard Increment,
is something that I'd like to modify.
| | 00:22 | Now, by default it's set to 1-point, which
means every time you press an arrow key, you
| | 00:26 | nudge the selection by a point.
| | 00:28 | But while you can always nudge by a
greater increment by pressing Shift along with an
| | 00:33 | arrow key, you can't nudge by a smaller increment,
the way you can inside InDesign, for example.
| | 00:40 | So it pays when you're working in
Illustrator to set the Keyboard Increment to something
| | 00:43 | small in the first place.
| | 00:45 | I find that 0.2 point works out very nicely.
| | 00:48 | That is a fifth of a point.
| | 00:50 | In that way, especially when I am nudging
anchor points or curved segments around inside
| | 00:54 | of an illustration, I can do so with precision.
| | 00:57 | And if I want to nudge by a larger increment,
such as 2 points in this case, I would press
| | 01:02 | Shift along with an arrow key, and if I
want to nudge by still larger increments, I can
| | 01:06 | double-click on an arrow tool icon in the
toolbox in order to bring up the Move dialog box.
| | 01:11 | You want to make sure your Constrain Angle
is set to 0° as by default, otherwise you'll
| | 01:15 | start drawing rectangles and ellipses and
textboxes and all kinds of stuff at an angle.
| | 01:21 | These checkboxes are set fine by default, but I
do want to show you how Use Preview Bounds works.
| | 01:27 | I'll leave it off for the moment and click OK,
and then I'll go ahead and draw a rectangle
| | 01:32 | here, like so, and I'll go
ahead and draw another one below it.
| | 01:35 | And I'll assign this second rectangle
a thick Line Weight, such as 30 points.
| | 01:40 | Then I'll press the V key to switch back to
my Black Arrow tool and I'll Shift+click on
| | 01:44 | the first rectangle so they're both selected,
and then I'll click on a line up here in the
| | 01:48 | Control panel--make sure the panel is set to
Align to Selection--and then click on Vertical
| | 01:53 | Align Top and that will go ahead and
align the top segments in those two shapes.
| | 01:58 | And notice the Strokes aren't in
alignment, but the paths themselves are.
| | 02:03 | If you'd prefer to work the other way around,
then you press Ctrl+K or Command+K on the
| | 02:07 | Mac, and you turn on Use Preview Bounds, then
click OK; and now notice if I go back to that
| | 02:13 | exact same option, Vertical Align Top, and
I click on it, that goes ahead and nudges
| | 02:18 | the first rectangle upward so
the two Strokes are in alignment.
| | 02:22 | So what you're doing is you're aligning based
on appearance instead of structure.
| | 02:27 | So I'll go ahead and delete those two rectangles;
they have no business in this artwork.
| | 02:31 | Our next option has to
do with making selections.
| | 02:34 | I'm going to go ahead and advance to this
document here and I'm going to zoom in on
| | 02:40 | this little Start menu icon that I drew, and
I'll double-click on it as well in order to
| | 02:44 | enter the Group Isolation mode.
| | 02:46 | Now, this is a pretty
complicated little piece of artwork here.
| | 02:49 | And let's say I want to select this region
of blue down below; if I end up clicking here,
| | 02:53 | I select a little colorful window guys, and
that's because they're casting a drop shadow.
| | 02:58 | So in other words, I'm selecting based on
the appearance of this artwork as opposed
| | 03:03 | to, once again, its structure.
| | 03:05 | If I press the A key to get my White Arrow
tool--and let's say I want to select a point,
| | 03:10 | just an anchor point,
somewhere on this blue circle.
| | 03:13 | If I end up clicking inside the circle--well,
in this case I still am selecting the drop
| | 03:19 | shadow, so I need to get farther away from
it, if I click right about here, let's say--
| | 03:22 | I end up selecting the entire shape because I
clicked inside of its Fill instead of on its path outline.
| | 03:28 | So I'd have to click off to deselect the
artwork and then try to click more precisely right
| | 03:32 | there in its outline. I missed again.
| | 03:34 | This time I'll position my cursor where it
needs to be and I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A or
| | 03:38 | Command+Shift+A on the Mac to deselect the
artwork, then I'll click, and this time I
| | 03:41 | get the anchor point.
| | 03:43 | So it can get pretty gnarly when you're
working in complex artwork, even something like this
| | 03:47 | where it's a complex element inside of
an otherwise pretty simple piece of art.
| | 03:52 | So here's what you do.
| | 03:53 | I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift+A
on the Mac in order to deselect my artwork,
| | 03:57 | and then I'll press Ctrl+K or Command+K on
the Mac to bring up the Preferences dialog box.
| | 04:01 | I'll switch to this next option down here
on the left hand side, Selection & Anchor
| | 04:05 | Display, and notice this checkbox
right there--Object Selection by Path Only.
| | 04:10 | Now, if you turn it on, you're going to
have to work more precisely inside the program,
| | 04:15 | but you'll have more flexibility too;
you'll be able to select through objects the
| | 04:19 | way you do when you're in the Outline mode.
| | 04:21 | So I'll go ahead and turn
this checkbox on, then click OK.
| | 04:24 | Now if I click inside of this blue ellipse, I
don't select anything, because I'm not selecting
| | 04:29 | based on its appearance,
there is nothing at that location.
| | 04:32 | Whereas if I move my cursor over, at some
point I'll see a little square next to my
| | 04:36 | cursor, and that will show me that there's
a path outline underneath, and I'll click.
| | 04:41 | It doesn't select the entire shape this
time, it just selects the segment that I clicked
| | 04:44 | on, which allows me to then click on
an anchor point in order to select it.
| | 04:48 | Also, this is interesting, I'll press Ctrl+Shift+
A or Command+Shift+A again, and I'll move inside
| | 04:53 | of this orange window right there.
| | 04:55 | Notice that I've got a square next to my
cursor, that shows me that there's a path outline
| | 04:59 | at this location, and if I click, it turns
out to be the outline around the blue ellipse,
| | 05:05 | which is exactly what I wanted.
| | 05:06 | So you're selecting based on the structures
of the paths and not their appearance, which
| | 05:11 | I can tell you based on experience is a
little tricky at times, but it's a more advanced
| | 05:16 | way to work and you're not going to find
yourself having to Ctrl+Click or Command+Click in order
| | 05:21 | to select down a stack.
| | 05:22 | There is an equivalent to
that option that affects text.
| | 05:25 | So I'll go ahead and switch to my next
document, this one that we worked with in Chapter 11
| | 05:30 | of the intermediate course.
| | 05:31 | Now notice that clicking inside of the
background image doesn't select it, even though it is
| | 05:36 | unlocked by the way.
| | 05:38 | And that's because I'm not
selecting based on appearance anymore.
| | 05:40 | If I want to select that image, then I'd
have to zoom out and click on its outline, like
| | 05:45 | so; which is actually great, because then I'm
not accidentally selecting the image all the time.
| | 05:50 | But let's say I want to select done dirt
cheap right there and I click right about there,
| | 05:55 | I end up selecting the word design, because
Illustrator is taking into account where the
| | 06:00 | descenders would be, as well
as where the ascenders would be.
| | 06:04 | So even though you're clicking on what
appears to be the h in cheap, you end up selecting
| | 06:08 | the word design instead.
| | 06:10 | If you want to get around that, then press
Ctrl+K or Command+K on the Mac once again,
| | 06:14 | and I'm going to go ahead and turn that Use
Preview Bounds option off, because I prefer
| | 06:18 | not to work with it, I just want you to
see how it works, and then I'll click on Type
| | 06:22 | over here on the left hand list.
| | 06:24 | And notice that you've got this option,
Type Object Selection by Path Only.
| | 06:28 | If you turn it on and then click OK, now
notice if I click on this h, I'm not going to select
| | 06:34 | anything, because I'm not clicking on
the baseline for either text object.
| | 06:39 | Now I have to click exactly on the baseline
or this baseline here in order to select that
| | 06:45 | text, and it doesn't matter if you have many
text objects overlapping each other, as long
| | 06:49 | as you can click on the text object's
baseline, you'll select it. All right!
| | 06:53 | Just one more item I want to show you, I'll
press Ctrl+K or Command+K on the Mac to revisit
| | 06:58 | the Preferences, and then I'll
switch down to Plug-ins & Scratch Disks.
| | 07:02 | If you want Illustrator to work as
efficiently as possible and crash on you as infrequently
| | 07:07 | as possible, then you want to adjust the
Scratch Disks, which gives Illustrator a little more
| | 07:12 | wiggle room when you're working on very complex
documents that take up a lot of room and memory.
| | 07:17 | Assuming that you have multiple hard drives
installed on your computer--and this is only
| | 07:21 | for those of you with multiple internal hard
drives--then you want to change the Primary
| | 07:26 | Drive to not your Startup Drive. So in
my case I'd change it to the D Drive.
| | 07:31 | And then change your Secondary Drive to the
Startup Drive, or if you've got another drive
| | 07:35 | to work with, you can select it instead.
| | 07:37 | I'm going to select the Startup Drive.
| | 07:40 | Note that these particular changes will only
take effect the next time you start Illustrator.
| | 07:44 | So what you want to do is click OK and then
go up to the File menu and choose the Exit
| | 07:49 | command here on the PC or the Quit command
on the Mac, and then relaunch the software.
| | 07:54 | Every time you quit Illustrator, it forces
the program to save your preference settings;
| | 07:59 | that way if you crash, you don't lose those
settings the next time you start the software.
| | 08:04 | And that's how you adjust a few key
preference settings in order to achieve a more advanced
| | 08:09 | and more efficient
experience here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding the color-managed workflow| 00:00 | In this movie we're going to take on color
settings in Illustrator, a.k.a., color management.
| | 00:05 | And while it's a gnarly topic conceptually, the one
change I'm going to ask you to make is very simple.
| | 00:11 | Now, I happen to be working inside of an
RGB document, and I know that because if I go
| | 00:15 | the File menu and choose Document Color mode,
RGB Color is checked, and you have that option
| | 00:22 | to Switch Color Modes when you create the
document in the first place, or I could switch
| | 00:26 | the Color mode on the fly.
| | 00:28 | So typically you use CMYK Color for print
documents and RGB Color for web documents,
| | 00:33 | but you don't have to go
that way if you don't want.
| | 00:36 | You can easily repurpose the
same document in both directions.
| | 00:39 | Anyway, what it means by virtue of the
fact that I'm working in RGB is that all of my
| | 00:45 | colors inside this document are defined in
the RGB space, even if it appears otherwise.
| | 00:51 | What I'll do is I'll click on this red text
right here, which has been converted to path
| | 00:54 | outlines as you can see, and then if I
examine the Fill color inside the Color panel, I see
| | 00:59 | CMYK sliders, but I see
some very unusual values.
| | 01:03 | And that's because I didn't really use
the CMYK sliders to define this color.
| | 01:07 | And I can see what I actually used by
clicking on the flyout menu icon in the upper right
| | 01:12 | corner and choosing RGB, and there are my much more
reasonable values there, which are actually in place.
| | 01:19 | Let me show you something else.
| | 01:21 | I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift+A
on the Mac to deselect that text, and then
| | 01:25 | I'll press the M key to switch to the
Rectangle tool and I'll draw a rectangle; that comes
| | 01:29 | in filled with red, because that was
the color of my last selected object.
| | 01:33 | I'm going to dial in a different color though.
| | 01:35 | Take the R value down to 200, I'll take the
G value down to 0, and I'll crank up the Blue
| | 01:40 | value to 255 so we get this
screaming purple right here.
| | 01:44 | Now notice if I switch over to my CMYK
values, that they're pertaining to keep up; but you
| | 01:50 | can see that the color right there at the
tip of each one of the sliders is a much dimmer
| | 01:54 | purple, and if I change this value right here--
notice it says 81.45--if I change it to just
| | 01:59 | 82%, which is a nominal difference, not
something you'd normally perceive and press the Enter
| | 02:05 | key or the Return key on the Mac, my
rectangle dims dramatically. And that's because now
| | 02:11 | what Illustrator is doing is trying to find
an RGB equivalent for these CMYK values, which
| | 02:16 | is this muddier shade of purple here.
| | 02:18 | So by virtue of the fact that I'm working
in the RGB space, I can take advantage of
| | 02:23 | colors like this one, which we're now seeing
because I pressed Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on the Mac.
| | 02:28 | Now, what's great about this is Illustrator
and Photoshop and the other Creative Suite
| | 02:32 | applications not only allow you to create
vivid RGB artwork along with your CMYK as
| | 02:38 | well, but they also do so
inside of a controlled workflow.
| | 02:42 | So I want you to see something here.
| | 02:44 | I'll go up to the Edit menu and choose the Color
Settings command, or you can press Ctrl+Shift+K,
| | 02:49 | Command+Shift+K on the Mac, because it's
yet another preference option; and I'll change
| | 02:54 | the Settings as by the default to North
American General Purpose 2--at least those are the
| | 02:58 | default settings here in the States.
| | 03:00 | And notice that RGB is set to sRGB,
which is a way of confirming the RGB space.
| | 03:06 | So in other words, Illustrator isn't just
sending the RGB values out to the screen and
| | 03:11 | hoping for the best, it's actually quantifying
this RGB space, which is great and that means
| | 03:16 | you can get reliable results between different
applications and between your applications
| | 03:21 | and your printer as well.
| | 03:22 | sRGB however--while it's great as a web
output space--is not great for a day-to-day
| | 03:28 | work, because what it is, is it's an old
profile for one thing, and also it's based on your
| | 03:34 | run-of-the-mill, sort of worst case scenario,
PC monitor. And not even that--it's a CRT
| | 03:40 | monitor, even though we all
use flat screens these days.
| | 03:43 | So it's just a way of quantifying the worst
case scenario and you don't really want to
| | 03:47 | be working in the worst case scenario.
| | 03:49 | I'm going to leave it set this way for now.
| | 03:51 | I'll click OK just so that North American
General Purpose 2 sticks, but I want you to
| | 03:55 | see something else.
| | 03:57 | We're unsynchronized, meaning that my
various CS6 applications aren't in agreement with
| | 04:02 | each other, and I'll show you what that
looks like in a moment, but I'll click OK.
| | 04:06 | I'm going to take this square right there
and I'm going to go up to the Edit menu and
| | 04:09 | I'm going to choose the Copy command; and
then I'll switch over to Photoshop, and I'll
| | 04:14 | go up to the Edit menu and I'll choose its
Color Settings command, which is very similar,
| | 04:19 | borders on being identical.
| | 04:22 | Notice that it's set to a different space,
one that I've created, and the RGB Workspace
| | 04:26 | is Adobe RGB, which is a more robust workspace.
| | 04:30 | And it means that you can take full advantage
of this expensive graphics software that you
| | 04:34 | have and the display features of
your more sophisticated monitor.
| | 04:39 | Notice once again that we're seeing the word
Unsynchronized, because Illustrator and Photoshop
| | 04:44 | are not in agreement
with each other. All right,
| | 04:46 | I'll go ahead and Cancel out and I'll go up to
the File menu and I'll choose the New command,
| | 04:50 | and Photoshop is going to automatically
recognize the contents of the clipboard there, so all
| | 04:54 | I need to do is click OK.
| | 04:56 | And then I'll go up to the Edit
menu and choose the Paste command.
| | 04:59 | Photoshop is going to ask me how I want to
paste this object. I'm just going to Paste
| | 05:03 | it as Pixels and click OK, and then I'll
press the Enter key or the Return key on the Mac
| | 05:08 | to confirm that place.
| | 05:09 | So I want you to see something.
| | 05:11 | This is Photoshop, and this is Illustrator;
that's the same color of purple right there,
| | 05:16 | even though we're working
in two different RGB spaces.
| | 05:21 | Watch what happens if I were to go up to the
Edit menu here in Illustrator again and choose
| | 05:25 | Assign Profile; and I were to say, you know
what, I want to be working in that same space
| | 05:31 | I'm working in inside of Photoshop, so I'll
go ahead and click on this menu, scroll up
| | 05:36 | and choose Adobe RGB (1998
) right there and click OK.
| | 05:40 | You're going to see your square shift; click OK,
and watch it shift to a totally different color.
| | 05:45 | Now I'll go ahead and copy it, this time
just by pressing Ctrl+C or Command+C on the Mac.
| | 05:49 | I'll switch back to Photoshop and I'll paste
this guy in by pressing Ctrl+V or Command+V
| | 05:55 | on the Mac. I'll leave Pixels selected, click
OK, and notice we now have the pinker version
| | 06:00 | of that purple square again.
| | 06:03 | I'll go ahead and press the Enter key or the
Return key on the Mac to confirm the placement there.
| | 06:06 | So this is the previous purple and this is
the new purple, and what Photoshop is doing
| | 06:10 | is it's converting this
profiled rectangle on-the-fly.
| | 06:15 | Now, you don't really need to
understand everything I've shown you there.
| | 06:19 | What I want you to know is that you're working
in a color-managed workflow, whether you like
| | 06:24 | it or not--and you do like it--because back
in the old days this thing could have turned
| | 06:28 | blue on you inside of a different program.
| | 06:31 | Anyway, I'll switch back to Illustrator.
| | 06:33 | What we really want at the end of the day
is for all of our Creative Suite applications
| | 06:38 | to agree with each other.
| | 06:40 | And we also want to take advantage of the
widest array of colors that we can, and you
| | 06:44 | do that by adjusting your color settings, and I'm
going to show you exactly how in the next movie.
| | 06:49 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Establishing the optimal Color Settings| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you how to change your
color settings so that all the CS6 applications
| | 00:05 | align with each other, and you're
afforded the most optimal working experience.
| | 00:09 | Now, you can see here I've added another rectangle
with a gradient inside of it, just so that we can see.
| | 00:14 | I'm going to go up to the
Edit menu, choose Assign Profile.
| | 00:18 | This is not a command that you typically
use inside Illustrator unless you've opened an
| | 00:23 | unprofiled EPS image from long, long ago.
Otherwise you probably don't want to flit
| | 00:29 | your profiles back and forth.
| | 00:30 | I'm just doing this for
the sake of demonstration.
| | 00:33 | So I'm going to choose Assign Profile.
| | 00:35 | In the previous movie I assigned Adobe RGB.
I'm going to switch it back to my working
| | 00:39 | space, which is sRGB, and I'll click OK.
| | 00:42 | I want to watch these rectangles in particular.
| | 00:45 | Both of them end up
dimming down, as you can see.
| | 00:48 | Now, you may say, well, I like this shade
of purple better than the other one anyway,
| | 00:52 | that's not really the point.
| | 00:53 | You can achieve this shade of purple inside
just about any RGB space, it's just a matter
| | 00:58 | of modifying the color values inside the
Color panel; but I want you to see that switching
| | 01:03 | the profile switched the
illustration's appearance.
| | 01:07 | Now I want you to go up to the Edit
menu and choose the Color Settings command.
| | 01:11 | What this command does is it changes the
workspace that's available to you when you're creating
| | 01:16 | future illustrations and it assigns
that profile to those illustrations.
| | 01:21 | So this is going to change what we do in
the future, not what we've already done.
| | 01:26 | Go ahead and choose Color Settings, and
then the only change I'm suggesting you make is
| | 01:30 | switch RGB from sRGB to Adobe RGB (1998);
otherwise the settings are just fine as is,
| | 01:39 | with one possible exception, and that being
the CMYK value here--that you would want to
| | 01:43 | change to accommodate your commercial printer.
| | 01:46 | So if they've got a different profile for
you, you should use it, or they may just tell
| | 01:51 | you to stick with the default.
| | 01:52 | Now, the next thing you want to do--particularly
if you work with other Creative Suite applications,
| | 01:57 | if you have one of the full Creative Suites
that includes Photoshop and other programs--
| | 02:03 | then you want to note the fact that you're
seeing Unsynchronized up here in the upper
| | 02:07 | left hand corner, which is telling you that
at least according to Illustrator the other
| | 02:11 | applications are not synced up.
| | 02:13 | If you want to synchronize those apps, then
you click on the Save button and you go ahead
| | 02:18 | and save out a file.
| | 02:19 | I've already done this using Photoshop.
| | 02:21 | I'll create a new file however that's specifically
geared toward the settings I'm creating in Illustrator.
| | 02:26 | So we'll call this Best Workflow AIcs6,
let's say; you can call yours anything you want.
| | 02:32 | Make sure to save it to this default location,
then click the Save button, and then click OK.
| | 02:38 | And notice, by the way, when I clicked OK,
my rectangles did not change in appearance.
| | 02:43 | Even though I switched from sRGB to Adobe RGB,
I didn't change the profile that's associated
| | 02:49 | with this document.
| | 02:51 | This document is still specked.
| | 02:53 | If I go up to the Edit menu and choose
Assign Profile, it's still specked to sRGB.
| | 02:58 | So the change I just showed you is not
going to affect any documents you've created in
| | 03:04 | the last ten years, as long as
they're profiled as by default. All right!
| | 03:10 | I'm going to Cancel out of here.
| | 03:11 | Now, again, if you've got the Creative Suite--
and only if you have the Creative Suite--then
| | 03:16 | you want to synchronize all
your applications from Bridge.
| | 03:19 | And you do that by going to the File menu
and choosing Browse in Bridge, or you can
| | 03:24 | press Ctrl+Alt+O, and then inside the Bridge
go up to the Edit menu and choose the Creative
| | 03:30 | Suite Color Settings command.
| | 03:31 | If you don't see this command, you don't have
the suite, or at least Bridge doesn't think you do.
| | 03:37 | Also, if you choose the command and
you get an error message, same thing.
| | 03:41 | Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and select
those settings that I just saved out a moment ago,
| | 03:45 | Best Workflow AIcs6.
| | 03:47 | Notice even Bridge is telling us that things
are not synchronized; but as soon as I click
| | 03:52 | on the Apply button and then go back up to
the Edit menu and choose that command again,
| | 03:58 | then I can see that everybody is now synchronized,
and we should have absolutely perfectly matching
| | 04:04 | colors across the various applications.
| | 04:08 | So I'll go ahead and Cancel out there.
| | 04:09 | Now, there is just one
more thing I want to show you.
| | 04:12 | I'm going to click on the boomerang icon in
order to return to Illustrator, and I'll switch
| | 04:17 | over to the Skateboard only.ai file, and I'll
go up to the File menu and choose Save for Web.
| | 04:24 | And here's the deal, I'm going to change the
Width of this artwork to 400 pixels, and cross
| | 04:29 | my fingers and hope it
works; of course it didn't.
| | 04:32 | So I'll turn off the link icon and then
turn it back on, and that went ahead and sized
| | 04:36 | my art, so that I have a better view of things.
| | 04:39 | And I want you to see, look side-by-side of
these guys, compare them--the one on the right
| | 04:43 | is brighter, the colors have become more vivid, and
that's a function of having Convert to sRGB turned on.
| | 04:49 | If I turn it off, watch the image on the right-
hand side is going to dim down, did you see that?
| | 04:54 | That is not to say that Convert to sRGB is
a problem, you still want to always choose
| | 04:59 | it when you're going to the web, you don't
want to send out an unprofiled Adobe RGB image,
| | 05:05 | which is what we'd have now.
| | 05:06 | So go ahead and turn that option on.
| | 05:08 | You're just going to have to accept the fact
that things are going to shift on screen and
| | 05:11 | here's the reason why:
because this dialog box is broken.
| | 05:15 | This is the one place inside of Illustrator
where you do not have a color-managed workflow,
| | 05:20 | and so Illustrator, when it converts the Adobe
RGB colors to sRGB in order to maintain their
| | 05:26 | appearance--believe it or not, that's what
it's trying to do--in order to maintain the
| | 05:30 | appearance of all the colors,
it has to modify those colors.
| | 05:33 | Problem is, Illustrator is not switching
them back to Adobe RGB on-the-fly, instead it's
| | 05:38 | just sending us this unfiltered view.
| | 05:41 | You just have to know that's the way it is;
just accept it, it's going to look fine.
| | 05:45 | You can see that now if I go ahead and
click on the Save button and I'll call this guy,
| | 05:49 | just so that we know, sRGB Skateboard, and
then I'll click on the Save button, and I'm
| | 05:55 | saving this by the way as an
uncompressed full color PNG file.
| | 06:00 | Then you can see if I open that PNG image
inside of a browser that we've got the same colors.
| | 06:05 | Now, they may look a little different side-by-
side, that's a function of your screen display by
| | 06:09 | the way; when you're working on an LCD screen,
colors tend to drift from left to right, but
| | 06:14 | if I move this guy in front, you can see
that we've got the same colors as we did before
| | 06:20 | and it becomes even more evident
if I move the browser version down.
| | 06:24 | And that color similarity abides despite the
fact that the illustration in the foreground
| | 06:28 | is specked to sRGB and the illustration in the
background isn't RGB at all, it's specked to CMYK.
| | 06:36 | And that's the beauty of working in a color-
managed workflow and sticking with the best color
| | 06:40 | space possible, which for RGB graphics is
Adobe RGB when working inside of Illustrator
| | 06:47 | and sRGB when exporting to the web.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
23. Blends and MasksIllustrator's oldest dynamic functions| 00:00 | Despite the fact that they were introduced
about 25 years ago, blends and mask continue
| | 00:06 | to rank among Illustrator's most
powerful and flexible capabilities.
| | 00:12 | Blending permits you to design custom
gradations and morphings, in which one path steadily
| | 00:17 | transitions into another.
| | 00:20 | You can even blend between objects that are
far apart from each other, as well as entire
| | 00:25 | groups of path outlines.
| | 00:28 | Masking permits you to place those gradients, or
any other collection of objects, inside a path.
| | 00:34 | But the real beauty of both blends and masks
is that you can edit them anytime you like.
| | 00:41 | Change the color or shape of a blended
path and the entire blend updates immediately.
| | 00:47 | You can change the path of the blend so it
slows down, speeds up, or curves on its way
| | 00:53 | from one shape to the other.
| | 00:55 | Plus, you can blend both Fills and Strokes,
blend between Opacity and Transparency, and
| | 01:02 | specify the exact number
of steps between shapes.
| | 01:06 | Where masks are concerned, you can edit both
the mask and its contents, and you can even
| | 01:12 | set one mask inside another one.
| | 01:15 | Frankly, it warms my heart to see these 25-year-
old features hold up better than many half their age.
| | 01:23 | Here's hoping I'm still relevant when I turn 25.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a multicolor blend| 00:00 | Over the course of this chapter we're
going to take this base graphic and we're going
| | 00:04 | to transform it into
this final piece of artwork.
| | 00:07 | And everything that you're
seeing pretty much is a blend.
| | 00:11 | The background is a blend, the gradient
foreground is a blend, the starburst traveling across
| | 00:16 | the sky is a blend, these lines inside the
sarcophagus and the wings and the eyebrows
| | 00:21 | of the bat here, those are blends, and even
these posts are a blend between two extreme posts.
| | 00:28 | So this is a very, very powerful feature
inside of Illustrator--old school but powerful.
| | 00:33 | I'm going to switch back to my base graphic
here, and currently this background art--I'll
| | 00:39 | press Ctrl+0 or Command+0 on the Mac--this
background art is a function of a gradient.
| | 00:47 | So if I click inside the gradient, I'm not
going to select it because of my recommendation
| | 00:52 | in the previous chapter, where I suggested,
by the way, just to make sure we're all on
| | 00:57 | the same page--I'll press Ctrl+K or Command+K
on the Mac, switch to Selection & Anchor Display--
| | 01:02 | I suggested you turn on Object
Selection by Path Only. And that way we're going to
| | 01:08 | have a lot more control over our
experience inside of Illustrator here.
| | 01:12 | So I'm going to Cancel out
because I want that checkbox on.
| | 01:15 | I'll go ahead and click on the outside of
this rectangle, and that takes me to the sky
| | 01:21 | layer here inside the Layers panel.
| | 01:23 | I'll go ahead and twirl it open, and that
selects this path inside this sky layer.
| | 01:28 | And it's currently filled with a six-color
gradient, as you can see here inside the Gradient
| | 01:32 | panel, which is a lot of colors, but I could
gain even more control if I were to express
| | 01:38 | this gradient as a blend; because that way
I can create a kind of wavy pattern, instead
| | 01:43 | of a linear pattern like I have now, where
basically I've got a straight vertical gradient here.
| | 01:50 | And so each band of color is like a very
skinny horizontally-oriented rectangle. But with
| | 01:55 | a blend I can create all kinds
of patterns inside the gradient.
| | 02:00 | So I'm gong to start things off by
changing this path to a Solid Color.
| | 02:04 | So I'll press the comma key in order to
switch to the Solid Color option--and notice I've
| | 02:09 | gone ahead and switched back to my CMYK
values here inside the Color panel, because this
| | 02:14 | is a CMYK document, as I can
see up here in the title tab.
| | 02:18 | And I'll just go ahead and click on a shade
of green here inside this CMYK spectrum bar
| | 02:23 | that's available to me at the bottom of the Color
panel, just so I can see the rectangle.
| | 02:27 | Now I'm going to turn on this group that's
also included in the sky layer down here at
| | 02:31 | the bottom of the stack, and the name of
the group is bands, and I'm going to meatball
| | 02:36 | that bands group in order to select it.
Then I'm going to ungroup it by going up to
| | 02:41 | the Object menu and choosing the Ungroup
command, or I could press Ctrl+Shift+G, and that way
| | 02:46 | I can go ahead and blend
between these colors. All right!
| | 02:50 | Now I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift+
A on the Mac in order to deselect all those
| | 02:54 | paths, and I'm going to
zoom out a little bit too.
| | 02:57 | Now, notice by the way that we have a total
of six different shapes here; there is this
| | 03:03 | light blue shape, this red shape, then we
have a brown one, a purple one, a blue one,
| | 03:08 | and a kind of rich black one here at the
top of this stack, as you can see indicated by
| | 03:13 | these values inside the Color panel.
| | 03:15 | And the reason I'm mentioning all these
colors and these path outlines is because there are
| | 03:19 | six of them, just as there were previously
six colors inside my gradient. All right!
| | 03:25 | There's two ways to create a blend.
| | 03:27 | One is to go ahead and select a couple of paths,
like so, and then you switch to the Blend tool.
| | 03:33 | This is not my preferred technique; I
just want you to know that it's an option.
| | 03:36 | You switch to the Blend tool, which you
can get by pressing the W key; it's down here
| | 03:40 | near the bottom of the toolbox.
| | 03:41 | This is a really strange
tool, very, very old school.
| | 03:45 | You click on an anchor point in one of the
paths and then you click on the corresponding
| | 03:49 | anchor point in the other path outline, and
then Illustrator goes ahead and draws a blend
| | 03:55 | between those two paths.
| | 03:56 | Now, the reason you would use this tool, I
don't use it very often at all, the only real
| | 04:02 | reason to use it is when things go wrong.
| | 04:05 | If Illustrator ends up blending your path
completely incorrectly and it blends between
| | 04:10 | two opposing anchor points and you end up
with a weird pattern and you want to fix things.
| | 04:15 | So if that happens, you press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z to
undo, and then you turn your attention to the Blend tool.
| | 04:21 | What you generally do, in case you're curious,
is you go ahead and grab your Black Arrow
| | 04:26 | tool--this is the preferred method of
creating a blend--and I'll go ahead and marquee all
| | 04:32 | six of these paths.
| | 04:33 | I'm just marqueeing the left hand edge here
of all six of these paths in order to select
| | 04:37 | them, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 are all selected now,
and nothing else inside the document is selected.
| | 04:44 | And then I'll go up to the Object menu, you
choose Blend, and then you choose the Make
| | 04:49 | command, or you've got a keyboard shortcut
of Ctrl+Alt+B or Command+Option+B on the Mac.
| | 04:55 | And bang--just like that, even though two
of the paths were already blended before,
| | 04:59 | now we're blending between all six paths in
one fell swoop. And we end up getting this
| | 05:04 | very interesting effect.
| | 05:05 | I'm going to press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift
+A on the Mac, as well as Ctrl+0 or Command+0,
| | 05:11 | and that deselects the paths
and then centers my artwork.
| | 05:13 | And notice now that we have this rippling
gradient effect that we could not have achieved
| | 05:19 | using a standard gradient.
| | 05:21 | And check this out, I'll go ahead and
switch to my White Arrow tool--which of course I
| | 05:24 | can get by pressing the A key--and then I'll
go ahead and hover. Notice I'm kind of moving
| | 05:29 | my cursor around and searching for path edges.
Whenever you see that square next to the arrow
| | 05:34 | cursor, whether it's a Black Arrow or the
White Arrow, that means there is a path outline
| | 05:37 | right underneath the cursor.
| | 05:39 | Go ahead and click in order to select that segment
in this case, so I'm selecting with precision here.
| | 05:44 | And now I'll go ahead and drag up on one of the
control handles on this side, then I'll click on this
| | 05:49 | segment and drag up on the control handle
on this side; and you can see that I'm making
| | 05:54 | changes to my gradient on-the-fly, which is
the amazing thing about blends is that they
| | 06:01 | are just staggeringly powerful
and a lot of fun as well I think.
| | 06:06 | Anyway, I'm going to drag this guy up.
| | 06:08 | Notice now I'm creating a very sharp transition.
| | 06:11 | If I press Ctrl+H or Command+H on the Mac
in order to hide my selection for a moment,
| | 06:15 | you can see that I'm creating a
sharp transition at this point.
| | 06:17 | So you've got that kind
of control as well, right?
| | 06:20 | Not only do you have control over the
placement and the shape--physical shape of the colors--
| | 06:25 | but you also have control over how fast
the colors blend into each other. All right!
| | 06:30 | I'm going to press Ctrl+H or Command+H on
the Mac to bring back my selection edges.
| | 06:34 | Oops, dragged the wrong thing.
| | 06:36 | Oh well, I'll click on this segment again
in order to select it and then I'll drag this
| | 06:39 | control handle down in order to soften the
transition little bit at that point.
| | 06:44 | I'm going to press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+
Shift+A on the Mac in order to deselect my image.
| | 06:48 | It looks like we still have some
awfully sharp transitions actually.
| | 06:52 | I'm going to click on that path again in order to
select it and drag these control handles down a little bit.
| | 06:58 | All right, that looks better to me.
| | 07:01 | So there you have it, that's how you
create a multicolor blend inside of Illustrator.
| | 07:06 | In the next exercise I'll show you how to take
this blend and place it inside of a clipping mask.
| | 07:09 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Establishing a clipping mask| 00:00 | In this movie we're going to take our big
multicolor blend and we're going to place
| | 00:04 | it inside of a clipping mask.
| | 00:06 | So here's the idea.
| | 00:07 | I'll go ahead and zoom out a click,
actually a couple of clicks here, in order to take
| | 00:11 | in this big huge blend here.
| | 00:13 | And notice that it not only exceeds
outside of my artboard, but it exceeds outside of
| | 00:19 | the bleed indicated by that red rectangle.
| | 00:22 | And what that means is there's not really
any reason to clip this blend, because after
| | 00:27 | all, Illustrator is going to
naturally crop the blend inside of the bleed.
| | 00:32 | But let's say for whatever reason it's important
to you that the blend exists inside of a rectangle.
| | 00:38 | I'll go ahead and twirl open the sky layer
down here close to the close to the bottom
| | 00:41 | of Layers panel. Notice that I've got
this rectangle right here--this green rectangle--
| | 00:47 | which we can see if we hide the blend for a
moment, and then we've got the blend in front of it.
| | 00:52 | Any time that you want to place something
inside something else, you want to create
| | 00:56 | what's known as a clipping mask.
| | 00:59 | And the thing that's going to serve as the
clipping path, that is the thing that's going
| | 01:04 | to do the cropping, needs to be in front
of the stuff that's going to get clipped.
| | 01:09 | So in our case the clipping path is this
green rectangle here and the blend is what's known
| | 01:14 | as the clipping content.
| | 01:16 | So I'm going to go ahead and grab that green
rectangle, the path item here inside the Layers
| | 01:20 | panel, and I'm going to drag it
and drop it on top of the blend.
| | 01:24 | Then I'll meatball the path in order to select
it and I'll Shift+Meatball the blend, so both
| | 01:28 | of these items are selected
here inside the sky layer.
| | 01:31 | And now I'll go up to the Object menu, I'll
choose Clipping Mask, and I'll choose Make;
| | 01:36 | and it has a keyboard shortcut
of Ctrl+7 or Command+7 on the Mac.
| | 01:41 | And while that's not terribly memorable, it
is the number before the keyboard shortcut
| | 01:47 | that's assigned to Compound Path, so the
Compound Path > Make command has a keyboard shortcut
| | 01:52 | of Ctrl+8 or Command+8 on the Mac; we
discussed that back in the Intermediate course. And
| | 01:57 | of course the reason being,
because 8 is your ultimate compound path.
| | 02:01 | It has not just one hole,
but two holes inside of it.
| | 02:04 | And so if you just remember the Clipping
Mask command comes immediately before Compound
| | 02:08 | Path and therefore its keyboard shortcut
immediately precedes Ctrl+8 or Command+8, then you might
| | 02:14 | remember Ctrl+7 or Command+7.
| | 02:15 | Anyway, hate to belabor it, but just want
to give you a mnemonic in case you want to
| | 02:19 | remember this shortcut, because this is
a very useful command inside Illustrator.
| | 02:23 | So I'll go ahead and choose the command, and bang,
just like that we place the blend inside of the group.
| | 02:29 | Check it out. All right!
| | 02:30 | So I'm going to press Ctrl+0 or Command+0
on the Mac to zoom in, and then I'll twirl
| | 02:34 | open this new item here that's called Clip
Group, indicating that this is a clipping group.
| | 02:40 | And inside of the clipping group we have
this item right here, which is by the way, if
| | 02:44 | I double-click on it, you can see it's called
Clipping Path. And so that is the path outline,
| | 02:49 | the rectangle that's clipping the blend.
| | 02:51 | Notice that the Clipping Path
immediately loses its Fill and Stroke attributes.
| | 02:55 | You can bring them back if you want,
but you do lose them initially.
| | 02:58 | And then finally we've got the blend inside
the Clipping Path, and if you twirl it open,
| | 03:03 | might as well as long as we're here, you can
see that we've got all six of our path outlines;
| | 03:07 | the light blue one, the red one, the brown
one, the purple one, the dark blue one, and
| | 03:12 | the rich black one.
| | 03:13 | And then we've got this item right here,
and if I go ahead and meatball it, you can see
| | 03:18 | then it's a path that has six anchor points
on it, and this is a path that Illustrator
| | 03:23 | created automatically, and it is the path
of the blend, it determines how the various
| | 03:27 | colors blend into each other,
and it's what's known as the spine.
| | 03:31 | In fact, I'm going to go ahead and double-click on that
item there and rename it spine, because that's what it is.
| | 03:37 | And I want to show you a
couple of things about a blend.
| | 03:39 | I'm going to meatball the entire blend
there and I'll press Ctrl+H or Command+H on the
| | 03:44 | Mac in order to hide those selection
edge so we can better see what's going on.
| | 03:47 | Then I'll go up to the Object menu, I'll
choose Blend, and I want you to notice these two
| | 03:52 | commands to which I assign
custom keyboard shortcuts.
| | 03:55 | So if you loaded dekeKeys in the previous
chapter, you'll see that Reverse Spine has
| | 04:00 | a shortcut of Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Right Bracket
or Command+Shift+Option+ Right Bracket, and
| | 04:04 | Reverse Front to Back has a keyboard
shortcut of mash your fist right bracket.
| | 04:08 | So if you reverse the spine you're going to
reverse the direction of the spine, and that's
| | 04:12 | useful if your Blend
ends up going the wrong way.
| | 04:14 | So if I choose that command, you
can see now everything is upside down.
| | 04:18 | The rich black is at the bottom and then
the dark blue and then the purple and then the
| | 04:21 | brown and we can't even see the red and the light blue,
because they're outside the rectangle. All right!
| | 04:26 | I'll press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on
the Mac in order to undo that change.
| | 04:30 | Your other option there, if I go back to
the Object menu, choose Blend, and choose
| | 04:34 | Reverse Front to Back, that's going
to change the order of the colors.
| | 04:38 | They'll remain in the same physical
position, but their stacking order will change.
| | 04:42 | So that in our case the light blue here is
going to be in front of the red, which is
| | 04:47 | in front of the brown, which is in front of
the purple, and so forth. And that ends up
| | 04:51 | emphasizing that light blue way too much.
| | 04:53 | Plus, if I press Ctrl+H or Command+H on the
Mac, you can see that most of these shapes
| | 04:58 | are fairy straight on top, and so that ends up
returning us to a linear gradient essentially,
| | 05:05 | because all of the wavy action is at the
bottom of the path outlines. All right!
| | 05:09 | So I'll press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on
the Mac in order to undo that change.
| | 05:13 | But the good news is, if I press Ctrl+Shift+A
or Command+Shift+A on the Mac, we have managed
| | 05:17 | to place the blend inside of a rectangular
clipping path, so that everything is nice
| | 05:23 | and tidy, just as it is with the gradient,
so we don't have a lot of excess path outlines
| | 05:29 | inside the artwork.
| | 05:31 | And that folks is how you establish a
clipping mask by placing a blend in this case inside
| | 05:36 | of a clipping path, here inside of Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reinstating the colors of a clipping path| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you how to restore
the Fill and Stroke associated with the clipping
| | 00:04 | path, and along the way we'll transform this
radial gradient that's assigned to the grass
| | 00:09 | down here at the bottom of the artwork to
this custom blended gradient that you see here.
| | 00:14 | So I'm going to start things off by
selecting the grass path, and I'll do so by clicking
| | 00:19 | on its outline with the Black Arrow tool;
that doesn't work however, because the grass
| | 00:23 | layer at the top of Layers panel is locked.
| | 00:25 | So I'll unlock that grass layer and then
I'll go ahead and scroll down, and I'll lock the
| | 00:29 | sky layer, and that will just make it easier
to select the objects inside my illustration.
| | 00:33 | All right, now I'm going to zoom out a
click here and scroll down as well, and I'll go
| | 00:38 | ahead and scroll back up the Layers panel
until I see that grass layer, and now I'll
| | 00:41 | click on that grass outline again in order
to select it, and you'll see here inside the
| | 00:46 | Gradient panel that I
have a three color gradient.
| | 00:49 | So it starts off with this bright green at
the beginning here; the Cyan value is 50%
| | 00:54 | and the Yellow value is 100%.
| | 00:55 | Then we have this medium shade of
green and finally we have very dark green.
| | 01:00 | And if you add up these values, C65, M30,
Y85, and K80, you end up getting 260%.
| | 01:08 | And I mention that because there's this
thing called the total ink limit, and that's the
| | 01:13 | amount of ink that the paper can absorb
without the ink running on the page, and this is once
| | 01:18 | again specifically
applicable to commercial printing.
| | 01:22 | And it's typically 270% or less.
| | 01:24 | So because I've got my values set
so they add up to 260%, I'm okay.
| | 01:29 | You don't want to go beyond 300%, and you
certainly don't want to go as high as 400%,
| | 01:34 | except for special effects, as
I'll discuss in future chapters.
| | 01:38 | But anyway, just make a mental note of these values,
because we're going to have to come back to them.
| | 01:42 | So let's say instead of this very basic
elliptical gradient, and if you want to see what it looks
| | 01:46 | like just press the G key in order to
switch to the Gradient tool, and then hover over
| | 01:51 | the Gradient Annotator, and you'll see that
its shape is very elliptical; meaning that
| | 01:57 | it's not very tall and it is very wide.
| | 01:59 | Let's say I want something
different, I want something more organic.
| | 02:02 | I'm going to start off with three ellipses.
| | 02:05 | So I'll twirl open my grass layer so that I
can see its contents here, and I'll go ahead
| | 02:10 | and turn on these ellipses here.
| | 02:12 | And you can see that we've got
a dark green one at the back.
| | 02:14 | And I'll go ahead and press the V key to
switch to the Black Arrow tool, and click on that
| | 02:18 | ellipse to select it.
| | 02:19 | And there are my exact same
values; C65, M30, Y85, and K80.
| | 02:25 | And then I'll click on the middle one, those
are the same values that I'd assigned to the
| | 02:29 | middle color stop inside of
that green radial gradient.
| | 02:33 | And then this is my bright
green right there in the center.
| | 02:36 | And as you can see it's 50% Cyan and 100%
Yellow, so the exact same colors we had before.
| | 02:42 | And the colors are arranged pretty
similarly to how they are arranged inside the radial
| | 02:47 | gradient, although there is a lot more
real estate associated with the bright green.
| | 02:51 | All right, let's say we want to put
these ellipses inside of the grass path.
| | 02:56 | Then I'll go ahead and scroll down my
Layers panel a little bit and I'll grab that path
| | 03:01 | at the bottom, which represents the grass, and I'll
drag it and drop it on top of the forward ellipse.
| | 03:09 | So underneath the Grass Group right there--
which is a group of stroked path outlines--
| | 03:14 | but on top of the ellipses. All right!
| | 03:16 | Now I'll go ahead and meatball this grass
path to select it, and now let's assign a
| | 03:20 | totally different color so
that we can keep track of it.
| | 03:23 | My Fill is active, as you can see here, so
I'll go ahead and click in the CMYK spectrum
| | 03:27 | bar on a bright shade of
yellow, right there in the middle.
| | 03:30 | That is the vertical middle of the bar.
| | 03:33 | And so now the path is filled with orange
and it's stroked with black.
| | 03:38 | Now I'm going to select all these
paths here by marqueeing around them.
| | 03:41 | So I've managed to select the three ellipses,
which are filled with various shades of green,
| | 03:45 | as well as the orange grass path in front.
| | 03:48 | You don't want to select any of
this group of stroked outlines here.
| | 03:52 | And notice that I didn't select the sky in
the background, even though it appears to
| | 03:55 | have this red outline around it.
| | 03:58 | That's merely a function of the bleed; that's
not part of the red that's assigned to this layer.
| | 04:02 | Anyway, I've just managed to select the grass and
not the sky, because the sky is locked
| | 04:07 | The next thing I want to do is go up to the
Object menu, choose Clipping Mask, and choose
| | 04:12 | Make--or you can press Ctrl+7 or Command+7
on the Mac, and that goes ahead and masks the
| | 04:17 | green ellipses inside of that grass path.
| | 04:21 | Problem is, I never got around blending the
ellipses, so they don't look like a gradient at all.
| | 04:26 | Fortunately that's a very
easy problem to take care of.
| | 04:29 | What you want to do is go up to the Control
panel--you can see we now have a Clip Group--
| | 04:34 | and then move over from Edit
Clipping Path to Edit Contents.
| | 04:37 | So click on the second icon in, in
order to select those three ellipses.
| | 04:42 | Now to blend them; go up to the Object menu,
choose Blend, and choose the Make command,
| | 04:46 | or press Ctrl+Alt+B or Command+Option+B on the
Mac and you end up getting this smooth gradient.
| | 04:52 | All right!
| | 04:52 | I'm going to press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift
+A on the Mac, to deselect everything. And then
| | 04:57 | I'll go ahead and zoom in, and I want you
to see that we've got a problem right there,
| | 05:01 | which is the tips of the grass blades have
been cut off. And that's because if I click
| | 05:06 | on the outline for this clipping path once again,
you can see that its Fill and Stroke are totally gone.
| | 05:13 | Notice over here in the Color panel we have
a question mark for Fill and that's because
| | 05:17 | in fact the entire Clipping Group is selected
at this point, as we can tell by the meatball
| | 05:22 | over here inside the Layers panel. But I
can see that the Stroke is totally gone.
| | 05:27 | So I lost the Fill that was assigned to the
clipping path--that is the thing that's doing
| | 05:31 | the clipping, the grass--
and I also lost its stroke.
| | 05:35 | Now, there's a couple of different ways to
select this clipping path independently of
| | 05:39 | its blended ellipses, and one way is to
switch over to Edit Contents and then switch back
| | 05:46 | to Edit Clipping Path.
| | 05:48 | And now just the clipping path is selected,
as you can see by the fact that both the Fill
| | 05:52 | and the Stroke are set to None.
| | 05:54 | However, the easier way, the way I do it--
just because that doesn't make a heck of a
| | 05:57 | lot of sense that you have to go back and
forth between those two icons--is to just
| | 06:01 | twirl open the Clipping Group
here inside the Layers panel.
| | 06:04 | It will be called Clip Group by the way.
| | 06:07 | And then presumably the whole thing would be
selected like so, and then you'd just meatball
| | 06:12 | the clipping path itself.
| | 06:13 | And you know you have just the clipping path
selected when you see the word Path up here
| | 06:19 | in the Control panel on the
far left side.
| | 06:22 | So when you turn a path into a clipping path
you lose its Fill and Stroke automatically.
| | 06:27 | In order to reinstate them,
here is the easiest way to work.
| | 06:31 | I'm going to go ahead and scroll down my
list a little bit here inside the Layers panel,
| | 06:34 | twirl open that Blend Group right there, and
meatball the bottom ellipse, because I want
| | 06:39 | to match the color of that ellipse; and that goes
ahead and brings up those color value: 65, 30, 85, 80.
| | 06:45 | Then switch back to the clipping path.
| | 06:47 | I know this doesn't necessarily make sense,
but this is the easiest way to work, believe
| | 06:51 | it or not. Go ahead and switch back to
the clipping paths, so I'll meatball it.
| | 06:54 | And then notice this little guy right there,
Last Color. That's the last color you either
| | 06:59 | applied or you even clicked on that was
associated with the last selected shape.
| | 07:04 | So I'll go ahead and click on that color
and that reinstates C65, M30, Y85, K80.
| | 07:09 | So I just want you to know
that that option is there.
| | 07:13 | Now I'll go up to my Control panel,
because I need to reinstate the Stroke as well.
| | 07:17 | I'll click on the Swatch right there,
and I'll select Rich Black as my color.
| | 07:22 | That goes ahead and makes the Line
Weight value 1.0 by default, which is great.
| | 07:27 | So I'll go ahead and click on the word
Stroke here; the only other change I want to make
| | 07:30 | is to assign a Round Joint, so that we have a
slight amount of rounding at all the corner points.
| | 07:36 | And now I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift
+A on the Mac, and you can see now that we have
| | 07:40 | an absolutely smooth transition.
| | 07:43 | But if I go ahead and zoom out by pressing
Ctrl+0 or Command+0, we still have--even though
| | 07:48 | the contouring is different--we still
have an elliptical shape to this gradient.
| | 07:53 | What I want to do is create a more
sculpted gradient like this one here, which is why
| | 07:56 | I show you how to achieve this
effect in the very next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing individual blended paths| 00:00 | In this movie we'll take that green three
ellipse gradient that we created with a fair
| | 00:04 | amount of effort as a blend, and we'll
customize it to fit the contours of this grassy knoll
| | 00:10 | in order to create this effect here, which is
something that we can't do using the Gradient tool.
| | 00:16 | So I'll go ahead and switch
back to my image at hand here.
| | 00:19 | And then I'll zoom into the bottom portion
of the illustration and I'll press the A key
| | 00:23 | to switch to the White Arrow tool.
| | 00:25 | Now, here is something to bear in mind when you're
trying to hunt around for paths inside of a blend.
| | 00:31 | You can press Ctrl+Y or Command+Y on the Mac
to switch to the Outline mode, and then you
| | 00:35 | are going to see the outlines of all three
of your ellipses right there, but when you're
| | 00:42 | in the thick of it, as when I'm looking at
the center of the illustration, it's impossible
| | 00:46 | to make heads nor tails of what's going on.
| | 00:50 | So I'll press Ctrl+Y or Command+Y on the Mac
in order to switch to the Preview mode, and
| | 00:54 | what I want to do is I want
to find the center ellipse.
| | 00:58 | And certainly I could twirl things open
inside the Layers panel and go ahead and find that
| | 01:03 | shape, or I can just hunt around here.
| | 01:05 | Notice, if you have an approximate sense of
where an anchor point is, then you can hover
| | 01:09 | over it with the White Arrow tool, and you'll
see a little hollow square with a dot inside
| | 01:14 | of it next to the cursor, and that indicates
that there is an anchor point underneath that
| | 01:18 | cursor. To select it, just go
ahead and click, like so.
| | 01:22 | Now I want to add a couple of points to this
path, and you might want to confirm that this
| | 01:26 | is the medium green ellipse by noting its
values up here in the Color panel, that is
| | 01:30 | CMYK, are 65, 15, 100, and 50 respectively.
| | 01:36 | I'm going to add a couple of anchor points
by pressing the P key in order to switch to
| | 01:40 | my Pen tool, and then I'll hover over about
this location there. You should see a Plus
| | 01:44 | sign next to your Pen tool cursor, if so,
click in order to set a point at that location.
| | 01:50 | And then I'll go ahead and scroll over to
the left a little bit, and I'll click right
| | 01:54 | about there to set another anchor point.
| | 01:57 | Then I'll press the A key in order to switch
back to my White Arrow tool and I'll go ahead
| | 02:01 | and drag this guy upward while pressing
the Shift key in order to bend the ellipse up
| | 02:07 | as you see it there.
| | 02:08 | Now I'm going to move these anchor points too.
| | 02:10 | So I'll go ahead and click on one, Shift+Click
on the other, and drag either one while pressing
| | 02:15 | the Shift key upward, just in order to
constrain the angle of my drag. All right!
| | 02:19 | Now I want to see the control
handle associated with this point.
| | 02:22 | So I'll go ahead and Shift+Click on this
anchor point to turn it off, and now the control
| | 02:27 | handle comes back into view and I'll go ahead
and drag it up like so in order to move it upward.
| | 02:33 | Then I'll click on this segment to make it
active, and I'll drag upward on this control
| | 02:37 | handle to move it up as well.
| | 02:40 | So we've got some pretty nice contouring
going here, as you can see; but we also have, if
| | 02:45 | you look very closely here, you can see
that the medium green starts encroaching on the
| | 02:49 | bright green to about this location here and
sort of wraps around like this and comes back
| | 02:55 | and then goes this direction. Which might
end up being the effect you're looking for,
| | 02:58 | but in my case it's not.
| | 02:59 | So I'm going to hover around again with my
White Arrow cursor to about this location
| | 03:04 | there--there is my anchor point--and then
I'll click on it to select it. And that is
| | 03:08 | the top anchor point in the bright green ellipse,
which has a Cyan value of 50% and a Yellow value of 100%.
| | 03:14 | And I need to add a couple of anchor points
on either side, so I'll press the P key once
| | 03:18 | again to get my Pen tool, drop down to
about this location, right about there actually
| | 03:22 | and click, and then click to set
another point at this location.
| | 03:27 | In each case you should see a
Plus sign next to your cursor.
| | 03:30 | Then press the A key to switch
back to the White Arrow tool.
| | 03:32 | I'll go ahead and drag this guy upward,
like so, in order to create a little region of
| | 03:36 | brightness there, and I'll go ahead and
modify the neighboring control handles.
| | 03:41 | And I might drag each of these anchor points
up as well, so I'll click on one, Shift+Click
| | 03:46 | on the other, drag them up a little bit.
| | 03:48 | That is actually taking these points too high,
because what this will do, if I were to leave
| | 03:53 | the blend like this, I'd create a flat area of
green inside this region of the illustration.
| | 03:59 | That's more flat green than I want, and it's
also too much brightness, so I'll Shift+Click
| | 04:03 | on the center anchor point, so
I've got one, two, three selected.
| | 04:07 | Then I'll go ahead and drag down until the
bottom two anchor points are outside of the
| | 04:13 | artboard. This black line right there, the
black horizontal line represents the bottom
| | 04:17 | of the artboard. And I'll press Shift+Down-
Arrow a few times in order to nudge those anchor
| | 04:22 | points down as well.
| | 04:23 | And then I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+
Shift+A on the Mac, in order to deselect my artwork;
| | 04:28 | and I'll press Ctrl+0 or Command+
0 on the Mac in order to zoom out.
| | 04:32 | And that friends, is how you go about editing
individual blended paths inside of Illustrator
| | 04:37 | in order to add a custom contour to at
least what appears to be a gradient fill.
| | 04:42 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting the number of steps in a blend| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you how to change the
number of steps between blended path outlines,
| | 00:05 | and when and why you might want to do so.
| | 00:07 | I'll start off by pressing and holding the
Ctrl and Spacebar keys, that's Command and
| | 00:11 | Spacebar on the Mac, in order to get the Zoom tool,
and then I'll marquee around this approximate area here.
| | 00:18 | And if you look closely inside of either the
green gradient or the reddish one above it,
| | 00:23 | then you may be able to make out a series of
striations, which are the steps themselves.
| | 00:29 | And when you're able to see the steps
like this, it's called stair stepping.
| | 00:33 | Now, what you want of course is not to see
those steps as much as possible, so that you're
| | 00:38 | simulating the effect of
a smooth color transition.
| | 00:42 | The thing is, the stair stepping you see on
screen isn't necessarily indicative of the
| | 00:47 | stair stepping you might get
when you print the document.
| | 00:49 | Ostensibly, every gradient, whether created
with Gradient tool or using blending, should
| | 00:55 | look nice and smooth for output.
| | 00:57 | However, what I'm going to do, just so you
can see how these steps work, I'm going to
| | 01:00 | click on the path outline with the Black
Arrow tool in order to select it, and then I'll
| | 01:05 | go up to the Control panel and click on the Edit
Contents icon in order to gain access to the mast blend.
| | 01:11 | Now, to change the number of steps, you go up
to the Object menu, choose Blend, and choose
| | 01:16 | the Blend Options command.
| | 01:17 | That will bring up this dialog box right here.
| | 01:20 | Notice that Spacing by
default is set to Smooth Color.
| | 01:23 | I'll turn on the Preview checkbox so I can
see what I'm doing, and I'll switch this option
| | 01:27 | either to Specified Steps--which allows you
to dial in the number of steps between the
| | 01:32 | path outlines--or you can choose Specified
Distance to determine the distance between each step.
| | 01:38 | Most of the time, just because it's easier
to wrap your brain around, you go ahead and
| | 01:42 | choose Specified Steps.
| | 01:44 | Notice that Illustrator tells me that
it came up with 76 steps automatically.
| | 01:47 | Now, I could take that value and reduce it
to just 6 steps and then press the Tab key,
| | 01:52 | and now you can see those steps very easily.
| | 01:55 | We've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and then a hidden
sixth step that's outside of the clipping path.
| | 02:01 | Now, it may look like every one of the
steps is filled with a gradient that starts dark
| | 02:05 | at the bottom and becomes lighter at the top,
that's absolutely an optical illusion created
| | 02:10 | by the contrast between the colors of each step.
| | 02:13 | In fact, each step is filled with a solid color, and
that's how it works inside standard gradients as well.
| | 02:19 | Illustrator uses bands of solid color that
are so tightly packed together that they look
| | 02:24 | like smooth color transitions.
| | 02:26 | Now, I could take this value up to something
extreme, such as let's say 776 steps and press
| | 02:33 | the Tab key, and then I'll
end up with a smooth gradient.
| | 02:36 | However, I can still see the
stepping that I saw just a moment ago.
| | 02:40 | All I've done is created a
much more complicated blend.
| | 02:44 | So I'll go ahead and take that value back
down to 76, just so you can see the difference,
| | 02:48 | press the Tab key; almost
no difference on screen.
| | 02:51 | So in this case,
Illustrator got it exactly right.
| | 02:54 | So I can just Cancel out of this dialog box.
| | 02:56 | So you may well ask, well if Illustrator
gets it right nearly all the time--which is
| | 03:00 | true--then why do you ever have
to monkey around with the steps?
| | 03:04 | And the answer is because
sometimes Illustrator doesn't get it right.
| | 03:08 | And one of the most common situations is
when you're working with a very small blend.
| | 03:12 | I'm going to switch over to this illustration here,
which should be familiar from the previous chapter.
| | 03:17 | I've gone ahead and included another version
of the file inside the 23_blends_masks folder.
| | 03:22 | And I'll go ahead and zoom in on that
Windows icon right there, and you can see it's very
| | 03:26 | tiny, because it fits in
between these characters of type.
| | 03:29 | I'll go ahead and zoom in
two more increments here.
| | 03:32 | This icon is a group, so I'll double-click on
this light blue path outline in order to enter
| | 03:36 | the Group Isolation mode, and then I'll click
on this light blue ellipse to select it; and
| | 03:41 | then I'll move my cursor around to right
about there, until I can see a little black square
| | 03:46 | next to my arrow cursor. I'll Shift+
Click in order to select that dark blue ellipse.
| | 03:51 | And now I want to blend between the two of them.
| | 03:53 | So I'll go up to the Object menu, choose Blend,
and then choose the Make command--or you can
| | 03:58 | just press Ctrl+Alt+B or Command+Option+B on the Mac--
and it comes up with a single step. Why just one step?
| | 04:05 | Because the distance between these path outlines is so
miniscule that this is all Illustrator thinks you need.
| | 04:11 | In fact though, you are going to see
this step when you print the document.
| | 04:14 | So what you want to do is
change the number of steps.
| | 04:16 | You can do so by going to the Object menu,
choosing Blend, and choosing Blend Options.
| | 04:21 | But there's an easier way to get to this function,
and that is to just double-click on the Blend
| | 04:26 | tool icon in the toolbox.
| | 04:28 | And notice that brings up that
same Blending Options dialog box.
| | 04:31 | I'll switch from Smooth Color, which is
certainly not what we're getting, to Specified Steps.
| | 04:36 | Illustrator is telling me it
just created one step for me.
| | 04:38 | I'll turn on the Preview checkbox so I can
see what I am doing, and then you can nudge
| | 04:42 | this value up from the keyboard by
pressing the Up Arrow Key, or if you want to nudge
| | 04:46 | in 10 step increments, you press Shift+Up Arrow.
| | 04:49 | And at about 50 steps I'm getting very
smooth results, so I'll go ahead and click the OK
| | 04:54 | button, and then I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A
or Command+Shift+A to deselect my artwork.
| | 04:59 | So that's one situation in which you might need
to change the number of steps. Here is another.
| | 05:04 | I'll go ahead and switch back to my
sarcophagus illustration and press Ctrl+0 or Command+0
| | 05:08 | on the Mac in order to zoom out.
| | 05:10 | And then I'll zoom in on this region here
which features these folds between the batwings,
| | 05:15 | and I'll press the V key to switch to my Black
Arrow tool, click on this path outline. Let's
| | 05:20 | say I want to create a few more folds in
between these two extreme path outlines here.
| | 05:25 | One way to achieve the effect
would be to rotate the path outline.
| | 05:29 | So I could switch to the Rotate tool.
| | 05:32 | Click on the top anchor point in order to
set the transformation origin, and then drag
| | 05:36 | up to about here and press the Alt key or the
Option key on the Mac in order to create a copy.
| | 05:41 | Then I'll press Ctrl+D or Command+D a couple
of times in order to create three more folds.
| | 05:46 | Two big problems however; I'm not matching
the curvature of the top segment and I'm not
| | 05:51 | matching its scale either, so I'd have to
monkey around with each one of these path
| | 05:55 | outlines, which is not what I want.
| | 05:56 | So I'll press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on the Mac a
few times in order to undo those modifications.
| | 06:02 | Press the V key to switch back to my Black
Arrow tool and Shift+Click on this top path outline.
| | 06:06 | Notice that each of these path outlines features
two anchor points connected by a curve segment.
| | 06:11 | And now I'll press that keyboard shortcut
for the Make Blend command, which is Ctrl+Alt+B
| | 06:16 | or Command+Option+B on the Mac,
and I just get one path outline.
| | 06:19 | And the reason in this case is Illustrator
is looking at these two paths and saying
| | 06:23 | okay, neither of them has a Fill, both of
them have identical black Strokes, so what
| | 06:28 | in the world do you want from me?
| | 06:29 | I can't create a smooth color transition
because you haven't given me anything to work with.
| | 06:34 | So what you do of course is you double-
click on the Blend tool icon here in the toolbox
| | 06:38 | in order to bring up the Blend Options
dialog box. You switch from Smooth Color Spacing
| | 06:43 | to Specified Steps, turn on the Preview
checkbox, and then just Up Arrow that value there to
| | 06:50 | 3, and we end up getting
the effect we're looking for.
| | 06:53 | And notice that this time around
Illustrator is both rotating and scaling and matching
| | 06:58 | the curvature of the steps to match
those of the two extreme blended paths.
| | 07:03 | Now go ahead and click OK in
order to accept that change.
| | 07:08 | That's how and why you change the number of steps
between blended path outlines here inside Illustrator.
| | 07:13 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Fixing problems with the Blend tool| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you how to fix a
problem blend, that is to say a blend that's going
| | 00:04 | in totally the wrong
direction, using the Blend tool.
| | 00:08 | So I'm going to switch over here to the
folds inside of the right-hand batwing, and we're
| | 00:14 | going to create another blend
between these two extreme path outlines.
| | 00:18 | So I'll click on one and I'll Shift+Click
on the other using the Black Arrow tool in
| | 00:23 | order to select both of them, and then I'll
go up to the Object menu, choose the Blend
| | 00:27 | command, and choose Make. And
that will go ahead and create this.
| | 00:31 | And it's like, what in the world are you doing?
| | 00:35 | Things were working out so beautifully for the
other wing and now things go tragically wrong.
| | 00:39 | Well, let me show you.
| | 00:41 | I'll double-click on the Blend tool icon in
order to bring up the Blend Options dialog box.
| | 00:45 | This is Illustrator's idea of
Smooth Color, which is not what we want.
| | 00:49 | So I'll select Specified Steps and I'll
press Shift+Up Arrow in order to take that value
| | 00:53 | up to 10, and then I'll
turn on the Preview checkbox.
| | 00:56 | And now you can better see what's going on.
| | 00:59 | Illustrator is blending from the left-hand
point in the top path outline, to the top
| | 01:03 | point in the path outline below.
| | 01:06 | And then it's blending from this right-hand
point in the top path outline, to this bottom
| | 01:11 | point in the path below.
| | 01:13 | So it's got the whole equation backwards.
| | 01:15 | And the problem is that the paths were drawn
in different directions in the first place,
| | 01:20 | and that can frequently throw you.
| | 01:22 | So I'll go ahead and click the OK button in
order to accept that change for the moment,
| | 01:26 | because I want to show you
that things can get weirder still.
| | 01:29 | I'll press the A key to
switch to the White Arrow tool.
| | 01:31 | I'll go ahead and click off
the paths to deselect them.
| | 01:33 | Then I'll click on this anchor point in order
to select it independently, and I'll go ahead
| | 01:38 | and move the anchor point over to the right.
| | 01:40 | Things are still a problem.
| | 01:41 | But if I move it farther down,
then everything gets better.
| | 01:45 | And that's because Illustrator is now able
to better sense the direction in which the
| | 01:48 | blend should be going.
| | 01:51 | So there's a lot of computational stuff going
on under the hood that can either fix problems,
| | 01:56 | as in this case, or create
problems, as we saw before.
| | 02:00 | I want these path outlines to be in exactly
the same place they are right now, but I want
| | 02:06 | to get a good blend out of things.
| | 02:08 | So I'll press the V key to switch to the Black
Arrow tool, and I'll click on this path outline
| | 02:12 | to select the entire blend, as you can see.
Then I'll go up to the Object menu, choose
| | 02:17 | Blend, and choose Release in order to get rid
of the existing blend and break the original
| | 02:22 | path outlines apart.
| | 02:24 | What you do is switch to the Blend tool.
| | 02:26 | So I was telling you the Blend tool is really
designed to create blends in the first place,
| | 02:30 | it's just that it's usually easier to take
advantage of that Make Blend command instead.
| | 02:35 | However, when things don't turn out right,
that's when the Blend tool comes in handy.
| | 02:39 | You use the tool by clicking on one anchor
point and then clicking on the analogous anchor
| | 02:44 | point in the other path outline.
| | 02:45 | Now, of course I could use the tool on these
right-hand points over here, but they're right
| | 02:50 | on top of each other, so
I'm not going to get very far.
| | 02:53 | Instead, I'll click on this bottom anchor
point, and then I'll click on the far left
| | 02:57 | anchor point in order to create my blend.
| | 03:00 | The problem is Illustrator has seen fit to
blend this point on the edge of the sarcophagus,
| | 03:07 | which is on a totally different layer and
wasn't selected in the first place. So that
| | 03:12 | kind of thing can happen too.
| | 03:14 | In which case the solution is to press Ctrl+Z
or Command+Z on the Mac in order to undo that
| | 03:18 | tragic blend, and then lock down the offending
layer, which in our case is this purple layer
| | 03:23 | called shield & rims.
| | 03:24 | So I'll go ahead and lock it down like so.
| | 03:27 | And then I'll go ahead and click on those
same two anchor points again; I'll click on
| | 03:30 | this guy down here, and then I'll click
this one on the left, and I end up getting the
| | 03:34 | exact blend I'm looking for--with the
exception of the fact that it doesn't contain enough
| | 03:38 | steps. So I'll now double-
click on the Blend tool icon.
| | 03:42 | I'll switch my Spacing from Smooth Color
to Specified Steps, I'll turn on the Preview
| | 03:46 | checkbox, and I'll increase that Steps
value to 3, like so. And then I'll click OK.
| | 03:52 | And that's how you rectify a problem blend
using the Blend tool. And again, you use the
| | 03:57 | tool by clicking on similar anchor
points in two or more path outlines.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Blending different levels of opacity| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you how to blend
between shapes with different levels of opacity, and
| | 00:05 | as a result we'll come up with a starburst in the
upper right corner of the final version of the artwork.
| | 00:10 | I'll go ahead and switch over
to my file in progress here.
| | 00:13 | And I'll bring up the Navigator panel, just
in the name of expediency, and drag over to
| | 00:18 | the star, which is located in
the upper right corner as I say.
| | 00:21 | Now currently we're seeing this pale
yellow circle in the center here, along with this
| | 00:25 | kind of fuzzy star.
| | 00:27 | There is another star in back of it however
that's absolutely transparent and therefore invisible.
| | 00:32 | So we're going to start things off armed with the
Black Arrow tool by selecting the central circle.
| | 00:36 | I can't get to it however
because it's on the locked layer.
| | 00:39 | So I'll scroll down the list inside the
Layers panel and I'll unlock the orange star layer
| | 00:44 | and then I'll click on that
circle again to select it.
| | 00:47 | And if your Fill is active in the Color panel,
you can see that it's set to 25% Yellow, and
| | 00:52 | that is all; Cyan, Magenta,
and Black are all set to 0.
| | 00:56 | Meanwhile, the Opacity value up here
in the Control panel is set to 100%.
| | 01:00 | Now to get to the other shape in our
upcoming blend here, I'll press Ctrl+Y or Command+Y
| | 01:05 | on the Mac to switch to the Outline mode, and then
I'll click on this big nine-pointed star right here.
| | 01:11 | And you can see that it has the exact same
color for the Fill; 25% yellow, that's it.
| | 01:17 | But the Opacity level up here in the
Control panel is set to 0%, and as a result when I
| | 01:21 | press Ctrl+Y or Command+Y on
the Mac, the star is invisible.
| | 01:25 | Now, normally you don't work with Opacity
levels of 0%, because after all that turns
| | 01:30 | the path outline into a
nonparticipating element of your artwork.
| | 01:34 | However, when working with blends, 0%
Opacity turns out to be a really great thing.
| | 01:39 | So with the big star selected I'll Shift+Click on the
central circle, and I want you to notice something else.
| | 01:45 | These shapes could not be more different.
| | 01:48 | This time around we're not blending between
similar path outlines, as we have in the past;
| | 01:52 | instead we've got a circle with just four
anchor points connected by four curving segments.
| | 01:57 | And then we've got this nine-pointed star
with 18 anchor points, all of which are connected
| | 02:02 | by straight segments. And yet
things are going to reconcile just fine.
| | 02:05 | Now that's because we're working with
regular geometric forms--the star contains points
| | 02:10 | that are symmetrical around a central point--
and the circle is absolutely symmetrical.
| | 02:15 | If you were to try this with free form
path outlines that were totally different from
| | 02:18 | each other, you might not get
the results you're looking for.
| | 02:21 | Anyway, I just wanted to mention that.
| | 02:24 | Let's turn this thing into a blend by going
up to the Object menu, choosing Blend, and
| | 02:27 | then choosing the Make command.
| | 02:30 | And notice that we end up getting just a
single step in between, and that's because the two
| | 02:36 | shapes are filled with the
exact same color; 25% Yellow.
| | 02:40 | The Blend function is not smart enough to
see the difference between Opacity levels.
| | 02:44 | However, check this out.
| | 02:45 | If I press the A key in order to switch to
the White Arrow tool, and then I Shift+Alt+Click
| | 02:50 | or Shift+Option+Click on that central circle
to deselect it, then I can change the color
| | 02:55 | associated with the star by dialing in, for
example, 50% for the Cyan value, and Illustrator
| | 03:01 | ends up generating a super smooth blend on-the-fly.
Albeit, one that changes color over the course of the blend.
| | 03:08 | So it starts an opaque pale yellow and blends to an
increasingly translucent greenish blue.
| | 03:14 | Now let's say you want to change
the number of steps in this blend.
| | 03:17 | Then you would double-click on the
Blend tool icon here inside the toolbox.
| | 03:22 | And then I'll switch the Spacing--this time
just for the sake of demonstration, to Specified
| | 03:26 | Distance--and I'll turn on the Preview checkbox.
| | 03:28 | And at first that's not going to make any
difference, because having four points between
| | 03:32 | each one of the steps works out fine; it
ends up producing a very smooth result.
| | 03:36 | But let's say I take this value up to
something like 30 points and press the Tab key, now
| | 03:42 | we have 30 points between the most
extreme portions of these path outlines.
| | 03:47 | So from this edge of the circle, for example,
to this point in the step, and then this point
| | 03:52 | in the step and so forth, all the
way to the extreme star.
| | 03:55 | But what I'm looking for is a specified
number of steps, so I'll switch to Specified Steps.
| | 04:00 | Notice that Illustrator has
automatically come up with 127 steps.
| | 04:04 | Let's say I reduce that value to a third by
dialing in /3, and then I press the Tab key.
| | 04:09 | So I've taken the number
of steps down to 42 steps.
| | 04:12 | You can now see if you look very closely, you can
see that we have some stair stepping inside the star.
| | 04:17 | However, if I click OK and then I press Ctrl+0
or Command+0 on the Mac in order to zoom out,
| | 04:23 | press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift+A on the
Mac in order to deselect the artwork, it looks
| | 04:27 | super smooth, even though
it's just one-third as complex.
| | 04:31 | So that's how you create blends between
shapes with different levels of Opacity.
| | 04:35 | In the next movie we'll up the ante in
order to create this star trail here, and we'll
| | 04:40 | do so by modifying the spine of the blend.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing the spine of a blend| 00:00 | In this movie, I will show you how to create
this graduated star trail by modifying something
| | 00:05 | that's known as the spine of the blend,
which is created automatically by Illustrator any
| | 00:10 | time that your blended path
outlines are spread apart from each other.
| | 00:13 | I will go ahead and switch to my
illustration in progress and then I will press Ctrl+Y or
| | 00:17 | Command+Y on a Mac, so that we can see a
couple of shapes that are otherwise hidden.
| | 00:22 | There is this little circle over
here on the far left-hand side.
| | 00:26 | And notice that it once again has a Fill
of 25% yellow, and its Opacity value up here
| | 00:32 | in the Control panel is 0%.
| | 00:34 | Then we have this small circle in the upper
right-hand region of the artwork that's inset
| | 00:39 | within the circle that we
blended in a previous movie.
| | 00:42 | If I click on it, you can see once again the
Fill is 25% yellow, so the Fills are exactly
| | 00:47 | the same, whereas the Opacity is set to 50%.
| | 00:51 | With this shape selected, I will go ahead
and Shift+Click on the left hand circle in
| | 00:54 | order to select it as well; and then I will
press Ctrl+Y or Command+Y on a Mac in order
| | 00:58 | to switch back to the Preview mode, and I
will go up to the Object menu, choose the
| | 01:03 | Blend command, and then choose Make.
| | 01:05 | And Illustrator creates a
series of steps as you can see.
| | 01:09 | So even though the Blend command is not
sensitive to varying levels of opacity, it does respond
| | 01:14 | to big distances between paths as you can see.
| | 01:17 | However, that's not good enough.
| | 01:19 | We need more steps than that.
| | 01:20 | So, what I am going to do is double-click on
the Blend tool to bring up the Blend Options
| | 01:24 | dialog box, and this time because we're going
to be modifying the distance between the two
| | 01:29 | circles--that is, the distance that the blend
has to travel--I am going to switch my Spacing
| | 01:34 | to Specified Distance.
| | 01:36 | And now by default, this will
probably come up as something like 4 points.
| | 01:39 | I will turn on the Preview checkbox, and you
can see that, that looks pretty darn smooth
| | 01:43 | from this far away.
| | 01:45 | So I will click OK in order to accept that
change, and then I will zoom in on my star
| | 01:51 | in the upper-right corner here.
| | 01:53 | And you can see, the closer we get to the
star, the more lumpy this blend appears, and
| | 01:58 | that's because we're seeing the
tops of each one of the step circles.
| | 02:02 | We need a little tighter spacing than that.
| | 02:04 | So I will double-click on the Blend tool again,
and I'll take this value down after turning
| | 02:08 | on the Preview checkbox.
| | 02:09 | I'll take that value down by pressing the
down-arrow key, and at a distance of 2 points,
| | 02:14 | we end up getting a very smooth result.
| | 02:16 | So, I will click OK in
order to accept that change.
| | 02:19 | But, I do want you to see something.
| | 02:20 | I will double-click on the Blend tool again
because this is the only way to refresh this information.
| | 02:24 | Then I will switch from Spacing to
Specified Steps, and you can see that we've got 426
| | 02:29 | steps, I just want you to notice that.
| | 02:31 | All right, now I will cancel out, and I will
press Ctrl+0 or Command+0 on a Mac in order
| | 02:36 | to zoom out from the illustration; go ahead
and zoom back in a little bit so I can better
| | 02:41 | see what I'm doing.
| | 02:43 | And notice we've got this straight
line between the two extreme circles.
| | 02:48 | And if I twirl open the star layer here
inside the Layers panel, and then I scroll down and
| | 02:53 | twirl open the blend, you can see that
we've got a few path outlines to work with.
| | 02:58 | These two guys right here are the two
circles, even though their names are truncated.
| | 03:03 | And this guy here, the line,
is what's known as a spine.
| | 03:06 | And if you wanted to, you could go ahead
and rename that item for what good it does as
| | 03:10 | to spine, just so you can
better keep track of it.
| | 03:13 | Now, let's say I want to modify the spine,
so it has a kind of wave associated with it;
| | 03:18 | I can do that using the Convert Point tool.
| | 03:20 | So I will go ahead and click and hold on
the Pen tool icon, and then I will select the
| | 03:24 | Convert Point tool from the bottom of the flyout
menu, or you can press the keyboard shortcut, Shift+C.
| | 03:30 | And now if you're feeling very careful,
you can drag from that end point right there.
| | 03:36 | But, what may end up happening to you is
that Illustrator barks at you and tells you that
| | 03:39 | you're not dragging from an anchor point,
which means that it thinks you are dragging from
| | 03:43 | the center of the circle instead, in which
case just go ahead and click the OK button.
| | 03:47 | I will press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on a Mac
to undo the change, and then lock down those
| | 03:52 | two circles inside the blend so that only the
spine is unlocked and then try dragging again.
| | 03:59 | And so where this left-hand anchor point is
concerned, you're going to want to drag up
| | 04:02 | and to the right if you want to
get the same results I'm getting.
| | 04:05 | Then scroll over to this right-hand point,
and while it's tempting to drag inward from
| | 04:10 | that point, what you're going to need to do
is drag up into the right because you have
| | 04:15 | to drag in the direction of the path, and in the
case of this path, it's going from left to right.
| | 04:19 | All right so with a little bit of work,
you should come up with this result here.
| | 04:23 | Press Ctrl+0, or Command+0 on
the Mac in order to zoom out.
| | 04:27 | And now, if you double-click on the Blend
tool in order to bring up the Blend Options
| | 04:30 | dialog box, Specified
Distance is still set to 2 points.
| | 04:33 | But, if you switch to Specified Steps, you can
see that that means something different this time.
| | 04:38 | Now it's 429 steps instead of 426 steps.
| | 04:42 | And while that's not a big difference, it is
big enough in order to maintain a smooth blend.
| | 04:49 | All right I am just going to go ahead and
cancel out of this dialog box. And that folks
| | 04:53 | is how you modify the spine of the blend in
order to send that blend in a different direction
| | 04:59 | than it would otherwise perceive by default.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding a custom spine to any blend| 00:00 | In this movie, I will show you how to add
a spine to an existing blend, and this is
| | 00:04 | useful if Illustrator doesn't
give you a spine by default.
| | 00:08 | So, let's say for example I want to go ahead
and give this bat a kind of cartoon eyebrow,
| | 00:15 | so that we have a series of ridges over the eye.
| | 00:18 | In that case, what I do is I'd start things
off--and if you want to get the same results
| | 00:22 | as me, you want to double-click on
the Blend tool before you do anything.
| | 00:26 | So with nothing in the artwork selected, double-
click on the Blend tool and change the Spacing option
| | 00:31 | to Smooth Color, and then click OK.
| | 00:33 | And that changes the
default setting for future blends.
| | 00:36 | Then, press the V key in order to get your
Black Arrow tool, click on one eyebrow ridge--
| | 00:41 | notice that it's just an arc between two anchor points--
and then Shift+Click on the other one to select both.
| | 00:47 | And then you can create the blend from the keyboard
just by pressing Ctrl+Alt+B or Command+Option+B on the Mac.
| | 00:53 | Now, because these path outlines aren't
far enough apart from each other, Illustrator
| | 00:57 | doesn't give us a spine.
| | 00:59 | And we can confirm that by going over to the
Layers panel, twirling-open the bat head layer,
| | 01:04 | and then right at the top is this
blend item, the one we just created.
| | 01:08 | Twirl it open, and then if I scroll down here,
you could see I just have those two arcs,
| | 01:13 | that's it, with no spines in between them.
| | 01:15 | So, we need to make a
custom spine, and here's how.
| | 01:18 | Press the A key to switch to the White
Arrow tool, and then click on the top of the eye
| | 01:23 | like so, in order to select that top segment.
Neither the anchor point should be selected.
| | 01:28 | Then press Ctrl+C or Command+C
on the Mac to copy that segment.
| | 01:32 | Next, press the V key to switch back to the
Black Arrow tool, and click on either of these
| | 01:37 | arcs to select the entire blend, and press
Ctrl+F or Command+F on a Mac, in order to paste
| | 01:43 | the copy of that segment in front of the blend.
| | 01:46 | Then drag it into position like so. So you
want the first anchor point to be about midway
| | 01:51 | into that first arc, that is the
arc over here on the right-hand side.
| | 01:55 | Then, go ahead and switch to the Scale tool
which you can get by pressing the S key. Click
| | 02:00 | on that right-hand anchor point to set the
transformation origin, and then drag from
| | 02:06 | a position up into the left where you see
my cursor, for example. Drag further up and to
| | 02:11 | the left until the far left side of the line
ends up extending to that left-hand arc at
| | 02:18 | the end of the eyebrow; and then go ahead
and release, because these anchor points here
| | 02:22 | will end up determining the
position of the extreme path outlines.
| | 02:27 | The segment is
still selected as you can see.
| | 02:29 | And you can also see here in the Layers panel
that we have a path outline, which is selected
| | 02:34 | on top of the blend.
| | 02:35 | What I want you to do is drag this
path and drop it on to the blend.
| | 02:39 | Do not drag it and drop it into the blend
because if you do that, you'll end up making
| | 02:43 | it part of the blend.
| | 02:45 | We don't want that, so I will
press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on a Mac.
| | 02:48 | Instead, let's go ahead and take that path
and rename it spine, which is not necessary
| | 02:52 | by the way, you don't have to do that.
| | 02:53 | But, that will just help us keep track of
what's going on. And then just drag it and
| | 02:57 | drop it on to the word blend like so.
| | 03:00 | And that turns it into a spine for the blend and
it actually changes the way that the arcs move.
| | 03:06 | So, this is before, I will press Ctrl+Z or
Command+Z on the Mac, you can see that we
| | 03:10 | end up with this very straight blend. And
this is after, if I press Ctrl+Shift+Z or
| | 03:15 | Command+Shift+Z, we get a very different
result, and Illustrator goes ahead and gets rid of
| | 03:21 | both the fill and stroke that were
previously assigned to what is now the spine.
| | 03:26 | All right, now I will press the A key to
switch to White Arrow tool, click off the spine to
| | 03:30 | deselect it, and then try to find it again
by keeping track of that black square next
| | 03:35 | to the white arrow cursor, then
click in order to select that spine.
| | 03:39 | And now you can modify its control handles
to any extent you like in order to change
| | 03:44 | how the blend proceeds.
| | 03:47 | Also notice, if you drag one of the anchor
points--for example I will drag this left-hand
| | 03:50 | anchor point--you're going to actually
move the beginning path in that blend.
| | 03:55 | I will press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z
on a Mac because I don't want to do that.
| | 03:59 | Although I might go ahead and nudge this anchor
point up just a little bit by dragging it like so.
| | 04:05 | That looks good to me, just one
more thing I want to do, which is to change
| | 04:08 | the number of steps.
| | 04:09 | So, I will double-click on the Blend tool
here in the toolbox, and I will change the
| | 04:14 | spacing to Specified Steps, turn on the
Preview checkbox, and then I will increase that value
| | 04:19 | from 8 to 9; so not a big change there.
| | 04:22 | By the way, you also have this orientation
option, which is specifically designed to accommodate
| | 04:27 | blends along a spine. And note that you can
switch this setting to Align to Path, which
| | 04:32 | will go ahead and reorient those
extreme paths to match the angle of the spine.
| | 04:37 | That's not what I want however, so I will
switch back to Align to Page in order to maintain
| | 04:42 | the original path orientation.
| | 04:44 | And then I will click OK in order to adjust
the blend, and then I will press Ctrl+Shift+A
| | 04:49 | or Command+Shift+A on the Mac,
in order to deselect the spine.
| | 04:53 | You can see that we end up with a kind of
cartoon eyebrow created by blending a couple
| | 04:57 | of arcs along a path outline that we copied from
the top of the eye included with the original artwork.
| | 05:03 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Advanced blending and masking techniques| 00:00 | In this movie, I will show you how to modify
a couple of blends at the same time, and also
| | 00:04 | show you how to create a pair of clipping
masks--one of which is nested inside of another--
| | 00:09 | without losing your Fill and Stroke attributes.
| | 00:12 | So a lot of advanced blending
and masking coming at you here.
| | 00:15 | I am going to start off by bringing up my
Navigator panel and then I'll change the zoom
| | 00:21 | level to 200% and I will go ahead and drag
down like so inside the panel in order to
| | 00:27 | scroll to this portion of the sarcophagus.
| | 00:29 | Now these panels happen to be located on a
locked layer, which is this one right here,
| | 00:33 | the purple layer called shield and ribs.
| | 00:35 | Go ahead and unlock it if
you are working along with me.
| | 00:38 | Now it's tempting to grab
all four of these lines--
| | 00:41 | let's say I want to create a
series of rib lines between them--
| | 00:44 | to grab all four of them by clicking on one
and then Shift clicking on the other three,
| | 00:49 | and then pressing Ctrl+Alt+B or Command+Option+
B on the Mac. in order to blend between the two
| | 00:54 | pairs at the same time. But Illustrator doesn't
think that's what you're trying to accomplish.
| | 00:59 | It thinks that you are trying to blend
between all four lines at the same time, so we end
| | 01:03 | up getting this cross line right
here, which is not what we want.
| | 01:06 | In other words, you can only
create one blend at a time.
| | 01:09 | So I will press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on the
Mac, in order to undo that change. And then
| | 01:14 | I will Shift+Click on these right-hand lines
in order to deselect them, and I will press
| | 01:18 | Ctrl+Alt+B again, or Command+Option+B, in
order to blend between those lines. We only get
| | 01:23 | one step by default.
| | 01:24 | We will fix that problem in a second.
| | 01:27 | Then go ahead and click on this right-hand
line and Shift+Click on the top right hand
| | 01:31 | line and press Ctrl+Alt+B or Command+Option
+B on the Mac, to create the second blend.
| | 01:36 | Now you can Shift+Click on the first blend, so
both blends are selected and modify them both at once.
| | 01:42 | So you can only create one blend at a time,
but once they are created, you can modify
| | 01:46 | as many blends as you like.
| | 01:48 | And we are going to do so by double-clicking
on the Blend tool, as we have so many times
| | 01:52 | before, and I will change the Spacing value
to Specified Steps and I just happen to know
| | 01:56 | that I want 15 steps. I will turn on the
Preview checkbox and we end up with this effect here,
| | 02:01 | then I will click OK to update the blends.
| | 02:05 | All right, now let's say we want to place
the blends into this gradient shape right here.
| | 02:08 | I will press the V key in order to switch
to my Black Arrow tool and I will select the
| | 02:12 | shape if only to reduce the ambiguity
here, so you know what I'm talking about.
| | 02:16 | And normally when we are creating a clipping mask,
what you do is you put the mask in front, right?
| | 02:21 | So I press Ctrl+X or Command+X on the Mac
and then I'd select my ribs and I need to
| | 02:26 | select both sets of them, so I don't end up
pasting that shape that I just cut in between
| | 02:31 | the two blends. And then I will press Ctrl+F or
Command+F on the Mac, to paste the shape in front.
| | 02:36 | We can see through to the ribs by the way,
because this gradient includes transparency,
| | 02:42 | and then you would go ahead and Shift+Click
on those blends once again, in order to select
| | 02:47 | them and you would go up to the Object menu,
choose Clipping Mask and then choose the Make command.
| | 02:52 | And sure enough we end up
masking those blends, which is great!
| | 02:56 | However we lose the Gradient Fill that was
previously associated with the clipping path,
| | 03:02 | which is a big pain in the neck, because now we have
to re-create that gradient; and I don't want to do that.
| | 03:07 | So I am going to press Ctrl+Z or Command+
Z on the Mac, in order to undo that change.
| | 03:11 | And instead what I will do is I will cut the
blends and paste them inside of the gradient shape.
| | 03:17 | And I will do that by Shift+Clicking on the
gradient, which goes ahead and deselects it.
| | 03:22 | And then I will press Ctrl+X or Command+X,
this time to cut the blends, and now I will
| | 03:28 | go ahead and click on the
gradient path in order to select it.
| | 03:31 | All right, here's what you do.
| | 03:33 | This is sort of a new style way to create
clipping masks and involves a little more work.
| | 03:36 | However, we don't end up
losing our Fills and Strokes.
| | 03:40 | So in my case, I need to switch
to the double column toolbox here.
| | 03:44 | So the bottom of the toolbox does not end
up getting cut off, and I will click on this
| | 03:49 | icon right there, Draw Inside. And you can
also press Shift+D to advance to it, if you
| | 03:53 | want to, but you will end up
cycling through the Draw Behind mode.
| | 03:57 | So it's easier just to go ahead and click
on this guy and you'll see dotted corners
| | 04:01 | surrounding the bounding box around the
selected shape. And now what you want to do is go up
| | 04:06 | to the Edit menu and choose Paste in Place, or
you can press Ctrl+Shift+V or Command+Shift+V
| | 04:11 | on the Mac, and that goes ahead and pastes
the ribs inside of the gradient without getting
| | 04:16 | rid of the gradient--which is very important.
| | 04:19 | All right now we want to take both the
gradient mask here and the ribs, and we want to paste
| | 04:25 | them into the larger
sarcophagus shape in the background.
| | 04:29 | And it contains a gradient too, as well as a
stroke and we don't want to lose those attributes.
| | 04:33 | So go ahead and click on the Gradient shape
in order to select the entire clipping group,
| | 04:37 | and press Ctrl+X or Command
+X on the Mac, once again.
| | 04:41 | Now notice that Illustrator
automatically switches you back to Draw Normal mode.
| | 04:45 | So that's something you
had to keep an eye out for.
| | 04:47 | Now click on this big perspective rectangle
here in order to select it; and you want to
| | 04:51 | click on the left-hand side of the outline.
| | 04:55 | That's the easiest way to select the shape.
| | 04:57 | Then switch back to the Draw Inside mode
by clicking on its icon there; you will see
| | 05:01 | the dotted corners once again--you may not be
able to see all of them, but they'll be there.
| | 05:06 | And then return to the Edit menu and again
choose Paste in Place in order to create this
| | 05:11 | effect here. And now you can press Ctrl+Shift+
A or Command+Shift+A on the Mac, in order to
| | 05:15 | deselect your artwork.
| | 05:17 | Now you will need to manually switch back to
Draw Normal mode, if you want to once again
| | 05:22 | drawn normally inside of Illustrator.
| | 05:24 | And just to see what we've managed to do here,
I will scroll down inside my Layers panel,
| | 05:28 | I will twirl open that shield and ribs layer
and then I will scroll down to this clipping
| | 05:34 | group item right there, and you can see if I
meatball it, we see the words clipping group
| | 05:38 | on the far left side of the Control panel.
| | 05:40 | And if I twirl it open, you'll see that
we've got a clipping path on top here and below
| | 05:45 | that we have another clipping group.
| | 05:47 | Again, you see the words clipping group
on far left side of the Control panel.
| | 05:51 | Twirl it open and we've got this nested clipping
path right there that contains two blends behind it.
| | 05:58 | And so Illustrator has even changed the
stacking order so that the clipping masks make sense.
| | 06:04 | And that's how you create clipping masks--
whether one is nested inside of another or not is
| | 06:08 | irrelevant--without losing your Fills and Strokes,
using the Draw Inside mode combined with Paste in Place.
| | 06:15 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Blending between entire groups| 00:00 | In this movie I'll demonstrate how you can
blend between entire groups of objects at
| | 00:05 | a time, which is an exceedingly
powerful way to create more complex artwork.
| | 00:10 | So I'll go ahead and scroll down to this
railing down at the bottom of the sarcophagus. And
| | 00:15 | all these objects are contained on this low
fence layer, which is once again locked, so
| | 00:19 | I'll go ahead and click on the lock icon to
unlock it, and then I'll twirl open the layer.
| | 00:25 | Now we have a handful of path outlines that
represent this gray railing, as well as this
| | 00:29 | end cap here and this
facing directly above the grass.
| | 00:33 | But the objects that I really want to draw
your attention to are these two groups right
| | 00:37 | here. So notice that we have this upright
post over here on the left-hand side, and then
| | 00:41 | we have this more angled
post on the right-hand side.
| | 00:44 | It's going to be easier to tell what's
going on if I select a different layer color,
| | 00:49 | so I'll double-click on this low fence layer
in order to bring up the Layer Options dialog
| | 00:53 | box, and then I'll change the color to yellow--
something bright that I'll really stand out.
| | 00:58 | So notice if I drag this right-hand railing
over to the left that we have two very different
| | 01:05 | railings. Even though they look quite similar,
one is at a steeper angle and it's also shorter,
| | 01:10 | both of which subscribe to
the loss of perspective drawing.
| | 01:13 | And so what we need to do is create a handful
of posts in between these two, so I'll go ahead
| | 01:18 | and press Ctrl+Z or Command+
Z on a Mac to undo that move.
| | 01:21 | Now these objects are not super complicated,
but they're too compensated to pull off with
| | 01:26 | a single path outline, which is why each one
of the groups contains two outlines. And notice
| | 01:31 | that the top path is the vertical post itself,
| | 01:34 | and then in the bottom path is the ball at
the top of the post. And that's how the path
| | 01:38 | outlines are organized inside both groups.
| | 01:41 | So we have the same thing going on over here
on the left-hand side; we've got the vertical
| | 01:45 | post in front and then the round ball in
back of it--and that's very important by the way.
| | 01:51 | Anytime that you're going to blend between
groups, you need to make sure you have the
| | 01:54 | same number of paths inside of both groups,
and that the paths are stacked the same inside
| | 02:00 | of both of the groups as well.
| | 02:02 | Assuming that's a case, I'll go ahead and
twirl this layer closed here and I'll click
| | 02:06 | on the right-hand post and then
I'll Shift+Click on left-hand post.
| | 02:11 | And now what you want to do is as usual go
up to the Object menu, choose Blend, and then
| | 02:16 | choose Make or press Ctrl+Alt+B or Command+Option+
B on a Mac, and you create a bunch of intermediate
| | 02:21 | posts as you see here.
| | 02:23 | I don't want to see nearly that many posts,
so I'll double-click on a Blend tool icon
| | 02:27 | in the toolbox and then I'll change the
Spacing to Specified Steps, and this time instead of
| | 02:33 | 15 steps, I'll go ahead and take that
number down to 5, turn on the Preview checkbox so
| | 02:37 | we can see what we're doing, and click OK.
| | 02:40 | And notice that as a result of this blend,
each one of these posts both grows in size
| | 02:45 | and straightens up as we
proceed from right to left.
| | 02:49 | So in a sense what we're creating is a power
duplication series, and that's how you create
| | 02:55 | a more complicated procession of objects by
blending between groups here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting the speed of a blend| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you how you can use
the control handles on a spine in order to
| | 00:05 | adjust the speed of a blend.
| | 00:07 | And the idea here is that this arrangement
of posts doesn't quite match the way things
| | 00:14 | would appear in real life. And even though
these are kind of cartoon posts with stroked
| | 00:19 | outlines, I do want them to more or less
subscribe to the rules of perspective drawing.
| | 00:24 | What we should have is this effect here so
that the post aren't exactly equally spaced
| | 00:31 | and the spacing actually becomes wider as
we progress from right to left, that is as
| | 00:36 | the post come toward us.
| | 00:38 | So I'll go ahead and switch to the
illustration in progress here, and I'll click on any one
| | 00:43 | of the posts to select it, and notice that
the posts are sufficiently far apart that
| | 00:47 | illustrator has automatically assigned a spine.
And so all we need to do is add control handles
| | 00:53 | to the spine and then adjust
the control handles as well.
| | 00:57 | So I'll go ahead and select that Convert
Anchor Point tool from the Pen tool flyout menu,
| | 01:02 | and then I'll drag from that left-hand point to the
right in order to convert the point to a smooth point.
| | 01:09 | Now, I don't want to do this number where
I end up bending the spine, because that's
| | 01:13 | going to bend my blend as well.
| | 01:15 | Rather, I want to go ahead and keep that
control handle aligned with the path outline.
| | 01:20 | So I'll press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on the Mac,
to undo the addition of that handle, and I'll
| | 01:24 | just go ahead and drag along the path outline
instead in order to create this effect here.
| | 01:29 | So in other words, we're using the control
handles to adjust the speed, but not add any
| | 01:35 | sort of bend or arc to the blend.
The spine remains absolutely straight.
| | 01:40 | And you can see as a result of the fact that
we have a long handle, we have a slow transition
| | 01:44 | between objects over here on the left-hand
side and a very rapid transition over on the
| | 01:49 | right-hand side, where
we have no control handle.
| | 01:52 | Well, we need to remedy that.
| | 01:53 | We need to add a control handle on
the right-hand side in other words.
| | 01:56 | So I'll go ahead and drag out from that
right anchor point--and notice that I'm dragging
| | 02:00 | to the right once again, because the direction
of my path goes from left to right. So I have
| | 02:05 | to maintain a constant direction when
drawing for control handles as well.
| | 02:10 | Now, at this point I still want to make
some modifications, but I'm not going to do so
| | 02:13 | using the Convert Point tool, because the
Covert Point tool is only useful for establishing
| | 02:19 | the control handles in the first place.
| | 02:21 | Instead I'll press the A key to switch to
the White Arrow tool, and then I'll go ahead
| | 02:25 | and drag this control handle farther out.
| | 02:29 | And we're beginning to get an
effect that I like actually.
| | 02:31 | I might drag this control handle a little
farther to the right, and this control handle
| | 02:38 | a little farther to the left.
| | 02:40 | And I'm doing my best to maintain a straight
path, which is a little difficult to do when
| | 02:44 | you're working with smooth points, but it is
important in order to get the proper effect.
| | 02:49 | And that actually looks pretty darn good.
| | 02:51 | I might take this guy back just a little bit.
| | 02:54 | And this way we end up with a more organic
transition between the posts, with a post over
| | 03:00 | on the left-hand side--the ones that are
closest to us having the most distance between them--
| | 03:05 | and the post over here on the right-hand side,
that is the ones that are farthest away, having
| | 03:10 | the tightest distance.
| | 03:12 | And that, folks, is how you change the speed
of the blend by adding control handles to
| | 03:16 | an otherwise straight spine
here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Rotating objects in 3D space| 00:00 | In this final movie I'll show you how to do
something that has nothing to do with blending
| | 00:04 | and masking inside of Illustrator, but it
does help us to finish off the artwork, and
| | 00:09 | it's a really cool effect as well.
| | 00:11 | What we're going to do is rotate 2D
objects in 3D space in order to create this crest
| | 00:17 | at the top of the sarcophagus and
this chiseled text down here below.
| | 00:21 | So I'll go ahead and switch over to my
illustration in progress and then I'll turn on the second
| | 00:25 | to top layer, which is called type & crest.
| | 00:28 | And if you click on one of the character outlines,
you'll see that I've converted this text to path outlines.
| | 00:34 | I'm going to press Ctrl+H or Command+H on
the Mac, in order to hide those selection edges,
| | 00:40 | and I'll go ahead and zoom in a few clicks as well
so that we can see this text up close and personal.
| | 00:46 | Notice that I've created this
inner edge using a couple of Fills.
| | 00:51 | So I've got this Fill in front, it's a
Gradient Fill, and back of that is another Gradient
| | 00:55 | Fill that's offset to the right, and then
back of that we have a black Stroke that's
| | 00:59 | offset a little bit to the right as well.
| | 01:02 | Now, that will create the effect of having
chiseled letters once we match the text to
| | 01:07 | the perspective of the scene, and that's
something that you can do with the 3D Revolve command.
| | 01:13 | So make sure that you're seeing that a
Compound Path is selected over here in the far left
| | 01:17 | side of the Control panel.
| | 01:19 | Then go up to the Effect menu,
choose 3D, and choose Rotate.
| | 01:23 | Now, I'll be devoting an entire chapter to 3D
effects in the Mastery course of the series,
| | 01:29 | so you can consider this a
preview of coming attractions.
| | 01:33 | I'll go ahead and choose the Rotate command,
and then I'll turn on the Preview checkbox
| | 01:37 | so I can see what my text will look like when
rotated according to the settings right here.
| | 01:42 | Now, notice I'm seeing this little warning that's
telling me that my gradients will be rasterized.
| | 01:46 | In other words, they're going to be
converted to pixels, but that will happen on-the-fly.
| | 01:51 | So I'll still be able to edit the
gradients using the Gradient tool if I so desire.
| | 01:55 | Now, the next thing you want to do
is start dragging this cube around.
| | 02:00 | And notice if I drag the front edges here
that they turn red, and I'm also changing the
| | 02:06 | first value on the right hand side.
| | 02:08 | So the red edges go with this X-axis function right
there; the vertical green edges go with the next value.
| | 02:15 | So notice that now I'm
modifying the second value in the list.
| | 02:19 | You also modify the other values a little
bit, but not quite as much, and then these
| | 02:24 | blue edges end up affecting the Z value,
which is the final value in the list.
| | 02:30 | Again, it affects that value more than
the others; the others update slightly.
| | 02:35 | Now, just so we can cut to the chase
here, I'm going to dial in a few values.
| | 02:39 | I came up with an X value of 20 degrees, and a
Y value of -29 degrees, and a Z value of -6 degrees.
| | 02:49 | But of course I did so through trial and
error, just by dragging this box around.
| | 02:54 | Now, you'll notice, if you take a look at
the preview inside the document window, that
| | 02:58 | while I'm matching the angle of my
scene, I'm not matching the perspective.
| | 03:02 | In other words, the letters should
decline as they flow to the right.
| | 03:06 | But you can add perspective to your
scene by increasing this Perspective value.
| | 03:11 | So notice as I apply a larger value, I'm
swinging the right hand-letters backward and the left-
| | 03:17 | hand letters forward.
| | 03:19 | I'm going to go ahead and increase that value
even farther, and I ended up with a Perspective
| | 03:24 | value of 100 degrees, as you see here.
| | 03:27 | Now, every once in a while you may end up
seeing these edges here inside the illustration
| | 03:31 | window, do your best to ignore those.
| | 03:34 | Also, by the way, we don't need any surface
shading and we don't need to take advantage
| | 03:38 | of any additional options;
this is perfectly fine.
| | 03:42 | So once you've entered these values, 20, -29,
and -6, as well as 100 degrees for the Perspective,
| | 03:50 | go ahead and click OK in order to
apply those settings to the text.
| | 03:54 | So just to give you a sense of what a
tremendous difference this has made, this is the Before
| | 03:59 | version of the text and this is
the After version.
| | 04:04 | Now let's turn our attention
to the crest up here at the top.
| | 04:07 | You'll notice that I created some
dimension in the background in advance.
| | 04:10 | So all we need to do is rotate
the forward crest into place.
| | 04:14 | I'll go ahead and click on
that crest in order to select it.
| | 04:17 | We're not seeing the selection
edges of course because they're hidden.
| | 04:20 | If you want to confirm that yes indeed
this forward path outline is selected, you can
| | 04:23 | press Ctrl+H or Command+H on the Mac to see
the selection edges; but I recommend you then
| | 04:29 | press Ctrl+H or Command+H again in order to
hide them so you can better see what you're
| | 04:33 | doing as you apply the 3D rotation.
| | 04:37 | The next step is to go up to the Effect
menu and choose that second command at the top
| | 04:41 | of the list, Rotate...
| | 04:44 | in order to bring back
your last applied settings.
| | 04:46 | I'll then go ahead and dial in
some new numbers this time around.
| | 04:51 | So I want the X value to be 37 degrees, I'll change the Y
value to -25 degrees, and I'll change the Z value to -14 degrees.
| | 04:59 | A Perspective value of 100 degrees is just fine.
| | 05:03 | Turn on the Preview checkbox and you
should see that crest snap into place.
| | 05:08 | Then go ahead and click on the OK
button in order to apply that change.
| | 05:12 | And that's it folks.
| | 05:13 | I'll go ahead and zoom out a little bit
here and I'll press the F key a couple of times
| | 05:17 | in order to switch to the Full Screen mode.
And that is the final version of the artwork,
| | 05:24 | created not only using the 3D Rotate Effect,
but also dare I say, a dizzying array of
| | 05:31 | blends and clipping masks
here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
24. Logos and Specialty TextIllustrator's logo-making features| 00:00 | The name of this chapter is logos and specially text,
which if I were you would make me a little skeptical.
| | 00:07 | The very idea that I'm going to show you how
to design a logo is an iffy proposition at best.
| | 00:13 | Logo design is a specialized discipline that I
couldn't begin to explain in a single chapter,
| | 00:18 | even if I were an expert on
the topic, which I am not.
| | 00:22 | So instead I'll take you on a tour of the wealth
of logo making features that Illustrator offers you.
| | 00:28 | Simply put, if you can do it to a
path outline, you can do it to type.
| | 00:33 | We'll start by customizing a single
character of type to create a unique design worthy of
| | 00:39 | printing on a T-shirt.
| | 00:41 | Then I'll show you how to paste the logo
along the top and bottom of a circle. And finally,
| | 00:46 | you'll create a credible neon effect,
starting with some hand-drawn letters, working your
| | 00:52 | way through some blends in random brightness
fluctuations, and then blurring the effect in Photoshop.
| | 00:58 | This final effect pretty much tells the story.
| | 01:02 | If by the end of this chapter you know how to
create this, who cares what the chapter is called.
| | 01:07 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Customizing a single character of type| 00:00 | In these first two movies, I'll show you how
to customize a single character of type, so
| | 00:05 | you can take a font that's available to
presumably everyone, and turn it into a special text
| | 00:11 | treatment that's all your own.
| | 00:13 | Specifically, we want to take this text
that's set in a font called Chiller, and we want to
| | 00:18 | customize the O, so that it
appears to be overflowing with real love.
| | 00:23 | So, I am going to go ahead and zoom in on
this text over here in the first Artboard.
| | 00:28 | And just so we can use this final text as
a kind of tracing template, I am going to
| | 00:33 | lockdown the t-shirts layer and I'll turn on
the top layer which is called path outlines.
| | 00:37 | And notice if I click on a character of type,
you can see that I've converted my text to
| | 00:42 | path outlines, not only so that I can edit
the text, but also because it's very possible
| | 00:47 | that you don't have the font
Chiller loaded on your system.
| | 00:51 | So what we want to do here--I'll press Ctrl+
Shift+A or Command+Shift+A on a Mac to deselect my
| | 00:54 | text--what we want to do is use the interior
of the O as the interior of the final character,
| | 01:02 | but we want use the special predefined
symbol that ships along with Illustrator to create
| | 01:07 | the exterior of the O. And here's how that works.
| | 01:10 | Go up to the Window menu and choose the
Symbols command to bring up the Symbols panel.
| | 01:16 | Now I'll be devoting an entire chapter to
symbols in the mastery course, but for now,
| | 01:21 | just know that symbols are pre-drawing graphics
that you can add to your artwork anytime you like.
| | 01:26 | Now to get to the specific symbol that we
are looking for, you click on this little
| | 01:29 | Library icon in the bottom-left corner of
the Symbols panel and you choose this guy
| | 01:33 | right there Grime Vector Pack.
| | 01:36 | Thing is, I've already loaded the
symbols into this particular document.
| | 01:39 | So, if you're working along with me, you can
just escape out there and then grab this guy,
| | 01:44 | Grime Vector Pack 05, and drag it and
drop it into the illustration window.
| | 01:50 | That's going to come in
very large as you can see.
| | 01:53 | And if I zoom out to take in the entire height
of this symbol, and I am going to drag it down
| | 01:58 | as well. And you need to take care when you
are working with symbols like this to drag
| | 02:02 | them by their outlines.
| | 02:03 | Now, what we have here is an instance. So
symbol definition is stored inside the Symbols
| | 02:09 | panel, and then you create an instance of
that symbol--a kind of duplicate out here in the
| | 02:14 | illustration window--which is great if
you want to create a lot of instances.
| | 02:18 | But if all you want to do is customize a
single instance, then you need to break the link
| | 02:22 | between the path inside your artwork and the
original symbol in the Symbols panel. And you
| | 02:27 | do that by clicking on this Break Link icon
down here at the bottom of the panel. All right!
| | 02:32 | So far, so good.
| | 02:33 | I'll go ahead and hide the Symbols panel and
also change this path's fill by clicking on
| | 02:38 | the first Swatch icon up here in the Control
panel and changing it to White. All right!
| | 02:43 | Now we need to zoom back in because we are
a little bit too far out here, and at this
| | 02:48 | point, I need to be able to see what's
going on in the background art, the artwork that
| | 02:52 | I am using is a template. Which means I
need to be able to see through the contents of
| | 02:55 | the path outline layer.
| | 02:57 | So, in other words, I need path outlines to
appear in the Outline mode while all the other
| | 03:02 | layers to appear in Preview mode. And you do
that by the way by pressing the Ctrl key or
| | 03:08 | the Command key on a Mac, and clicking on
the eyeball icon in front of the path outlines
| | 03:14 | layer. And notice that gets rid of the pupil
inside of the eyes, so we have a kind of Little
| | 03:18 | Orphan Annie Eye going here.
| | 03:20 | And so any layer that has a hollow eye icon
next to it, means we're seeing it in the Outline
| | 03:25 | mode; any layer that has a pupil in its
eyeball is appearing in the Preview mode.
| | 03:30 | One other thing to note here, see how the
path outlines layer went ahead and twirled
| | 03:34 | itself open and then we have this Grime
object below it, with its name truncated in my case,
| | 03:39 | and it has a different color associated with it.
| | 03:42 | And that's because if you go ahead and
meatball this object, you'll see that it's a layer--
| | 03:48 | in other words it's a sub-layer
inside the path outlines layer.
| | 03:52 | And that's just something that Illustrator does.
| | 03:54 | When you break the link to a symbol, you end
up with a sub-layer; naturally in this case,
| | 03:59 | it's not what we want.
| | 04:00 | So I'll twirl open that object and then I'll
grab the thing inside of it, and I'll go ahead
| | 04:05 | and drag it out of the Grime sub-layer.
| | 04:08 | And then I'll go ahead and drag that sub-layer
onto the Trash icon at the bottom of the panel
| | 04:13 | and now you can see if I twirl the path
outlines layer closed and twirl it back open again,
| | 04:18 | we don't have any of that blue because we
no longer have any sub-layers. All right!
| | 04:22 | Just one more thing I want to do in this movie,
I want to go ahead and position this Grime
| | 04:27 | object right there at about this location here.
| | 04:31 | And I'll go ahead and zoom in to make sure
I have positioned it properly, and I might
| | 04:34 | want to nudge it a little
bit as well.
| | 04:37 | And now I need to scale the object by switching
to the Scale tool--which you can get by pressing
| | 04:41 | the S key--and then I'll Alt+click or Option+
click on that anchor point there and I'll change
| | 04:47 | the Uniform value to 43.5%, which I arrived
at just through trial and error by the way,
| | 04:54 | and now I'll click OK.
| | 04:56 | It appears that things aren't quite aligned,
so I'll just press the Up Arrow key and that
| | 05:00 | seems to reconcile things
quite nicely. All right!
| | 05:03 | I'll go ahead and zoom out a little bit here,
so I'll go ahead and press the V key to switch
| | 05:06 | to my Black Arrow tool.
| | 05:08 | Now that we've got the outline of the letter O--
which will define the interior of our custom
| | 05:14 | character as well as the outline of this
Grime object, which will define the outside of the
| | 05:18 | custom character--we need to fuse the two
together, and we'll do exactly that in the next movie.
| | 05:23 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Combining a letterform with a path outline| 00:00 | In this movie, I will show you how to
combine a letter form with a predefined symbol to
| | 00:04 | create a custom character of type.
| | 00:07 | Now notice that I still have my path
outlines layer set to the Outline mode and my other
| | 00:11 | two layers are set to the Preview mode.
| | 00:13 | And if you were to open this illustration,
you would see exactly the same thing because
| | 00:17 | Illustrator goes ahead and saves the
preview settings along with the document.
| | 00:22 | Now in our case, what we want to do is keep
the interior of the O and merge it with the
| | 00:27 | outside of this Grime symbol.
| | 00:29 | So that means we need to get
rid of the outside of the O.
| | 00:32 | And I am going to do that by
zooming in just so I have a closer view.
| | 00:36 | And then I will press the A key to switch
to my White Arrow tool and I will click on
| | 00:39 | this anchor point right there and Shift+click on
this one here in order to select a representative
| | 00:45 | anchor point along the top of both the left
side of the O and the right side of the O.
| | 00:51 | And then I will press Backspace key or the Delete
key on the Mac in order to get rid of those points.
| | 00:56 | That divides the outside and the inside
of the O into two separate path outlines.
| | 01:01 | So now you can press the Shift and Alt
keys or the Shift and Option keys on a Mac, and
| | 01:06 | click on the inside of O to deselect it; and
then press the Backspace key or the Delete
| | 01:10 | key on the Mac, in order to get rid
of that outside path. All right!
| | 01:15 | Now I am going to zoom in even tighter here.
| | 01:17 | And we need to move a few anchor points around.
| | 01:19 | So I will marquee these anchor points right
there and Shift+marquee these ones and then
| | 01:24 | Shift+click on these final three; but notice as
soon as I try to Shift+click on that endpoint,
| | 01:30 | I end up selecting this curve segment above
it instead, which means if I start dragging
| | 01:35 | the anchor points around, I am
going to stretch the selected segment.
| | 01:38 | I don't want that, so I will press Ctrl+Z or
Command+Z on the Mac, to undo that maneuver.
| | 01:42 | Now I will press the Shift key and marquee
right around that anchor point like so, in
| | 01:47 | order to both select the anchor point
and deselect the segment.
| | 01:52 | Now I can move these anchor
points into the desired positions.
| | 01:55 | And I'm just matching the location of the
points on my tracing template in the background.
| | 02:01 | Each time I get an anchor point in position,
I Shift+click on it to deselect it and then
| | 02:05 | drag the other ones in the position like so,
then I'll Shift+click this guy to deselect
| | 02:10 | him, drag these two anchor points into
position, Shift+click on each of them to deselect them,
| | 02:16 | and then drag this guy right there.
| | 02:18 | Now I am going to leave this anchor point
hanging off, we will come back to it in just a moment.
| | 02:22 | Now we have got to create a hole in the path
outline that was formerly that Grime symbol
| | 02:28 | in order to create this channel right
here through the O that appears in dark blue.
| | 02:33 | So I will go ahead and marquee these
anchor points there and then Shift+click on this
| | 02:36 | second point to select it as well.
| | 02:37 | And I will press Backspace key or the Delete key
on the Mac, in order to get rid of those points.
| | 02:43 | And now I will marquee these anchor points
in order to select them, Make sure just those
| | 02:49 | anchors points are selected, you don't want
to select part of this guy. And then drag this
| | 02:53 | endpoint so that it snaps into
alignment with this one.
| | 02:57 | Now, what we want to do, and it seems like
it should be simple, we just want to go ahead
| | 03:00 | and join these two endpoints together so
that we are combining the inside edge of the
| | 03:05 | O with the outside Grime path outline.
| | 03:08 | So I will go ahead and marquee those two
coincident endpoint--that is, one is directly on top
| | 03:12 | of the other--and then I will go up to the
Object menu, I will choose Path and I will
| | 03:16 | choose Join or you can press
Ctrl+J or Command+J on a Mac.
| | 03:20 | Now the Join command was dramatically enhanced
in Illustrator CS5, but it still is not perfect.
| | 03:27 | You are going to run into times
where illustrator gripes at you.
| | 03:31 | And this is a classic example.
| | 03:32 | As soon as I choose Join, I get this alert
message that starts off, To join, you must
| | 03:37 | select two open endpoints. Which is not
only not entirely true, but is not accurate to
| | 03:43 | our situation at all because that's exactly
what we've selected is two open endpoints.
| | 03:47 | To get a sense of what's gone wrong in our
case, you have to read the very end of last
| | 03:51 | sentence where it says, if both of them
are grouped, they must be in the same group.
| | 03:56 | Our problem is that one of our endpoints is
inside of a group and the other one is inside
| | 03:59 | of a compound path; and as a result,
Illustrator refuses to join them together.
| | 04:04 | You should not turn on the Don't show again
checkbox, because if you do, and you run into
| | 04:09 | this problem in the future--which you will--
then instead of getting an alert message,
| | 04:14 | Illustrator will just ignore you, which
I can tell you is extremely confusing.
| | 04:18 | So just go ahead and click OK.
| | 04:20 | And now here's how to solve the problem.
| | 04:23 | Press the V key in order to switch to the
Black Arrow tool and then click off the path
| | 04:27 | outlines to deselect them.
| | 04:29 | Now click on the outside edge
right there in order to select it.
| | 04:33 | What we want to see is the word Path over
here on the far left side of the Control panel;
| | 04:37 | instead, we see Compound Path, which is going to
create a problem when we try to join one path to another.
| | 04:43 | Our only option is to release the Compound
Path by going up to the Object menu, choosing
| | 04:47 | Compound Path and choosing Release.
| | 04:49 | Now you want to make sure by the way that you are
not releasing any holes or creating any problems.
| | 04:54 | In our case, we are fine.
| | 04:56 | So go ahead and choose the Release command.
| | 04:58 | Now we hope to see the word Path on the far
left side of the Control panel and instead
| | 05:02 | we see Mixed Objects, which means anything;
we could have some paths selected, we could
| | 05:07 | have a group selected, don't know.
| | 05:10 | So click off the path outline to deselect it,
click on it again to select it and now I see Group.
| | 05:16 | So I release the Compound Path only to be
confronted by a group, which means I now have
| | 05:21 | to go the Object menu and choose the Ungroup
command or press Ctrl+Shift+G or Command+Shift+G
| | 05:26 | on a Mac; and now I've got a
path. Excellent!
| | 05:29 | Now what you want to do is
click on the inside path outline.
| | 05:33 | And you can see that it is a group over
here on the far-left side of the Control panel.
| | 05:37 | So go back to the Object menu
and choose the Ungroup command.
| | 05:41 | And now notice we have got a Compound Path.
| | 05:43 | Now here's the thing, you don't want to just
release the Compound Path; because if I zoom
| | 05:49 | out, which I did by pressing Ctrl+0 or Command
+0 on the Mac, notice we've got holes in the
| | 05:55 | Es and they are currently selected.
| | 05:58 | So if you were to release those Es as compound paths,
then we would release the holes inside the Es as well.
| | 06:04 | Don't want that, so click off the path
outlines to deselect them, then click on the inside
| | 06:09 | edge of the O, so just it is selected. It is still a
Compound Path, but we can release it with impunity.
| | 06:15 | So go up to the Object menu,
choose Compound Path and choose Release.
| | 06:21 | Now for the drum roll please, let's go ahead
and zoom in here at this location and I will
| | 06:26 | press the A key in order to
switch to my White Arrow tool.
| | 06:29 | You can see that now we just have a path
outline selected, which is just about all that the
| | 06:33 | Join command can accommodate.
| | 06:35 | So I will marquee these
two coincident endpoints.
| | 06:37 | We will go up to the Object menu, choose Path, and
choose Join, and sure enough that goes ahead and works.
| | 06:45 | And if I click off the anchor point, click on
it and drag it, you can see where we formerly
| | 06:49 | had two independent endpoints, we now
have a single interior point. All right!
| | 06:54 | I will press Ctrl+Z or Command+
Z on a Mac to undo that move.
| | 06:56 | Now we have just two
endpoints left and that's these guys right here.
| | 07:01 | So I will go ahead and drag this anchor point
until it snaps into alignment with the other
| | 07:04 | one, then I will marquee the two anchor
points to select them both and I will press Ctrl+J
| | 07:10 | or Command+J on a Mac, in
order to join them together.
| | 07:13 | The deed is now done.
| | 07:14 | Let's go ahead and take a look at our work.
| | 07:16 | You can switch back to the Preview mode by
pressing the Ctrl key or the Command key on
| | 07:20 | the Mac, and clicking on that hollow eye in
front of the path outlines layer; or you can
| | 07:24 | just go up to the View menu and choose the
Preview command to switch the entire illustration
| | 07:29 | back to the Preview mode.
| | 07:31 | Now I will press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift+
A on the Mac, in order to deselect my artwork.
| | 07:35 | And I will press Ctrl+0 or Command+0
on a Mac, in order to center my zoom.
| | 07:40 | And that folks is how you combine a
letterform along with a predefined symbol to create a
| | 07:45 | custom character of type.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating logo type along an open path| 00:00 | In this project we'll create a logo that
features classic type on a circle, and I'll start things
| | 00:05 | off in this movie by showing you
how to create type along an open path.
| | 00:10 | So switch over to the starter document here--
and by the way if you are working along with
| | 00:14 | me--this document features Myriad Pro Black, which
you may or may not have installed on your machine.
| | 00:21 | If not, when you get the alert message, just
go ahead and click the Open button and switch
| | 00:24 | on My Fonts for some
nice bold fonts of your own.
| | 00:27 | All right, the first thing we
need to do is take this circle.
| | 00:31 | Notice that I have just one
circle inside of this top layer here.
| | 00:35 | We need to break it in two, because you can only
join type to a single path outline in Illustrator.
| | 00:42 | So we need the top path of the
circle separated from the bottom half.
| | 00:46 | And just so I can show you the difference
between working with closed and open paths
| | 00:50 | inside of Illustrator, here
is how we're going to work.
| | 00:52 | I want you to press the A key to switch to
the White Arrow tool, then click off the path
| | 00:57 | outline to deselect it, and click on that
top anchor point in the circle to select it.
| | 01:02 | Then go on to the Edit menu and choose the
Copy command, or of course you can press Ctrl+C
| | 01:07 | or Command+C on the Mac.
| | 01:08 | And now we want to go ahead and paste a copy of
that anchor point along with its two neighboring
| | 01:13 | segments, so in other words
the top half of the circle.
| | 01:16 | And the easiest way to do that is to return
to the Edit menu and choose Paste in Front,
| | 01:21 | or press Ctrl+F or Command+F on the Mac.
| | 01:24 | Now press the V key to switch back to the
Black Arrow tool, and click on the baseline
| | 01:28 | of that point text object to select it.
| | 01:31 | Now if this were another program, you might
be able to join the type to the top half of
| | 01:35 | the circle, but in
Illustrator you have to cut and paste.
| | 01:38 | So go up to the Edit menu and choose the
Cut command or press Ctrl+X, Command+X on the
| | 01:43 | Mac; and then click on the top half circle
to select it, and then switch to the Type
| | 01:48 | tool, which you can get by pressing the T key.
| | 01:51 | And now position your cursor over the path
outline. And notice that it changes from an
| | 01:55 | I-beam inside of a dotted square to an I-
beam with a little dotted path going through it;
| | 02:01 | and that tells you that you are going to convert this
path to a text path, and you do so just by clicking on it.
| | 02:07 | You'll get this tiny blinking insertion
marker which pretends to suggest that that's where
| | 02:12 | you're going to create your type. And
initially that's true, but things are going to go a
| | 02:17 | little bit haywire in just a moment.
| | 02:19 | Now go up to the Edit menu and choose the
Paste command or press Ctrl+V or Command+V
| | 02:23 | on the Mac, and you'll create this text that
begins at the place that you clicked and then
| | 02:30 | proceeds to the right--the reason being
that this text started out flush left.
| | 02:34 | So let's go ahead and change that by clicking on
the Align Center icon up here in the Control panel.
| | 02:40 | And initially that's not going to do anything,
and that's because we're centering the text
| | 02:45 | at the wrong location, but we can
change that using the Black Arrow tool.
| | 02:50 | So I'll go ahead and click on the
Black Arrow up at the top of the toolbox.
| | 02:54 | You can't press the V key of course, because
then you center a V character into your text.
| | 02:58 | All right, now notice this big tall line
that's jutting out from the half circle.
| | 03:02 | That indicates the point around which your text will
be centered, because it's currently aligned center.
| | 03:08 | Now go ahead and drag that line in
order to move the text along the circle.
| | 03:12 | What I want to do is exactly center the text on
the top anchor point, which is a little tricky.
| | 03:17 | You have to make sure your cursor is just
slightly above the path outline; because if
| | 03:22 | it's even slightly below you'll
end up flipping the text, like so.
| | 03:26 | So if you end up getting flipped text or
something goes wonky, then here's the solution.
| | 03:31 | Go up to the View menu and turn on Smart
Guides if they are not already on, and then you'll
| | 03:36 | have a lot more control.
| | 03:38 | Now I'll go ahead and drag this line once
again, which now appears below the path outline,
| | 03:42 | because I flipped the text.
| | 03:44 | I'll go ahead and drag it up, and now I
can drag far above my path outline as you can
| | 03:48 | see here; and I'll see a vertical green line
when I've exactly aligned my cursor to that
| | 03:54 | center anchor point.
| | 03:55 | All right, now at this
point I can release the cursor.
| | 03:58 | Now we've got a couple of additional
controls that you might want to adjust.
| | 04:02 | Notice this vertical line right here, which
indicates where the text starts, and this vertical
| | 04:06 | line, which indicates where the text ends.
| | 04:08 | If you drag one of those inward, you are going
to reduce the area in which your text resides
| | 04:14 | and as a result you'll end up with this
overflow marker that tells you that you can go ahead
| | 04:19 | and flow your text into another object if
you want to. Obviously that's not what we want.
| | 04:24 | In order to make sure the text is exactly
selected, you need to drag this right-hand
| | 04:29 | vertical line all the way down to the final
anchor point like so; and then drag the first
| | 04:34 | vertical line all the way down to the first anchor
point. And you'll end up achieving this effect here.
| | 04:41 | And now we can go ahead and change the text
from black to white by clicking on the first
| | 04:45 | color swatch up here in the Control panel
and selecting White from the list of swatches.
| | 04:50 | And that's how you create
text along an open path outline.
| | 04:54 | Now naturally of course the text is not centered
as it should be inside of the design and that's
| | 04:59 | an item that we'll address in a future movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating logo type around a closed circle| 00:00 | In this movie we'll create the logo text
along the bottom of the circle, and along the way,
| | 00:05 | I'll show you how to create
text along a closed path outline.
| | 00:08 | Now, you may wonder when you look at this
design so far, whether Illustrator gets rid
| | 00:13 | of the stroke associated with the path or
whether it keeps that stroke. And the answer
| | 00:18 | is it gets rid of the stroke automatically.
| | 00:21 | The only reason we're seeing a stroke under the
word Tiger is because we've got this additional
| | 00:26 | circle. So if I move the circle away like so,
you can see that the stroke has disappeared.
| | 00:31 | Which begs the question what if you
want to add a stroke to text along a path?
| | 00:37 | In that case you press the A key to switch
to the White Arrow tool, and you go ahead and
| | 00:41 | click on that half circle to select it
independently of the word Tiger. And then in my case, because
| | 00:48 | I only have a partial path outlined selected,
I would switch over to my Stroke panel--which
| | 00:52 | I can get by choosing Stroke from the Window
menu--and I'll would enter a Line Weight, let's
| | 00:58 | say something big like 12
points, so that we can see it.
| | 01:02 | This is also incidentally how you go about
modifying the path outline in case you want
| | 01:07 | to change it. So I could go ahead and drag
the anchor point and I could drag a control
| | 01:11 | handle and Illustrator will update that
text automatically along the path. And actually
| | 01:17 | I don't want to do any of these things, so
I'll just go up to the File menu and choose
| | 01:21 | the Revert command in order to
restore the saved version of my document.
| | 01:25 | All right, now to place the text on the
close path outline, I'll go ahead and press the
| | 01:29 | V key to switch to my Black Arrow tool, and
I'll click on the baseline of the Tortellini
| | 01:34 | text to select it. And this time around
I'm going to do everything from the keyboard;
| | 01:38 | so I'll press Ctrl+X or Command+X on a Mac
to cut that text to the clipboard, and then
| | 01:43 | I'll click on the circle in order to select it,
and I'll press the T key to switch to my Type tool.
| | 01:49 | Notice this time if I hover over the path
outline, I see the iBeam cursor inside of
| | 01:54 | a dotted circle and that shows me if I
click on a path outline, I'll create my text as
| | 01:58 | area text inside the circle.
| | 02:01 | I don't want to do that, so I'll press and
hold the Alt key or the Option key on a Mac,
| | 02:05 | and this time I get my Path tool cursor.
| | 02:08 | And the reason you have to do this is
because you're working with a closed path outline,
| | 02:12 | as opposed to an open one.
| | 02:14 | So go ahead and Alt+Click or Option+Click
on that circle in order to enter that blinking
| | 02:19 | insertion marker right at the click point,
then press Ctrl+V or Command+V on a Mac in
| | 02:24 | order to paste your text.
| | 02:26 | I want it to be centered, so I'll go up here
to the Control panel and click on the Align
| | 02:30 | Center icon over here close the right-hand
side. And you can see that ends up putting
| | 02:36 | the text back at the top of the
circle which is not what I want.
| | 02:40 | So I'll switch back to my Black Arrow tool--
and I've to do that manually of course by
| | 02:43 | clicking on the tool at the top of the
toolbox--and then I'll drag that vertical guideline
| | 02:49 | right there at the top of the circle down
like so. And you don't want to flip your text
| | 02:54 | to the other side like that; instead--and
this can be pretty tricky, you can see things
| | 02:58 | are flitting around on me quite a bit here
and you don't want that effect here--you just
| | 03:03 | have to sort of patiently move your cursor
until you end up getting that text along the
| | 03:08 | top of the bottom circle, so that it reads
in the right order. And if you still have smart
| | 03:13 | guides turned on, you should see a green
vertical line to tell you that you have exact alignment,
| | 03:19 | and then go ahead and release the
mouse button in order to apply the change.
| | 03:23 | All right, this time around we don't have
to worry about the positions of the beginning
| | 03:27 | and end points, because they are
automatically located opposite the text at the top of the
| | 03:33 | circle right next to each other, which tells
us that we have the alignment we're looking for.
| | 03:37 | All right, so the only thing left to do is
change the text to white by clicking on the
| | 03:41 | first color swatch up here in the Control
panel and selecting white from the list. And
| | 03:46 | that's how you go about creating
text along a closed path outline.
| | 03:50 | In the next movie I'll show you how to change the
orientation and vertical alignment of text on a path.
| | 03:55 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Vertical alignment, orientation, and spacing| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how you can
adjust the vertical alignment of text on a path,
| | 00:05 | as well as its orientation and
character spacing, all using a single command.
| | 00:10 | Now as you can see, by default the
Illustrator goes ahead and aligns the baseline of the
| | 00:15 | text to the path outline.
| | 00:17 | Now most of the time that's going to work
out really well, but in our case the original
| | 00:21 | circle cuts halfway through
the brown portion of the logo.
| | 00:25 | So we need to scoot the text down.
| | 00:27 | If you're working along with me, just go and
press Ctr+A or Command+A on the Mac to select
| | 00:31 | both text objects. As you can see the Art
Layer which contains the logo elements, is locked.
| | 00:37 | Now I'll go up to the Type menu and choose
Type on a Path, and you can see this submenu
| | 00:42 | begins with the bunch of orientation settings.
| | 00:45 | Those same settings are made available by
this command right here, Type on a Path options.
| | 00:50 | So go ahead and choose that command and then turn on
the Preview checkbox so we can see what were doing.
| | 00:55 | Notice Align to Path right there.
| | 00:57 | Those are your vertical alignment options.
| | 01:00 | By default, it's set to Baseline.
| | 01:01 | So as I say, the Baseline of the
text is aligned to the path outline.
| | 01:05 | But you could change it to something like
Ascender, so that the text drops down dramatically,
| | 01:11 | or you can change it to Descender,
so the text jumps all the way up.
| | 01:14 | So in other words either the Ascenders, that
is the top of the tallest characters, or the
| | 01:19 | Descenders, which would be the bottom of the
character set dropped down from the baseline,
| | 01:24 | are aligned to that path outlined.
| | 01:26 | We don't want either of those options.
| | 01:28 | I just want you to see that
they are there. We want center.
| | 01:32 | So we end up centering the
text on the path outline like so.
| | 01:35 | These Effect options are
your orientation settings.
| | 01:39 | By default, Effect is set to Rainbow, which
is going to be what you want 99% of the time,
| | 01:44 | but you also have these other settings that
you can choose from, including Skew, which
| | 01:49 | is probably the second to most useful; but
then you've got these other ones that you
| | 01:54 | can play with as well.
| | 01:56 | So of course I invite you to go ahead and
experiment with those, but we're going to
| | 01:59 | stick with Rainbow.
| | 02:01 | And then finally you've
got this Spacing setting.
| | 02:04 | This one is a little difficult to understand.
| | 02:06 | The idea is that you want to space your text
differently for those times when you encounter
| | 02:12 | convex areas like at the top here, or
concave areas as down at the bottom.
| | 02:18 | So your text is going to tend to spread
when it goes over these humps and then when it
| | 02:22 | goes into the valleys, it's
going to tend to bunch up.
| | 02:25 | So the idea behind spacing, and you can see
if you click the down pointing arrow head
| | 02:29 | that you have a lot of presets to choose from.
| | 02:32 | But let's say I go with the biggest setting.
| | 02:34 | Now you would think 36 would spread out
everything, but it's only going to spread the text in
| | 02:39 | the concave areas, in the valleys; and it's going
to bunch up the text along the hills if you will.
| | 02:46 | So as soon as I choose 36, Tortellini is going to
spread apart, but TIGER is going to bunch together.
| | 02:52 | And you can enter a higher value if you want to.
| | 02:55 | I could change this to 100 for example, and
that really spreads TORTELLINI and really
| | 03:00 | squishes TIGER together.
| | 03:02 | Now while that might work well for you when
you're creating text along a rolling path outline,
| | 03:08 | in our case it's not going to do the trick
because both TIGER and TORTELLINI where little
| | 03:13 | squished before we started.
| | 03:15 | So I'm going to go ahead and change that
spacing value back to Auto, so Illustrator can just
| | 03:20 | go ahead and do its standard thing, and
in our case we're not seeing a difference.
| | 03:23 | Let me see if I change this back to 0 here and
then switch back to Auto and press the Tab key.
| | 03:32 | Well, that's the best I'm going to do.
| | 03:34 | Now you also have the option of turning on the Flip
checkbox, which is going to flip the text upside down.
| | 03:40 | So pretty self-evident, but I
want you to know it's there.
| | 03:42 | Anyway, I'll turn Flip off and I'll go
ahead and click OK in order to center that text
| | 03:48 | vertically on the circle.
| | 03:50 | Now as I say, we still need
to spread our characters apart.
| | 03:53 | So I'm going to bring up my Character panel, which
is available to me over here in the icon column.
| | 03:58 | You can also choose Character from the Window
menu or just press Ctrl+T or Command+T on the Mac.
| | 04:03 | And I'm going to change this Tracking value here
to 80, which is going to spread out the text nicely.
| | 04:09 | And I'm also going to change the Horizontal Scale
value to 130 in order to achieve this effect here.
| | 04:16 | Now well, that works great for the word
TIGER, it doesn't work so well for TORTELLINI.
| | 04:20 | So I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift+A
on the Mac in order to deselect the artwork,
| | 04:25 | and then I'll click along the bottom portion
of the circle to select it, and let's adjust
| | 04:30 | some settings here.
| | 04:31 | I'll start by changing the Horizontal
Scale value to 120 and that ends up achieving a
| | 04:37 | much better looking effect I think, and then
I'll reduce the Tracking value to 60 in order
| | 04:43 | to create this final version of the logo.
| | 04:46 | And that's how you change the vertical alignment,
as well as the orientation and character spacing
| | 04:52 | of text along a path outline.
[00:04:53.600, 0:04:53.600
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Warping logo type around a circle| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you how
to warp type inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:04 | So the idea is this:traditional type on a
circle, like we have here, works great for
| | 00:09 | long words, like tortellini; but as soon as
we start going with shorter words like tiger,
| | 00:15 | things start falling apart. And it
gets worse with shorter word still.
| | 00:19 | So let's say our client decides they want
to branch out and they want to create another
| | 00:23 | product called TIGER MILK, and we're
responsible of course for creating the logo.
| | 00:29 | But as soon as you replace the word TORTELLINI with
MILK, things really fall apart for a couple of reasons.
| | 00:35 | First of all, the letters appear to be out of
alignment with each other, and that's because
| | 00:39 | Illustrator is vertically aligning each and every
letter independently along the bottom of that circle.
| | 00:46 | The second problem, and probably the bigger
one, is that a couple of our characters are
| | 00:51 | so wide--in particular the K and especially
the M--that they're creating these kind of
| | 00:57 | rectangular forms inside of the circle.
| | 01:01 | What we really want to do is distort
the text around the circle, like so.
| | 01:06 | And if that's the effect you're looking for,
then you're going to have to apply an Envelope
| | 01:10 | Warp, and let me show you how that works.
| | 01:12 | I'll go ahead and switch back to this version
of the document and I'll turn off the elements
| | 01:17 | layer and then I'll turn on the text layer.
| | 01:20 | And you can see that I've gone ahead and
restored the words TIGER and MILK without any special
| | 01:24 | tracking or horizontal spacing.
| | 01:27 | I'll start by clicking on the baseline for
the word TIGER, and then you want to go up
| | 01:31 | here to the Control panel and
notice this Make Envelope option.
| | 01:36 | First of all, click the down-pointing arrow
head and go ahead and select Make With Warp.
| | 01:41 | Then click on the Make Envelope icon in
order to bring up to Warp Options dialog box.
| | 01:46 | By default the Style is set to Arc.
| | 01:48 | You have a lot of different styles to choose
from and you can check them out on your own.
| | 01:52 | But Arc is the effect we want.
| | 01:54 | And then go ahead and
turn on the Preview checkbox.
| | 01:57 | And by default you'll see a Bend value of +50,
which initially looks to be pretty darn good.
| | 02:04 | So I'll go ahead and click OK
in order to accept that effect.
| | 02:08 | And then I want to go ahead
and move the word TIGER down.
| | 02:11 | My Black Arrow tool is selected, so I can
press the Enter key or the Return key on the
| | 02:14 | Mac, in order to bring up the Move dialog box.
| | 02:18 | I'll change the Move value to something like,
I don't know, 80, I'm just guessing here.
| | 02:23 | And make sure the Preview checkbox is turned on.
| | 02:26 | And you can see that that's a
pretty good move potentially.
| | 02:29 | However, I don't have
enough Bend assigned to my text.
| | 02:33 | So I'll go ahead and accept this
positioning value for now and click OK.
| | 02:37 | If you want to modify the Bend for an
existing warp object, you go up to this Bend value
| | 02:43 | here in the Control panel and you change it.
| | 02:46 | And I ended up coming up with a Bend
value of 72 degrees by the way for this text.
| | 02:51 | It appears that my text
is still too high, however.
| | 02:54 | So I'll go ahead and press the Enter key again or the
Return key on the Mac, to bring up the Move dialog box.
| | 03:00 | And let's start with the
Vertical value of 20, see where we get.
| | 03:04 | And I'll just increase that
value by pressing the Up Arrow Key.
| | 03:08 | So I'm nudging it upward until the text
appears properly vertically centered inside the top
| | 03:14 | half of the design.
| | 03:16 | And at a Vertical value of 34 points,
it looks like I've got it right.
| | 03:19 | So I'll just go ahead and click the OK
button in order to apply that change. All right!
| | 03:24 | Now click off the text to deselect it.
| | 03:26 | Let's run something similar on the word MILK.
| | 03:28 | I'll go ahead and click on its baseline to
select it, and then I'll click on the Make
| | 03:33 | Envelope icon up here in the Control panel,
and this time I need a negative Bend value.
| | 03:38 | So I'll take this guy down to -50%, let's say, and
again, looks pretty darn good. So I'll click OK.
| | 03:45 | Now I'll press the Enter key or the Return keu on
the Mac to bring back the Move dialog box,
| | 03:50 | and let's try a Vertical
value of -34, what the heck.
| | 03:54 | And that's not enough, so I'll reduce the
value by pressing the Down Arrow key until
| | 03:59 | I raise the characters to a better location,
and it looks to me like -45, I don't know,
| | 04:07 | something like that works good for now.
| | 04:09 | But I don't have enough Bend for my text,
so I'll click OK, and I'll go up to the Bend
| | 04:14 | value up here in the Control panel and I'll take it
down to -58%, which moves the characters down too far.
| | 04:21 | So I'll press the Enter key or the Return
key on the Mac a couple of times in order
| | 04:25 | to bring up the Move dialog box.
| | 04:26 | Let's try a value of -30, and that's not enough,
so I'll take that value down to about there, -33.
| | 04:35 | Actually, let's try -32, and then I'll click OK.
| | 04:39 | Now, problem here is I'll press Ctrl+H or
Command+H on the Mac to hide those selection
| | 04:43 | edges, am I wrong or does it look
like the M is bending up too high?
| | 04:49 | If that ends up happening to you, if you
experience this kind of effect, what you want
| | 04:54 | to do is just slightly rotate the characters;
and you can do that by going to the Effect
| | 04:58 | menu, choosing Distort & Transform,
and then choosing the Transform command.
| | 05:03 | And if you loaded dekeKeys, I've given you a
keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+E or Command+E on the Mac.
| | 05:07 | And I'm just going to take that angle value
up to 1 degree, turn on the Preview checkbox, and
| | 05:12 | that seems to do the trick.
| | 05:13 | It doesn't completely solve the problem;
the bottom of the K is coming up a little too
| | 05:17 | high, but the M looks great and we're kind
of splitting the difference, so this is good.
| | 05:21 | I'll click OK in order to accept that change.
| | 05:25 | Now, at this point let's say
you want to modify the word MILK.
| | 05:28 | I'll press Ctrl+H or Command+H on the Mac
to show you what we have now is an envelope
| | 05:34 | object, and I can't get
to it with the Type tool.
| | 05:36 | I can't actually drag
over that text to select it.
| | 05:39 | And you can see that's that case, because
as opposed to just seeing a standard I-beam
| | 05:43 | cursor, which is what you see when you're
editing text, I'm seeing an I-beam inside
| | 05:47 | of a dotted square, which tells
me I'll create a new text object.
| | 05:51 | Well, to edit the text inside of the envelope,
you go up here to the Control panel to the
| | 05:56 | second icon, Edit Contents; and you click on it,
and now you've got access to your baseline.
| | 06:03 | Even though it doesn't look like
the text is sitting there, it is.
| | 06:06 | So just go ahead and click on the baseline
with the Type tool and then press Ctrl+A or
| | 06:11 | Command+A on the Mac to select all that
text and enter new text, such as MART.
| | 06:15 | Now, you don't want to enter a ton of text,
because notice Illustrator is going to try
| | 06:19 | to squish it into that
space that you started with.
| | 06:23 | So you want your text to be about the same
size, and if you only enter a single character,
| | 06:28 | it's going to fan out into that big envelope.
| | 06:31 | But the word MART works great, so I'll go
ahead and enter it and then press the Escape
| | 06:35 | key in order to escape
out of the Text Entry mode.
| | 06:38 | And then if you want to switch back to your
Envelope options, you'd click on that first
| | 06:42 | icon, Edit Envelope up there in the Control panel,
and you regain access to your Bend value, for example.
| | 06:49 | And that's how you warp text to distort the
characters around the circle here inside Illustrator.
| | 06:54 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a classic neon type effect| 00:00 | In this movie, we will take these very
plain letters and we will turn them into one of
| | 00:04 | the more classic type treatments that you
can create inside of Illustrator, and that
| | 00:08 | is neon; and we will be making these neon
letters by the way, using the Blend feature
| | 00:13 | that we saw in the previous chapter; and
then we'll go ahead and enhance the credibility
| | 00:17 | of the effect inside Photoshop to
create this final version of the art.
| | 00:22 | So some pretty exciting stuff coming up here.
| | 00:24 | You are going to be creating
just about everything from scratch.
| | 00:27 | So I'll go ahead and switch over to my base
art, and I want you to know that I went ahead
| | 00:32 | and hand-drew these characters, and the
reason is, if you start with editable text and then
| | 00:37 | you convert it to path outlines,
you invariably get closed paths.
| | 00:42 | In order for this effect work, you need open
path outlines, which is why I had to draw them.
| | 00:47 | However, note that they are not particularly
complicated, if I click on the P for example
| | 00:51 | to select it, you can see that it's a
collection of straight lines along with a half circle
| | 00:57 | over here, a quarter
circle top left and so forth.
| | 01:00 | Now we are going to want to blend one group
of letters against another group of letters,
| | 01:06 | so that means we need to
group the letters together.
| | 01:08 | So I'll press Ctrl+A or Command+A on the
Mac to select all of the letters and then I'll
| | 01:13 | go up to the Object menu and choose Group command,
or you can press Ctrl+G or Command+G on the Mac.
| | 01:18 | Now we are going to start by creating a total
of six different stroke variations, which means
| | 01:23 | that we'll need multiple
groups of these letters.
| | 01:25 | So now it's a good time to go up to the
Edit menu and choose the Copy command or press
| | 01:29 | Ctrl+C or Command+c on the Mac in order to
copy the letters to the Clipboard. And that
| | 01:34 | way we can paste as many copies as we like.
| | 01:37 | Now if I switch over to my Color panel you
can see that my Stroke is active. Also notice
| | 01:41 | that I am working with RGB values, and if
I go to the File menu, you can see that the
| | 01:46 | Document Color mode is RGB Color. And the
reason of showing you this is because you're
| | 01:51 | going to get a brighter neon
effect if you work with RGB.
| | 01:55 | So I'll go
ahead and escape out of there.
| | 01:57 | With my Stroke Active I'll go ahead
and switch over to my Swatches panel.
| | 02:01 | I'll change the rear-most letters, which
is the ones currently selected to Black.
| | 02:06 | And then we'll go ahead and make the letters
black against the black background, but they'll
| | 02:09 | come in very handy in just a moment.
| | 02:12 | You also want to change the Line Weight value,
which is available on Stroke panel which I've
| | 02:16 | gone up on screen. If you don't, you can just
go to the Stroke value up here in the Control
| | 02:20 | panel. And I'll change that
Line Weight value to 32 points.
| | 02:24 | All right, now we need to bring in
another version of these letters.
| | 02:27 | So go up to the Edit menu and
choose the Paste in Front command.
| | 02:31 | In the future I'll be taking advantage of
that shortcut, Ctrl+F or Command+F on the Mac.
| | 02:36 | Now we want to change this guy to Deep red,
which is one of the Swatches I've created
| | 02:40 | in advance, and as you can see, it is
indeed a deep shade of red. And I will change the
| | 02:46 | Weight value to 28 points.
| | 02:48 | And I just came up with these values and
these colors through trial and error by the way.
| | 02:52 | Now I'll press Ctrl+F or Command+F on the
Mac to paste a third copy of these letters.
| | 02:58 | I'll once again change them to Black and I'll
increase the Weight value to 22 pts and I'll
| | 03:03 | press Ctrl+F or Command+F on the Mac,
to create a fourth copy of the letters.
| | 03:07 | I'll change them to this very bright
shade of red. called Bright red by the way.
| | 03:12 | And I'll change the Weight value to 16 points.
| | 03:15 | Press Ctrl+F or Command+F to create a fifth
copy of the letters--by the way, we are almost
| | 03:19 | done here--and change the color to Dark red,
which of course is the darker shade of red
| | 03:24 | that I went ahead and saved off.
| | 03:26 | A Weight value 10 points is just fine,
| | 03:28 | so I don't need to change that. And then I'll
press Ctrl+F or Command+F to create the sixth
| | 03:32 | and final copy of the letters.
| | 03:35 | I'll change the color to this Vivid Yellow, and
then I'll change the Weight value to a mere 4 points.
| | 03:41 | All right, so that takes care of all the base
paths that we are going to use in the blend.
| | 03:46 | Now what you want to do is press Ctrl+A or
Command+A again, to select all six groups of letters.
| | 03:52 | You're not going to see anything changed because
letters are sitting right on top of each other,
| | 03:57 | and with all those groups selected, go up
to the Object menu, choose Blend, and then
| | 04:01 | choose Make; or you can press Ctrl+Alt+B or
Command+Option+B on the Mac, and you'll end
| | 04:06 | up getting a blended effect.
| | 04:08 | Now whether or not it's got to
be smooth as it appears for me,
| | 04:11 | I don't know. So let's go
ahead and make sure it does,
| | 04:14 | by double-clicking on the Blend tool icon,
here in the toolbox. And by default I believe
| | 04:20 | you are going to see Spacing set to the
Smooth Color; in which case if I turn on to Preview
| | 04:24 | Checkbox, you are going to see a much less
smooth effect here because Illustrator is
| | 04:29 | not creating a sufficient number of blends.
| | 04:32 | If that's the case, then switch from spacing
the specified steps, and I found that 20 steps
| | 04:38 | between each group of paths worked beautifully.
And then you go ahead and click OK in order
| | 04:43 | to accept a change. And I'll press the V key
to switch back to the Black Arrow tool and
| | 04:47 | I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift+A
on the Mac in order to deselect by letters.
| | 04:52 | Now before we quit the movie,
couple bits of housekeeping.
| | 04:55 | I'll go ahead and twirl-open the neon layer
hear inside the Layers panel, and you'll see
| | 04:59 | here is our new blend that
we just got done creating.
| | 05:02 | Let's go ahead and rename it by double-
clicking on the word Blend; and I'll change the name
| | 05:06 | to Letters, and I'll also go ahead and turn
on the border item above it. And I went ahead
| | 05:11 | and created the border in advance because
it's really the same darn thing we just got
| | 05:16 | done doing, with the exception that instead
of using a bunch of shades of red and yellow,
| | 05:22 | I used a bunch of shades of blue.
| | 05:24 | All right, so obviously we have some work
yet to do in order to come up with something
| | 05:29 | that even vaguely resembles neon.
| | 05:32 | But we have managed to get most of the heavy-lifting done, by
blending between multiple differently stroked groups of letters.
| | 05:37 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding random neon brightness fluctuations| 00:00 | In this movie, we will take a fairly flat
looking neon effect so far and we'll make
| | 00:04 | it sizzle by adding those super-hot random
brightness fluctuations that characterize real neon.
| | 00:12 | I am going to go ahead and zoom in on this
version of the illustration here, so you can
| | 00:16 | see these white strokes that are
flowing through the P as well as the E.
| | 00:21 | Notice for one thing that they're sharply
defined, so that we have these crystal-clear
| | 00:25 | specular highlights, which is what we want.
And also they begin very hot and they end
| | 00:32 | very hot, but they become a
little dimmer toward the middle.
| | 00:36 | And that's something that you see in real neon,
but you don't see conveyed in neon art very often.
| | 00:42 | We are going to achieve this
effect using a variable width stroke.
| | 00:46 | Now I don't want to change the width of each
and every one of these strokes independently,
| | 00:50 | so I'm going to create a
variable width profile in advance.
| | 00:54 | So I'll go ahead and switch over
to my illustration in progress.
| | 00:57 | If you're working along with me, twirl open
the neon layer here inside the Layers panel.
| | 01:02 | Right at the top here, you will see this
item called width; go ahead and turn it on, that
| | 01:06 | is make it visible.
| | 01:07 | You will see this straight line in the
upper left-hand corner of the artwork.
| | 01:12 | Go ahead and select it with the Black
Arrow tool and as you can see it's nothing more
| | 01:15 | than a horizontal line, but it does have
some width information and you can find out what
| | 01:20 | that width info is by selecting the Width tool,
which you can also get by pressing Shift+W.
| | 01:26 | You can see here, all together I have got
four width points: two at either end and then
| | 01:31 | two toward the center.
| | 01:32 | At either end, if you double-click on one
of these, I have set the Total Width value
| | 01:36 | to 16 points; go ahead and cancel out
because the work is done in advance.
| | 01:41 | And toward the center, if you double-click
on either of those, you will see that the
| | 01:45 | Total Width value is half as
much, that is 8 points.
| | 01:48 | I will cancel out of there too.
| | 01:51 | Having gone ahead and created this width profile,
I will now save it off by pressing the V Key
| | 01:56 | to switch back to my Black Arrow tool; and
then I'll go up to this middle option here
| | 02:00 | in the Control panel, click on it and then
click on the little hard drive icon; and I'll
| | 02:05 | go ahead and save this off as neon
stroke, and then click OK. All right!
| | 02:11 | We don't need this line anymore.
| | 02:12 | So I'll turn off the width
item here inside the neon panel.
| | 02:15 | Now I want to bring back
another copy of my letters.
| | 02:18 | You may still have a copy of the letters
in your clipboard, in which case you can just
| | 02:21 | press Ctrl+F or Command+F on the Mac.
| | 02:23 | But in the case you don't, here's what you do.
Go ahead and twirl open that letters blend
| | 02:28 | right there, which is the blend we created
in the previous movie, and then let's make
| | 02:32 | a copy of the topmost item in the blend by
clicking on it here inside the Layers panel.
| | 02:38 | You don't have to meatball it.
| | 02:39 | And then press the Alt key or the Option key
on the Mac, and drag it up and out of the letters
| | 02:44 | blend, and drop it into place like so.
| | 02:47 | Now I'll go ahead and twirl close my blend
and I'll rename this guy something like bright,
| | 02:52 | just so that I know what its contribution
is going to be; and now let's change the color
| | 02:58 | of the Stroke from Yellow, which is
the top stroke in the blend, to White.
| | 03:03 | The Line Weight should be 4 points incidentally.
| | 03:05 | And now we want to change the width profile,
so go to that Item that currently reads Uniform,
| | 03:10 | up here in the Control panel; click on it,
scroll down the list and then select the item
| | 03:14 | you just created, which
in my case is neon stroke.
| | 03:17 | If I press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift+A
in a Mac, you can see that we now have those
| | 03:21 | hot spectral highlights, right at the beginning
and the end of each one of the neon letter tubes.
| | 03:28 | All right!
| | 03:29 | Now for the random brightness variations,
go ahead and scroll up the Layers panel and
| | 03:33 | you'll see another hidden item
called shines; go ahead and turn it on.
| | 03:37 | All it is, is a series of four rectangles
that I created in front of the letters. They're
| | 03:42 | all different widths by the way, but
they're all sufficiently tall so they extend well
| | 03:47 | outside the border around the letters.
| | 03:50 | The next thing you want to do is
select all of these rectangles.
| | 03:53 | I have already grouped them together in advance.
| | 03:55 | So all you need to do is click on the outline
of any one of the rectangles to select all four.
| | 04:00 | Next, go up to the Effect menu, choose Blur, and choose
Gaussian Blu. And you want to enter a very high value.
| | 04:07 | I went ahead and cranked my Radius up to 50
pixels. And then turn on the Preview checkbox
| | 04:13 | to see what happens. And note that you create
these kinds of gradient patterns really inside
| | 04:19 | of the illustration.
| | 04:20 | But ultimately what we're doing is blurring
each and every one of the rectangle. Notice
| | 04:24 | that the blurs occurred not only horizontally,
but vertically as well, which is why it's
| | 04:29 | so important that the rectangles are much taller
than either the text or the neon border around the text.
| | 04:35 | Then go ahead and click OK in order to
blur those rectangles. And finally, click on the
| | 04:40 | word Opacity up here in the Control panel,
and change the Blend mode, which by default
| | 04:45 | is Normal. Go ahead and click on the word
Normal and change that Blend mode to Overlay,
| | 04:50 | in order to achieve this effect here.
| | 04:53 | And it's almost as if the rectangles
entirely disappear, but if you take a careful look
| | 04:57 | you'll see that we have increased brightness
and even heat if you will, inside of each of
| | 05:04 | the blurred rectangles. All right!
| | 05:06 | So now you can press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+
Shift+A on the Mac to deselect the artwork.
| | 05:11 | And that, friends, is how you use white strokes and
fills to enhance the credibility of otherwise flat neon art.
| | 05:17 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating neon "block outs" between letters| 00:00 | Now if this were a real neon sign, then all
of the letters in the word OPEN would be made
| | 00:04 | from a single glass tube that had
been hand bent in different directions.
| | 00:09 | The areas of that tube between the letters
are blocked out using opaque glass paint.
| | 00:14 | So you can see here if I go ahead and
click on this path between the bottoms of the O
| | 00:19 | and P that we have four
areas of block out right here.
| | 00:24 | So presumably the light runs through the O,
into the P, through the center of the E, up
| | 00:28 | and around and into the N.
| | 00:31 | I will tell you that I created this
artwork based on an actual photograph,
| | 00:35 | so that must be the way it works.
| | 00:37 | Anyway, for the sake of reality we need to
create those regions of blocked out tube.
| | 00:42 | So I'll go and switch over to my illustration
in progress here and if you're working along
| | 00:46 | with me, go ahead and twirl open the
neon layer here inside the Layers panel.
| | 00:51 | Scroll down and you'll see
this item called connect.
| | 00:54 | Go ahead and turn it on and meatball it as well.
| | 00:57 | You see over here on the far left side of the
Control panel that I have selected a Compound Path.
| | 01:01 | Now it could build up the block out effect using
another blend, just as we did a couple movies ago.
| | 01:06 | But for the sake of variety I'm going to
assign multiple strokes to this Compound Path from
| | 01:11 | the Appearance panel.
| | 01:13 | So go ahead and switch over to the
Appearance panel, which you can also get by choosing
| | 01:16 | the Appearance command from the window menu,
click on the one and only stroke assigned
| | 01:20 | so far in order to make it active; and
change its color to deep red, and then change the
| | 01:26 | Line Weight to 30 points.
| | 01:27 | Now I'll add another stroke by clicking on
the Add New Stroke icon down here in the lower
| | 01:32 | left corner of the Appearance panel.
| | 01:34 | This time I will change the stroke color to Black
and I'll change its Line Weight value to 26 points.
| | 01:40 | Then I'll go ahead and add yet another
stroke by clicking on the Add New Stroke icon down
| | 01:45 | there in the lower left corner of the panel.
| | 01:47 | I'll change the color back to Deep red and
I'll change the line weight to 12 points.
| | 01:52 | I came up with all this
strictly through trial and error.
| | 01:55 | As I say I was just trying
to match a base photograph.
| | 01:59 | Now we need to add a little bit
of softness between these strokes.
| | 02:01 | I am going to do that
using a Gaussian Blur effect.
| | 02:04 | So with this top stroke selected go up to the
Effect menu, choose Blur, and then choose Gaussian Blur.
| | 02:11 | I came up with a radius value
of 10 pixels, then click OK.
| | 02:15 | That deselects the stroke.
| | 02:16 | So I'll go ahead and twirl it open so that
I can see, indeed I do have a Gaussian Blur
| | 02:20 | effect assigned to it. And there is
blurriness here inside the artboard.
| | 02:24 | Now I'll click on a stroke to make it active
again and I'll go ahead and offset that stroke
| | 02:29 | a little bit by going to the Effect menu,
choosing Distort & Transform, and choosing Transform.
| | 02:34 | And I'll change both of the
Move values to 1 this time around.
| | 02:38 | Then I'll click OK and you'll see these
strokes offset down and to the right slightly.
| | 02:44 | That deactivates the stroke again, which
is fine, but I need to reduce the opacity.
| | 02:48 | So I'll go ahead and click on the word Opacity
there and I'll change the Opacity value to 50%.
| | 02:53 | So we end up with a dimmer effect like so.
| | 02:55 | All right, now let's work on the black stroke.
| | 02:57 | Go ahead and click on it to select it.
| | 02:59 | Just one thing to do for this guy, go up to the
Effect menu, choose Blur, and choose Gaussian Blur.
| | 03:06 | This time I want a radius value of 7 pixels.
| | 03:08 | Obviously, you can try out
your own settings if you like.
| | 03:11 | I will go ahead and click OK and that blurs
the black stroke. And now I'll click on the
| | 03:17 | bottom red stroke to select it, and actually
I want that same Gaussian Blur effect right
| | 03:21 | there that applied to the top strokes.
| | 03:23 | So I am just going to click on
it as long as it's available.
| | 03:25 | And I'll press the Alt or the Option key on
the Mac and I'll go ahead and drag and drop
| | 03:29 | that effect on to the bottom stroke.
| | 03:31 | That'll go ahead and
blur the backstroke as well.
| | 03:34 | Twirl it open so I can see,
| | 03:35 | yes indeed I've got a Gaussian Blur.
| | 03:37 | I'll click on the word Opacity and reduce this
one to 75% in order to come up with this effect.
| | 03:43 | Now then, I want you to see something.
| | 03:44 | I'm going to switch back to the final
version of the Illustrator document and notice each
| | 03:50 | one of these blockouts here, I will go
ahead and zoom in, begins dark, becomes a little
| | 03:55 | brighter toward the
center, and becomes dark again.
| | 03:58 | I was able to achieve that
effect using a Gradient Stroke.
| | 04:01 | So I'll go ahead and switch over to my illustration in
progress and I'll click on the top stroke to make it active.
| | 04:07 | Maybe go ahead and twirl these guys closed
here and I'll add yet another new stroke by
| | 04:11 | clicking on the Add New Stroke icon.
| | 04:13 | Now I'll change it from a solid color to a
gradient by tapping the period key. And that
| | 04:17 | goes ahead and opens up
the Gradient panel as well.
| | 04:19 | I'll go ahead and expand the panel by
clicking the Up Down arrow icon couple of times, and
| | 04:24 | I'll click on the white color stop to make
it active, and I'll change its location value
| | 04:29 | to 50% so that I end up with this effect here.
| | 04:32 | Now I'll click on the black color stop,
and I'll actually double-click on it.
| | 04:36 | Right now it's a weak black, which is not
going to perform accurately for this effect.
| | 04:40 | I want a nice rich black.
| | 04:42 | So I will go ahead and click on my black
swatch, which is that little global swatch right there.
| | 04:47 | If you want to see how it's made, look on
the color icon right up above the swatch icon
| | 04:52 | there. And then click on this large RGB icon
right there in order to convert the black to RGB.
| | 04:58 | That should be all there is to it, but then
you need to also go to the flyout menu icon and
| | 05:02 | choose RGB in order to see those RGB values.
| | 05:06 | And notice that they're all set to 0, which
is a darker black that you get with CMYK when
| | 05:12 | only the K value is set to 100.
| | 05:14 | Anyway, you need that in
order for this effect to work.
| | 05:17 | All right now that you have set your RGB
values to 0 for this black color stop, go ahead and
| | 05:22 | press the Alt key or the Option key on the
Mac, and drag that color stop to the far left
| | 05:27 | side so you're creating a copy of it.
| | 05:29 | Then the final step here inside the
Color panel is to change the Stroke setting.
| | 05:33 | To the center one right there
Apply gradient along stroke.
| | 05:37 | And that will go ahead and create the
gradient along each one of these strokes, whether it's
| | 05:41 | a horizontal path outlined or a vertical one.
| | 05:43 | Now I am going to collapse my Gradient
panel and I am going to change my Stroke Weight
| | 05:48 | to something very thick, 36 points.
| | 05:50 | So it's thicker than any of the strokes
below it, and then finally you want to twirl that
| | 05:54 | stroke open, click on the word Opacity there,
and change the Blend mode from Normal to Multiply.
| | 06:00 | That will go ahead and turn that
gradient stroke into a darkening agent.
| | 06:05 | Just one final thing we have to do.
| | 06:06 | I am going to press and
hold the Ctrl+Spacebar keys.
| | 06:09 | That would be Command+Spacebar on a Mac.
| | 06:11 | And I'll zoom in on this area right there.
And notice now that we've revealed some color
| | 06:16 | other than black in the background behind
the letters, the black edge of the blended
| | 06:21 | letters is very hard.
| | 06:23 | So we need to soften that edge.
| | 06:25 | And here is how you do that.
| | 06:26 | Switch over to Layers panel.
| | 06:28 | Go ahead and scroll down until you come
to that letters item, which is the blend.
| | 06:32 | Twirl it open and then go ahead and scroll
down the list there, and grab this guy right there.
| | 06:38 | So meatball the
bottom-most item inside the blend.
| | 06:41 | Then go up to the Edit menu and choose the
Copy command or press Ctrl+C or Command+C
| | 06:46 | on the Mac, then return to the Edit menu
and choose the Paste and Back command, or press
| | 06:50 | Ctrl+B or Command+B on the Mac.
| | 06:53 | That goes ahead and pastes yet another
version of these letters at the back of the blend.
| | 06:59 | Now what you want to do is you want to change
the Line Weight value up here in the Control
| | 07:02 | panel from 32 points to 36 points.
| | 07:06 | And that will go ahead and
expand this black region.
| | 07:09 | Finally, go up to the Opacity
value here and change it to 0%.
| | 07:15 | That way you're fading from an Opaque black
version of the letters to a transparent black
| | 07:20 | version of the letters, and you
create this soft transition right there.
| | 07:24 | All right, so I will go ahead and press Ctrl+0,
Command+0 on the Mac to center my zoom; and
| | 07:29 | press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift+A on
the Mac, in order to deselect my letters.
| | 07:33 | That takes care of our neon
work inside of Illustrator.
| | 07:36 | In the next movie we will take the artwork into
Photoshop and we will end up making it look like this.
| | 07:41 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding neon blur and bokeh in Photoshop| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to take the
neon effect that we've created inside of Illustrator
| | 00:04 | and up the credibility of
that effect inside Photoshop.
| | 00:08 | Now, if you're not all that familiar with
Photoshop, we'll be taking advantage of a
| | 00:12 | couple of advanced features--namely
Smart Objects, and the Blur Gallery.
| | 00:17 | If you like to learn more about either feature,
check out my full course, Photoshop CS6 One-on-One:
| | 00:23 | Advanced, which features one chapter a
piece on Smart Objects and the Blur Gallery.
| | 00:28 | However, our applications of these
features is going to be pretty straightforward.
| | 00:32 | So even if you're not that familiar with
Photoshop, you'll be able to follow along.
| | 00:36 | So the first thing I'm going to do is go
up to the File menu, and choose Browse in
| | 00:41 | Bridge or press Ctrl+Alt+O or Command+Option+O on
the Mac, in order to switch over to Adobe Bridge.
| | 00:47 | I have the program trained on the contents
of the 24_logos folder, in which you'll find
| | 00:52 | a file called Blended neon.ai.
| | 00:55 | Go ahead and right-click on that file,
choose Open With, and then choose Adobe Photoshop
| | 01:00 | CS6 in order to open it in
Photoshop instead of Illustrator.
| | 01:03 | Now, that will cause
Photoshop to rasterize the file.
| | 01:07 | That is, convert all the vectors
into pixels, which is just fine.
| | 01:11 | If you want to see a bigger preview by the
way of the file you're about to open, then
| | 01:14 | you can change the thumbnail size from Small to Fit
Page, and you'll end up seeing our artwork so far.
| | 01:21 | You should be able to leave the Image Size
set to its defaults, but you might want to
| | 01:24 | just double check the settings.
| | 01:25 | The Width and Height values should be 3000
and 1800 pixels a piece; the Resolution should
| | 01:30 | be 300 pixels per inch; the mode, that is the
Color mode, is Adobe RGB; and the Bit Depth is 8 bit.
| | 01:37 | Assuming that's all true, then go ahead and
click OK in order to rasterize that artwork.
| | 01:43 | And a few moments later, you'll see
your illustration open inside Photoshop.
| | 01:47 | Now, you're not going to be able to gain
access to any of the path outlines, you'll just see
| | 01:51 | the single flat layer one right there.
| | 01:54 | Go ahead and double-click on the
layer name and call it neon sign for now.
| | 01:57 | Next what we need to do, because I want to
assign a filter to this layer, you want to
| | 02:02 | go up to the Layers panel flyout menu right
there, and then choose Convert to Smart Object.
| | 02:08 | And that will go ahead and turn the thing
into a smart object, so you can apply editable
| | 02:12 | nondestructive filters in much the same way that you
apply dynamic effects inside of Illustrator. All right!
| | 02:18 | I'll go ahead and zoom on in a little bit here.
| | 02:20 | And then I'll go up to the Filter menu, choose
Blur, and choose that same command that we've
| | 02:25 | been using inside of Illustrator, Gaussian Blur.
| | 02:27 | And in fact, this is where
Gaussian Blur really lives.
| | 02:31 | A few years back, it got rewritten to
serve the purposes of Illustrator.
| | 02:34 | Anyway, go ahead and choose the command.
| | 02:37 | I want you to set the Radius value to this
whopping 24 pixels, which looks ridiculous,
| | 02:41 | but in the second, it will make sense.
| | 02:43 | Then, go ahead and click OK.
| | 02:45 | Now, you'll see this Smart Filter item
right here listed below it is Gaussian Blur.
| | 02:51 | Notice these little slider icons to the right,
I want you to double-click on that icon in
| | 02:56 | order to bring up the Blending Options
dialog box, and then change the mode from Normal
| | 03:00 | to Lighten, in order to produce this
soft glow effect. Next, click OK.
| | 03:06 | All right!
| | 03:06 | Now, we need to heighten the impact
of the effect using the Blur Gallery.
| | 03:11 | So we want to create a copy of this layer.
| | 03:13 | And the easiest way to do this, and this is going
to sound crazy if you haven't used Photoshop before.
| | 03:17 | But, the easiest way to create a copy is to press
Ctrl+J or Command+J on a Mac, but J being for Jump.
| | 03:24 | Then, make sure that your Rectangle
Marquee tool is selected here inside the toolbox.
| | 03:28 | If not, go ahead and tap the M key.
| | 03:31 | And then right-click inside the image
window and choose Rasterize Smart Object in order
| | 03:35 | to convert that smart object back to pixels.
| | 03:38 | And the reason we have to do this is
because the filter gallery is most likely, for you,
| | 03:45 | not compatible with smart objects.
| | 03:48 | For a few of you who subscribe to the creative cloud,
it is, but for the vast majority of us, it's not.
| | 03:53 | And so, with this pixel based layer selected,
go up to the Filter menu, choose Blur, and
| | 03:59 | then choose Field Blur.
| | 04:02 | And that will completely change the appearance
of Photoshop, it's as if you switch to a different
| | 04:06 | program or something.
| | 04:07 | But, we're actually just
inside of a huge window.
| | 04:10 | What you want to do is change this Blur value
right here to 30 pixels if you want to achieve
| | 04:16 | the same effect I'm getting.
| | 04:17 | And most likely, down here in the bottom-
right corner, you'll see the words Blur Effects,
| | 04:21 | but you won't see any options.
| | 04:23 | Go ahead and double-click on that Blur
Effects Tab in order to expand the options, and then
| | 04:28 | change the Light Bokeh value to 35% like so,
and we want to adjust the Light Range as well.
| | 04:36 | So, see this first value, that's 191 by default.
| | 04:39 | Change it to 225, and then
leave the second value set to 255.
| | 04:44 | And what that's doing is it's adding a Light
Bokeh to our artwork, so that we have these
| | 04:48 | super hot highlights that are being added
to the blur which is perfect. All right!
| | 04:53 | Now, go ahead and click OK in
order to apply that setting.
| | 04:58 | The Blur Gallery ends up
throwing out my zoom a little bit.
| | 05:00 | So, I'll just press Ctrl+0 or Command+
0 on the Mac, in order to center things.
| | 05:05 | And then finally, you want to double-click on
an empty portion of this top layer, somewhere
| | 05:09 | to the right of the words neon sign, in
order to bring up the Layer Style dialog box.
| | 05:15 | And this is just a little bit of black
magic here, you want to press the Alt key or the
| | 05:20 | Option key on the Mac, and see that little
black triangle underneath the Underlying Layer
| | 05:25 | slider bar--it's got a little crevice down
the center of it, that's because you can take
| | 05:29 | it apart when you have
the Alt or Option key down.
| | 05:32 | So, press the Alt key or the Option key on
the Mac and drag the right-half of that black
| | 05:37 | slider triangle until that value that's
changing right above my cursor switches to 130.
| | 05:43 | So you should see 0/130, and then 255 is fine.
| | 05:48 | Now, click OK in order to
accept that modification.
| | 05:51 | Now, I'll go ahead, and press the F key a
couple of times in order to switch to the
| | 05:55 | Full Screen mode, and I'll zoom on in as well.
| | 05:59 | And that is the final version of our neon
sign created from nothing more than a handful
| | 06:05 | of hand-drawn letters.
| | 06:07 | You couldn't find a more classic type effect begun
inside Adobe Illustrator, and completed here inside Photoshop.
| | 06:13 |
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|
|
25. The Color Guide PanelGenerating colors using harmony rules| 00:00 | Back in Chapter 12 of the intermediate course,
I showed you the Swatches panel, which allows
| | 00:06 | you to collect colors that you intend
to use over and over inside your artwork.
| | 00:11 | In this chapter, I show you the Color Guide
panel, which also collects swatches; the difference
| | 00:16 | is, instead of you having to define each and
every color using CMYK or RGB values, Illustrator
| | 00:24 | does the work for you. That's right.
| | 00:27 | The program actually generates the colors
for you, and not one at a time, but dozens
| | 00:32 | at a time and without a second's hesitation.
| | 00:35 | The only thing you have to do is select a base
color and define a harmony rule, so Illustrator
| | 00:41 | has some idea of what
kinds of colors you might like.
| | 00:45 | What is a harmony rule, you ask?
| | 00:47 | It's a pattern that describes a physical
relationship between colors as measured on a circular graph,
| | 00:53 | called a color wheel.
| | 00:55 | Here is the color wheel now.
| | 00:57 | You specify a base color on the wheel and
then Illustrator looks for related colors
| | 01:02 | according to a harmony rule, which is a
fixed pattern of lines that go off at predefined
| | 01:07 | angles. That pattern may be
relatively simple or slightly more complex.
| | 01:13 | Your colors can even go off in all directions.
| | 01:16 | Illustrator offers 23 harmony rules in all.
| | 01:20 | I am not only going to show you all of them;
I am going to make you and the Color Guide
| | 01:24 | panel fall in love, real actual figurative love.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Introducing the Color Guide panel| 00:00 | In this movie, I will introduce you to the
Color Guide panel, which automatically generates
| | 00:04 | a library of swatches that
are related to a base color.
| | 00:08 | So for example, in this case I have two side-by-
side versions of this t-shirt art. And let's say
| | 00:13 | the t-shirt is colored exactly the way I
wanted to be, with a slight blue for the fabric and
| | 00:19 | then this darker blue for the trim.
| | 00:20 | But the background art, even though it's
structurally sound--in other words, I like the path outlines
| | 00:25 | themselves--and by the way, this background
comes to us from Fotolia Image Library, about
| | 00:30 | which you can learn more at fotolia.com/deke.
| | 00:33 | But the colors that I have assigned here, these
shades of gray aren't what I'm going for at all.
| | 00:37 | So I need to recolor this artwork.
| | 00:39 | Now on one hand, I have made things easier
for myself by grouping related objects, so
| | 00:43 | for example, if I click on one of the light
gray leaves, that selects all of the light
| | 00:47 | gray shapes; and then I could dial in a different
color for example, I might increase the Magenta
| | 00:52 | and Yellow values and take the Black value
down for a vivid shade of deep scarlet. And
| | 00:58 | then I'll click on this background
rectangle that's located right along the bleed here;
| | 01:03 | and let's say I want to
replace its color with a swatch.
| | 01:05 | So I'll click on first Swatch icon up here
in the Control panel and I'll select what,
| | 01:10 | this light shade of orange, let's say.
| | 01:13 | And I end up with this very garish effect.
| | 01:15 | And part of the problem is that the swatches
that are included along with the new document--
| | 01:20 | whether a print document like this one or
a web document--they tend to be very bright
| | 01:25 | colors, as you can see.
| | 01:27 | We have a few shades of brown, but we don't have
any pastels, we don't have any real complementary
| | 01:32 | colors here; instead we just have bright
cheerful swatches that are not necessarily the kind
| | 01:38 | of thing that you are going to
be applying on a regular basis.
| | 01:42 | And so what I'd have to do if I don't like
this color, I'd have to manually manipulate
| | 01:46 | the color here inside the Color panel until
I come up with something I like better, which
| | 01:51 | can take 10, 15 minutes just to color a
simple artwork like this; or you can let Illustrator
| | 01:57 | do the work for you by using the Color panel.
| | 02:00 | So I am going to start things off here by
clicking on this light blue t-shirt, and the
| | 02:04 | easiest way to select the shirt is to click
along the bottom of it between the two leaves.
| | 02:08 | And then I'll go up to the Window menu and
I'll choose the Color Guide command, or you
| | 02:12 | can press that keyboard shortcut, Shift+F3.
Aand notice now that we have a series of related
| | 02:18 | colors--actually we don't.
| | 02:20 | This first color right there, that's the
color upon which this harmony is based.
| | 02:26 | And that happens to be the last color
that I applied to the background art.
| | 02:30 | If you want to update this list of colors,
you need to click on that very first color
| | 02:34 | swatch, which will be the color of the selected
object and then that goes ahead and updates the list.
| | 02:40 | Now you might think, Gosh!
| | 02:41 | It seems like an unnecessary step,
shouldn't Illustrator do that automatically?
| | 02:44 | Well, actually no, because watch this.
| | 02:47 | Now I want to use this base color in order
to update my background art, so I'll click
| | 02:52 | on this dark gray shape in order
to select all the dark gray objects.
| | 02:55 | And Illustrator wisely does not update my
list; after all I want to be able to work
| | 03:01 | from that list of colors.
| | 03:03 | Now you can see here that we have a list of
four related colors by default and we also
| | 03:07 | have a variety of tints and shades located
here inside the panel. So that central column
| | 03:14 | of colors, that represents that row of colors
that we see above; and then we have tints, which
| | 03:20 | are reduced shades of the color.
| | 03:22 | In other words, we are mixing the color
along with the white of the paper. And then these
| | 03:27 | darker shades, notice that they become not
only darker, but also less saturated because
| | 03:32 | Illustrator is peeling out the CMY
values and adding in K, that is to say, Black.
| | 03:38 | Now you don't have to stick with
this specific harmony by the way.
| | 03:42 | You can select a different one by clicking
on this down-pointing arrowhead and then you
| | 03:45 | have got this huge list of
harmonies inside this menu.
| | 03:48 | Now, this is the point at which a lot
of people just check out and think, eh!
| | 03:52 | What does this even mean, I mean analogues
versus right complement, left complement,
| | 03:56 | what in the world is going on?
| | 03:58 | And especially, some of these guys are even less
intelligible like Triad and Tetrad and so forth.
| | 04:02 | Well, I am going to show you what's going
on with every single one of the main harmony
| | 04:07 | groups in the very next movie, so that
you'll have no doubt about how it works.
| | 04:12 | But for now, I am just going to select something
that's pretty straightforward, Complementary 2.
| | 04:17 | These are color complements to my blue, and
with this new list of swatches, I can apply
| | 04:22 | them--assuming that my fill is active, which
it is--by just clicking on them. And so I'll
| | 04:26 | click on this brown here in order to apply
that to what were formerly the dark gray objects,
| | 04:32 | and then I'll click on one of these scarlet
objects here to select it, and I'll replace
| | 04:36 | it with this light shade of Warm Brown.
| | 04:38 | And then I'll select the background
rectangle right there at the bleed, and I will replace
| | 04:42 | it with the medium brown right there in the
center, and then finally I'll select one of
| | 04:46 | the black objects and I'll replace it with the
darker shade of blue, second down in the left-hand column.
| | 04:52 | If I click off the shapes to deselect
them, I come up with this effect here.
| | 04:55 | Now, I may or may not like what I've gotten,
but it took me less than a minute to color
| | 05:00 | my artwork; whereas it would take me
several minutes without Color Guide.
| | 05:05 | So there is your basic introduction to
the Color Guide panel inside Illustrator.
| | 05:10 | In the next movie, I'll show you how each one of
the major categories of these harmony rules works.
| | 05:14 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The 23 color harmony rules, diagrammed| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll explain the 23 harmony rules
that are available to you from the Color Guide panel.
| | 00:05 | Now as opposed to explaining every single
one, I am going to show them to you in ten
| | 00:10 | groups, and I am going to show them to you
as color diagrams, as you're about to see.
| | 00:15 | So here's the Color Guide panel.
| | 00:17 | If I click on this down-pointing arrowhead,
you can see that we've got a list of harmony
| | 00:21 | rules right there and they
just happen to be 23 in all.
| | 00:24 | I am going to diagram how they work--not
inside Illustrator, but rather inside Photoshop,
| | 00:29 | because Photoshop offers Layer Comps,
which are great for creating slideshows.
| | 00:33 | So here are the 23 harmony rules listed in the
order that they appear in the Color Guide panel.
| | 00:39 | Now I will keep those up on
screen as I explain what's going on.
| | 00:43 | In order to understand the harmony rules--
really understand them--we need to take on
| | 00:47 | a little bit of color theory.
| | 00:49 | It's not hard stuff, in fact it's pretty fun.
| | 00:52 | Now one way to think of color is
as if it's organized on a wheel.
| | 00:56 | So here's your standard everyday average RGB
wheel with the hues organized around the outside,
| | 01:02 | and as we go toward the center,
we have reduced saturation values.
| | 01:05 | So we end up with a bright Red out here at
the very edge of the circle and a low saturation
| | 01:11 | Red ultimately going to gray
toward the center of the circle.
| | 01:16 | You can see we've got Red over on the right,
Yellow's up right; we've got Green up left,
| | 01:20 | Cyan over on the left-hand side--meaning
that it is the color complement to Red.
| | 01:25 | We've got Blue down in lower-left--
it's the color complement to Yellow.
| | 01:29 | Then we've got Magenta down right--
it's the color complement to Green.
| | 01:33 | Just to satisfy your potential
curiosity, here is the CMYK wheel.
| | 01:38 | Notice that the colors are
organized exactly as they are for RGB.
| | 01:41 | The difference is that we end up with less
vibrant colors all the way around, and that's
| | 01:45 | just because it's easier to produce bright
vivid colors on a screen than it is on the
| | 01:50 | printed page, at least where
process color printing is concerned.
| | 01:54 | Now Illustrator does use a color wheel in
order to map out its color harmonies, but
| | 01:59 | it doesn't use either of these wheels.
| | 02:01 | Instead it uses the Lab Color Wheel.
| | 02:04 | The L in Lab stands for luminance,
and then A and B are color axes.
| | 02:09 | The A axis cuts horizontally across the circle
and the B axes cuts vertically across the circle.
| | 02:16 | As a result we get a different range of
colors, as you can see here, that is more analogous
| | 02:21 | to the way that we actually
perceive colors in the real world.
| | 02:24 | So we still have Red over here on the right,
but we've got this huge range of warm colors,
| | 02:28 | which is where of course our flesh tones reside.
| | 02:31 | So we've got Yellow up here at the top.
| | 02:33 | Instead of being located at 60 degrees,
the way it is with RGB and CMYK, it's located
| | 02:38 | at more like 100 degrees.
| | 02:41 | So beyond 90 degrees at the top, we've got orange
as a primary color, so a rich array of oranges.
| | 02:47 | We've got a diminished Green to Cyan range,
which is a good thing, because we can't see
| | 02:52 | a lot of those colors that we
can invent using RGB values.
| | 02:56 | Then we've got Blue all the
way down at the bottom here.
| | 02:59 | We've got Violet--a rich range of violets
as you can see--and then Magenta would be
| | 03:04 | right about there. But Magenta isn't really a
primary where the Lab color space is concerned.
| | 03:10 | As the colors descend in saturation, they
descend toward White as opposed to Gray.
| | 03:16 | Now you can't really represent color just in
a wheel, because color is a three-dimensional
| | 03:22 | thing in order to calculate it properly.
| | 03:24 | What we're not seeing is
any luminance variations.
| | 03:27 | In order to see luminance variations, we
would have to create cross-sections like so, with
| | 03:32 | different wheels--a very bright wheel on top and
increasingly darker wheels going down the stack.
| | 03:38 | What we're looking at right here
is the brightest of the wheels.
| | 03:42 | So this is the top slice of that cylinder
of color, and I say that because I am going
| | 03:46 | to be demonstrating the
harmony rules using this top slice.
| | 03:51 | So what Illustrator does is it takes your
color and it goes ahead and maps it onto the wheel.
| | 03:56 | So this is where the t-shirt
falls inside of the Lab Color Wheel.
| | 04:00 | When you click on that color swatch inside
the Color Guide panel, Illustrator goes ahead
| | 04:03 | and makes that the base color
for its color harmony calculations.
| | 04:07 | Now let's take a look at the harmony rules.
| | 04:09 | We will start off with the
default which is Tetrad 2.
| | 04:13 | By Tetrad, Illustrator means four.
| | 04:15 | So the colors are branching
off in four different directions.
| | 04:19 | So it starts with the base color.
| | 04:21 | In the case of Tetrad 2, it goes ahead and
adds a darker, slightly more saturated version
| | 04:25 | of that base color, and then it goes ahead
and snags three other colors in three different
| | 04:30 | directions on the wheel.
| | 04:32 | So if I were to move his base color to a new
location, for example if the base color were
| | 04:37 | green, then the other colors
would rotate inside the wheel as well.
| | 04:40 | So you're always going to get different
colors out of this calculation, but it's going to
| | 04:44 | be calculated at the same angles given Tetrad 2.
| | 04:48 | Tetrad 1 and 3 are giving you different numbers
of colors and the angles are slightly different,
| | 04:53 | but you're still getting four
different directions of color.
| | 04:57 | Now let's check out Triad 2 which is very
much like the Tetrad group, so you can see
| | 05:02 | you've got Triad, Triad 2, and Triad 3; and
the one difference is that it's branching
| | 05:07 | the colors out in three directions.
| | 05:08 | In this case it's still giving us five colors,
because it's creating two variations along
| | 05:13 | a couple of the axes here, but we
are still going in three directions.
| | 05:18 | Now let's go to top of the list to
Complementary. And Complementary colors are going to be on
| | 05:23 | the opposite side of the color wheel.
| | 05:25 | So we start with the base color.
| | 05:26 | The base color is always appearing big in
these diagrams, and then we have a couple of
| | 05:30 | base color variations that are slightly different
saturation values and very different luminance levels.
| | 05:36 | Then we've got a couple of true complements.
| | 05:39 | That is to say they are on the opposite
side of the wheel, although they have different
| | 05:42 | saturation and luminance levels; and then we
have this slightly off-kilter complementary
| | 05:48 | color, at least where
Complementary 2 is concerned.
| | 05:51 | Now let's take a look at the next group here,
Split Complementary through Right Complement.
| | 05:55 | I will go ahead and advance to
this guy, which is Left Complement.
| | 05:59 | Notice that Illustrator is rotating
the Complementary colors to the right.
| | 06:04 | So why in the world is
it called Left complement?
| | 06:07 | Well, there is no left and right
when you're traveling around a circle;
| | 06:10 | there is only clockwise and counterclockwise.
| | 06:13 | By left, Illustrator really means clockwise.
| | 06:16 | So it might be a left rotation.
| | 06:18 | If I start with a color up here, then it
would rotate around to the left; but as often as
| | 06:22 | not, you are going to be rotating to the right.
| | 06:24 | So it's just clockwise.
| | 06:26 | By contrast a Right Complement
is a counterclockwise rotation.
| | 06:31 | Split Complementary is going in both directions.
| | 06:34 | So it gives you the base color and then it gives you
one color counterclockwise and another color clockwise.
| | 06:39 | All right! Next is Analogous.
| | 06:42 | This is Analogous and then there's also
Analogous 2, and in this case, all the colors are going
| | 06:47 | off in similar hue directions.
| | 06:49 | In the case of Analogous, you are not
seeing any luminance or saturation variations, so
| | 06:53 | we are getting some greenish
blues and some purplish blues.
| | 06:56 | Then we've got Monochromatic.
| | 06:58 | This is the first of the Monochromatic
group right here, and as you can see, all of the
| | 07:03 | colors are in lockstep
where the hue is concerned.
| | 07:06 | There are some saturation
and luminance variations.
| | 07:10 | With shades, by the way, you
only get luminance variations.
| | 07:14 | Next in the list, we've got Compound.
| | 07:16 | Compound finds a few Analogous colors as you can
see here, and then it finds some Complementary colors.
| | 07:22 | The diagram that we are seeing here is
specifically Compound 1; but just remember that Compound
| | 07:27 | is Analogous plus Complementary, hence Compound--
that is, more than one thing going on at the same time.
| | 07:33 | The High Contrast bunch is
all Triads, as you can see here.
| | 07:36 | They go off in all sorts of different
directions, and the Illustrator goes ahead and picks very
| | 07:41 | highly saturated colors
toward the outside of the circle.
| | 07:45 | This diagram is specifically
for High Contrast 4, by the way.
| | 07:50 | Then finally we have
Pentagram, very easy to understand.
| | 07:53 | The colors branch out in
five different directions.
| | 07:56 | They vary little in terms of saturation and
I believe not at all in terms of luminance.
| | 08:03 | So there you have it.
| | 08:03 | I hope that helped, because this diagram
took me forever to put together; but those are
| | 08:09 | the 23 different harmony rules that are
available from the Color Guide panel inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Mixing and matching color harmonies| 00:00 | Now that you know how the harmony rules work,
| | 00:02 | I'm going to show you how to violate those
rules by combining colors from multiple different
| | 00:07 | harmonies; because after all there's nothing
that says you have to color your artwork in
| | 00:11 | lockstep with a single color harmony.
| | 00:14 | Color is altogether subjective, so you
should feel free to go your own way; and I'll also
| | 00:20 | show you how to adjust a few
settings inside the Color Guide panel.
| | 00:23 | So, I'm going to start things off by, let's
say, selecting these dark leaves over here
| | 00:30 | in the left-hand Artboard. And notice that
even though I've selected these dark brown
| | 00:33 | objects, I'm still seeing color harmonies
based on the blue of the T-shirt, and I'll
| | 00:39 | continue to do so as long as I don't
click on this base color to change it.
| | 00:44 | So I'll start things off by clicking on the
down-pointing arrowhead and I'm going to switch,
| | 00:48 | let's say, to Compound 2, because I like
the shade of yellow right there. And now I'll
| | 00:53 | go ahead and click on yellow in order
to apply it to the selected artwork.
| | 00:58 | Now I'll click on the beige leaves and I'll
switch by Harmony Rule to High Contrast 1,
| | 01:04 | because I like that shade of red right there,
so I'll go ahead and click on it to apply
| | 01:08 | it. And then next I'll click this background
rectangle and I'll switch to Compound 1 looks
| | 01:14 | like the way to go. And I'll select one of
these lighter tints of this orange right here;
| | 01:20 | that actually looks pretty great.
| | 01:22 | Now I'm going to select my black objects,
and if you take a close look at them--I'll
| | 01:27 | press Ctrl+H or Command+H on the Mac in
order to hide those selection edges and then zoom
| | 01:31 | in--you can see that we have a little bit
of light fringe around these objects; and that
| | 01:36 | indicates that we have a weak black that's
jutting up against some CMY values here, so we might
| | 01:41 | end up having a little bit of a trapping problem.
And so to illuminate that, I'll click on Opacity
| | 01:46 | up here in the Control panel, and I'll
change the Blend mode from Normal to Multiply; and
| | 01:51 | that'll go ahead and burn those
black objects into the background.
| | 01:55 | All right, now I am going to switchover to
the second Artboard here by pressing Ctrl+0
| | 02:00 | to zoom out, Command+0 on the Mac, and then
Shift+Page Down to advance to the next page.
| | 02:05 | And I think this time-around I want to go
with more of a green scheme, so I'll select
| | 02:09 | the background rectangle, and I am not seeing
any selection edges, because I hid them. So
| | 02:15 | I'll press Ctrl+H or Command+
H on the Mac to bring it back.
| | 02:18 | Apparently I don't have anything selected,
as indicated by No Selection on the far left
| | 02:22 | side of the Control panel; so I'll try clicking
again, and this time I managed to grab the rectangle.
| | 02:27 | All right, so I know I'm hunting for a green;
obviously this harmony isn't going to work,
| | 02:31 | so I'll click the down-pointing arrowhead
and I'll switch to Tetrad 3. I'd say that
| | 02:37 | looks pretty good, and then I'll click on
that central green in order to apply it.
| | 02:41 | Now by defaults we're seeing shades and
tints as I mentioned a couple of movies ago, but
| | 02:46 | you don't have to stick with that.
You've got two other options available to you.
| | 02:50 | If you click on the fly-out menu icon, you'll
see that you also have the option of showing
| | 02:55 | Warm and Cool; so we'll see warm variations
on the colors over here on the left-hand side;
| | 03:01 | and finally you've got Vivid/Muted, which should
really be called Muted/Vivid, because after
| | 03:06 | all the muted versions of the colors--the
low-saturation versions--are shown over here
| | 03:11 | on the left inside, and vivid high-saturation
variations are shown on the right-hand side.
| | 03:16 | Here's something else you can do.
| | 03:18 | If you click on the fly-out menu icon again
and choose Color Guide Options, then you can
| | 03:23 | change the number of swatches that you see
inside the panel, as well as how much variation
| | 03:28 | occurs between the swatches.
| | 03:30 | By default it's cranked up to 100%, that is,
all the way to More. If you take it all the
| | 03:36 | way down to Less, you'll see a preview in
real-time over here inside the Color panel.
| | 03:42 | Aand you'll also see that there are no
variations going on whatsoever; every single one of those
| | 03:47 | swatches in each row are identical, so you
don't want to take the variation value down
| | 03:52 | this far, in other words.
| | 03:54 | You want it to have some
variation, some percentage going on.
| | 03:58 | But I'm going to go ahead and crank it all
the way back to 100%, because I like that;
| | 04:02 | but I might increase the number of steps.
You can take this value incidentally as high
| | 04:07 | as 20 steps, and then you'll have these
teeny little tiny swatches here; it's probably a
| | 04:13 | few too many. I might take mine up to 5, however.
And notice that the swatch is updated in real-time
| | 04:19 | right there inside the panel.
| | 04:20 | All right, now I'll go ahead and click OK
in order to accept that slight change, and I'll
| | 04:25 | click in one of these gray leaves--these dark
gray leaves--in order to select them; and I'll
| | 04:29 | switch my Harmony Rule once again to try it
to this time-around. And by the way, you do
| | 04:35 | not need to follow along in lockstep with
me anymore than you do with a specific harmony
| | 04:40 | rule, I definitely
encourage you to go your own way.
| | 04:43 | Anyway I'm going to try out one of these muted
greens, let's say, in the second-to-last row. That
| | 04:50 | looks pretty good to me. And then I'll
click on one of the light gray objects and I'll
| | 04:54 | change it to, let's say, a higher-saturation
version of this red, in order to create this
| | 05:00 | effect here, which I am really liking.
| | 05:02 | All right, now I'll go ahead and select these
background objects, the black ones, and I'll
| | 05:06 | press Ctrl+H or Command+H on the Mac, so I
can keep track of what I'm doing. And I think
| | 05:10 | I'll switch harmonies again back to let's
say Tetrad 2; works out beautifully. And I'll
| | 05:16 | click in one of these low-saturation oranges
right there in order to lighten up those dark
| | 05:22 | objects. And if I want to create an interaction
between the selection and the green background,
| | 05:28 | then I would click on Opacity and
change the Blend mode once again to Multiply.
| | 05:32 | And now I can continue to fool around
with the color, I might say, you know, gosh!
| | 05:36 | I'd like to try out one of these low saturation
purples instead, and come up with this effect here.
| | 05:43 | Now I'll go ahead and press Shift+Tab in
order to hide my right side panel, so that we can
| | 05:46 | check out both versions of the artwork at
the same time. And that's how you color your
| | 05:51 | artwork any way you like using as many harmony
rules as you see fit here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Color groups and custom harmony rules| 00:00 | In this movie, I will show you how to take
a collection of colors that you've applied
| | 00:04 | from a bunch of different harmony rules
and save them off as a color group inside of
| | 00:09 | the Swatches panel.
| | 00:10 | And a color group is just what it sounds like;
it's a group of colors. These folders here
| | 00:16 | full of colors inside the
Swatches panel, those are groups.
| | 00:19 | And then you can take a color group and
employ it as a custom harmony rule, which provides
| | 00:24 | you all kinds of flexibility.
| | 00:26 | So I am going to start things off by
selecting these black shapes right here in the first
| | 00:32 | artboard. And I want to change the color,
because after all right now the color is just
| | 00:35 | 100% black, which isn't
really going to do us any good.
| | 00:39 | So I will switch over to the Color panel,
and I am going to dial in a Cyan value of
| | 00:43 | 50%, a Magenta value of 50% as well, I'll skip
Yellow, and take the Black value down to 50%.
| | 00:49 | So, it's 50, 50, 0, 50 in my case.
| | 00:53 | And now if I press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift+
A on the Mac, you can see we get this effect here.
| | 00:58 | All right!
| | 00:59 | Now, I want to select all of the colored
objects on the backdrop layer, and I will do so by
| | 01:03 | Alt+Clicking or Option+Clicking the
backdrop layer here inside the Layers panel.
| | 01:08 | And that selects a ton of objects that are
filled with a total of eight colors.
| | 01:13 | Now, I'll switch over to the Swatches panel,
and all you need to do to create a new color
| | 01:18 | group is click on this little
folder icon at the bottom of the panel.
| | 01:21 | That will bring up the
New Color Group dialog box.
| | 01:24 | I am going to call this guy Floral Scheme.
| | 01:27 | I do want to create my
swatches from the selected artwork.
| | 01:31 | You also have the option of converting these
colors to global swatches, which means that
| | 01:36 | the swatches and the objects that are either filled
or stroked with those swatches are linked together.
| | 01:41 | But, I am just going to accept the default
settings for now by clicking OK, and we now
| | 01:46 | have a new group filled with eight
different colors as you can see here.
| | 01:50 | The first color in the group will serve as
the base color, incidentally, when we employ
| | 01:55 | this group as a harmony rule,
as you will see shortly.
| | 01:59 | Another way to create color groups is to load them
from the color libraries that ship along with Illustrator.
| | 02:04 | So, if you're working along with me, go
ahead and click the Library icon down here in the
| | 02:09 | bottom-left corner of the Swatches panel,
and you can see that you have just a ton of
| | 02:13 | these things to choose from.
| | 02:14 | I am going to select Nature, and then Flowers, and
that will bring up this independent panel right here.
| | 02:21 | And notice that all of the swatches are
organized into groups. That's the way it works for
| | 02:25 | most of these custom libraries.
| | 02:27 | And so, you can see down here toward the bottom
I've got Poppy, I've got Iris, I have Bird of Paradise.
| | 02:33 | Let's say I'm interested in that one,
the second group from the bottom.
| | 02:36 | A couple of different ways you can
import a group into your illustration.
| | 02:39 | Well, before I show you, I should make sure to
deselect my artwork; otherwise I am going to muck things up.
| | 02:44 | So I will press Ctrl+Shift+A
or Command+Shift+A on the Mac.
| | 02:48 | One way to import a group is to drag
it and drop it into the Swatches panel.
| | 02:53 | But if that seems like too much work, which
it is, then you can just click on the group
| | 02:58 | here inside the free-floating flowers panel.
| | 03:01 | And that will add Bird of Paradise
as a group to the active illustration.
| | 03:06 | Now you can go ahead and
close the Flowers panel.
| | 03:09 | Now, at this point, I am going to click on
Floral scheme in order to make it active.
| | 03:12 | Then I will switch back to the Color Guide
panel, and look at that: the active group
| | 03:16 | is automatically assigned as a harmony rule.
| | 03:20 | So I've got the base color, which is
currently red, along with seven others.
| | 03:24 | If I want to switch the base color back to
the blue of the T-shirt, then I click on the
| | 03:28 | T-shirt to make it active.
| | 03:29 | My Fill is active, so I'm seeing
that shade of blue as the base color.
| | 03:34 | Go ahead and click on it, and all the other
colors are going to update in kind, based on
| | 03:39 | the de facto harmony rule that
you've established with your color group.
| | 03:43 | Now, I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift+
A on the Mac in order to deselect the shirt,
| | 03:47 | and let's employ the rule.
| | 03:48 | I'm going to start by clicking on the
background rectangle in the first artboard, and I'll
| | 03:52 | change it to a vivid shade of this purple here;
and then I will click on a yellow leaf for example.
| | 03:59 | And I am going to switch my Color Guide
settings from Muted/Vivid to Warm/Cool, so that I have
| | 04:05 | some very warm shades to work with over here.
| | 04:08 | I'm going to select this color swatch; you can of
course go your own way, apply any swatch as you like.
| | 04:15 | Then I will click on this red leaf down
here in order to select the red objects.
| | 04:18 | And I'll fill them with this shade of orange
right there, which is pretty similar to the other one.
| | 04:24 | If I click off, you can see that my shapes
don't look all that different from each other;
| | 04:28 | but perhaps that's exactly what I am looking
for. Or I could switch to these objects--click
| | 04:33 | on them, the dark ones--and I will go ahead
and switch my settings to Show Tints/Shades
| | 04:38 | this time around, and I will select one of
the very dark colors over here in the left-
| | 04:42 | hand column in order to apply it.
| | 04:44 | And you know, I am thinking better of
those previously red leaves. Go ahead and click
| | 04:49 | on this leaf again in order to select all
those objects and switch over to Vivid/Muted.
| | 04:54 | Obviously, I am winging it here.
| | 04:56 | I will try this most vibrant
shade of red and see how it looks.
| | 05:00 | And I think I like that better.
| | 05:02 | And by the way, you can do
this with any color group.
| | 05:06 | So if I switch over to the Swatches panel
again and select Bird of Paradise. Who knows
| | 05:11 | how that reconciles as a harmony rule until,
of course, you go ahead and select the folder;
| | 05:16 | switch back to Color Guide, and it
is now assigned as a harmony rule.
| | 05:20 | Click on, in this case the T-shirt over here
in the right-hand artboard in order to select
| | 05:25 | it; click that blue base color, to make it
the base color for the harmony rule; and then
| | 05:30 | let's go about assigning some of these colors.
| | 05:32 | I will select the background rectangle once
again, and I'll change it to this shade of brown.
| | 05:37 | Then I will click on this shape. I will
fill it with this brightly colored green, and I
| | 05:42 | will click on the red leaf, and I'll change
it to this intense shade of purple right there
| | 05:48 | in order to complete the effect.
| | 05:50 | I might as well change those dark shapes as
well. I will fill them with this very saturated
| | 05:54 | blue over on the far left hand side. All right!
| | 05:57 | Now, I will go ahead and scoot over my artwork,
and press Shift+Tab in order to hide my right
| | 06:01 | side panels so that we can see both
of the artboards at the same time.
| | 06:05 | And that's how you save a collection of
colors as a color group inside the Swatches panel,
| | 06:10 | and then turn around and employ that color group as
a custom harmony rule inside the Color Guide panel.
| | 06:15 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working in the Edit Colors dialog box| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to modify entire
collections of colors inside the Edit Color dialog box.
| | 00:07 | And you can modify these colors either based
on Harmony Rules, or based on existing color
| | 00:11 | groups, or you can totally go your own way.
| | 00:14 | And you do so visually inside that very same Lab
Color wheel that I showed you a few movies ago.
| | 00:20 | I've gone ahead and restored my original
color scheme because that last one I created was
| | 00:25 | not my best work; but I've still got my
color groups Floral scheme and Bird of Paradise
| | 00:30 | available inside the Swatches panel.
| | 00:32 | I'll click on Bird of Paradise to make it
active, switch back over to the Color Guide
| | 00:36 | panel, click on my blue base color in order to
make it the base color for this custom harmony.
| | 00:43 | And then I'll modify the colors by clicking
on this little Edit Colors icon in the bottom-
| | 00:48 | right corner of the Color Guide panel, and that
will bring up this big Edit Colors dialog box.
| | 00:54 | Now as you can see front and center inside
this dialog box is a Lab color wheel with
| | 00:59 | red over here on the right hand side, green
on the left side, yellow up, and blue down.
| | 01:03 | And we are actually seeing the relative
positions of the colors inside the Bird of Paradise
| | 01:08 | group, just as if this were a standard
color harmony. And I can modify these colors just
| | 01:15 | by dragging any one of them.
| | 01:17 | So if you drag the base color, the one with
the thick outline, then you'll end up moving
| | 01:21 | all the related colors as you see here. And
that goes for reducing the saturation of the
| | 01:26 | colors or increasing the
saturation of the colors as well.
| | 01:30 | You can also drag independent colors. Now
in the case of a custom harmony rule like
| | 01:34 | this one, that's going to continue to move
all the hues around. But notice that you can
| | 01:39 | modify the saturation of a sheep color,
which is one of the followers of the base color;
| | 01:46 | either by dragging out toward the perimeter of
the color wheel, which increases the saturation;
| | 01:51 | or dragging inward toward the
center, which reduces the saturation.
| | 01:55 | If you want to modify the brightness of
all colors inside of the group, then you drag
| | 02:00 | this Adjust brightness slider.
| | 02:02 | So if you drag to the right you will increase
the brightness, if you drag to the left you'll
| | 02:06 | decrease the brightness.
| | 02:07 | What do you do if you want to change the
brightness of a single color independently?
| | 02:10 | Well in that case you click on this second
icon underneath the color wheel, Show brightness
| | 02:15 | and hue on wheel, and that's going to change
the center to perimeter access as a brightness
| | 02:21 | access, while of course
the perimeter remains hue.
| | 02:25 | And now notice that I can create a dark
blue like so, independently of the other colors.
| | 02:31 | And then if you decide you want to switch
back to saturation you just click in that
| | 02:35 | first icon under the wheel.
| | 02:37 | Few other options that are available to you
here, if you click on this little flyout menu
| | 02:41 | icon you can change your primary colors.
| | 02:44 | By default I believe you'll see these set
up as CMYK; I prefer to work--because I am
| | 02:49 | working inside of his Lab color wheel--not
with Lab as you might think, because entering
| | 02:54 | in Lab values takes a fair amount of expertise.
| | 02:57 | I prefer to work with a HSB, which
is Hue, Saturation and Brightness.
| | 03:02 | And that way, you know that a Hue value of
zero, for example, gets you red and then you
| | 03:08 | can either go with a highly saturated red at 100%,
or a dim amount of saturation at 50% for example.
| | 03:14 | You can control your
brightness independently as well.
| | 03:17 | A 100% for full on brightness, 0% is always
going to get you black, and then other percentages
| | 03:22 | are going to get you
brightness levels in between.
| | 03:25 | A few other options that are available to
you, I'll go ahead and take this color back
| | 03:29 | over here to say green.
| | 03:30 | You have the option of moving colors
independently by clicking on this chain icon in order to
| | 03:36 | unlink the colors, in which case you'll see
these dotted lines here that connect the colors
| | 03:41 | to the center of the wheel. And now you can drag
each one of the colors independently as you see fit.
| | 03:47 | Now in the name of complete coverage
I'll show you other options as well.
| | 03:51 | You can click on the segmented color wheel
icon here in order to segment the color wheel
| | 03:56 | into pieces like so, and that just constrains
the colors that you can actually select from.
| | 04:03 | And then you also have the option of
displaying color bars, which will show you all of the
| | 04:07 | colors in your group so far as bars.
| | 04:10 | And the primary reason you might want to do
that is to randomly change the order of the
| | 04:15 | colors inside of a group like so; or you can
randomly change the saturation and brightness
| | 04:22 | of the colors, if you prefer.
| | 04:24 | So a couple of unique options that
are available to you at that point.
| | 04:27 | I am going to switch back to displaying the
smooth color wheel, and I want to once again
| | 04:32 | move all my colors as one.
| | 04:34 | So I'll click on that chain icon in order
to link the colors and then I'll go ahead
| | 04:38 | and drag them around like so. I might increase
the brightness of the colors a little bit as well.
| | 04:42 | Finally, you have the option of removing colors
or adding colors using these tools right here.
| | 04:48 | So if I click on the Remove Color tool and
then click on a color, I'll get rid of it.
| | 04:53 | If I click on the Add Color tool and I click at
a location, I'll go ahead and add a color there.
| | 04:59 | And I want that color to be darker so I'll
switch to the Brightness icon, go ahead and
| | 05:04 | darken things up, and then
switch back to the Saturation icon.
| | 05:08 | And one more thing. You can right-click on
one of these colors and make it the base color
| | 05:12 | by selecting Set as Base Color. And notice
that moved all of the colors around and the
| | 05:17 | reason it did so is because that guy is now
the base color, but otherwise the relative
| | 05:21 | configuration of the harmony remains the same.
| | 05:25 | So I might go ahead and drag this guy
back out and increase its brightness as well.
| | 05:29 | And you also have the option of right-clicking
inside one of these colors and choosing Select
| | 05:35 | Shade, which will bring up this color field here.
| | 05:38 | The hue remains locked
down inside of this field.
| | 05:41 | However, you can drag back and forth in order
to change the saturation of the color, or you
| | 05:47 | can drag up or down in
order to change its brightness.
| | 05:50 | I am going to make this color very saturated
and pretty dark as well. And when you're finished
| | 05:56 | click off the field to dismiss it.
| | 05:58 | At this point you can now save your new
collection of colors as a color group
| | 06:02 | in one of two ways. You can either update
Bird of Paradise--notice it's appearing in
| | 06:06 | italics to show you that you've
made changes since you last saved it.
| | 06:10 | So if you wanted to update that existing group,
all you do is click on that little hard drive
| | 06:14 | icon. Or if you want to make a new group, then
go ahead and enter a new name up here at the
| | 06:20 | top of the screen, and then click on the little
folder icon in order to save out that new group.
| | 06:25 | And Bird of Paradise will no longer appear
italic because after all, it's no longer linked
| | 06:30 | to this set of colors.
| | 06:32 | Assuming you're done, go ahead and click OK
in order to create that new color group, and
| | 06:37 | then you can switch back over to the Swatches
panel and click on that new group; in my case
| | 06:42 | it's called Bird of Randomness.
| | 06:44 | And you can switch back to the Color panel
and go ahead and set the base color back to
| | 06:48 | blue and see what you end up coming up with, and
then go ahead and assign those colors as you see fit.
| | 06:54 | And that's how you modify an entire
collection of colors visually, directly inside the Lab
| | 06:59 | Color wheel inside the Edit Color dialog box.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Expanding on an existing harmony rule| 00:00 | In this move I will show you how to design
a custom color scheme based on an existing
| | 00:05 | harmony rule, and we will once again achieve
this effect inside the Edit Colors dialog box.
| | 00:10 | So I'll start things off by employing one of
the existing harmony rules, and that harmony
| | 00:16 | rule is the last one in the list here
inside the Color Guide panel, which is Pentagram.
| | 00:21 | And now just to make sure everything is set
up the way it should be, I'll select my t-shirt
| | 00:24 | art to make it active, and I'll click on that
blue base color in order to make it the base
| | 00:29 | color for the Color Guide panel.
| | 00:31 | Now I'll select this background rectangle
and I'll go ahead and change it to the shade
| | 00:37 | of red, for example, just so that we
are coming up with something different.
| | 00:41 | Then I'll select these yellow leaves and I
will change them to this vivid shade of violet
| | 00:46 | and I'll click on the red shapes, which are
barely visible anymore, and I'll change them
| | 00:50 | to the most saturated version of the yellow.
| | 00:53 | And I'll end up achieving this effect here.
| | 00:55 | Again, this is just for the sake of comparison.
| | 00:59 | Now let's see if we can build a better version of
Pentagram that offers us a wider range of colors.
| | 01:05 | You can do that by clicking on the Edit
Colors icon at the bottom of the Color Guide panel.
| | 01:10 | And notice what we have with Pentagram is
this guy with the base color as his head and
| | 01:17 | then he has got these arms and legs.
| | 01:19 | And if you move any of the sheep colors, you
are going to move both the arms and legs up
| | 01:24 | and down, either toward each other or away
from each other, as if we have a sort of Vitruvian
| | 01:29 | Man inside of the Lab Color wheel.
| | 01:32 | Incidentally, if you want to check out the
shapes of any of the harmony rules, including
| | 01:35 | ones that I didn't diagram a few movies back,
then you can just go ahead to select them.
| | 01:40 | For example, I showed you
what Tetrad 2 looks like.
| | 01:43 | It looks like this right there, that's what I showed
you in the diagram; but I didn't show you Tetrad 3.
| | 01:49 | So you can go ahead and check that out as
well and notice that Tetrad 3 is set up so
| | 01:54 | that when you drag one of the sheep colors,
the opposing sheep color moves along with it.
| | 01:59 | Anyway, I am going to switch back to
Pentagram, and I am going to drag his head to the top
| | 02:03 | just because it's an easier way for me to
work anyway. And I will go ahead and drag the
| | 02:08 | head down a little bit as well in order to
decrease the saturation of all the colors.
| | 02:13 | I want to add a total of four color stops,
one to each of the arms and legs, and I'll
| | 02:18 | do that using the Add Color tools.
| | 02:20 | So I will select the tool and then I'll
click right about there in order to add a color
| | 02:25 | along that same line so we have exactly
the same hue and a lower saturation value.
| | 02:31 | Notice that the Add Color tool does not
stay active, which is kind of pain in the neck.
| | 02:36 | So you have to reselect it over and over again.
| | 02:38 | I will go ahead and click on it to select it
and then click at this location right there,
| | 02:42 | click on the tool to select it again, click
here in order to add a color, and then finally
| | 02:47 | select the tool and click on this left-
hand line in order to add a shade of green.
| | 02:52 | Now let's say I want to
make these new colors darker.
| | 02:55 | I will switch over to the Brightness icon
underneath the color wheel, and that makes
| | 02:59 | it look like I lost all of my new colors.
| | 03:02 | That's not actually true.
| | 03:03 | It's just that we can't see the difference
between the colors because we are not seeing
| | 03:07 | saturation anymore, and the hue values
were locked in sync with each other.
| | 03:12 | Just go ahead and drag your
new colors toward the center.
| | 03:16 | That will not only darken them up, but you
will also be able to see the original colors
| | 03:20 | at the ends of the arms and legs.
| | 03:23 | So I will go ahead and drag this guy in as well.
| | 03:26 | Then if you want to switch back to saturation,
which I do, then click on the Saturation icon
| | 03:30 | down there underneath the color wheel and
I am going to drag these guys all the way
| | 03:34 | out so that we have the most saturated
versions of these colors possible. And I might increase
| | 03:41 | the brightness of the colors
overall just so I can see what I'm doing.
| | 03:44 | Now I'll go ahead and save out my new
color group as 9-color pentagram, let's say.
| | 03:51 | Then I need to create the group by clicking
on a little folder icon and 9-color pentagram
| | 03:55 | will appear at the bottom of the group.
| | 03:57 | Now if you make any changes at this point--
| | 03:59 | for example if you drag up or down on the
arms, I'll will go ahead and drag these guys
| | 04:03 | up a little bit, and I'll also return my
head back to its original color so I can get a
| | 04:08 | sense of what I'm achieving here.
| | 04:11 | You know what, I am going to switch back
to the CMYK values so that I can confirm the
| | 04:16 | actual values that are associated with the t-
shirt, which are 85 for cyan, 50% for magenta,
| | 04:22 | and 0 for both the yellow and black; and I
end up with these colors here, which gives
| | 04:27 | me the opportunity to brighten things if I like.
| | 04:29 | I could switch to the Brightness icons
underneath the color wheel, and then I could just go ahead
| | 04:34 | and drag these guys out so that I get very
bright versions of all these colors, and I
| | 04:39 | can change the locations a
little bit as well if I so desire.
| | 04:44 | I might move them to about here,
let's say, just playing around.
| | 04:48 | Now notice that 9-color pentagram appears in
italics, which tells you that you have unsaved changes.
| | 04:53 | If you click the OK button at this point,
Illustrator is going to ask you if you want
| | 04:57 | to save the changes to this group, but
what's misleading about this is if you click the
| | 05:02 | No button, you can end up losing other work
that you've performed inside of this dialog box.
| | 05:08 | That's why I recommend you just avoid this
warning in general by clicking on the Cancel
| | 05:11 | button and either saving this guy as a new
group by entering a new name and clicking
| | 05:16 | on a folder icon, or just updating the existing
group, which is what I'm going to do by clicking
| | 05:21 | on a little hard drive icon. And now 9-
color pentagram is no longer italicized.
| | 05:26 | You know what, I am just going to move this
guy--I am going to try to move it up here--
| | 05:29 | that is the head, up to a totally different
location and saving my changes once again,
| | 05:35 | just for the sake of demonstration.
| | 05:37 | Now I'll click the OK button in order to
exit the dialog box, and I'll scoot over to the
| | 05:43 | second artboard here and you can see that
we've got this stack of nine rows of colors.
| | 05:49 | I'll click on the t-shirt to once again
select it, click on the blue base color to make it
| | 05:54 | the base color for my new color scheme, and
then I'll click in the background. And notice
| | 05:58 | I've got tons of
different options to choose from.
| | 06:00 | So I might go with this dark, but very vivid
shade of red here. And then I'll click on this
| | 06:06 | kind of greenish leaf right here, and then
I'll change it to this medium shade of pink;
| | 06:11 | and then I will click on this reddish leaf
below, and on the right side of the t-shirt
| | 06:15 | and I will change it to this
medium vibrant shade of yellow.
| | 06:18 | Finally, I'll go ahead and select the dark
shapes and change them to a very dark shade
| | 06:24 | of that sort of purplish color in the third
row, and I end up with this color scheme here.
| | 06:29 | All right, so I'll go ahead and scoot the
artwork over and press Shift+Tab to hide those
| | 06:32 | right side panels so that we can take in both
artboards at a time. And you can see even though
| | 06:38 | both of these color schemes are based on the
pentagram harmony rule, we end up achieving
| | 06:43 | very different results, thanks to our ability to
customize the harmony rule inside the Edit Colors dialog box.
| | 06:49 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Constraining colors to a predefined library| 00:00 | All right, we're managing to get some
pretty radical color schemes going here.
| | 00:04 | Let's say you want to rein things in and you want
to limit your choices to an existing color library.
| | 00:10 | For example, I'll switch back over to the
Swatches panel, and I'll click on the Library
| | 00:14 | icon in the bottom left corner of that panel,
choose Nature, and then choose Stone and Brick.
| | 00:20 | And we'll see a collection of color groups,
all of which provide us with more muted options.
| | 00:25 | Now I could go ahead and select one of
those color groups if I wanted to; but instead I
| | 00:29 | am just going to close this free-floating
panel and I'm going to switch back over to
| | 00:33 | the Color Guide panel. And notice the word
None right here, that indicates that we have
| | 00:37 | no constraints whatsoever.
| | 00:39 | If you want to apply a constraint, then you
click on this little Limit icon, and that will
| | 00:43 | once again offer a list of the libraries
that ship along with Illustrator; choose Nature
| | 00:47 | and then choose that same option, Stone and
Brick; and notice that we're limited to a much
| | 00:52 | smaller range of colors.
| | 00:54 | Now if you want to modify that range then
you click on the Edit Colors button in order
| | 00:59 | to bring up the Edit Colors dialog box; and
notice that Stone and Brick is still active,
| | 01:04 | and now you can drag your Colors around inside
of the Lab wheel--albeit with these Constraints.
| | 01:12 | Now don't think just because you drag a
color over a particular range of color here that
| | 01:17 | that's the exact color you are going to get.
| | 01:19 | Bear in mind that we're just seeing hue
and saturation; we are not seeing brightness.
| | 01:24 | If you want to modify the brightness you click in
the brightness icon below the color wheel like so.
| | 01:29 | And then you can adjust the brightness
values size as you see me doing here. And you can
| | 01:34 | select whatever colors you won't work with.
| | 01:37 | And then if you want to once again modify
saturation, you'd switch back to the saturation icon.
| | 01:42 | Now if ever you want to remove the limit,
then all you need to do is click on this little
| | 01:46 | icon below Stone and Brick, and choose None. And
then you will no longer have any constraints.
| | 01:53 | But I do want the constraints, so I'll switch
back to Nature and then Stone and Brick once again.
| | 01:59 | And I'll click the OK button. I want you
to notice nothing is italicized here inside
| | 02:04 | the Color Groups list.
| | 02:05 | But if I click OK, Illustrator will still
ask me, hey do you want to save your changes
| | 02:10 | to the swatch group; either a new group
called Color Group, or if you've been working along
| | 02:14 | with me, it may ask you if you
want to update 9-color pentagram.
| | 02:17 | What I recommend you do is click the Cancel
button, because obviously you don't want to
| | 02:21 | lose your work but you probably don't want
to create a new color group called Color Group.
| | 02:25 | And I'll just name this guy Stone & brick.
| | 02:28 | And by the way were limited to all of the
colors inside the various groups inside that
| | 02:33 | Stone and Brick library.
| | 02:35 | But I'll go ahead and name my new group Stone
& brick like so, click on a little Group icon
| | 02:39 | in order to make it, and then I'll click OK.
| | 02:41 | Now there is a couple of different ways you
can apply these colors. One is to return to
| | 02:46 | the Swatches panel, scroll down the list or
just give yourself more room by dragging the
| | 02:50 | horizontal bar, and apply your
colors directly from these swatches.
| | 02:55 | So I might click on this background rectangle
over here in the left hand artboard, and I'll
| | 02:59 | change it to the shade of
reddish-brown let's say.
| | 03:02 | And then I'll click on one of the
yellowish shapes in order to select all of them and
| | 03:07 | select this swatch right there.
| | 03:09 | And then I'll click on this purplish leaf to
select all the purple shapes, and I'll change
| | 03:14 | them to this lower saturation brown in order
to create this more muted background effect
| | 03:19 | that isn't competing quite as much for my
attention, so I still have a focus on the T-shirt design.
| | 03:24 | The other way to work--I'll go ahead and
switch over to the second artboard--is to return to
| | 03:28 | the Color Guide panel. And that way you can
take advantage of Shades and Tints and so forth.
| | 03:34 | I might switch back to Show Vivid/
Muted and see what I have available to me.
| | 03:39 | And I'll select that background rectangle
and I'll change it to this shade of brown
| | 03:43 | right here so you can see already
I'm getting very different results.
| | 03:47 | I'll select this yellow shape, not seeing
anything I want in this list so let's try
| | 03:52 | out Warm/Cool and see if there's
anything different there. Not really.
| | 03:55 | Let's try out Tints/Shades then and go
with this lightest shade of brown right there.
| | 04:01 | And then I'll select this pink leaf in order
to make it active and I'll change it to this
| | 04:05 | sort of lightish reddish color in order to
achieve this effect--although that's not giving
| | 04:10 | me enough contrast, so I'll
try this color right there.
| | 04:15 | And every time you do this by the way you
are going to get different results, which
| | 04:17 | is why I'm always sort of struggling to figure
out exactly which colors I am going to apply.
| | 04:23 | And you know I want these shapes right there to be a
little darker, so I'll go with this color right there.
| | 04:28 | That looks pretty good to me.
| | 04:30 | But in any event, if I press Shift+Tab in
order to hide those right side panels so that we
| | 04:34 | can see both of the artboards at the same time,
you can see that even though we're working
| | 04:39 | inside of the confines of the exact same
color library--Stone and Brick--we are achieving
| | 04:45 | very different effects, depending on whether
we apply the colors directly from the Swatches
| | 04:49 | panel over here on the left, or from the
Color Guide panel over here on the right.
| | 04:54 | That's how you constrain a harmony rule, as
well as your ability to select and apply colors
| | 04:59 | to an existing color
library, here inside Illustrator.
| | 05:01 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
26. Recoloring ArtworkChanging lots of colors all at once| 00:00 | One of the most labor-intensive things you
can do as a digital designer is lay down the
| | 00:05 | colors that you intend to use in your artwork.
| | 00:07 | In the last chapter, I showed you how the Color
Guide panel alleviates the hassle of assigning colors.
| | 00:14 | But what if you already have a palette
of colors arranged inside your artwork,
| | 00:18 | and what you need to do is bring in new artwork
and make it match the colors of the existing stuff?
| | 00:25 | That's the job of the re-color artwork feature.
| | 00:28 | Simply put, it changes the colors of lots
of objects all at once. Check this out.
| | 00:35 | All you do is select a bunch of path outlines
or groups or whatever, then you click an icon
| | 00:40 | in the Control panel, you link your colors
together here, and then you drag them around
| | 00:46 | inside the by-now-familiar color wheel.
| | 00:49 | The interface is a bit elaborate.
| | 00:51 | But it isn't hard to use.
| | 00:53 | And once you know it's there,
you'll be using it all the time.
| | 00:56 | Its name is Recolor Artwork,
and that's exactly what it does.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Introducing the Recolor Artwork command| 00:00 | In this movie I'll introduce you to the
Recolor Artwork dialog box, which really is one of
| | 00:05 | the best features in all of Illustrator.
| | 00:07 | So as you can see, I've got a total of
eight versions of my T-shirt, however I've only
| | 00:12 | assigned two color schemes so far--dark
blue at the top and light blue at the bottom.
| | 00:17 | In the end I want every single one of
these T-shirts to be colored differently.
| | 00:21 | And I am going to do so using Recolor Artwork.
| | 00:25 | So let's start things off with
this second column of T-shirts.
| | 00:28 | I'll partially marquee them using the Black
Arrow tool, and that goes ahead and selects
| | 00:32 | all the paths in the T-shirts because
they're assembled into a couple of groups.
| | 00:37 | Then I'll zoom in by pressing Ctrl+Plus and
I'll go ahead and scroll things over a little
| | 00:41 | bit to the left as well. Might as well press Shift
+Tab in order to bring back my right side panels.
| | 00:46 | Now there is two ways to get to Recolor Artwork.
| | 00:48 | The easiest way is to go up to this
Recolor Artwork icon and click on it.
| | 00:53 | However, if for any reason you can't find
that icon, then you can also access the feature
| | 00:58 | as a command by going to the Edit menu,
choosing Edit Colors, and then choosing Recolor Artwork.
| | 01:04 | Either way, that will bring up this
whopping big Recolor Artwork dialog box.
| | 01:08 | Now I don't have a lot of room to work with
here on screen, so I am going to hide my Color
| | 01:13 | Groups over here on the right-hand side by
clicking on this left pointing arrow head,
| | 01:17 | and that will go ahead and collapse the
dialog box as you see, and then I can move it over.
| | 01:23 | Notice a couple of things here.
| | 01:24 | First of all the Recolor Art checkbox is on by
default, so you can see your changes as you make them.
| | 01:30 | And Illustrator goes ahead and automatically
hides the selection edges so that they don't
| | 01:35 | get in your way of seeing what's going on.
| | 01:37 | But bear in mind, at least where my screen
is concerned, that it's these two left hand
| | 01:42 | T-shirts that are currently selected.
| | 01:44 | Now notice that we have a total of seven
colors in the selected shirts, and I can see that
| | 01:48 | by the words Current Colors, or in parentheses, (7). And you can
go ahead and manually reassign colors, if you
| | 01:55 | like, inside of this panel, and
we'll come back to it in a future movie.
| | 01:59 | But the easier way to work the first is to
switch over to the Edit panel, which you get
| | 02:04 | to by clicking on the word Edit, and then you'll
see your colors inside the familiar lab wheel.
| | 02:10 | If you don't see the lab wheel go ahead
and click on this first icon over here on the
| | 02:14 | left-hand side, Display smooth color wheel.
| | 02:17 | Now notice by default all of the colors
are independent of each other, as indicated by
| | 02:21 | these dotted lines.
| | 02:23 | If you want to link all the colors together
then you need to click on the little chain
| | 02:26 | icon and the lines turn solid.
| | 02:28 | And now I can go ahead and drag these
colors to a new location, like so, and Illustrator
| | 02:34 | goes ahead and
automatically recolors my artwork.
| | 02:37 | Now, just so I can better see what I am
doing I am going to switch from the CMYK sliders
| | 02:42 | to HSB--that is Hue, Saturation, Brightness--
and also drag these guys a little bit farther
| | 02:49 | over here. You can make
any modifications you like.
| | 02:53 | Now let's say I'm noticing that these
creases inside the orange shirt at the bottom are
| | 02:59 | a little bit light and
they lack saturation as well.
| | 03:02 | But for the life of me I don't know which one
of these circles corresponds to those folds.
| | 03:08 | If you want to find out exactly which color
is which, then you have to switch back to be
| | 03:12 | Assign panel and grab this tool right here
that allows you to click on colors to find
| | 03:17 | them inside of the artwork.
| | 03:19 | That will go ahead and dim the selected artwork
and then you need to click on one of the original
| | 03:23 | blues in order to find it.
| | 03:25 | So this bottom blue is that dark text; this
next blue up is the folds inside the top shirt;
| | 03:31 | and the next one up is the background of the
top shirt; and then we have got the light letters;
| | 03:36 | and then finally this second to top one of
here, those are the folds in the T-shirt, which
| | 03:41 | corresponds to this shade of brown.
| | 03:44 | What I'll do now is I'll go ahead and switch
back to the Edit panel and I'll see that color
| | 03:50 | is selected right there, so its circle will
have a heavier outline than the other ones.
| | 03:54 | Now I want to edit that color
independently of the others, so I'll click on the chain
| | 03:58 | icon once again to unlink
the colors from each other.
| | 04:02 | And I'll go ahead and switch to this Brightness
option below the color wheel, and then I'll
| | 04:06 | drag this guy down a little bit in order to
darken up those colors as you can see right
| | 04:11 | there. I'll also make them little more orange
by dragging this color in a clockwise direction.
| | 04:16 | And then finally I want to make it more
saturated so I'll switch back to the saturation icon
| | 04:21 | right there and I'll drag this guy farther out in
order to add a little bit of saturation, as you can see.
| | 04:28 | So now that I have a better fit, I'll go
ahead and re-link the colors and make any of the
| | 04:33 | further modifications I want to; for example,
I might infuse the shirts with a little more
| | 04:36 | yellow as you see here.
| | 04:38 | When you're done all you need to do is click
on the OK button and Illustrator goes ahead
| | 04:42 | and recolors that artwork.
| | 04:44 | And now I'll click off the T-
shirts in order to deselect them.
| | 04:47 | And that, friends, is the quickest way to
automatically recolor selected artwork by working inside
| | 04:53 | the familiar lab color
wheel here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Recoloring with the help of swatch groups| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you another way to
recolor artwork--and this is a really great
| | 00:04 | method--that relies on a combination of
Color Groups, along with a Color Guide panel.
| | 00:10 | So I am going to start things off by selecting
the two T-shirts in the third column and I'll
| | 00:14 | create a Color Group based on the selected
colors by switching over to the Swatches panel
| | 00:20 | and then clicking on the little
folder icon at the bottom of the panel.
| | 00:24 | I'll go ahead and name this Shades of blue,
let's say, and I'll make sure that Selected
| | 00:29 | Artwork is turned on, and then I'll click OK in
order to create a series of colors inside of this group.
| | 00:36 | Now turns out we don't actually need the final
one, so I'll press Ctrl+Shift+D or Command+Shift+D
| | 00:41 | on a Mac to deselect the artwork, and then
I'll get rid of this guy right here because
| | 00:46 | he's already duplicated by the rich black
swatch. So I'll just drag it to the trash.
| | 00:51 | Now let's create a new group of
colors, this time based on red.
| | 00:55 | So I'll go ahead and select the existing
shades of blue group and that will go ahead and turn
| | 00:59 | it into a harmony here
inside the Color Guide panel.
| | 01:03 | Now I'll switch back to Swatches and I'll
select this shade of red as my base color.
| | 01:09 | And now if I go back to the Color Guide panel
I should see that the entire harmony is updated,
| | 01:15 | based on that red that I just like selected.
| | 01:17 | And so now I'll go ahead and save off this
row of colors right here as the swatches group
| | 01:22 | by clicking on this little icon in the
lower right corner of the Color Guide panel.
| | 01:28 | Now you won't see anything happen right away,
because you've made the Color Group inside
| | 01:32 | the Swatches panel.
| | 01:33 | So go back to the Swatches panel and
you'll notice a new group right there.
| | 01:37 | It will not have a name; it
will just be called Color Group 1.
| | 01:40 | If you double-click on the folder icon,
that's going to bring up the Edit Colors dialog box
| | 01:46 | and then what you'd have to do in order to
name this group is expand the dialog box so
| | 01:52 | that you can see the
names of the groups over here.
| | 01:54 | Then you would have to enter a new name
and click on this little hard drive icon.
| | 01:58 | Or a simpler way to work, if all you want
to do is change the name of the group, then
| | 02:02 | the easier way to work is make sure the
group is selected here inside the Swatches panel
| | 02:06 | once again, then go to the panel's fly-out
menu and choose Color Group Options. And that
| | 02:12 | will go ahead and bring up this Color Group
Options dialog box, and then I could just call
| | 02:17 | this guy Shades of red of
course, and then click OK.
| | 02:20 | All right, now let's put that group to
work in order to recolor this artwork.
| | 02:25 | If you're working with me go ahead and
select the third column of T-shirts, both the top
| | 02:28 | one and the bottom one.
| | 02:30 | Then I'll go ahead and scroll over a little
bit so that I can keep track of these selected
| | 02:34 | shirts, and I'll go up to the
Recolor Artwork icon and click on it.
| | 02:38 | Now for this trick to work you need to be
able to see your Color Groups, so go ahead
| | 02:42 | and expand the dialog box if necessary, and
then all you have to do is click on Shades
| | 02:48 | of red and the deed is done.
| | 02:50 | Illustrator just goes ahead and automatically
reassigns the colors and it does so intelligently,
| | 02:55 | so it's finding analogous
colors in the new Color Group.
| | 02:58 | And again if this isn't exactly the color scheme
you're looking for, then you can make modifications.
| | 03:04 | And in my case what I am going to do is I
am going to find that color--I think it's
| | 03:08 | this one once again--and in fact just to make
sure I'll select this tool in the lower right
| | 03:13 | corner here and I'll click on that color bar and sure
enough there are my folds, which is one I am looking.
| | 03:19 | I'll go ahead and turn the tool off now by
once again clicking on it. And now I'll just
| | 03:23 | modify this color using the HSB values.
| | 03:26 | So the first thing I am going to do is darken
the color by reducing the B value, and notice
| | 03:31 | by the way you have to releases the slider
triangle in order to see things update on screen.
| | 03:35 | I don't want it to be quite that dark so
I'll make it a little brighter and I'll increase
| | 03:40 | the Saturation as well. Again you can
absolutely go your own way and make whatever decisions
| | 03:45 | you like, but that looks pretty darn good to
me. And now I'll go ahead and click OK in the
| | 03:50 | order to apply my changes.
| | 03:52 | Now notice that Shades of red is appearing in
italics because after all I made a modification
| | 03:58 | to one of the colors.
| | 03:59 | So Illustrator is asking me do I want to save my
changes to the swatch group Shades of red before closing.
| | 04:05 | If you click Yes, you will
update the Shades of red group.
| | 04:09 | If you click No, you'll leave the group
alone but you will recolor the artwork.
| | 04:14 | So clicking No still goes ahead and changes
the blue T-shirts to red as you can see here.
| | 04:20 | The only thing I didn't do was update that one
color swatch inside of the Shades of red group.
| | 04:26 | All right, now I'll click off the artwork
to deselect it, and that's how you recolor
| | 04:30 | artwork by creating color groups
with the help of the Color Guide panel.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Changing the color-assignment order| 00:00 | In this movie I will show you how to change the
order in which colors are assigned from a Color Group.
| | 00:05 | And I'll demonstrate this
feature on this final column of shirts.
| | 00:09 | Now imagine that I want
these shirts to be green.
| | 00:13 | Well, I'll go ahead and click on the original
Shades of blue group here inside the Swatches
| | 00:17 | panel. and that once again sets it up as a
harmony rule here inside the Color Guide panel.
| | 00:23 | Now I'll switch back to Swatches
and I'll select green as my key color.
| | 00:27 | And the swatch that makes the
most sense to me is this one here:
| | 00:30 | C75, M0, Y100 and K0.
| | 00:34 | So I'll go ahead and
click on it to make it active.
| | 00:36 | Then I'll switch back to the Color Guide panel,
you can see is now a key color for this new
| | 00:40 | harmony; and so I'll click on this little
icon down here on the lower right corner of
| | 00:44 | the panel in order to save off those
shades of green as new a Color Group.
| | 00:50 | Then I'll go back to the Swatch panel,
scroll down to the bottom of the list; you'll see
| | 00:54 | this new color group called
'Color Group 1' in my case.
| | 00:58 | Go ahead and click on it to make it active.
| | 01:00 | If you want to rename it, go ahead and choose
the Color Group Options command from the Fly-out menu.
| | 01:05 | And I'll call this one of course Shades of
green; not feeling too terribly creative today.
| | 01:10 | So go ahead and click OK and now I'll select these
2 final T-shirts over here on the right-hand side.
| | 01:17 | I'll go ahead and scroll my artwork over once
again so that I can keep track of what I'm doing.
| | 01:21 | Now I'll click on the Recolor Artwork icon in
order to bring up the Recolor Artwork dialog
| | 01:26 | box; and now I'll click on Shades of green
in order to recolor the artwork. And just like
| | 01:33 | that my work is done.
| | 01:34 | But let's say I want to shuffle
colors around a little bit here.
| | 01:38 | Notice these arrows, they are showing that
this shade of blue is being mapped to this
| | 01:43 | green right there, which is
the first green inside the Group.
| | 01:47 | And then the second blue is being mapped to
the second green inside the group and so forth.
| | 01:53 | Notice this last item, this black bar, is not
being mapped to any color--hence it does not
| | 01:58 | have an arrowhead. And that's because
Illustrator automatically protects blacks and white.
| | 02:04 | If that's not what you want, then go ahead
and click on this little Color Reduction Options
| | 02:08 | icon to bring up this dialog box and then
turn off in our case the Black checkbox and
| | 02:14 | click OK. And now you'll go ahead and map the
black lines in the T-shirts to a dark shade of green.
| | 02:21 | That's not what I want however, so I am going
to go ahead and click on that icon again and
| | 02:25 | turn Black back on and
click OK in order to unmap it.
| | 02:29 | If you want unmap any other color, all you
have to do is click on one of these arrows.
| | 02:33 | For example, if I don't want to remap this
light shade of blue here, I can just click
| | 02:37 | on the arrow to turn it off and now all of
those blues remain blue inside of my artwork.
| | 02:44 | If you want to map the color again, just go
ahead and click on the arrow to turn it back on.
| | 02:48 | Then you have these icons down here,
notice this guy, Randomly change color order, and
| | 02:54 | Randomly change saturation and brightness.
| | 02:57 | If you click on Randomly change color order, you're
just going to remap the colors in a different order.
| | 03:02 | So you're just switching your greens around
randomly as they relate to the original blues.
| | 03:07 | And if you click on Randomly change
saturation and brightness, then you are going to end
| | 03:11 | up predictably changing the saturation
and brightness values across the board.
| | 03:16 | Now if you end up making a mess of your artwork,
by the way, there are a couple of different
| | 03:21 | ways to fix things.
| | 03:22 | One is to just go ahead and click on
Shades of green again--notice that it's Italic.
| | 03:26 | But if you click on the green bars again,
you'll reset the colors to the way they looked
| | 03:30 | before and Shades of green will no longer
appear Italic, thereby showing you that no
| | 03:35 | changes have been made.
| | 03:37 | What if we make a complete mess of things,
like I'll click on the Brights' group here
| | 03:42 | in order to apply this hideous Color
scheme here, and then let's say I'll switch over to
| | 03:46 | the Edit panel and I make some more
very terrifying adjustments like so.
| | 03:52 | And then it occurs to me that
this is an unmitigated disaster.
| | 03:55 | Well, you don't really have an Undo inside
this dialog box, but you do have a Revert,
| | 04:00 | and you get to it in a kind of weird way.
| | 04:03 | You click on this little eyedropper icon right
here, which might make you think you actually
| | 04:08 | do something with it, like it's a tool. And
it does say Get colors from selected art.
| | 04:13 | But what really does is it reverts
the colors to their original appearance.
| | 04:18 | Then you switch back to Assign, click on Shades
of green to apply it, and go on your merry way.
| | 04:24 | Now what I want to do is I want to swap the
green of the bottom T-shirt with the green
| | 04:29 | of the top T-shirt, both inside the T-shirt
and where the folds are concerned as well.
| | 04:35 | So I need to find them using this
little magnifying glass icon here.
| | 04:39 | So I'll click on it, and notice that
automatically turns off the Recolor Art checkbox by the way.
| | 04:44 | Now this color is assigned to the
top letters; I want to leave it alone.
| | 04:48 | And this color here is assigned to the
bottom letters. Whereas this color is the interior
| | 04:54 | of the bottom shirt and this color right
here I believe is the interior of the top shirt.
| | 04:59 | So I need to swap those two.
| | 05:01 | And then this color here is the folds of
bottom shirt and this color here is the folds of
| | 05:06 | the top shirt, so I
want to swap them as well.
| | 05:07 | And you do that by dragging the greens around.
| | 05:11 | So first of all turn off the magnifying
glass there, and then I want to grab this guy and
| | 05:15 | switch him with that guy, so I'll just drag
and drop and then I'll go ahead and switch
| | 05:19 | those two with each other.
| | 05:21 | And then I want to do the same
with this green and this one.
| | 05:24 | Now I'll go ahead and swap
them with each other as well.
| | 05:27 | So you have this high degree of control
over exactly how these colors are mapped.
| | 05:33 | All right, now I want to make one more
modification to the color of the top folds, and I believe
| | 05:39 | if I grab my magnifying glass once again
and click on this bar--yes, that's them--so I
| | 05:43 | need to change this Shade of green right there.
| | 05:45 | I'll now click on magnifying glass again to
turn it off, with that green selected. I'll
| | 05:51 | go ahead and reduce the brightness value,
not quite that much, may be to right about
| | 05:55 | there, let's try that. And I'll increase the
Saturation as well until I get this effect.
| | 06:02 | So once I'm happy with the appearance of
these colors, I'll go ahead and click OK.
| | 06:07 | Again, Illustrator is going to ask me if I
want to go ahead and save my changes to that
| | 06:13 | Swatch group, Shades of
green this time, before closing.
| | 06:16 | I don't want to do that.
| | 06:18 | So I'll just go ahead and click on the No
button, and that leaves Color group alone.
| | 06:21 | However, it still ends up
re-coloring the artwork.
| | 06:24 | All right, now I'll go ahead and press Shift+Tab
to hide my panels and press Ctrl+0 or Command+0
| | 06:30 | on the Mac, in order to center out my artwork.
| | 06:33 | And there you have it, my bold new T-shirt
colors, thanks to my ability to automatically
| | 06:38 | recolor artwork in many
different ways, here inside Illustrator.
| | 06:42 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reducing the number of colors in your art| 00:00 | In this move I'll show you what to do if the
number of colors inside of a Color Group that
| | 00:04 | you want to use is less than the number of
colors currently assigned to the selected
| | 00:09 | objects, in which case you need to go ahead and
double up colors. And let me show you how that works.
| | 00:14 | Now what you're seeing here is the final
piece of artwork that we created at the end of the
| | 00:18 | previous chapter, but while this brownish
background works great with these blue shirts, if you
| | 00:24 | turn off the blue Ts layers here inside the
Layers panel you'll see that I have a brown
| | 00:28 | Ts layer below it, and now
we're losing the contrast.
| | 00:32 | So I need to assign a different
color scheme to the background.
| | 00:35 | And I am going to do so by Alt+Clicking or
Option+Clicking on the back drop layer in
| | 00:40 | order to select all of its path outlines.
| | 00:42 | And then even though the Recolor Artwork dialog
box is going to automatically hide these selection
| | 00:48 | edges, I'm going to manually hide them by
pressing Ctrl+H or Command+H on a Mac, and
| | 00:53 | that will just make it easier to show
you a before and after when we are done.
| | 00:57 | All right, now I'll go ahead and press Shift+
Tab to hide my right side panels, and then I'll
| | 01:01 | click on the Recolor Artwork
icon up here in the Control panel.
| | 01:05 | And what I want to do is work from this
Color Group right here, Shades of blue, which I've
| | 01:09 | created in advance. So I'll go
ahead and click on it to make it active.
| | 01:13 | And notice that the number of colors
just reduced here inside of the Colors list.
| | 01:19 | So I'll go ahead and click the eyedropper
icon so you can see them again, that will
| | 01:23 | restore the original colors.
| | 01:24 | You can see that we have eight colors in all and
we have a row for each one of those eight colors.
| | 01:31 | But as soon as I click on Shades of blue, we
still have a total of eight colors; however
| | 01:36 | they're doubling up as you can see.
| | 01:38 | So this grayish color here and this yellowish
color are both remapping to the slight shade
| | 01:43 | of blue and so forth.
| | 01:45 | You don't have to accept things that way if
you don't want to; you can change things around.
| | 01:50 | And you can also change the
order in which the colors are mapped.
| | 01:54 | Notice this little fly-out menu icon right
there, if you click on it, you'll see that
| | 01:58 | you can change the order in
which the colors are arranged.
| | 02:01 | So Hue - forward and Hue - backwar,d that means the
colors are going to be ordered according to their Hue.
| | 02:05 | Forward would be one direction, backwards is
going to be the other around the big color wheel.
| | 02:10 | And then we have Lightness - dark to
light or Lightness - light to dark.
| | 02:13 | I am going to go with Lightness - light to dark
like, so I'm putting the brightest shade of blue on top.
| | 02:19 | Now I am not very happy with the way these
colors are organized here so I'm going to
| | 02:24 | switch my Colors option from Auto to All.
| | 02:27 | And what that's going to do is it's going
to re-expand the list as you see here, so
| | 02:31 | only the first four shades of brown are
getting mapped to shades of blue and the other colors
| | 02:37 | are staying the same as they were before.
| | 02:39 | And this allows me now to drag-and-
drop the colors in a different order.
| | 02:43 | So I am going to drag this guy up and drop him at
the top of the list, so he's mapped to the light blue.
| | 02:49 | And then I'll grab this yellow and I'll drag
it and drop it up there as well so it's also
| | 02:54 | mapped to the light blue.
| | 02:56 | And then I'll just kind of move this dialog
box over so I can tell if I am getting the
| | 03:01 | right effect or not.
| | 03:02 | And I suspect that I want this light shade
of brown to map to this color here and then
| | 03:07 | this dark shade of brown
to map to the dark blue.
| | 03:10 | That seems to make a lot more sense.
| | 03:12 | Now notice what that does is it creates two
empty rows right there, which is just fine,
| | 03:17 | you don't have to use them.
| | 03:18 | That doesn't mean white is mapping to anything that
just means there is no color action going on at this point.
| | 03:24 | And then the dark shade of gray, which is
this dark stuff over here on the right hand side,
| | 03:29 | is mapping to nothing.
| | 03:31 | And if you wanted to you could go ahead and
turn off its arrow as well and if you do that
| | 03:35 | by the way--if I click on the arrow to turn
off, which doesn't really have any effect inside
| | 03:40 | of the illustrations because it wasn't
mapping to a different color in the first place. But
| | 03:43 | now if I click on this little dialog box
icon here, notice that the Grays checkbox is now
| | 03:49 | turned on, because Illustrator thinks that
I want to protect Shades of gray, Which is
| | 03:54 | just fine, I just want you to see
that that's the way things work.
| | 03:56 | I am going to go ahead and
Cancel out the dialog box.
| | 03:59 | One more thing that I want to show you:
notice that you can drag individual colors if you
| | 04:04 | want to, so I could grab this guy and drag
him to a new location like so, or you can
| | 04:09 | go ahead and move all of the colors in a row
by dragging from this little doohickey over
| | 04:13 | here on the left hand side of the row.
| | 04:16 | So if I drag that thing down and drop it
into place then I move both of those colors.
| | 04:20 | If you just want to move some colors
independently of others then you can Shift+Click in order
| | 04:25 | to select multiple colors like so and then
you would just drag on one of the Color Swatches
| | 04:30 | in order to move those
guys back into place.
| | 04:32 | All right, so now that I have the effect I am
looking for I'll go ahead and click on the OK button.
| | 04:37 | Illustrator will ask if I want to save my
changes to the Shades of blue group, I don't
| | 04:42 | so I'll just go ahead and click the No
button, and that tells Illustrator to go ahead and
| | 04:47 | continue to recolor my
artwork, just not change the group.
| | 04:51 | And to give you a sense of what we've
accomplished here, I'll press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on the
| | 04:54 | Mac, that's the original coloring
associated with the background art.
| | 04:58 | And then if I press Ctrl+Shift+C or Command+Shift
+C on a Mac, that's the new coloring, which does
| | 05:03 | a much better job of
setting off our brown T-shirts.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying tints and shades of a single swatch| 00:00 | In this movie, I will show you how to
reverse the colors of the T-shirt on right, so it's
| | 00:04 | a dark T-shirt with light trim.
| | 00:06 | And I will also show you how to switch out
the background so that it's all tints and
| | 00:10 | shades of a single swatch, as in the case
of this final version of the artwork here.
| | 00:16 | All right, so I will switch back to the art
that I created in the previous movie, and then
| | 00:20 | I will bring up my right side panels by
pressing Shift+Tab, and I'll lock down the backdrop
| | 00:25 | layer in order to protect it. And then I
will press Shift+Tab again in order to hide the
| | 00:29 | panels and I will marquee the shirt like
so, in order to select all of its objects.
| | 00:35 | Doesn't look like it's selected because I
had hidden my selection edges, so I will press
| | 00:39 | Ctrl+H or Command+H on
the Mac to bring them back.
| | 00:43 | Now I will click on Recolor Artwork icon in
order to bring up the Recolor Art dialog box.
| | 00:47 | I am going to make some
very quick modifications here.
| | 00:50 | I am going to drag this color up to this
bar right there, so that's going to switch out
| | 00:55 | those two, and then I will grab that same
color swatch and I will switch it out with a top
| | 00:59 | one in order to create this effect here.
| | 01:02 | So in each case, Illustrator is
swapping those colors with each other.
| | 01:06 | Now the only remaining problem is that the
text here should be dark instead of light.
| | 01:12 | And I want it to be darker than the T-shift
surface itself, which is this top color right
| | 01:18 | here, so you can see that I have gone ahead
and switched my CMYK values, which are 45,
| | 01:23 | 60, 80, 40, just need to remember that.
| | 01:26 | Now I will click on this lighter brown in
order to select it and I will dial in those
| | 01:30 | same first three color values: 45 for Cyan,
60 for Magenta, and 80 for Yellow, and then
| | 01:37 | I will crank the Black value up to 70% in order to
produce this effect here. And now I will click OK.
| | 01:43 | So as you can see, Re-coloring Artwork
becomes a pretty simple operation after a while.
| | 01:48 | All right, now I want to recolor the
background behind the left hand shirt.
| | 01:51 | So I will press Shift+Tab in order to
bring back my right side panels, and this time I
| | 01:56 | am going to lock the brown Ts layer, and
then I am going to unlock the backdrop layer.
| | 02:00 | And now I will press Shift+Tab again in order
to hide that panel and I will marquee across
| | 02:06 | the artboard like so in order to select the
background paths on the first artboard only.
| | 02:11 | And then I will once again click in the
Recolor Artwork icon and I will move the dialog box
| | 02:15 | over to the right, so I can see what I am doing.
| | 02:18 | Now this time I want to work with a specific
shade of green and it happens to be this second
| | 02:22 | swatch inside of the Bird of Paradise group.
| | 02:26 | So I will go ahead and select
that group to make it active.
| | 02:28 | This is an example of a case in which I have
selected a Color group that has far more colors
| | 02:34 | in it than does the selected artwork.
| | 02:36 | However, I want fewer colors still.
| | 02:38 | I just want this Shade of green and that's
it, so I am going to drag it up and swap it
| | 02:43 | with that Shade of red right there, and then
I am going to change Colors from Auto to 1.
| | 02:50 | Now you need to decide how Illustrator is
calculating the different tints and shades.
| | 02:55 | Now by default it's creating tints of this
base color only; that is to say, lighter versions
| | 03:00 | of the color, but not darker.
| | 03:02 | And the only reason we are retaining the darkness
around the border is because Black is protected.
| | 03:07 | However, you can change that.
| | 03:09 | So if you hover next to this little collection
of colors, you will see a down-pointing arrowhead;
| | 03:13 | go ahead and click on it and you'll see
these various options that you can choose from.
| | 03:18 | Now by default Scale Tints is selected, but let
me show you what's going on with all of these.
| | 03:23 | I will select Exact, which means that you
are going to boil all of the colors down to a
| | 03:27 | single color and that's it, the one color
swatch. But you are not going to see it happen
| | 03:31 | on the fly, which is a little
bit frustrating in my opinion.
| | 03:35 | What you have to do is click off the
menu in order to apply the settings.
| | 03:39 | So you can now see everything but black
is turning to that one shade of green.
| | 03:43 | If you want to preserve the tints inside
of the existing colors--that is preserve the
| | 03:48 | relative brightness differences--then
you'd select the second option and click off of
| | 03:53 | it in order to apply it. But notice now that
we have very little distinction between these
| | 03:58 | shapes right here--you may not even be
able to see them--and the background green.
| | 04:03 | Whereas, if you go ahead and scale the tints,
then you are going to create more distance
| | 04:07 | between those tint values, so I will go
ahead and select that third option and then click
| | 04:12 | off of it and you can see that these
guys right here show up a lot better.
| | 04:17 | Now the other two remaining options here are
dimmed unless you turn off Preserve Spot Colors.
| | 04:22 | Now this may seem weird, because this
document doesn't contain any spot colors.
| | 04:26 | But the idea is that were I using Spot colors,
then I would not be able to change the shades
| | 04:31 | of those spot colors-- in other words, make them
darker--nor would I be able to shift the Hues.
| | 04:36 | But if you are working inside of a document
that's strictly CMYK, then feel free to turn
| | 04:40 | that checkbox off and then you
have those two more options available.
| | 04:44 | So if I select Tints and Shades and once
again click off the menu, then I am going to get
| | 04:49 | some darker colors, as you can see here,
darker variations on that green. And then if I select
| | 04:55 | Hue+Shift and click off, then I am going to get
a little bit of Hue variations going on as well.
| | 05:01 | I am not looking for the Hue variations for
this one, so I will just go ahead and choose
| | 05:05 | Tints and Shades, click off in order to see
the Preview. Looks great, and then click OK
| | 05:10 | to apply your change.
| | 05:12 | Now at this point Illustrator is going to
ask me if I want to update the group Bird
| | 05:15 | of Paradise; that would be a terrible idea.
| | 05:18 | So I will go ahead and click on the No button.
| | 05:20 | However that still goes ahead and re-colors
my artwork, as I can see, if I deselect it
| | 05:25 | by pressing Ctrl+Shift+A or
Command+Shift+A on the Mac.
| | 05:29 | And that's how you distill selected artwork
down to tints and shades of a single color
| | 05:34 | swatch, here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Recoloring artwork that contains gradients| 00:00 | In this final movie I'll show you how to
recolor artwork that contains gradients.
| | 00:05 | And we've got a few gradients going on here.
| | 00:07 | There is this live-paint object in the foreground
that contains a total of three radial gradients,
| | 00:12 | and then I've got another radial gradient
assigned to the rectangle in the background.
| | 00:16 | We'll start with the rectangle
because it's easier to work with.
| | 00:19 | So I'll start things off by twirling open
the complex knot layer here inside the Layers
| | 00:23 | panel, and then I'll meatball
the path at the back of the stack.
| | 00:26 | And next I'll click on the Recolor
Artwork icon up here in the Control panel.
| | 00:30 | I don't need access to my Color Group so
I'll click the left pointing triangle so I have
| | 00:35 | a little more room to work on screen here.
| | 00:37 | Notice that we have a total of just three
colors in all; and those are the three key
| | 00:43 | colors, the three color stops, in a gradient.
| | 00:45 | So in other words you don't have to worry
about all the steps in between; Illustrator
| | 00:50 | will take care of that automatically.
| | 00:52 | The Black is protected so it won't change.
| | 00:55 | So we're really just left with this kind of
plum color and this lighter purple as well.
| | 00:59 | I am going to modify both by switching to
the Edit panel and then I'll link my colors
| | 01:04 | together by clicking on the chain icon and
I'll drag this key color out toward the edge
| | 01:09 | of the circle here on the right hand side in
order to change the colors inside the gradient
| | 01:14 | to a deeply saturated red.
| | 01:16 | I'll also go ahead and
increase the Brightness just a little.
| | 01:20 | Probably not that much;
I'll take it a little bit down.
| | 01:23 | But I want to have a fierce
red at work in the background.
| | 01:25 | So you can see even when you're working with
gradients inside of Illustrator it's a simple
| | 01:30 | matter to go ahead and recolor that artwork.
| | 01:34 | That's really all there is to it, at
least where the rectangle is concerned.
| | 01:37 | So I'll go head and click the OK
button in order to apply that change.
| | 01:41 | Next I'll click on the outline of the live
paint object to select it and then I'll once
| | 01:45 | again click on Recolor Artwork to
bring up the Recolor Artwork dialog box.
| | 01:49 | This time we've got a total of 11 colors,
just one--the shade of black there--is protected.
| | 01:56 | Everything else is up for grabs.
| | 01:58 | So I'll go ahead and switch over to Edit and
I'll once again go ahead and link my colors
| | 02:03 | together by clicking on the chain icon and
then I'll drag this key color. You can really
| | 02:08 | drag any of them you want,
| | 02:10 | but I'm going to drag his key color to a shade
of yellow. Something like this actually should
| | 02:15 | work out pretty good, might introduce a little bit of
orange to that yellow so it doesn't get too greenish.
| | 02:21 | And then I'll once again increase the
Brightness of all those colors by dragging the slider
| | 02:26 | triangle below the lab color wheel.
| | 02:29 | Bear in mind, that's going to brighten all of
the colors except that black, which is locked down.
| | 02:34 | Now you can see that even though the color
scheme looks potentially great--let's say
| | 02:40 | I love it--we have that same old problem that
we encountered back in the intermediate course
| | 02:44 | where all of my gradients end up separating
inside of Live Paint object. But there's nothing
| | 02:49 | to be done about it inside this dialog box,
so I'll just go ahead and click OK in order
| | 02:53 | to recolor that artwork.
| | 02:55 | And then just so I can better see what I'm
doing I'll press Ctrl+H or Command+H on a
| | 02:59 | Mac to hide those selection edges.
| | 03:02 | And I'll switch to my Gradient tool, which I
can get by pressing the G key, and I'll drag
| | 03:07 | from right about here down and to the right,
just a little bit past the tip of the object.
| | 03:14 | And that ends up correcting my
gradients, but it also messes up the strokes.
| | 03:18 | So I'll click inside the Line Weight option and
change it to 2 pt, which is where it was at before.
| | 03:23 | And I'll also click in this second swatch
up here in the Control panel and change the
| | 03:29 | color to this rich black
that I've created in advance.
| | 03:33 | Now that doesn't seem to do anything. I'll
go ahead and press the Esc key in order
| | 03:37 | to hide that panel, and I'll zoom in on
the lower right region of my artwork.
| | 03:42 | And you can see that I've gone
an awfully light black stroke.
| | 03:46 | And that's an anomaly that's created by
the Drop Shadow, and here's how you solve it.
| | 03:51 | Switch to the Appearance panel--and you should
see the word Drop Shadow right there--go ahead
| | 03:55 | and click on it and just change any one of
these values. So I am going to raise the X
| | 03:59 | Offset value to 3 pt and then turn
on the Preview checkbox; and that ends up, as
| | 04:05 | you can see, taking care of the problems.
| | 04:07 | So now we've got nice rich black strokes
along with a lighter Drop Shadow, which is the way
| | 04:13 | it's supposed to be.
| | 04:14 | Now I'll take that X Offset value back down
to 2 pt, and I'll click on the OK button
| | 04:19 | in order to complete the effect.
| | 04:21 | All right, now I'll press Ctrl+0 or Command+
0 on the Mac in order to center my zoom; and
| | 04:26 | as you can see you may run into some problems
particularly with Live Paint objects and dynamic
| | 04:31 | effects, but otherwise it's as simple matter
to recolor artwork--even artwork that contains
| | 04:37 | gradients--here inside Illustrator.
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|
|
27. Calligraphic, Scatter, and Art BrushesPainting with path outlines| 00:00 | In the real-world, brushes are
tools that you pick up and paint with.
| | 00:05 | In Photoshop and other pixel-based programs,
a brush is a dollop or jumble of pixels that
| | 00:11 | you paint onto a layer.
| | 00:14 | As you paint, Photoshop repeats the
brush to simulate a real-world brush tip.
| | 00:19 | But, in Illustrator, a brush is yet
another variety of vector-based path outline.
| | 00:25 | In its simplest form, it is one path
stretched across the length of another.
| | 00:30 | In more complex forms, a brush is many paths
stretched or repeated across the length of another.
| | 00:37 | This means that you can select the
Paintbrush tool from the toolbox, select a brush from
| | 00:42 | the Brushes panel, and paint
away, but it gets even better.
| | 00:46 | You can take any existing path outline drawn
with any tool you like, and then apply a brush
| | 00:52 | from the Brushes panel as a stroke.
| | 00:55 | You can apply a brush to the outline of live
editable text, or if you like, you can turn
| | 01:01 | the text into a brush and stretch
the text across the path outline.
| | 01:05 | Plus, brushes respond to variable width input,
assigned either by painting with a pressure-sensitive
| | 01:12 | tablet, or with the help of the Width tool.
| | 01:16 | Brushes are as usual amazingly versatile and
powerful as I will demonstrate at length in this chapter.
| | 01:23 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Introducing the Brushes panel| 00:00 | In this movie I'll introduce you to the
Brushes panel, as well as the five different styles
| | 00:05 | of brushes that are
available to you inside Illustrator.
| | 00:08 | Over the course of this project we will take
this file here with its couple of path outlines,
| | 00:14 | its three lines of editable text, and its
patterned background; and we'll transform it
| | 00:18 | into this kind of large garment tag.
| | 00:22 | With the exception of the pattern fills,
everything you're seeing is a function of brushes.
| | 00:27 | I'll go and switch back to my base artwork.
| | 00:28 | To get to the Brushes panel you go to the
Window menu and you choose the Brushes command.
| | 00:33 | You also have this handy keyboard shortcut
of F5, which is the same shortcut that brings
| | 00:38 | up the Brushes panel inside Photoshop.
| | 00:41 | I have a very long list of brushes that are
included along with this document, and like
| | 00:46 | many other elements inside of Illustrator,
Brushes are saved along with documents; but
| | 00:51 | you can also load them up from libraries.
| | 00:54 | And you do that by clicking a little Library
icon down here in the bottom-left corner of
| | 00:58 | the panel, and then you choose the library
from the pop-up menu, and then you can drag
| | 01:02 | and drop brushes from those libraries into your
Brushes panel in order to add them to your document.
| | 01:08 | I'll go and press the Esc key in order to
hide those menus. And by the way, these brushes
| | 01:13 | that you see here for the most part were called
from the libraries that ship along with Illustrator.
| | 01:18 | Now as I was mentioning, there's five
different kinds of brushes, starting with this top row
| | 01:24 | right here which are the calligraphic brushes. And
I'll demonstrate how a calligraphic brush works.
| | 01:29 | By selecting this top stroke right there,
I'll press Ctrl+H or Command+H on a Mac to hide
| | 01:34 | the selection edge just so it doesn't get in
our way, and I'll select the final calligraphic
| | 01:39 | stroke that I created called 30 pt
| | 01:42 | Oval. And you can see that it goes ahead
and traces a 30-point tall oval that's at a
| | 01:47 | little bit of an angle along the path outline
in order to create a calligraphic brushstroke.
| | 01:53 | And we'll be seeing more of
those in the very next movie.
| | 01:56 | I'll bring back my Brushes panel by clicking
a little Brush icon there in the icon column.
| | 02:01 | In this next row we have the scatter brushes,
and what they do is repeat a little graphic
| | 02:05 | object along the course of your path outline.
| | 02:08 | For example, I might go ahead and click on
3D Geometric 1, and you can see that those little
| | 02:14 | 3D hexagons repeat over and over again.
| | 02:18 | This next item, Basic, isn't actually a brush.
| | 02:21 | In fact, it turns off the Brush.
| | 02:23 | So if you click on Basic, you're going to
return, in my case, to this one point uniform stroke.
| | 02:29 | Next in the list are the calligraphic
brushes and they take a series of path outlines and
| | 02:35 | scratch them over the course of a path.
| | 02:38 | Probably the best example, in order just to
get a rough sense of how they work, is this
| | 02:42 | guy Grunge Brush Vector Pack 01.
| | 02:44 | I'll go head and select it.
| | 02:46 | You can see that it goes ahead and
stretches a series of path outlines over the length
| | 02:50 | of the selected path, and in many cases you
end up with a hand-painted effect like this
| | 02:55 | one here; or if I return to the Brushes panel and
scroll the list, there is this one called Text Divider 1.
| | 03:02 | I'll go ahead and select it and increase
my line weight to something like 12 points.
| | 03:06 | You can see that I end up
with this fancy ornament effect.
| | 03:10 | You can even assign text to a path as an art brush
and we'll see how that works in a future movie.
| | 03:15 | The forth kind of brush is the bristle brush,
and the default brush that you get when you
| | 03:20 | create a print document is Mop,
and it ends up looking like this.
| | 03:24 | Now the idea behind bristle brushes is that
they're designed to emulate real-world brushstrokes,
| | 03:30 | and what Illustrator does is lay down a series of
paths a different opacity levels on top of each other.
| | 03:36 | Then finally we've got
these pattern brushes here.
| | 03:40 | I'll go ahead and select African, because
it's fairly indicative, and you can see that
| | 03:44 | Illustrator is repeating a tile
pattern along the path outline.
| | 03:48 | And it actually scales the pattern so that it
fits the selected path, regardless of the line weight.
| | 03:53 | So I could take this line weight up to let's
say 6 points, and Illustrator is going to go
| | 03:58 | ahead and increase the thickness of the stroke
as well as scale each and every patterned tile.
| | 04:05 | Now just for the record, in this chapter we'll
be working with calligraphic brushes, scatter
| | 04:10 | brushes, and art brushes.
| | 04:12 | I will save the bristle brushes and the
pattern brushes for a chapter in the mastery course.
| | 04:17 | So there's your
introduction to the Brushes panel.
| | 04:20 | In the next movie I'll show you how to
create and apply a calligraphic brush.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying and editing a calligraphic brush| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to both
apply and customize a Calligraphic Brush, and we'll
| | 00:05 | be assigning that brush to this line of
editable text, which works inside of Illustrator as
| | 00:12 | long as you approach it from the proper angle.
| | 00:15 | So I'll start by clicking on the baseline of
the text with the Black Arrow tool to select
| | 00:19 | it, then I'll bring up the Brushes panel, and I'll go
ahead and assign this guy right there 5 pt. Oval.
| | 00:26 | Now that's not going to do anything, and the
reason that this doesn't work is that Illustrator
| | 00:31 | has nothing to latch the brush onto; you can't
brush individual characters of type, in other words.
| | 00:38 | So what you've got to do is switch over to
the Appearance panel, and I am going start
| | 00:42 | by double-clicking on the word Characters in
order to select the text with the Type tool.
| | 00:47 | What I want to do is get rid of this fill,
so I am just going to drag the fill to the
| | 00:51 | Trashcan in order to set it to none.
| | 00:54 | Then I'll double-click on Type No
Appearance right there in order to switch back to the
| | 00:58 | text object, and then I'll add a stroke by
clicking on the Add New Stroke icon down here
| | 01:03 | in the bottom-left corner of the panel.
| | 01:05 | Now that we have a stroke to work with,
I can assign a Calligraphic Brush to it.
| | 01:10 | So I'll go ahead and once again click on 5
pt. Oval, and we end up getting this effect here.
| | 01:15 | Now let's say you want to go ahead and
customize this brush, there's two ways to approach that.
| | 01:20 | One is to double-click on the Calligraphic
Brush in order to modify the settings associated
| | 01:25 | with that brush as well as the selected text;
and the other option is to apply a local adjustment
| | 01:31 | just to the selected object.
| | 01:32 | And if you want to do that, then you would
click on this little icon down here at the
| | 01:36 | bottom of the Brushes panel Options of Selected
Object and that brings up the Stroke Options dialog box.
| | 01:43 | Now notice that we do indeed have a
Calligraphic Brush. Calligraphic Brush by the way is a
| | 01:48 | round brush, it can be either
perfectly round or elliptical, as you see here.
| | 01:54 | And it gets repeated over the course of a
path outline or in a case of this editable
| | 01:59 | text, the character outlines.
| | 02:01 | Now notice that I have the Preview checkbox
turned on so I can see the results of my modifications.
| | 02:06 | You can change the Roundness of the brush
by dragging on these little handles inside
| | 02:10 | this brush preview, and you can change
its angle by dragging on the little arrow.
| | 02:16 | What I want to do is enter some
specific Angle and Roundness values.
| | 02:19 | So I'll set the Angle to -30 degrees for example,
and then I'll set this item which is by default
| | 02:26 | set to Fixed; it's set to
Random for this specific brush.
| | 02:29 | I want to leave it set to Random so I have some
random variation associated with the angle of my brush.
| | 02:35 | And if you're working with a pressure
sensitive device, such as a Wacom tablet; then you can
| | 02:39 | go with any of these settings; Pressure
through Rotation; depending on your stylus.
| | 02:45 | For that to work however, I would've had to have
drawn this path using a pressure sensitive device.
| | 02:50 | And of course that's impossible when
you're working with characters of editable text.
| | 02:55 | Anyway, I am going to set that item to Random
and then I'll set the Variation value to 90 degrees.
| | 03:00 | and what that means is the angle can now
vary from -30 degrees plus 90 degrees, which would be 60 degrees, or
| | 03:08 | -30 degrees minus 90 degrees, which would be -120 degrees.
| | 03:13 | For the moment here I am going
to set the Roundness value to 50%,
| | 03:16 | leave the next item set to Random, and
then increase the Variation value to 40%.
| | 03:22 | And I'll also increase the Size value here to
30 points, so we can see the difference here.
| | 03:27 | And notice these little
brush previews right there.
| | 03:30 | The black brush is the -30.
50%, 30 pt. brush.
| | 03:36 | The gray brush over here on the left is one
extreme variation; the one over here on the
| | 03:41 | right is another extreme variation.
| | 03:43 | Now notice that the Variation value, in the
case of both Roundness and Size, cannot be
| | 03:47 | higher than the base value.
| | 03:49 | So if I reduce the Roundness value to 25% for
example, Illustrator goes ahead and automatically
| | 03:55 | resets the Variation value to what it was
when I first began modifying this brush.
| | 04:01 | So I can take it as high
as 25% now, but no higher.
| | 04:05 | And then finally, I'm going to set the Size
value to 10 pt. for this effect, and I'm
| | 04:10 | going to switch from Fixed to Random once
again, and I am going to increase the Variation
| | 04:14 | value to 10 pts.
| | 04:17 | And notice what happens here--now you may
get a totally different result by the way.
| | 04:22 | What Illustrator is supposed to be able to
do is either increase the Size as much as
| | 04:27 | 10 points, so that it would go to 10 plus
10, 20 pt.; or reduce the Size as much as
| | 04:32 | 10 points which would take it down to 0 pt.
| | 04:35 | In my case, it's taking the brush stroke
only down; in your case, if you're working along
| | 04:40 | with me, it may be merely
increasing the brush size.
| | 04:43 | And that's because it's happening randomly, but
over the course of the entire character outlines.
| | 04:48 | So it's really actually uniform, it's just
that Illustrator is picking a random size
| | 04:53 | on the fly, and we're only going to see one random
variation while we're working in this dialog box.
| | 04:59 | So I might go ahead and take the Variation
value down to 7 pt. and then just click
| | 05:03 | OK; or you can modify the actual definition of
the brush, which gives you a little more flexibility.
| | 05:10 | Let me show you what I mean.
| | 05:11 | I'll go ahead and cancel out of here and then
I'll double-click on that Calligraphic Brush,
| | 05:15 | 5 pt. Oval, in order to modify its definition; and
I'll dial in those same values I entered a moment ago.
| | 05:22 | So -30 degree for the Angle value, 90 degree for Variation, I want
25% for the Roundness, I want a Variation of 25% as well.
| | 05:31 | I'll take that Size value up to 10 pt.,
I'll set it to Random, and then I'll change
| | 05:36 | the Variation value to 10 pt. as well. And
I end up getting a totally different effect
| | 05:42 | this time, but it is absolutely random.
| | 05:44 | And as long as we're here, we might as well
go ahead and rename this stroke as well; I'll
| | 05:48 | call it 10 pt. Oval instead
of 5, and then I'll click OK.
| | 05:52 | Illustrator will now ask me, do you want to
go ahead and apply this modification to the
| | 05:58 | stroke or do you want to leave the stroke
alone and just modify the definition of the
| | 06:02 | Calligraphic Brush?
| | 06:04 | Either one is okay, because even if you say
Leave Strokes--I'll just go ahead and click
| | 06:07 | Leave Strokes, so that it doesn't
change from its previous appearance.
| | 06:11 | Now if I go ahead and click on 10 pt.
Oval again in order to reapply it, I'll see the
| | 06:18 | result of my modifications.
| | 06:20 | And if you don't like this effect by the way
because we're applying random strokes, then
| | 06:25 | you can go ahead and click on
it again, and again, and again.
| | 06:28 | So every time you click on this brush, your stroke
is going to change inside the document. All right!
| | 06:34 | So I'm pretty happy with what I have here.
| | 06:36 | Now I am going to change the color of the
stroke, which is entirely acceptable by the way.
| | 06:41 | Calligraphic Brushes do not in
and of themselves convey any color.
| | 06:45 | So if you want to change the stroke you do
it like you usually do, just click the second
| | 06:49 | swatch up here in the Control panel, and
then I am going to select a color I've created
| | 06:52 | in advance which is called OW yellow.
| | 06:54 | The naming convention is based on the fact
that I've got this tile pattern called Orange
| | 06:59 | wedges and I used OW, Orange
wedges yellow, inside that pattern.
| | 07:04 | Anyway, I'll go ahead and select it in order
to change the color of my brush and then I'll
| | 07:08 | click on the first swatch here in order to
change the fill and I'll go ahead and set
| | 07:13 | it to this shade of green right here, C=75
M=0 Y=100 K=0, which is one of the default
| | 07:19 | swatches that's available to you
inside of Illustrator.
| | 07:23 | And there you have it.
| | 07:24 | That is how you go about applying and customizing a
Calligraphic Brush even to editable text here inside Illustrator.
| | 07:31 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying and scaling an art brush| 00:00 | In this movie we'll take our first look at
working with art brushes, which are easily
| | 00:05 | the most flexible kind of brushes--they're
my favorites anyway--inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:10 | So I'll go ahead and click on the baseline
of this text to select it, and then with the
| | 00:14 | Appearance panel open I'll go ahead and
create a new stroke by clicking on the fill--so I
| | 00:19 | create this new stroke directly above the
fill--and then I'll drop down to this Add
| | 00:23 | New Stroke icon and click on it, or you can take
advantage of that keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+/
| | 00:29 | or Command+Option+/ on the Mac.
| | 00:31 | Now I want this stroke to be a different color,
so I'll click on this color swatch there, and
| | 00:35 | I'll change it to the next swatch over OW
peach--and you may recall the OW is for Orange
| | 00:41 | Wedges. Go ahead and assign that color to
the stroke and then I'll bring up the Brushes
| | 00:45 | panel. And select from really any
one of this long list of brushes here.
| | 00:50 | I'm going to apply this one hand drawn brush
vector pack 02, and I end up getting this effect here.
| | 00:57 | Now it's a little hard to see, but it's
going to work out beautifully in the end, we just
| | 01:00 | need to do a better job of
offsetting it from its background.
| | 01:04 | So the first thing I'm going to do is
change the fill color from this bright green to a
| | 01:08 | darker shade of green, C90, M30, Y95, K30.
| | 01:11 | I think that will end up
producing a better result.
| | 01:15 | And now I'm going to add yet another
calligraphic brushstroke, by once again clicking on the
| | 01:20 | Add New Stroke icon.
| | 01:22 | I'll change the color of that stroke to that
same dark shade of green that I just assigned
| | 01:27 | to the fill, and then I'll select a different
calligraphic brushstroke--something thicker.
| | 01:33 | For example, I could go with something like
hand-drawn brush vector pack 03 in order to
| | 01:37 | produce this radical effect here. But the
effect I'm really looking for is something different.
| | 01:42 | And by the way, once you've assigned any kind
of brush to a stroke, you can access all of
| | 01:48 | these brushes from the Appearance panel. So
I'll go ahead and hide the Brushes panel at
| | 01:52 | this point. And I'll show you where the line
weight used to be, you'll now see this list of brushes.
| | 01:58 | So I could click on that icon and then
scroll up the list and select the one I'm really
| | 02:03 | looking for, which is Chalk-
Round, in order to apply it.
| | 02:07 | Now this is a more controlled effect obviously,
but it's not thick enough. So I'll go ahead
| | 02:12 | and press the Escape key in order
to hide that pop-up panel there.
| | 02:15 | There is a few different ways you can change
the thickness of an art brush. One is to bring
| | 02:19 | up the Brushes panel, and I can double-click
on Chalk-Round in order to modify both the
| | 02:24 | brush definition and potentially, the brush
that's assigned to my text. That ends up bringing
| | 02:30 | up a whopping big huge complex dialog box
that we'll take a look at in a future movie--
| | 02:35 | but that is one option.
| | 02:37 | Or you can apply a local adjustment to just
the selected stroke by clicking on this little
| | 02:42 | options icon down here at
the bottom of the Brush panel.
| | 02:46 | And notice that we have the Size option right
there, and if I turn on the Preview checkbox
| | 02:51 | I'll be able to see what I'm doing; and I
could increase the thickness of that brushstroke
| | 02:56 | like so, just by dragging up that Size value.
| | 03:00 | Let's say I wanted it to be 200% as thick
as it is by default; then I'll go ahead and
| | 03:05 | dial in 200%, you also have
this proportional checkbox.
| | 03:08 | Now the thing to bear in mind about any given
art brush is that it's actually just an elaborate
| | 03:15 | series of path outlines and those path outlines
get stretched along the course of the brushstroke.
| | 03:21 | If you want the stretching to happen not
only along the length of the path outline, but
| | 03:25 | you want it stretched widthwise as well,
then you turn on the proportional checkbox.
| | 03:30 | Now in our case that's going to give us a
ridiculous effect as you can see right here.
| | 03:34 | We end up covering up most of
our artwork with this brush.
| | 03:38 | And in order to get anything halfway decent, I
would have to take this size value to something
| | 03:42 | below 100%, which does deliver an interesting
result, not something I'm looking for however.
| | 03:49 | Where you're going to find proportional more
useful is let's say you have a representative
| | 03:52 | graphic, such as say a dolphin and you want to
make the dolphin bend across the path outline.
| | 03:58 | In that case you would turn proportional on, and that
way you don't stretch the dolphin, you just bend it.
| | 04:04 | Anyway for our purposes,
this isn't what we want.
| | 04:06 | And as it turns out there's an even simpler
way to scale a brush, so I'll go ahead and
| | 04:10 | Cancel out of this dialog box.
| | 04:13 | Another way to change the thickness of a
brush is to just change line weight value. So if
| | 04:18 | I increase the Line Weight from 1 pt. to 2
pt., then I'm going to increase the thickness
| | 04:24 | of my art brush by 200%.
| | 04:26 | All right, now finally I want to take this
calligraphic brush right here at the top of
| | 04:30 | the stack inside the Appearance panel, and I
want to make it better match the other brush
| | 04:35 | strokes so it's not quite so
uniform and perfect and so forth.
| | 04:39 | One way to do that would be
just to change out the stroke.
| | 04:42 | I could switch it to an art brush instead,
such as Charcoal-Varied for example, and that
| | 04:48 | will give me this effect here.
| | 04:49 | So you can see that there's just no end of
the kinds of effects you can achieve using
| | 04:54 | these art brushes, and what I just love about
them is that you can take plain old everyday
| | 05:00 | text like this set in Myriad Pro--which is
available to just about everybody on the planet
| | 05:06 | gets used a ton--and you can turn
it into something absolutely unique.
| | 05:11 | Or, I'll go ahead and press Ctrl+Z or
Command+Z on a Mac to undo that change.
| | 05:15 | I could make this stroke wiggle, so I could
take the calligraphic stroke and roughen it
| | 05:20 | up, and I'll do so by making sure that that
stroke is selected, and then I'll go up to
| | 05:25 | the Effect menu, I'll choose Distort
& Transform, and I'll choose Roughen.
| | 05:31 | And now I'll go ahead and enter a few settings
that I came up with in advance here. I'm going
| | 05:34 | to change the Size value to 3; I don't
wanted it to be 3%, however, I wanted it to be 3
| | 05:40 | points, so I'll switch
from Relative to Absolute.
| | 05:43 | I want the Detail value to be 8 per inch,
and then I want the Points to be set to Smooth,
| | 05:49 | and if I turn on the Preview checkbox, you
see that we end up getting this rougher effect
| | 05:54 | right here. That's applied to just the
calligraphic stroke and nothing else.
| | 05:59 | Now I'll go ahead and click OK
in order to accept that effect.
| | 06:03 | And that's how you apply and scale art brushes, as well
as roughen up a calligraphic brush here inside Illustrator.
| | 06:10 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying and editing a scatter brush| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you how to
apply and customize a scatter brush.
| | 00:05 | If you take a look at the final version of
the artwork here, you can see surrounding
| | 00:08 | the letters a series of these little starbursts,
or flowers if you will, that are scattered
| | 00:13 | around the perimeter of the characters.
| | 00:16 | And that is a function of a scatter brush.
And you can see that they vary in size; they
| | 00:22 | vary in terms of their spacing; they vary
in terms of their distance from the character
| | 00:26 | outlines; they even vary
in terms of their angles.
| | 00:30 | So let see how it's done.
| | 00:31 | I'll go ahead and switch over to my artwork
in progress here, and I'll click on the baseline
| | 00:35 | for my type, which is getting more
and more difficult to find actually.
| | 00:40 | And now I'll switch over to the Appearance
panel and I'll click on that hand-drawn brush
| | 00:44 | stroke right there in order to make it active,
so I can put the new stroke on top of it.
| | 00:49 | And then I'll click on the Add New Stroke icon
down here in the bottom-left corner of the panel.
| | 00:53 | And notice, for a brief moment--even though this is
a standard basic stroke--I have access to my brushes.
| | 01:00 | So, instead of a Line Weight value
here, I am seeing my list of brushes.
| | 01:04 | I'll go ahead and scroll up the list until
I find this scatter brush right here, random
| | 01:09 | sized flowers--which is included along with
this document--and I'll go ahead and click
| | 01:13 | on it in order to apply it.
| | 01:15 | And by the way, I'm using that same color
I used before, which is OW peach, and that's
| | 01:21 | going to serve us just fine. All right!
| | 01:23 | Now I want to make some modification to the
size and spacing associated with the scatter brush.
| | 01:28 | So I'll bring up the Brushes panel, and I
have one of two ways to work: I can go ahead and
| | 01:32 | double-click on the scatter brush itself,
if I want a modify it permanently, along with
| | 01:37 | how it's applied to my text. Or I can just
change how it's applied to the text, which
| | 01:42 | is what I want to do, by clicking on this
Options icon down here at the bottom of the panel.
| | 01:48 | And that brings up a fairly Byzantine list
of settings as you can see here, but they
| | 01:54 | turn out to be pretty
straightforward once you come to terms with them.
| | 01:57 | Now the first thing I want to do is turn on
the Preview checkbox so I could see what in
| | 02:00 | the world I'm doing.
| | 02:02 | Notice that Size Spacing Scanner and Rotation
are all set to random for this specific brush,
| | 02:08 | and that's very likely the way you're going
to work with just about any scatter brush.
| | 02:12 | You are going to have it set to Random that is,
but you can also fix the size for example--
| | 02:16 | in which case you get rid of that second value,
because you no longer have two limits associated
| | 02:23 | with the random variations.
| | 02:25 | Or if you're working with a pressure-
sensitive input device, you can assign Pressure all
| | 02:29 | the way through Rotation, which where this
text is concerned has no bearing whatsoever.
| | 02:34 | Anyway, I am going to leave this option set
to Random, and I want the size of these flowers
| | 02:39 | to come down a little bit.
| | 02:40 | So I am going to make the Minimum value--that
is lowest the size of any flower can go--30%,
| | 02:46 | and then I am going to set the highest value to
100%, and that's going to keep them in that range.
| | 02:52 | Now notice this time around, unlike what we
experienced with the Calligraphic brush--which
| | 02:58 | was random--but it was
only random one way at a time,
| | 03:02 | we're seeing something that makes a lot more
sense in my opinion. We are seeing the flowers
| | 03:06 | change in size on-the-fly throughout
the character outlines.
| | 03:10 | Now for Spacing, which is give out a space
between the flowers, I am going to reduce the
| | 03:13 | first body quite a bit to 20%, because
I really want them to be tightly packed.
| | 03:17 | And I'm going to take the upper value down
to 40%. And that's going to really squish them
| | 03:22 | in there, as you can see.
| | 03:24 | Scatter is the distance between the
flowers and the character outlines in this case.
| | 03:28 | It might be a path outline as well.
| | 03:31 | So, a Negative value is going to go inward
and the Positive is going to go outward. In
| | 03:36 | this case, by default, we have a huge spread
going on here. I am just going to tighten things
| | 03:41 | up by taking the minimum value up to -30%
and the maximum value down to 40%. And we
| | 03:48 | end up achieving this effect here.
| | 03:50 | The final value, Rotation, I don't really
give a darn about this value where these flowers
| | 03:55 | are concerned, you can play around with it
if you want to, it doesn't really make that
| | 03:59 | big of a visual difference.
| | 04:01 | What does make a difference
is the Colorization Method.
| | 04:04 | Right now it set to Tints, so that we can
create brighter shades of the base color.
| | 04:08 | If you set it to None, you are not going
to apply any Colorization whatsoever, so you
| | 04:12 | are going to end up with the original color
assigned to these flowers, which was black.
| | 04:17 | If you go in Tints and Shades, then you're
going to allow Illustrator to darken your
| | 04:21 | base color, which in our case is that bright
orange. And then finally, Hue+Shift will allow
| | 04:26 | Illustrator to Shift the Hue, that is in
our case go with a redder shade of orange.
| | 04:31 | Anyway, I'm going to switch it back to Tints,
which is the default setting and obviously
| | 04:35 | gives us the most desirable effect. And then
I'll click OK in order to apply that modification.
| | 04:42 | And now I want make just a
couple of additional changes here.
| | 04:45 | I want the Fill to appear in front of
our newest stroke, the random flowers.
| | 04:50 | So I'll go ahead and drag the Fill up the
list and drop it between the 10 oval calligraphic
| | 04:55 | brush stroke and the scatter
brush stroke that we just applied.
| | 04:59 | And then finally, I'm going to go ahead and
take this dark green stroke down here at the
| | 05:03 | bottom of the stack, twirl it open, click
on its Opacity option, and change the Blend
| | 05:08 | mode from Normal to Multiply in order to
burn that stroke into the background like so.
| | 05:14 | That just gives us an even higher degree
of contrast, then I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A
| | 05:20 | or Command+Shift+A on a Mac
in order to deselect the text.
| | 05:24 | And that, friends, is how you go about applying and
customizing a scatter brush here inside Illustrator.
| | 05:29 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Formatting and scaling brushed text| 00:00 | In this movie I'll demonstrate how even
though we've applied all of these brushes toward
| | 00:05 | text--including a calligraphic brush, two art
brushes, and a scatter brush--it remains altogether
| | 00:11 | editable. And also show you how to fill the
letters with the pattern, and exactly align
| | 00:16 | that pattern with the patterned background.
| | 00:19 | And so the first thing I'm going to do
obviously is select my text by clicking on its outline
| | 00:23 | with the Black Arrow tool. And then I'll
press that keyboard shortcut mash-your-fist F, so
| | 00:28 | it's Ctrl+Shift+Alt+F here on the PC, Command+Shift+
Option+F on the Mac, in order to highlight the font
| | 00:34 | here inside the Character panel. And I'm going to
dial in Minion, so that I end up with Minion Pro.
| | 00:40 | And then I'll press the Tab key to advance
to the Style option and I'll just go ahead
| | 00:44 | and enter Bold. And I
don't want condense caption.
| | 00:47 | So I'll go ahead and select just Bold from
my very long list--I've managed to install
| | 00:52 | every single style of minion there is--I'll go
ahead and select Bold which should be available
| | 00:57 | on your system by the way.
| | 00:59 | And a size of volume 360 points is just fine;
you can see that the text is much too large now.
| | 01:04 | So, the first thing I'm going to do in order
to reduce the width is to take the Horizontal
| | 01:08 | Scale value down to 80%, like so.
| | 01:12 | Then I'll go ahead and press the Enter key or
the Return key on the Mac in order to except
| | 01:15 | that change, and I'll change the Tracking value
to -60 as well, and we come up with this effect
| | 01:24 | here, which I think looks actually quite good.
| | 01:27 | And you can see that all the brushes
update on the fly, which makes brushes one of the
| | 01:32 | most flexible features in all of Illustrator.
| | 01:34 | All right, now I am going to assign a pattern
to the interior of the letters, so I'll click
| | 01:38 | on that Fill option here inside the
Appearance panel to make it active; and then notice that
| | 01:44 | I have a series of these patterns that I've
created starting with Beige wedges, then Orange,
| | 01:50 | Red, and finally Violet wedges. We're going
to be using Violet wedges for the text, so
| | 01:55 | I'll go ahead and click on that
Swatch to assign it to the text.
| | 01:59 | Now we've got a little bit of a problem here.
I'm going to zoom in so that we can better
| | 02:02 | see what's going on.
| | 02:04 | First of all notice that the pattern in
the background has been scaled, but it is not
| | 02:09 | scaled inside the letters.
| | 02:11 | Fortunately we can scale this Fill pattern now
inside of Illustrator CS6 using a Dynamic Effect.
| | 02:17 | So make sure that the Fill is still active,
then go up to the Effect menu, choose Distort
| | 02:22 | & Transform, and choose the Transform command.
Or if you loaded my dekeKeys keyboard shortcuts,
| | 02:28 | you can press Ctrl+E or Command+E on the Mac,
and I am going to dial-in a Horizontal value
| | 02:33 | of 200% and a Vertical value of 200% as well.
I just happened to know that that's exactly
| | 02:38 | how much I scale the pattern in the background.
| | 02:40 | And then I'll turn off Transform Objects;
you want Transform Patterns to be turned on.
| | 02:47 | And then turn on the Preview checkbox and
you'll see that that goes ahead and scales
| | 02:52 | a pattern inside the text.
| | 02:54 | But all is not perfect; I'm going to click
OK in order to accept this modification. And
| | 02:59 | then just so I can see exactly how the patterns
are lining up here, I'll turn off these various
| | 03:06 | strokes here, which is going to take a few
moments because there's a lot going on inside
| | 03:11 | this document. So you'll have to be patient
with that process, in other words, there is
| | 03:14 | a little bit of a delay after you turn off
each eye. And notice that we are not in alignment,
| | 03:21 | and here's the reason why.
| | 03:23 | I'll go ahead and click on the word
Transform, which is the effect that's assigned to the
| | 03:27 | fill, in order to bring up the dialog box.
I'm scaling with respect to the center of
| | 03:32 | the text, whereas the background is being
scaled with respect to the center of the rectangle,
| | 03:38 | and the center of the rectangle and the
center of the text are not the same thing.
| | 03:43 | So what we're going to have to do is
slightly nudge the pattern around, and we can do that
| | 03:48 | using these move values. So what you would
do is turn on the Preview checkbox, and then
| | 03:52 | I know I want to nudge the pattern to the
left, so I'll press the Down Arrow key for
| | 03:58 | Horizontal here in order to take it down to
-6 maybe. And then I'll tab to Vertical and
| | 04:04 | I want to raise the pattern so I'll take
the Vertical value down, because negative
| | 04:08 | value is nudge the selection upward.
| | 04:10 | Make sure just Transform Patterns is turned
on, Transform Objects should be turned off.
| | 04:15 | That is not quite an exact match.
| | 04:17 | So what I had to do was enter some decimal
values, and that tends to be kind of painful;
| | 04:21 | you just have to try out some
decimal values and see how it works.
| | 04:24 | Fortunately, I was able to land on these here:
-6.5 and then -8.5 in points. That goes ahead
| | 04:33 | and creates what appears to be absolutely
perfect alignment; and now I'll go ahead and
| | 04:38 | click OK in order to accept that change.
| | 04:41 | And now that the patterns are lined up, you
can go ahead and turn all of the strokes back
| | 04:45 | on one at a time, of course, here inside the
Appearance panel. And then I'll press Ctrl+0
| | 04:51 | or Command+0 on the Mac in order to center
my zoom, and Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift+A
| | 04:56 | on the Mac in order to deselect my text.
| | 04:59 | Actually I missed one of the strokes there,
I'll go ahead and reselect the text and then
| | 05:03 | turn on this top Stroke by clicking on it's
perspective eyeball. And you know, it dawns
| | 05:09 | on me now that I am seeing this
calligraphic stroke, that it's a little too bulky; but
| | 05:14 | rather than modifying its specific
attributes from the Brushes panel, I'll just go ahead
| | 05:19 | and click on the stroke at the top of the
list here in the Appearance panel, and I'll
| | 05:22 | take the Line Weight value down from 1 point
to 0.6 points, which is going to reduce the
| | 05:28 | width of the brush stroke
to 60% of its former size.
| | 05:31 | And now I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift
+A on the Mac in order to deselect my text. And
| | 05:37 | that is how you added text in any way you like
regardless of the brushes that you've assigned to it.
| | 05:43 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Designing a custom art brush| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show how to customize
an existing art brush so that you--yes you--
| | 00:06 | can create a brush that
simulates a traditional medium.
| | 00:10 | So here's the problem that we need to solve:
| | 00:12 | if you go ahead and zoom in on the letters,
for example the U, you'll see that the Green
| | 00:17 | art brush in the background ends up tracing
very heavily in some areas and very thinly--
| | 00:23 | so thinly that you can't
even see it anymore--in others.
| | 00:27 | And we've got some weird rough spots and almost
bites taken out of the stroke in different places.
| | 00:33 | And that's because of the uneven nature of this
brush and the fact that it tapers toward the end.
| | 00:39 | So what you have to bear in mind when you're
working with an art brush is that everything
| | 00:42 | about it is getting stretched and therefore
exaggerated, so little differences can really
| | 00:49 | become quite magnified.
| | 00:51 | So what I am going to do is take that brush,
which as you may recall is Chalk - Round, and
| | 00:58 | I'm going to drag it out into the artboard
and I'm going to modify it. And I am going
| | 01:01 | to create a total of three variations and
we'll see how they fare when we convert them
| | 01:07 | to their own art brushes in the next movie.
| | 01:10 | So the first thing I am going to do is turn
off this base layer right here so that I have
| | 01:14 | some white space to work in, and I'll
create a new layer by pressing the Alt key or the
| | 01:19 | Option key on the Mac and clicking on the
little page icon at the bottom of the Layers
| | 01:23 | panel. I am going to go ahead and name this
layer chalk alts, short for alternatives, and
| | 01:29 | then I'll change the color from Magenta to Violet,
and I'll click OK. And we've got ourselves a new layer.
| | 01:35 | Next, I'll bring up my Brushes panel and I'll
locate that brush that I want to modify, which
| | 01:40 | is Chalk - Round, and I'll go ahead and drag
it and drop it into the document window.Then
| | 01:45 | I'll go ahead and hide
the Brushes panel for now.
| | 01:48 | I'll also zoom in a bit on my brush here,
drag it down too, so that I can see it on screen.
| | 01:56 | Now a couple of things to note about dragging
and dropping brushes into the document window.
| | 02:00 | First, Illustrator does go ahead and convert
the brush to path outlines so you can modify
| | 02:06 | it to any extent you like.
| | 02:08 | But if you twirl this layer open, chalk alts,
you will see that you've got a group, and a
| | 02:12 | nested group inside of it, and the usual
weirdness that Illustrator comes up with.
| | 02:17 | So I'm going to do a double ungroup here
by going to the Object menu and choosing the
| | 02:22 | Ungroup command, and then I'll go back to
the Object menu and choose the Ungroup command
| | 02:26 | again. Of course I could have pressed Ctrl+Shift+
G or Command+Shift+G on a Mac a couple of times
| | 02:31 | in order to pull that off.
| | 02:33 | Now we've got this group that is the brush
itself, and then we've got this invisible rectangle
| | 02:38 | behind it, which represents the path outline.
| | 02:41 | So in this case our brush is going to
benefit inside of the entire path. So imagine the
| | 02:46 | path were converted from a uniform stroke, for
example, to a path outline, this is how things would map.
| | 02:53 | We want an entirely different looking brush
than that. And so I am going to take this rectangle
| | 02:58 | and drag it downward while pressing the
Shift and Alt keys or the Shift and Option keys
| | 03:02 | on the Mac in order to create a copy of it.
| | 03:05 | And then I'll copy this rectangle by
pressing Ctrl+C or Command+C on a Mac, and I'll paste
| | 03:10 | it by pressing Ctrl+F or Command+F on a Mac. And
you're probably wondering what in the world I am doing.
| | 03:16 | The idea is we need to preserve that
invisible rectangle in the background and have a copy
| | 03:20 | of it in the foreground that
we will use to create a brush.
| | 03:24 | Now I'll go ahead and fill the foreground
rectangle with black by clicking on the first
| | 03:28 | color swatch up here in the
Control panel and selecting Black.
| | 03:32 | And now let's go ahead and mess it up the
simplest way possible, which is to go up to
| | 03:37 | the Effect menu, choose Distort &
Transform, and choose the Roughen effect.
| | 03:42 | And this time I'm going to change the
Size value to 2--I want that to be 2 pt., so
| | 03:47 | I'll select Absolute.
| | 03:48 | And I'll turn on Smooth and I'll turn on the
Preview checkbox, and you can see that makes
| | 03:53 | for a kind of blobby brush; but I want it
to be way less regular than that, so I am
| | 03:58 | going to click inside of the Detail value
and press Shift+Up Arrow several times in
| | 04:03 | a row until I max that value out at 100/in,
so 100 little wiggles per inch
| | 04:10 | along this path outline. And that should just
about do it. You typically want as much random
| | 04:14 | variation as possible when you're
creating a traditional media brush. All right!
| | 04:19 | I'll go ahead and zoom in on this guy here.
| | 04:22 | Now that's a dynamic effect, we need it to
be a static effect; but I don't want to ruin
| | 04:26 | the dynamic effect in case I want
to go back and look at it later,
| | 04:29 | remember what my settings
were, that kind of thing.
| | 04:32 | So I'm going to marquee both of these paths
because there is one rectangle on top of the
| | 04:36 | other, and then drag them down while
pressing the Shift and Alt keys once again--that's
| | 04:40 | the Shift and Option keys on
the Mac--in order to create a copy.
| | 04:44 | And with both path outlines selected, it really
doesn't matter, you want to go up to the Object
| | 04:48 | menu and choose Expand Appearance. And that way
you've got a static version of that path outline.
| | 04:53 | And now I can look at it in the Outline
mode, which is going to be a little more helpful
| | 04:58 | because I'll be able to see my
transparent rectangle in the background.
| | 05:01 | So I'll press Ctrl+Y or Command+Y on the
Mac to switch to the Outline mode. You can also
| | 05:06 | choose Outline from the View menu.
| | 05:08 | All right, now I'll click off the paths,
deselect them and I'll click on this guy to select
| | 05:13 | it, and now I am going to manually scale
this path by switching to the Scale tool, which
| | 05:18 | you can get by pressing the S key.
| | 05:20 | And I want to make sure that the scribbly
path, which is the brush of course, is wider
| | 05:24 | than the rectangle behind it.
| | 05:26 | So I'll drag very slightly out to the left
as you see me doing here. And if you want to
| | 05:32 | constrain the angle of your scale to
exactly horizontal, you can press the Shift key as
| | 05:36 | you drag and then release; just make sure
that all of these guys are outside of the
| | 05:41 | limitations of the rectangle.
| | 05:43 | Now we need to create yet another copy.
| | 05:45 | So as I was saying at the outset, I am going
to create three variations on this chalk brush.
| | 05:52 | And that way we just have a range of options
to choose from because you really don't know
| | 05:57 | how well the brush is going to work until
you apply it to a path outline. All right!
| | 06:01 | So I'll go ahead and grab these guys, and I
just marquee them using the Black Arrow tool,
| | 06:06 | and then I'll go ahead and drag them down
while pressing the Shift and Alt keys once again.
| | 06:11 | And I'm going to scroll up as you see me doing
here, and then I'm going to go ahead and select
| | 06:15 | the top rectangle, because we're going to
start by editing our first alternate chalk effect.
| | 06:19 | I am going to select that background
rectangle and I'm going to switch to the Scale tool
| | 06:24 | once again; and this time I want to scale the
path so that it's taller. So I'll drag slightly
| | 06:30 | down like so while pressing the Shift key, in
order to constrain my scaling to exactly vertical.
| | 06:36 | And I just want to make sure the rectangle
completely encloses the wiggly path vertically,
| | 06:41 | but cuts into it horizontally.
| | 06:44 | Now return to the Black Arrow tool, marquee those
two paths, go to the Window menu, and choose Pathfinder.
| | 06:51 | And I want to go with Intersect, and that
will lop off the ends of that path outline like
| | 06:56 | so, so that we're cutting it
hard right there at the ends.
| | 06:59 | And I want to show you what that ends up
looking like, because that's going to result in a
| | 07:04 | corner as you'll see in the next movie,
whereas this little bit of overlap--it's going to
| | 07:09 | be too much overlap as you'll see. I don't
want to spoil the surprise, but I do want
| | 07:12 | to have a sense of where we're going here.
| | 07:14 | And now I'll marquee these two paths and
drag them downward while pressing the Shift and
| | 07:19 | Alt keys, the Shift and Option keys on the Mac.
| | 07:22 | This will be our third alternative and I'll
show you why we'll need it and what kind of
| | 07:26 | modifications we'll make as I demonstrate
how to convert these path outlines into actual
| | 07:32 | art brushes in the next movie.
| | 07:33 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating (or replacing) an art brush| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you how to convert
our wiggly path outlines into art brushes,
| | 00:05 | and then we'll turn around and apply those
art brushes to our character outlines. And
| | 00:09 | if we have any problems, which we will, then
I'll show you how to resolve those problems.
| | 00:15 | So I've gone ahead just for the sake of clarity here
and numbered each one of these Chalk-brush alternatives.
| | 00:22 | So the first one, #1, has the cleaved off
edges on the left and right hand sides.
| | 00:28 | #2 has the brush edges that exceed the
rectangle that represents the path outline, and then
| | 00:33 | #3 is just sitting there
waiting for me to modify it.
| | 00:37 | Currently it's the same as #2.
| | 00:38 | All right, so let's take these guys and turn
them into art brushes. And you do that by bringing
| | 00:43 | up the Brushes panel, and then if you're
working along with me, go ahead and select that top
| | 00:48 | wiggly path, and drag it and
drop it into the Brushes panel.
| | 00:53 | Notice that I have a
little plus sign next my cursor.
| | 00:55 | If I want to create a new brush, I just go ahead
and drop it into place and release the mouse button.
| | 01:00 | However, if you want to replace an existing
brush--I just want you to see this is possible--
| | 01:04 | you press and hold the Alt key or the Option
key on the Mac. And notice now you see a heavy
| | 01:09 | outline around the existing chalk round.
| | 01:12 | However, I don't really see any
purpose in replacing one brush with another.
| | 01:16 | We might as well keep all of our brushes intact.
| | 01:19 | So I'm going to release the Alt or Option key
and just go ahead and drop that path outline
| | 01:23 | into the Brushes panel.
| | 01:25 | Illustrator next asks what
kind of brush you want to create.
| | 01:27 | It can be a Scatter Brush, an
Art Brush, or a Pattern Brush.
| | 01:30 | The reason Calligraphic and Bristle Brush
are dimmed is because both of those styles
| | 01:34 | rely entirely on numerical parameters.
| | 01:38 | They have nothing to do
with existing path outlines.
| | 01:40 | So go ahead and select Art Brush and click
OK and you'll be met by this gigantic dialog
| | 01:46 | box, most of which you can safely ignore.
| | 01:48 | One of the options you can't ignore is Name.
| | 01:50 | So I'll go ahead and paste in
a name, which is Chalk alt #1.
| | 01:54 | You can go ahead and modify the Width value and
even change it to a percentage of its current size.
| | 02:00 | However, you are not really going to know
if that's what you want to do until you apply
| | 02:04 | the brush to a path outline.
| | 02:06 | So, not really the kind
of thing you do in advance.
| | 02:09 | You can go ahead and set the Brush so it Scales
Proportionally, but that's not going to work in our case.
| | 02:13 | You also have this interesting option
here, which is the Stretch Between Guides.
| | 02:18 | So you have to set up guidelines,
presumably vertical guidelines in our case, inside of
| | 02:23 | your document window. And then any portion
of the art brush between those guidelines
| | 02:27 | will scale, anything outside
the guidelines will not scale.
| | 02:30 | However, of course that would
require guides and I don't have any.
| | 02:33 | So I'm just going to stick with the
default setting, Stretch to Fit Stroke Length.
| | 02:38 | Notice then you've got these Direction options.
| | 02:40 | Nine times out of ten you're going to want
the default setting, once again, which is
| | 02:43 | Stroke From Left to Right, and that way you
stroke the art brush from left to right along
| | 02:48 | the direction of the path outline.
| | 02:51 | You can set it to something else, such as
Perpendicular if you want, but probably you don't.
| | 02:56 | So I'll go ahead and
switch it back to Left to Right.
| | 02:58 | You have also got the Options to flip the
brush along the path--that would be Left to
| | 03:02 | Right in our case--or across the path, which
would be vertical in the case of this preview
| | 03:07 | anyway. But again, that's a
decision you're going to make on-the-fly.
| | 03:11 | And then finally, Overlap is now set to this
default setting where Illustrator goes ahead
| | 03:15 | and adjusts the art brush at any corner points to
fill in gaps. And that's a great default setting;
| | 03:21 | it's highly unlikely in fact that
you're ever going to want to change that.
| | 03:25 | The one thing you're going to want to change,
besides the name of the brush, is the method.
| | 03:29 | So assuming that you're starting with a
black art brush or black path, as I am, and you
| | 03:35 | want to be able to colorize it by assigning a
color to the stroke, then you want to change
| | 03:39 | the method from None to Tints.
| | 03:41 | It's that simple, and that's all there is to it.
| | 03:44 | Then click OK in order to create that brush.
| | 03:46 | And now let's do the same
thing with brush #2 here.
| | 03:49 | I'll go ahead and marquee these two paths
this time, both the wiggly path and the invisible
| | 03:53 | rectangle behind it, and I'll drag and drop
the paths into the Brushes panel, select Art
| | 03:57 | Brush, click OK. Go ahead and paste in the
name, Chalk alt #2, and I'll change the method
| | 04:03 | to Tint, and then I'll click OK in order to
create that brush. And you can see they appear
| | 04:08 | at the bottom of the list of our brushes,
although you can drag them and drop them to
| | 04:13 | different locations if you like.
| | 04:14 | All right, now to assign these brushes to
the text, I'll go ahead and hide the Brushes
| | 04:18 | panel, then I'll press Ctrl+Y or Command+Y
on the Mac to switch to the Preview mode.
| | 04:23 | Turn off the Chalk alts
layer, turn on the base layer.
| | 04:26 | You are going to probably be
too close to your letters there.
| | 04:29 | So I'll go ahead and zoom out a little bit,
so we can take in the end of the word BRUSH.
| | 04:33 | And then I'll click on it's
baseline to select the letters.
| | 04:36 | I'll switch over to the Appearance panel, and
I'll click on that final green stroke, Chalk-Round.
| | 04:41 | And then I'll click on the tiny brush
preview and I'll scroll down the list until I find
| | 04:46 | the new brushes that I just
created, including Chalk alt #1.
| | 04:49 | Now this is the one that's cut off at the
ends. And notice as soon as I select it, I
| | 04:54 | end up with a much more uniform stroke
around the letters, even though it does have some
| | 04:59 | wiggle of course associated with it.
| | 05:02 | But notice these cuts at these various
locations right there at the tip of the S, and there's
| | 05:07 | another one right there at the tip of the
serif of the H. What that is, is the point
| | 05:12 | at which the path begins and ends.
| | 05:15 | So all character outlines are closed paths,
but Illustrator always sees paths, whether
| | 05:20 | closed or open, as having beginnings and endings. It's
just with the closed path, it's a single anchor point.
| | 05:27 | And it happens to be located right
there on the S and right there on the H.
| | 05:30 | You could convert the text outlines and then
change the point at which the letters begin
| | 05:34 | and end, but it's going to happen somewhere.
| | 05:36 | So anyway, the moral of the story is
having those ends cut off does not service well.
| | 05:41 | Now you may figure the solution would be
to click on word Stroke up here for example,
| | 05:46 | and then assign a Cap; but while you can't go
ahead and assign a Cap to a art brush stroke,
| | 05:51 | is it doesn't do anything. And same for
the corner settings as well, by the way.
| | 05:56 | So instead, what we're going to
do is switch to a different brush.
| | 05:59 | I'll go ahead and click on that tiny little
brush preview and I'll switch to Chalk alt
| | 06:03 | #2, the one that has the ends that exceed beyond that
invisible rectangle that represents the path outline.
| | 06:11 | And as I was saying, everything gets exaggerated
when you're stretching one of these art brushes
| | 06:16 | along a path outline or a character
outline in our case, and sure enough we get quite
| | 06:21 | a bit of exaggeration right there.
| | 06:23 | Those are those edges being stretched over here at
the corner of the H and this tip of the S as well.
| | 06:29 | Now it's kind of a cool effect, but it
doesn't happen to be the effect that I want where
| | 06:34 | this text is concerned.
| | 06:36 | So I'm going to need to split the difference, and I'll
show you what that looks like in the very next movie.
| | 06:40 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Refining a brush to fit ends and corners| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to refine an art
brush to better match the needs of your artwork.
| | 00:06 | In our case, we've got these scribbly
corners here at the points where Illustrator thinks
| | 00:11 | each one of the
characters of type begins and ends.
| | 00:14 | So at the corner of the H, down here at the tip
of the S and so forth. The tip of the R as well.
| | 00:20 | There is a point on the U, but it's just covered
up by everything else that's going on here.
| | 00:24 | So what we're going to do is take the
second alternative version of the chalk brush and
| | 00:29 | turn it into a third, better version.
| | 00:33 | So I'm going to switch over to the Layers
panel, turn off the base layer, and turn back
| | 00:37 | on the chalk alts layer.
| | 00:39 | And I'll go ahead and zoom in on these guys, numbers 1,
2, and 3, and its number 3 I'm interested in changing.
| | 00:46 | So I'll go ahead and press Ctrl+Y or Command+Y
on the Mac, in order to switch to the Outline mode.
| | 00:52 | And I'm going to zoom way in on the right
side of this third wiggly path drawing, and
| | 00:57 | then I'll press the A key to switch to the
White Arrow tool. And I'm going to marquee
| | 01:01 | right next to the right edge of the rectangle.
| | 01:04 | I don't want to marquee over
the edge, just right next to it.
| | 01:07 | So I get all these anchor points in the
right side of the wiggly path, and then I'll press
| | 01:11 | Backspace key or the Delete key
on the Mac, to get rid of them.
| | 01:14 | Then I'll press the P key to switch to the
Pen tool. And I'll go ahead and drag out about
| | 01:20 | yea far there, and then drag in
about so far down here as well.
| | 01:25 | You want the path to round ever so
slightly outside the rectangle, but not too far.
| | 01:30 | So I'll press the A key to switch back to
the White Arrow tool. And I might just go
| | 01:34 | ahead and drag the segment in a tiny bit here,
and I'm pressing the Shift key as I do to
| | 01:39 | constrain the angle of my drag.
| | 01:40 | All right, that looks pretty good to me.
| | 01:42 | Let's go ahead and do the same
thing over here on the left-hand side.
| | 01:45 | So you get what I'm trying to accomplish here.
| | 01:48 | I'm creating my own manual round caps.
| | 01:52 | Now I'm going to take my White Arrow
tool and marquee just to the left of the left
| | 01:57 | edge of the rectangle in order to select all
these anchor points on the left side of the
| | 02:01 | wiggly path, and I'll press the Backspace key
or the Delete key on the Mac to get rid of them.
| | 02:06 | Then I'll press the P key to
switch back to my Pen tool.
| | 02:09 | I'll Shift+Drag like so to constrain the
angle of that control handle to exactly horizontal,
| | 02:14 | and then I'll drag inward while
pressing the Shift key like so.
| | 02:19 | Something along the lines of
that I think will work out.
| | 02:23 | Bear in mind that this is
going to get exaggerated like heck.
| | 02:26 | So I might take that in again by Shift+Dragging
directly in the segment with the White Arrow tool.
| | 02:31 | All right, let's see how that works.
| | 02:32 | I may have been too
conservative you never know.
| | 02:35 | Go ahead and zoom out here in order to
take in the entirety of the wiggly path in the
| | 02:40 | invisible rectangle behind it.
| | 02:42 | I'll press the V key to
switch to my Black Arrow tool.
| | 02:45 | Notice this is alternative number three here.
| | 02:48 | I'll go ahead and marquee these two path
outlines to select them both, bring up the Brushes
| | 02:52 | panel, drag and drop the
selected paths into the panel,
| | 02:56 | Select Art Brush, click OK. Go ahead
and paste in the brush name Chalk alt #3.
| | 03:02 | Change the Method to Tints and click OK.
| | 03:05 | Now press Ctrl+Y or Command+Y on the
Mac to switch back to the Preview mode.
| | 03:09 | Go ahead and hide that panel, turn off the
chalk alts layer, turn on the base layer.
| | 03:13 | Let's go ahead and zoom out a little bit so
we can take in more of the artwork at a time.
| | 03:19 | And now it's time to gauge whether I
have done a halfway decent job or not.
| | 03:22 | I'll go ahead and click on the baseline of
my letters to select them, I'll switch back
| | 03:26 | over to the Appearance panel, click on Chalk alt #
2 there, the green stroke at the back of the stack.
| | 03:32 | Click on the tiny brush preview and change
it to Chalk alt #3, and we end up doing a
| | 03:39 | pretty darn good job on
those corners right there.
| | 03:42 | A little bit lumpy on the S, and if you wanted
to fix that then you would increase the curvature
| | 03:47 | of the ends of the wiggly
path, the most recent one.
| | 03:50 | However, I'm pretty happy with what I've got, so go
ahead and press the Escape key to hide that pop-up panel.
| | 03:55 | I'll press Ctrl+0 or Command+0 on the Mac in
order to center my zoom, and press Ctrl+Shift+A
| | 04:01 | or Command+Shift+A on the Mac
in order to deselect my artwork.
| | 04:04 | And that, folks, is how you refine an art
brush to exactly match the needs of your artwork.
| | 04:09 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Expanding, filling, and stroking a brush| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to expand
the appearance of an art brush, and this works
| | 00:04 | for any style of brush by the way.
| | 00:07 | And what that's going to allow us to do is
to create these red floral treatments up here
| | 00:12 | at the top and the bottom of the artwork
that are both filled with tile patterns--
| | 00:16 | these aren't pattern brushes, they are
art brushes filled with tile patterns--
| | 00:20 | and then we'll be able to stroke that
expanded art brush with yet another art brush.
| | 00:24 | So I'll go ahead and switch to my
illustration in progress, and using the Black Arrow tool
| | 00:29 | I'll select both the top path and the bottom
path here, that is these curling symmetrical
| | 00:34 | paths. And they are also symmetrical about
the artboard, that is they are located in
| | 00:38 | vertical opposition
symmetrically apart from each other.
| | 00:42 | And now let's go ahead and stroke these paths
with an art brush by bringing up the Brushes
| | 00:47 | panel. And then I'm going to scroll down the
list, past the natural media brushes to this
| | 00:52 | group of floral brushes right here. And the
one that I'm specifically interested in is
| | 00:57 | this guy called Floral Bulbs.
| | 00:59 | Now it doesn't look like much when applied
to a flat horizontal path, but when you apply
| | 01:04 | it to curving path outlines like these, you
get a very interesting effect as you can see.
| | 01:09 | It's almost a crab-like effect here.
| | 01:11 | I like it very much, so I just
want it to be a little thicker.
| | 01:14 | So I'll change the line weight to 1.2 pt.,
which will of course expand the width of the
| | 01:20 | art brush along the path
to 120% of its former size.
| | 01:24 | Now notice that even though this art brush
is horizontally symmetrical, we do not have
| | 01:30 | vertical symmetry going on.
| | 01:32 | This dollop of paint should be moved to
the other side of the path if it's going to be
| | 01:35 | symmetrical to the dollop of
paint at the top of the artboard.
| | 01:39 | So I'll Shift+Click on that
top path in order to deselect it.
| | 01:43 | Then I'll bring back my Brushes panel and
I'll click on that little dialog box icon
| | 01:48 | there in order to bring up the
options for the selected object.
| | 01:52 | Now I've got the Preview checkbox
turned on so I can see what I'm doing.
| | 01:56 | Notice these two flip checkboxes right here.
| | 01:58 | Flip Along is going to, in our case, flip the
brush stroke horizontally, which isn't going
| | 02:04 | to do us any good, because it's already
horizontally symmetrical; and if you want to confirm that
| | 02:08 | you can turn it on and
you'll see that nothing happens.
| | 02:11 | So mine as well turn it back off.
| | 02:12 | What we want is Flip Across in order to
flip the art brush across the path outline.
| | 02:17 | So I'll go ahead and turn checkbox on and
I get the exact symmetry I'm looking for.
| | 02:22 | All right now click OK in order to confirm
that change. And I'll hide the Brushes panel,
| | 02:27 | and then I'll Shift+Click on that top path
outline, and of course I was able to locate
| | 02:31 | it by looking for that little
square next to Black Arrow cursor.
| | 02:35 | Now what I'd like to be able to do is change
the stroke to a pattern, and so I can of course
| | 02:40 | click on this second swatch up here in the
Control panel and I can select a color if
| | 02:45 | I like. That will go ahead and
colorize the path, we've already seen that.
| | 02:48 | However, if I apply a tile pattern such
as red wedges here, it doesn't do anything.
| | 02:54 | We go back to the standard black path outline, and
that's because you can't apply tile patterns to art brushes.
| | 03:00 | So we need to expand those art
brushes into closed path outlines.
| | 03:04 | And you do that by going up here to be Object
menu and choosing the Expand Appearance command.
| | 03:10 | And that goes ahead and draws path
outlines around those art brush shapes.
| | 03:15 | Now what we've got is a group, as we can see
on the far left side of the Control panel,
| | 03:20 | but it's really two independent groups. And
you can confirm that by switching over to
| | 03:24 | Layers panel and twirling open the
flourishes layer right there. And you'll see our two
| | 03:29 | groups, full hi and full lo.
| | 03:32 | What we're going to want in order to scale
the pattern so that it matches the pattern
| | 03:35 | in the background is one overarching group.
| | 03:39 | That way the center of the big group here
of both floral patterns matches the center
| | 03:45 | of the artboard, which matches the center or
the background rectangle, so that everybody
| | 03:49 | is in sync with each other.
| | 03:51 | So the first thing we want to do is destroy
the current group by going up to the Object
| | 03:55 | menu and choosing the Ungroup command, or
you can press Ctrl+Shift+G or Command+Shift+G
| | 03:59 | on the Mac, and notice that leaves us with
a bunch of independent path outlines as I
| | 04:03 | can see once again on the far-
left side of the Control panel.
| | 04:07 | And now I'll group those together by going
up to the Object menu and choosing the Group
| | 04:11 | command or pressing Ctrl+
G or Command+G on the Mac.
| | 04:15 | Now just to keep everything tidy,
let's get rid of the fill that's associated
| | 04:19 | with the independent path outlines by switching
over to the Appearance panel and double-clicking
| | 04:24 | on the word Contents, which will show us
the fill that's assigned to those paths.
| | 04:29 | And I'll go ahead and click on that
Fill swatch and I'll change it to None.
| | 04:33 | Now I'll return to Group up here at the top
of the stack, it says Group: No Appearance.
| | 04:38 | Double-click on it in order to switch the
focus to the group, and click on the Add New
| | 04:42 | Fill icon at the bottom of the
panel to reinstate that black fill.
| | 04:47 | Then click on the Fill swatch in order to
bring up the list of swatches and select Red
| | 04:51 | Wedges in order to apply that tile pattern.
| | 04:55 | Now it's too small as you can
see, so we need to scale it.
| | 04:58 | By going up to the Effect menu, choosing
Distort & Transform, and choosing Transform--or if you
| | 05:02 | have loaded Deke keys you can
press Ctrl+E or Command+E on the Mac.
| | 05:06 | And then let's go and change both of these
Scale values to 200%, and I'll turn on the
| | 05:11 | Preview checkbox, and it looks like
I've done something terribly wrong.
| | 05:15 | I've left Transform Objects turned on; I
don't want that, so I'll turn off that checkbox.
| | 05:19 | But you do want Transform Patterns to be
turned on, and you'll see now we have a perfect match
| | 05:25 | between the red pattern and that
yellow pattern in the background.
| | 05:28 | So go ahead and click OK in
order to apply that change.
| | 05:32 | All right, now I want to stroke
these paths with yet another art brush.
| | 05:35 | So I'll bring up by Brushes panel and I'll
go ahead and scroll up the list--and this
| | 05:40 | is the guy I'm looking for right there,
Charcoal. Not Charcoal - Feather or Charcoal - Rough
| | 05:44 | or any of those, just plain old Charcoal.
| | 05:47 | And I also want the stroke to be green, so
I'll go ahead and click on the Stroke Swatch
| | 05:52 | here inside the Appearance panel and I'll change it
to that dark shade of green: C=90, M=30, Y=95, K=30.
| | 05:57 | And I'll also change the Blend mode by
clicking on the word Opacity and setting that Blend
| | 06:05 | mode from normal to multiply
in order to burn in the effect.
| | 06:09 | All right now to better see what I'm doing
here I'll press Ctrl+H or Command+H on the
| | 06:12 | Mac, to hide the selection edges.
| | 06:15 | I don't want those strokes to be in
front of the fills, I want them to be behind.
| | 06:18 | So I'll grab the stroke in the Appearance
panel and drag it down to just above the word
| | 06:22 | Contents in order to produce this effect here.
| | 06:25 | Now I want that Charcoal brush stroke
to fit the paths a little differently.
| | 06:29 | So I'll bring up the Brushes panel for the
final time in this movie anyway, and then
| | 06:33 | I'll click on that little dialog box icon
at the bottom of the panel. And I'll make
| | 06:38 | sure the Preview checkbox is turned on, and
I'll turn on both Flip Along and Flip Across.
| | 06:43 | And this is just based on
trial and error by the way.
| | 06:46 | But I want you to know that
these options are always available.
| | 06:49 | And now I'll go ahead and click
OK in order to apply that change.
| | 06:53 | And that's how you expand a brush stroke in
Illustrator so that you can fill it with a
| | 06:58 | tile pattern, as well as stroke that
former brush with yet another art brush.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Type on a path vs. text as an art brush| 00:00 | Another great use for an art brush is
creating text on a path; which is particularly useful
| | 00:06 | if you want to distort the text along a path,
as in the case of the stacks at the very top
| | 00:10 | and the bottom of the illustration; or
when you just want to auto fit the text to the
| | 00:16 | path. That's something that art brushes take
care of on their own, however you have got
| | 00:20 | to do all kinds of custom fitting
when you're creating type on a path.
| | 00:24 | So what we're going to do in this movie,
I'll show you how we might pull off this effect
| | 00:28 | using standard type on a path, and then in
the next movie I'll show you how to express
| | 00:32 | text as an art brush.
| | 00:33 | So I'll go ahead and switch over to my
illustration in progress, and notice that I do have text
| | 00:39 | on the path up here at the top
and the bottom of the illustration.
| | 00:42 | If you're working along with me, twirl open
the path-type layer here inside the Layers
| | 00:46 | panel. And notice that just the bottom two
objects on this layer are currently visible.
| | 00:50 | Go ahead and make them
invisible by turning off their eyes.
| | 00:54 | And then turn on these other four formerly invisible
objects by dragging down the eyeball column like so.
| | 01:01 | So you should have two lines of type; this one
is a little hard to see, so I'll drag it up here.
| | 01:05 | Two lines of white type expressed as point
text and then we have two invisible paths as well.
| | 01:12 | So I'm going to go ahead and affix this
bottom text first, and I'm not seeing any kind of
| | 01:17 | selection here because my edges are hidden.
| | 01:20 | So I'll press Ctrl+H or Command+H on
the Mac in order to bring them back.
| | 01:23 | So click on the baseline for the bottom text,
then go up to the Edit menu and choose the
| | 01:27 | Copy command or press Ctrl+
C or Command+C on the Mac.
| | 01:32 | Then go ahead and meatball the bottom of
the two crazy paths here, that's what they are
| | 01:36 | called here inside the Layers panel, and
that's just the easiest way to get to them because
| | 01:40 | after all they are invisible.
| | 01:41 | And press the T key in order to switch to
the Type tool, and then click somewhere along
| | 01:46 | the path. And I'm just going to click right
there in the center because my text is currently
| | 01:50 | center aligned, so you would think when I
go up to the Edit menu and choose the Paste
| | 01:54 | command or press Ctrl+V or Command+V on
the Mac, that everything would work out great.
| | 02:00 | But it doesn't, as usual.
| | 02:02 | So I'll go ahead and switch to the Black
Arrow tool. And it's just, I have to say, that text
| | 02:07 | on the path can be
maddening at times to work with.
| | 02:09 | So if you feel the same way, I share your
pain. I'm going to go ahead and drag this
| | 02:15 | first bar all the way over here to the
left-hand side and drag this last bar here all
| | 02:20 | the way to the right-hand side; but
unfortunately we still have overflow text.
| | 02:24 | So with the text selected, I'll go ahead and
bring up my Character panel, which I can get
| | 02:28 | by pressing Ctrl+T or Command+T on the Mac.
| | 02:32 | And I'm going to change this Vertical Scale
value to 110% and then I'll take the Horizontal
| | 02:37 | Scale value down to 90%. Then I'll go
ahead and press the Enter key or the Return key
| | 02:42 | on the Mac and that should take care of
things with the exception of the fact that we have
| | 02:46 | some weird spacing problems here and
there, especially right there in the center.
| | 02:51 | The F and T are not resolving properly, and
the only way I would get them to resolve properly
| | 02:56 | is to smooth out this transition.
| | 02:58 | But what we've got is a corner point
at this location, a cusp point actually.
| | 03:03 | And that never goes well when you're
working with text on a path. All right!
| | 03:07 | Now let's do the top text.
| | 03:08 | I'll go ahead and click on the
baseline for that text to select it.
| | 03:11 | Then I'll press Ctrl+C or Command+
C on the Mac in order to copy it.
| | 03:14 | I'll meatball the only remaining crazy path
item here inside the Layers panel, because
| | 03:19 | the other one got renamed
to the text along the path.
| | 03:23 | And with this path selected I'll go ahead
and switch to the Type tool again, by now
| | 03:27 | maybe I've learned my lesson, I'll click on
the first anchor point in order to set the
| | 03:31 | insertion marker at that location and I'll press Ctrl+
V or Command+V on the Mac, in order to Paste the text.
| | 03:36 | Then I'll switch back to my Black Arrow tool;
looks like the first bar is in place but second
| | 03:42 | bar needs to be moved over a little bit.
| | 03:44 | We have got overflow text again,
so we need to do some copy fitting.
| | 03:48 | I'll bring up my Character panel.
| | 03:50 | Change that Vertical Scale value to
110%, change Horizontal Scale to 90%.
| | 03:56 | And I also need to move the text down, so
I'll go up to the Type menu, choose Type on
| | 04:02 | a path, and then choose Type on a Path Options.
| | 04:06 | And I'll change Align to Path from Baseline
to Ascender, Turn on the Preview checkbox, and
| | 04:12 | it looks like that. Which
isn't really precisely what I want.
| | 04:15 | I want the top of those capital letters to
be aligned with a path, so I'll click OK and
| | 04:19 | I'll change my Baseline Shift value
here, which raises the baseline upward.
| | 04:24 | And I just happened to know that a value
of 6.5 pt. works for this text here, and I
| | 04:29 | end up getting this final effect.
| | 04:32 | But it's no good, because again we have the
spacing problems right there, most obviously
| | 04:36 | in the word FOR. But you can find
spacing problems elsewhere as well.
| | 04:40 | And of course, we're not going to be able to create
the distortion effect that I'm looking for either.
| | 04:44 | So in the case like this, you're
much better off going with an art brush.
| | 04:48 | So let me show you how that works.
| | 04:50 | The only bit of bad news associated with
text expressed as an art brush is that you've to
| | 04:54 | convert the text outlines.
| | 04:56 | You can't work with live text.
| | 04:57 | So you need to make sure that all of your copy
editing is done, everything spelled properly and so on.
| | 05:03 | Then you want to select your text objects,
so I'll select both of these guys right here--
| | 05:08 | that is the point text
objects, not the path text.
| | 05:12 | And then I would normally recommend that you
copy this text just so you keep the original
| | 05:17 | editable text handy. However,
we're going to live dangerously here.
| | 05:20 | So I'm just going to go up to Type menu and
choose Create Outlines or you can press Ctrl+Shift+O
| | 05:26 | or Command+Shift+O on the Mac. And now we've
path outlines where formerly we had point text.
| | 05:31 | All right, now I'll click off the text to
deselect it and I'll click on the top letters
| | 05:36 | to select them, and I'll bring up my
Brushes panel and I'll just go ahead and drag and
| | 05:40 | drop these path outlines into the Brushes panel.
| | 05:43 | Obviously we want an Art Brush, the Scatter
Brush wouldn't make any sense because that
| | 05:46 | would just scatter different versions of this
row of characters around. And a Pattern Brush
| | 05:52 | of course would repeat them.
| | 05:53 | So we just want a nice fluid art brush.
| | 05:56 | Go ahead and click OK, and then I'm
going to name this guy different strokes.
| | 06:00 | And that's it; you don't even need to change
the colorization method because the text is
| | 06:04 | going to remain white.
| | 06:06 | So everything else is already
done, just go ahead and click OK.
| | 06:10 | And now grab this bottom text right there
and drag it and drop it into place and set
| | 06:16 | it as an Art Brush, click OK.
| | 06:19 | The toughest part is naming this art brush,
especially because I'm not a particularly
| | 06:23 | good typist. And I believe
it's curiously handcrafted.
| | 06:27 | That's all I have to do, just name it, click
OK. And you can see now these lines of white
| | 06:33 | texts, they are very squished
inside of the Brushes panel.
| | 06:37 | But the great thing is that there are
appearing now inside Illustrator CS6 against a light
| | 06:42 | gray background, so we can actually
make them out when they're set to white.
| | 06:47 | And if you were to stretch the panel
horizontally then the text is going to stretch as well,
| | 06:51 | and that's because art brushes always fit
their paths, which is such a great thing.
| | 06:57 | And in fact, I'm going to show you exactly how to
fit the art brushes to the paths in the next movie.
| | 07:01 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Distorting text with the Width tool| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you how to apply text
expresses in art brush to a path outline with
| | 00:06 | absolute precision that you are about to see;
and I'll also show you how you can distort
| | 00:10 | that text using the Width tool,
which works great with art brushes.
| | 00:15 | Now at this point we have
quite the mess on our hands.
| | 00:17 | You can just dispose some of it here.
| | 00:20 | I am going to click on this top text that's
being converted to path outlines and Shift+Click
| | 00:25 | on the bottom text with my Black
Arrow tool to select both lines of text.
| | 00:29 | And because we've already saved these path outlines
as art brushes, we can get to them anytime we want.
| | 00:34 | So I'll just press the Backspace key or
the Delete key on the Mac to get rid of them.
| | 00:38 | Now what we need to do is separate these
path outlines because we want a work from them
| | 00:43 | from the text that's attached to them.
| | 00:45 | And that's not an obvious
thing to do in Illustrator.
| | 00:48 | If you just right-click on the path, you'll
see no options for separating the text, and
| | 00:54 | there is no such commands
available anywhere in the software.
| | 00:57 | Instead here's what you do.
| | 00:58 | You press the A key to switch to the White
Arrow tool, you click off the text to deselect
| | 01:02 | it, then you press Ctrl+Y or Command+Y on
the Mac in order to switch to the Outline
| | 01:07 | mode so that you can see
those invisible path outlines.
| | 01:10 | You Alt+Click or Option+Click in the top one
in our case, and then you Shift+Alt+Click or
| | 01:16 | Shift+Option+Click on the bottom one,
because we want to select them both.
| | 01:20 | Because we use the White Arrow tool, we've
selected the paths independently of the text
| | 01:25 | that's attached to them.
| | 01:26 | Now I'll go up to the Edit menu and choose the
Copy command, or press Ctrl+C or Command+C on the Mac.
| | 01:31 | All right, now I am going to twirl open my
path layer, and I am going to turn off those
| | 01:35 | two lines of path text.
| | 01:37 | In that way we still have our
editable text around if we need it.
| | 01:41 | Now I'll return to the Edit menu and choose
the Paste in Front command or press Ctrl+F
| | 01:46 | or Command+F on the Mac, to paste those path
outlines independently of the text formerly
| | 01:51 | associated with them.
| | 01:52 | All right, now I'll press Ctrl+Y or Command+Y
on the Mac to switch back to the Preview mode.
| | 01:57 | I'll press the V key to switch to the Black
Arrow tool, and I'll Shift+Click on that bottom
| | 02:01 | path to deselect it. And now I'll
assign that Text Brush to the top path
| | 02:06 | by bringing up my Brushes panel, and then
I'll scroll down the list until I find those two
| | 02:11 | white text brushes, and I'll click on the
first one, different strokes, in order to
| | 02:15 | apply it to the path. And it
is that darn easy, look at that.
| | 02:19 | The transitions are great, the spacing is
awesome, and Illustrator has automatically
| | 02:23 | copy-fitted the text, in other words,
its fit the text to the artwork.
| | 02:28 | And it gets even better; let's say I decide I want
to modify the path outline, I can do so with impunity.
| | 02:33 | I am going to press the A key to
switch to the White Arrow tool.
| | 02:36 | Click off the path to deselect it, and
select this right-hand anchor point here, and I'll
| | 02:40 | just press the Backspace key or the Delete
key on the Mac to get rid of it. And once
| | 02:44 | again Illustrator just
automatically condenses that text to fit.
| | 02:49 | Now I am going to nudge this text down by
pressing Shift+Down Arrow a few times, and
| | 02:54 | for what its worth I am working with a reduced
keyboard increment value with just 0.2 pt.
| | 02:59 | And I am also going to press Shift+Left Arrow
a few times in order to nudge this path outline
| | 03:04 | to the left, just making
some various alterations here.
| | 03:07 | I'll click off the path to deselect it; click
on it again, so I select a segment independently
| | 03:12 | of the anchor points; and I'll drag this
anchor point up to about here. I might move
| | 03:16 | the Control Handle in just a little bit, and I'll
move this Control Handle to this location here.
| | 03:22 | All right, now I'll press the V key to
switch back to the Black Arrow tool, click on this
| | 03:26 | path outline to select it. And I want a
symmetrical path, so I am going to have to flip this existing
| | 03:32 | path and then join it.
| | 03:34 | So I'll bring up my guides--I've got some
center guides that I've set up in advance,--
| | 03:37 | by pressing Ctrl+; or Command+; on the Mac,
and then I'll go ahead and switch to the Reflect
| | 03:44 | tool, which of course you can get by pressing
the O key. And then I'll Alt+Click or Option+Click
| | 03:49 | on the Mac on that vertical guideline.
| | 03:52 | That brings up the Reflect dialog box. I'll
set the Axis to Vertical and then click on
| | 03:55 | the Copy button in order to flip that path outline.
It ends up flipping the text as well as you can see.
| | 04:02 | And now I want to join these two path outlines
together so I have one continuous line of type.
| | 04:07 | That is not something you can do with path type.
| | 04:10 | So once you've created text on the path you
can't use the Join command in order to connect
| | 04:14 | it to a different path, but you can with an
art brush. I know, they are just so great.
| | 04:19 | So I am going to press the A key in order
to switch to my White Arrow tool and I am
| | 04:23 | going to click on this anchor point and then
Shift+Click on this one; then I'll go up to
| | 04:27 | the Object menu, choose Path and choose Join,
or you can just press Ctrl+J or Command+J
| | 04:32 | on the Mac. And we get this effect
here, likkideesplit, it's awesome.
| | 04:37 | So Illustrator is, in other words,
keeping up with everything that I am doing.
| | 04:40 | Now the text is backwards, so I'll bring
back up my Brushes panel and I'll click on the
| | 04:44 | little dialog box icon.
| | 04:46 | So open up the Stroke Options dialog box.
And I'll turn on Flip Along of course because
| | 04:50 | the text is running in wrong direction, but
it's also upside down so I'll turn on Flip
| | 04:55 | Across. And we get the exact
effect that we are looking for.
| | 04:59 | Now for the Width tool.
| | 05:00 | This part is awesome.
| | 05:01 | I am going to hide the Brushes panel, and
then I am going to select the Width tool, which
| | 05:05 | you can get by pressing Shift+W. And I'll
go ahead and zoom in a little bit here, so I
| | 05:10 | have a closer view of what I am doing, and
I'll go ahead and drag from this anchor point,
| | 05:14 | like so, and I'll drag from this one as well.
| | 05:17 | If you want better control over that--in
other words you want numerical control, so you can
| | 05:20 | get the same results I am getting--
| | 05:22 | then Select one of those points, Shift+Double-
Click on the other so that both of them are selected.
| | 05:28 | That brings up the width point at a dialog box and
change the Total Width value to 1.6 and then click OK.
| | 05:35 | All right, now I need to zoom out
because I need access to the outside points.
| | 05:40 | So I'll click on this one and Shift+Double-Click
on this one--the two end points in other words--
| | 05:46 | in order to once bring up the Width Point
Edit dialog box, and I'll change the Total
| | 05:50 | Width value to 0.9, and I'll click OK.
| | 05:53 | Now that we've done that I'll go
ahead and center my zoom by pressing Ctrl+0
| | 05:58 | or Command+0 on the Mac.
| | 06:00 | Now that we've added some width points to
our path, we have some new adjustment options
| | 06:04 | available to us in the Brushes panel.
| | 06:06 | So I'll go ahead and bring up to Brushes panel,
click on the little dialog box icon; and notice,
| | 06:12 | Size is now set to Width Points/Profile and
we have a minimum value and a maximum value.
| | 06:18 | Go ahead and change that maximum value to
120%, to slightly enhance the distortion of
| | 06:24 | those letters, and then click OK.
| | 06:27 | All right, now that we've done all this
work to the top path outline we don't need the
| | 06:31 | bottom one anymore; we'll just
create a copy of this top one.
| | 06:34 | So what I need to find is this crazy path down
here inside of the path type panel. I'll go
| | 06:39 | ahead and meatball it.
| | 06:40 | You can see it's selected, but I don't want
to press the Backspace key or the Delete on
| | 06:44 | the Mac yet, because my Width tool is still
active, so I'll press the V key in order to
| | 06:48 | switch to the Black Arrow tool and then
I'll press the Backspace key or the Delete key
| | 06:52 | on the Mac. And now I'll go
ahead and select this top text.
| | 06:55 | I'll switch back to my Reflect tool and I'll
Alt+Click or Option+Click on the Horizontal
| | 07:00 | guideline this time,
| | 07:01 | set the Axis to Horizontal and click Copy
once again. And you can see that Illustrator
| | 07:06 | is so smart, then I went
ahead and re-flipped my text.
| | 07:11 | Now we are going to assign the other art brush.
| | 07:13 | The good news is, it's going to look great;
the bad news is, as soon as we do so we're
| | 07:18 | going to lose our width information.
| | 07:20 | So I am going to press Ctrl+; or Command+;
on the Mac to hide the guides, because we
| | 07:25 | don't need them anymore.
| | 07:26 | And then I'll bring back up my Brushes
panel and I'll select the curiously handcrafted
| | 07:32 | brush. And you can see everything is run amok again,
it's upside down and there is no width information.
| | 07:38 | So the first thing I am going to do is just
set the width points so that I can go to that
| | 07:42 | dialog box just once.
| | 07:44 | So I'll select the Width tool and I'll
drag from this anchor point here, and I'll drag
| | 07:48 | from this anchor point, and with this one
selected I'll Shift+Double-Click on the other
| | 07:53 | one, and I'll change the Total Width value
to 1.6, click OK. And then I'll select the
| | 07:58 | left-hand end point and Shift+Double-Click
on the right end point, and change this value
| | 08:03 | to 0.9, and press the Enter
key or the Return key on the Mac.
| | 08:08 | And then finally I'll go back to the
Brushes panel and I'll click on the little dialog
| | 08:13 | box icon; and I'll turn on Flip Along and Flip
Across--we need both of them--and I'll change this
| | 08:19 | value, which for some reason whose reading
is 1% to 120% in order to achieve this final
| | 08:26 | effect here. And I'll press the V key to switch
to my Black Arrow tool, hide the Brushes panel,
| | 08:31 | press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift+
A on the Mac to deselect my artwork.
| | 08:35 | So obviously I am a big fan, I hope you are
too. Because that is how you apply text as
| | 08:40 | an art brush to any path outline regardless of whether it
has corner points or smooth points, here inside Illustrator.
| | 08:46 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Infusing your artwork with a tile pattern| 00:00 | In this final movie, which frankly has
nothing to do with brushes whatsoever, I'm going to
| | 00:05 | show you how to take our bright vividly
colored artwork so far, and dim it down a little bit,
| | 00:10 | as well as infuse it with the continuous tile
pattern that runs through everything. It runs
| | 00:15 | through the text, it runs through the brushes,
it runs through the strokes, and so forth.
| | 00:20 | And it's quite easy to pull off.
| | 00:22 | So the first thing I'm going to do is twirl
close that path type layer and twirl open my base
| | 00:26 | layer right here, which contains this big
rectangle that covers the entire background. And so I'll
| | 00:33 | go ahead and meatball it to select it. And I
want you to see here in the Appearance panel,
| | 00:38 | there is no stroke so I'll go ahead and twirl that
guy closed, but we do have a series of three fills.
| | 00:44 | So if I turn these two fills off for a moment,
you can see that at the back of this object
| | 00:49 | we've got the orange wedges pattern, and then
in front of that is a beige fill. That's all
| | 00:55 | that's going on there. And if I change the Blend
mode back to Normal, you can see that's the case.
| | 01:00 | But by virtue of the fact I change the Blend
mode for this one fill to Multiply, it goes
| | 01:04 | ahead and burns into the pattern. So in another
words I'm changing the luminance of the entire
| | 01:09 | pattern on the fly. And then I've got this
other fill right here, which is a gradient
| | 01:14 | also set to Multiply that's creating this
vignetting effect around the outside of the artwork.
| | 01:20 | So just want you to know what's going on there,
because we're going to repurpose this rectangle
| | 01:24 | by switching back to the Layers panel, and
then I'll click on this top layer, chalk alts,
| | 01:30 | and I'll create a new layer in front of it
by Alt+Clicking or Option+Clicking on the
| | 01:34 | little Page icon at the bottom of the Layers
panel. And I'm going to call this layer cap,
| | 01:39 | and then I'm going to change the color to
let's say dark green, and then I'll click OK.
| | 01:44 | Now I can create a copy of this rectangle--
that's on the base layer--by Alt+Dragging
| | 01:50 | or Option+Dragging that tiny blue square right
there. So I'll go ahead and Alt+Drag or Option+Drag
| | 01:55 | it all the way to the top to the cap layer.
And now we have a copy of that same rectangle
| | 02:00 | on the very top layer
inside of the Illustration.
| | 02:03 | The next step is to burn this
effect in by clicking on the word Opacity up here
| | 02:08 | in the Control panel and changing the
Blend mode to Multiply. But it's already set to
| | 02:12 | Multiply, so switch back
over to the Appearance panel.
| | 02:16 | Here's our problem this gradient fill is active.
| | 02:19 | We want the path itself to be active, so I
could click on it and return to that Opacity
| | 02:24 | option up there in the Control panel, or I
could just click in the final occurrence of
| | 02:28 | the word Opacity here in the Appearance panel
and I'll now change the Blend mode to Multiply
| | 02:33 | for the entire rectangle.
| | 02:35 | Now at this point I decided things were a
little bit too dark, so I decided the ease
| | 02:39 | up on the opacity of this gradient, and I
did so by clicking on a word Opacity under
| | 02:45 | this Fill item. And I went ahead and changed
the Opacity value to 50%. I'll press the Enter
| | 02:50 | key or the Return key on the Mac in order to
make that change, and then I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A
| | 02:56 | or Command+Shift+A on the Mac in order to
deselect the artwork. And that's how you dim
| | 03:00 | down an entire illustration and fill every nook
and cranny with the tile pattern by multiplying
| | 03:07 | a filled rectangle on an
independent top layer here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
28. Transparency and Blend ModesThe many forms of transparency| 00:00 | If all there was to transparency was the
opacity option, you wouldn't need any help from me.
| | 00:06 | Reduce the opacity value and the selected
path, group or layer becomes translucent.
| | 00:12 | I have given you some helpful keyboard
shortcuts, but otherwise that's all there is to it.
| | 00:17 | But that's not all there is to it.
| | 00:20 | You also have Blend modes which introduce
translucency by merging the colors of a selected object
| | 00:26 | with those of the objects below.
| | 00:28 | For example, there is the Multiply mode
which creates the effect of printing one ink on
| | 00:33 | top of another, so everything darkens.
| | 00:36 | There is the Screen mode which works like
shining your path outlines on a screen, so
| | 00:40 | everything becomes brighter.
| | 00:43 | There is Luminosity, which mixes the
detail from the selection with the colors of the
| | 00:48 | objects below, and many, many more.
| | 00:51 | Like so much of what you can do in Illustrator,
transparency is not part of the PostScript printing language.
| | 00:59 | Illustrator works around this potential
incompatibility by converting translucent objects to PostScript-
| | 01:05 | safe vectors and pixels on the fly.
| | 01:09 | But just in case you have any concerns, I end
this chapter by showing you how to rasterize
| | 01:14 | your artwork at a high resolution--300 or
more pixels per inch--and view it all together
| | 01:21 | intact in Photoshop.
| | 01:24 | Some people are nervous about
using transparency in Illustrator.
| | 01:28 | Don't you be one of them.
| | 01:30 | Watch these next movies and learn how to use
opacity, Blend modes, and knockout groups like a pro.
| | 01:37 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating translucency with the Opacity value| 00:00 | In this movie, I'm going to introduce you to
the Opacity value, which is a pretty simple
| | 00:05 | option. But I just want you to know everything you
can do with it, because it's extremely powerful.
| | 00:10 | We are working inside of this graphic that's
based on a traditional Ojibway creature, which
| | 00:16 | is Mishipeshu--also known as the
underwater panther--for what it's worth.
| | 00:21 | Now let's say I want to make
the creature's body translucent.
| | 00:23 | Why then I would go ahead and select the
body using my Black Arrow tool. And you can get
| | 00:28 | to the Opacity value from a couple of locations:
one is the Transparency panel--which I have
| | 00:33 | up on screen--and if you want to get to that you
go to the Window menu and choose the Transparency
| | 00:38 | command; or when you have an entire path outline
or other object selected, you'll see the Opacity
| | 00:44 | value up here in the Control panel.
| | 00:45 | So let's say I change this value to 50%, then
what we have is a 50-50 blend of the selected
| | 00:52 | object and everything behind it. So any
objects that are in front of this path outline will
| | 00:58 | not be affected; they will remain opaque.
| | 01:01 | And that's how it goes for all
the blending functions by the way.
| | 01:03 | You're always controlling the interaction between
the selection and everything behind the selection.
| | 01:09 | If you select a different value, such as I'll
switch to 30%, then we have 30% of the active
| | 01:15 | object mixed with 100 minus 30%, which
is 70% of everything behind it.
| | 01:21 | If you want to flip that equation, then you
switch the opacity to 70%. So now we have
| | 01:25 | 70% of the selected object mixed
with 30% of everything in back of it.
| | 01:30 | And you can dial in a custom value as well.
| | 01:32 | For example, I'll enter 44%--you cannot
enter decimal values by the way--and now I have
| | 01:38 | 44% of the active object mixed with 100 minus 44,
which is 56% of everything in back of it.
| | 01:44 | And I hate to keep belaboring this little
mathematical equation here, but it is interesting
| | 01:49 | in that you are mixing a kind of
concoction as you move through your illustration.
| | 01:55 | So we've got 44% X plus 56% Y, and that's
the way it is for all the blending options.
| | 02:03 | So when we get to Blend modes, which start
with Normal--Normal is the Blend mode turned
| | 02:07 | off--along with all the other ones here,
which I'll describe in detail in future movies.
| | 02:13 | They all create translucent interactions
and they do so using very simple equations.
| | 02:18 | Now I'm not going to go into what those equations
are, because most of you probably aren't interested
| | 02:22 | in that information,
however that's what's going on.
| | 02:25 | You're always mixing the opacity of the
active path with everything behind it.
| | 02:30 | Now let's say that you want to modify
the translucency of the entire creature.
| | 02:35 | So the first thing I'll do is go ahead and
reset the opacity of the selection to 100%,
| | 02:40 | and then I'll click in this little corner
wedge of the Mishipeshu layer, or I'll just
| | 02:45 | Alt+Click or Option+Click on that layer there in the
Layers panel in order to select the entire creature.
| | 02:50 | And just so we can better see what we're
doing, I'll press Ctrl+H--or Cmd+H on the Mac--
| | 02:54 | in order to hide those selection outlines.
| | 02:57 | And now let's say I change the
opacity to something basic like 50%.
| | 03:01 | And we're going to create all these
interactions between the selected path outlines, which is
| | 03:06 | not what we want, because obviously we
don't want to see through the creature's head to
| | 03:10 | this bit of neck that he has, and we don't want
to see this bit of leg back there, and so forth.
| | 03:15 | I'll go ahead and press Ctrl+Z, or
Cmd+Z on the Mac, to undo that change.
| | 03:20 | Instead, what you do is go ahead in this
case and target the entire layer by clicking on
| | 03:25 | the meatball for that top layer in the stack,
and you can likewise target groups and so forth.
| | 03:30 | And now if I were to change the opacity
value to 50%, I change the opacity of the entire
| | 03:36 | creature as a whole.
| | 03:38 | Now one last thing I'll share with you.
| | 03:40 | If you've loaded my dekeKeys keyboard
shortcuts back in Chapter 22 of this very course, then
| | 03:45 | I've given you keyboard
shortcuts for a few opacity settings.
| | 03:48 | So for example, if you press Shift+0
you'll reset the opacity value to 100%.
| | 03:54 | If you press Shift+1 then you'll change the
opacity to 10%, Shift+2 changes it to 20%,
| | 04:00 | Shift+3 to 30% and so on and so on, all the
way up to Shift+0 once again, so you can work
| | 04:07 | in 10% increments all the way up to
100%, which once again is Shift+0.
| | 04:13 | And that's how you work with the
opacity value here inside Illustrator.
| | 04:17 | In the next movie, we'll begin
to investigate the Blend modes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Darken, Multiply, and Color Burn| 00:00 | In this movie I'll introduce you to the
first group of Blend modes which include Darken,
| | 00:05 | Multiply and Color Burn all of which use the
selected object to darken everything below it.
| | 00:11 | So I'm going to start by meatballing this
Mishipeshu layer here inside the Layers panel,
| | 00:16 | and that way I can assign a Blend mode to
the entire layer at one time, so that I am not
| | 00:21 | creating interactions
between the various selected paths.
| | 00:24 | And now so I can see what I am doing, I'll
press Ctrl+H or Cmd+H on the Mac to hide
| | 00:29 | those selection edges.
| | 00:30 | Then I'll click on Normal, and as I was
mentioning in the previous movie Normal is the absence
| | 00:36 | of a Blend mode, so there is no blending
going on, when you have the Normal mode except for
| | 00:42 | the blending associated with the Opacity
value, but there's no extra Blend mode equation.
| | 00:48 | So the first group of actual Blend modes are
these guys right here: Darken, Multiply, and
| | 00:52 | Color Burn, and you can see they are
organized into a group because they are related.
| | 00:58 | Their opposites are the next group of Blend
modes as we'll see in the following movie,
| | 01:02 | and from then on the Blend modes are grouped
logically as well--even if they do have strange
| | 01:07 | names at times-- such as, for example, Multiply,
which we'll see is one of the best Blend modes there is.
| | 01:13 | Anyway, I'm going to start things off with
Darken which is the simplest of the Darken
| | 01:19 | modes, which is the simplest of these three
Blend modes. All it does is find which color
| | 01:24 | is darker, and if a color is darker in the
selected object then you see it; if a color
| | 01:30 | is darker in the
background then you see it instead.
| | 01:34 | So in other words it's an on-off proposition
which may lead you to wonder, why then do we
| | 01:39 | have this obvious blend going on right here?
Why don't we either see the background or
| | 01:45 | the monster in the foreground but not both?
| | 01:47 | And the reason is because this blending
operation is happening on an ink-by-ink basis, so to
| | 01:53 | really see what's going on we
need the Separations Preview panel.
| | 01:56 | So I'll go up to the Window menu and choose
Separations Preview in order to bring up that
| | 02:01 | panel, and then so I can actually use the panel,
I'll turn on the Overprint Preview checkbox.
| | 02:07 | And the best things for getting a sense of what's
really going on here happened to be Cyan and Magenta.
| | 02:13 | So I'll Alt+Click or Option+Click on the
eye in front of Cyan. And you can see now that
| | 02:19 | either we see the creature--as in the case
of his head--or we see the background--as in
| | 02:25 | the case of this stripe of color coming
through his neck--and then we see the creature again,
| | 02:29 | and then we see the background again, and
then we see the creature and we lose them
| | 02:33 | around the tail and the rear leg.
| | 02:36 | Whereas if I go ahead and turn Magenta on
and then turn Cyan off we get a different
| | 02:42 | result. We're still seeing much of the head
and we lose the neck to the background, but
| | 02:46 | then we get part of the neck back and then
we lose the body to the background and then
| | 02:49 | we see the haunches and the lower portions of the
rear feet and then we see the background once again.
| | 02:55 | So, that's what's going on with Darken
either you're seeing the selected object or you're
| | 02:59 | seeing the background--whichever is darkest--
on an ink-by-ink basis. So I'll go ahead and
| | 03:04 | turn CMYK back on here so that
we can see the full-color preview.
| | 03:09 | Now, the problem with Darken and the reason
you're probably not going to use it all that
| | 03:12 | often is because you can end up with some
choppy transitions and you can see that our
| | 03:17 | color transitions are less than
smooth here inside these gradients.
| | 03:21 | If you want something smoother and you want
something a little bit darker as well, then
| | 03:25 | you want to switch from Darken to Multiply,
which is probably the Blend mode you'll be
| | 03:31 | using most often inside of Illustrator. And
what it does is it creates these wonderfully
| | 03:36 | smooth interactions as you can see here.
| | 03:39 | It's analogous to taking the selected
object and printing it on a translucent overlay,
| | 03:44 | and then printing out the background on
another translucent overlay and putting one overlay
| | 03:48 | on top of another on a light table.
| | 03:51 | So you end up uniformly darkening throughout
the illustration, and you also get very smooth
| | 03:55 | effects, which is why Multiply is the mode
that Illustrator uses by default when you're
| | 04:01 | creating drop shadows, because it is the
shadow mode; it turns anything into a shadow.
| | 04:07 | And then finally we've got Color Burn, which
creates this radical effect here; we've got
| | 04:13 | choppier transitions even than what we
achieved with Darken, but we also have these elevated
| | 04:18 | saturation values, as you can see here.
| | 04:20 | Now Color Burn may end up making your strokes
look a little jagged, but that's just a function
| | 04:25 | of the screen display if I zoom on in here,
you can see that my strokes are smooth as
| | 04:30 | they ever were, although I do have some
choppy transitions inside the gradients.
| | 04:35 | The ultimate moral of the story here is you're
not going to use Color Burn very often, although
| | 04:39 | it can be useful for creating burnt effects.
You're going to use Darken the next most often
| | 04:44 | --which is to say, not very often at all--and
then you're going to use Multiply all the time.
| | 04:49 | So what I am going to do is go ahead and
zoom back out here and switch the mode back to
| | 04:53 | Multiply and then I'll go ahead and press
let's say Shift+6, which will work for you
| | 04:59 | if you loaded dekeKeys, in order to
reduce the Opacity value as well to 60%.
| | 05:04 | So both the Blend mode and Opacity work together
to determine the translucency of a selected object.
| | 05:12 | And you know what I think I'll do? I'm going
to press Shift+2 in order to reduce the Opacity
| | 05:16 | value to 20%, and then I am going to make a
copy of this layer by clicking on a fly-out
| | 05:21 | menu icon and then
choosing Duplicate Mishipeshu.
| | 05:25 | And I'm going to leave this guy set to Multiply,
but I'm going to restore his Opacity to 100%
| | 05:29 | by pressing Shift+0, and so now
we have a darker effect still.
| | 05:33 | So you can see if I turn off the bottom of
these two layers--the one that's set to 20%
| | 05:37 | opacity--that brightens things up a little
bit, and then when I turn that layer back
| | 05:41 | on, it darkens up that much more. And now
I'm going to go ahead and grab my Rotate tool
| | 05:46 | and I'll just drag this top version--the more
opaque version--of the creature a little bit
| | 05:52 | here in order to rotate him about this far,
and we end up getting a kind of motion effect,
| | 05:59 | which is one of the many, many things you
can do using Blend modes inside of Illustrator.
| | 06:04 | So there you have it, that's how to use the
Darkening modes, specifically Darken, Multiply,
| | 06:09 | and Color Burn, and in the next movie I'll
show you how to use the Lightening modes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Lighten, Screen, and Color Dodge| 00:00 | In this movie, we'll take a look at the
second group of Blend modes, which is the so-called
| | 00:04 | Lightening modes, which include Lighten,
Screen, and Color Dodge, and to demonstrate these
| | 00:10 | modes I'm going to switch to a different layer.
| | 00:12 | I'm going to turn both of these blue layers
off here at the top of the Layers panel and
| | 00:17 | then I'm going to turn on this
Dark Beast layer to make it active.
| | 00:21 | Now the great thing about these Lightening
modes is that all three of them take the selected
| | 00:25 | object and use it to brighten the objects in
the background. So even a very dark version
| | 00:31 | of the creature like this is going to end
up dramatically brightening the illustration.
| | 00:35 | I'll go and meatball this Dark Beast layer,
and we're not seeing the selection edges because
| | 00:40 | I already have them hidden, but if I press
Ctrl+H or Cmd+H on the Mac to bring it
| | 00:44 | back, there they are. Now I'll press Ctrl+H or
Cmd+H again to hide him so I can see what I'm doing.
| | 00:50 | And I'm going to switch the Blend mode
from Normal--which I stress is no Blend mode--to
| | 00:55 | Lighten, and Lighten is the exact opposite of Darken.
In fact, every one of these modes is an opposite.
| | 01:02 | So Lighten is the opposite of Darken, Screen
is the opposite of Multiply, and Color Dodge
| | 01:07 | is the opposite of Color Burn in
terms of the effect that they create.
| | 01:11 | Anyway, I'll go ahead and choose Lighten,
and in this case, wherever the selected object
| | 01:15 | is brighter we'll see it, and wherever the
background is brighter we'll see the background instead.
| | 01:20 | And again the reason that we never fully
lose sight of the creature here is because this
| | 01:26 | happens on an ink-by-ink basis.
| | 01:28 | So I'll go head and once again
bring up the Separations Preview panel.
| | 01:32 | My Overprint Preview checkbox is already
turned on, so I'll just go ahead and Alt+Click or
| | 01:36 | Option+Click on the eye
in front of the Cyan ink.
| | 01:40 | And you can see that the head totally disappears
in this region right here because the background
| | 01:45 | is brighter, and then the neck and shoulders
come back because they are brighter than the
| | 01:49 | background--at least the strokes are--and then
we lose sight of the creature in this region,
| | 01:53 | and then he comes back over here on the
haunches, and then he is in and out along the tail.
| | 01:59 | Whereas, if I turn on Magenta and turn Cyan
off, we get a very different looking effect.
| | 02:06 | So we've got most of the head intact. We
lose a little bit of the shoulder right there.
| | 02:11 | But the majority of his body and his front legs
as you can see here are intact. Then we lose
| | 02:16 | some of the haunches and the bottom of his
feet and then the tail is totally intact as well.
| | 02:21 | All right, so that's what's going on with
Lighten, not the most useful mode but it's
| | 02:25 | there. I am going to turn CMYK back on.
| | 02:28 | The problem with Lighten is just like with
Darken, you end up getting choppy transitions.
| | 02:32 | If you want smoother transitions and you
want a brighter effect, then you want to go ahead
| | 02:37 | and switch to Screen--which is a great mode,
second only to Multiply--and notice we get
| | 02:43 | this wonderfully lustrous
version of the creature here.
| | 02:46 | The standard analogy is that it's as if you
put the selection on one slide-- one 35 millimeter
| | 02:53 | slide--for example, and you put the
background on another one, you slide them into separate
| | 02:57 | projectors and you shine both
projectors at the same screen.
| | 03:02 | Where that analogy breaks down, for
Illustrator, is the background--especially here where the
| | 03:06 | layer icon concerned appears white--and if
there was that much brightness, then of course
| | 03:11 | that would wipe out the background. However,
you have to bear in mind that the area around
| | 03:15 | the selected creature is actually transparent,
so there is no interaction going on there at all.
| | 03:21 | Now I should show you just by way of
comparison, here what's happening on an ink-by-ink basis.
| | 03:26 | So I'll bring back Separations Preview and
I'll Alt+Click on Cyan, and you can see there's
| | 03:31 | really no point to which we completely lose the
creature now and we have very smooth transitions
| | 03:37 | throughout this plate, and if I turn on Magenta
channel as well, the effect becomes even more pronounced.
| | 03:44 | Now there are spots where portions of the
creature are going to fade away, and that's
| | 03:48 | because there are areas--since we're not
seeing all the inks here--where the background just
| | 03:53 | turns totally white.
| | 03:55 | And whenever something turns totally white
when you are working with the Screen mode
| | 03:59 | it wins; white always comes out on top
just as black always comes out on top when you
| | 04:04 | are working with Multiply.
| | 04:05 | I'll switch back to CMYK.
| | 04:08 | Not surprisingly Screen is the mode that
Illustrator employs by default when you apply a Glow effect,
| | 04:14 | whether Outer Glow or Inner Glow.
| | 04:17 | Next, we have the least useful of these modes
in my opinion, and I think you'll share that
| | 04:21 | opinion in just a moment.
| | 04:23 | That's Color Dodge and it ends up creating
an even choppier effect than Lighten and we
| | 04:28 | get these highly saturated colors as well.
| | 04:32 | Which does make it useful at times for
things like fire and very, very bright highlights,
| | 04:38 | but again if you are looking for a go-to
mode where lightening is concerned, it's going
| | 04:42 | to be Screen and I hasten to add that you
can combine Screen along with an Opacity value.
| | 04:48 | So because I've loaded dekeKeys, I can press
Shift+7 for example to reduce that opacity
| | 04:53 | to 70% and create this ghosted
version of the creature right here.
| | 04:58 | And that's how you work with the three Lightening
modes, specifically Lighten, Screen, and Color Dodge.
| | 05:04 | In the next movie we'll take
a look at the Contrast modes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Overlay, Soft Light, Hard Light, Difference, and Exclusion| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll introduce you to the
Contrast and Inversion modes which are the third and
| | 00:06 | fourth groups of Blend modes, respectively.
| | 00:09 | Specifically, the Contrast modes include Overlay,
Soft Light and Hard Light, and the Inversion
| | 00:14 | modes include Difference and Exclusion.
| | 00:17 | I'll show you how they work by once again
meatballing the Dark Beast layer. I have my
| | 00:22 | selection edges hidden but
the creature is selected.
| | 00:25 | Now your first Contrast mode is Overlay
and if you are familiar with Photoshop to any
| | 00:30 | degree, you may know that Overlay is often
in sighted as being the third most useful
| | 00:36 | Blend mode, right after Multiply and Screen.
| | 00:39 | In Illustrator everything is kind of turned
upside-down, because you typically work inside
| | 00:44 | CMYK space instead of RGB and as a result,
Overlay takes a back seat to the final Contrast
| | 00:51 | Blend mode which is Hard Light.
| | 00:53 | Let me show you what I mean.
| | 00:54 | When the creature is set to the Overlay mode,
you're use saying the selected object--the
| | 01:00 | creature once again--to enhance the contrast of the
objects behind it: that flowing gradient background.
| | 01:07 | So in other words, the contrast of the selected
object suffers, but the contrast of the objects
| | 01:12 | behind it are enhanced.
| | 01:14 | If you want the opposite effect, which is
typically what you do want--in other words, you
| | 01:19 | want to use the background in order to
enhance the contrast of the selected object--then you
| | 01:24 | switch from Overlay to Hard Light and in
our case we get this preferable effect here.
| | 01:29 | So, if you are working in a CMYK document,
as I am now, then Hard Light is your more
| | 01:35 | likely go-to Contrast mode.
| | 01:37 | Now by contrast, if Overlay turns out to be
too much--I'll go ahead and switch back to
| | 01:42 | it--then you can back off the effect not only
by reducing the Opacity value, and my Opacity
| | 01:48 | value is quite low, I should press Shift+0,
which is a dekeKeys shortcut for 100% Opacity.
| | 01:53 | So, if Overlay is too much, then you can
either reduce the Opacity value or you can switch
| | 01:59 | the Blend mode down to Soft Light,
which produces a unique effect.
| | 02:04 | In other words, Soft Light is not just a
lower opacity version of Overlay, it's an entirely
| | 02:09 | different calculation
| | 02:11 | that produces a slight imprinting effect.
But once again it's the selected object that's
| | 02:16 | enhancing the contrast of the background
objects, and therefore the selection ends up more or
| | 02:21 | less losing the battle. All right!
| | 02:23 | Now let's try out the first of the Inversion
modes, which is Difference, and what it does
| | 02:27 | is it uses both the selected object and
the background in order to invert each other.
| | 02:33 | So, we come up with essentially an inverted
version of the creature that also has a colorful
| | 02:39 | inverted background pattern inside of it.
| | 02:42 | If you want to keep the inversion effect
but you want to back off the saturation of the
| | 02:46 | colors, then you switch from Difference
to Exclusion and you get this effect here.
| | 02:52 | Now, it turns out that the Difference mode
has this hidden ability to turn text into
| | 02:58 | something that inverts everything
below it. Let me show you what I mean.
| | 03:02 | I am going to change this Dark Beast layer
to something dark, such as the Multiply mode,
| | 03:07 | so that we are creating a very
dark area inside of this illustration.
| | 03:10 | And then I am going to create a new layer
by Alt+Clicking or Option+Clicking the little
| | 03:15 | Page icon at the bottom of Layers panel,
I'll call this new layer Text--I don't care what
| | 03:19 | color it is--and I'll click OK.
| | 03:21 | So I'll go and switch to the Type tool, which
I can get by pressing the T key and I am going
| | 03:26 | to click up in this empty area, because if
I click somewhere inside the creature I am
| | 03:30 | going to end up creating type on a path.
| | 03:32 | So, I'll click right about there and I'll
just type in some text such as, "Inversion," and
| | 03:37 | then I'll press the Escape key to exit
the Text Editing mode, and I'll press Ctrl+H
| | 03:43 | or Cmd+H on the Mac to
bring back my selection edges.
| | 03:46 | And I'll go ahead and move
this guy down right about there.
| | 03:50 | And now notice what happens if you have black
text as I do, just plain black text, not rich
| | 03:56 | black, just 100%, okay, that's it.
| | 03:58 | And you change the Blend
mode from Normal to Difference,
| | 04:02 | then you end up with text that
inverts all the colors in back of it.
| | 04:06 | So, notice that all of our warm colors are
becoming cool inside of the characters of type.
| | 04:11 | However, we are not inverting the
Luminance levels, the Brightness values that is.
| | 04:16 | If you want to invert the Brightness values
then you go ahead and change the fill of the
| | 04:20 | text from Black to White, and you end up
getting this effect here, and again this is subject
| | 04:27 | to the Difference blend mode.
| | 04:28 | So, we've got bright letters against the
dark creature and we have dark letters against
| | 04:33 | the bright background. All right!
| | 04:35 | So I might go ahead and nudge that guy down
and then press Ctrl+Shift+A or Cmd+Shift+A
| | 04:39 | on the Mac to deselect the text.
| | 04:42 | That's how you go about using the Contrast
in Inversion modes: specifically Overlay, Soft
| | 04:47 | Light, and Hard Light along
with Difference and Exclusion.
| | 04:51 | In the next movie we'll take a look at the
final group of Blend modes: Hue, Saturation,
| | 04:55 | Color, and Luminosity.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Hue, Saturation, Color, and Luminosity| 00:00 | All right I've gone ahead and changed out the
text a little bit, all in the name of creating
| | 00:04 | a better design, but it's still White set
to the Difference mode so it's always going
| | 00:08 | to invert everything behind it.
| | 00:10 | In this movie, I am going to show you how
to work with the last four Blend modes: Hue,
| | 00:15 | Saturation, Color, and Luminosity, which are
generally best understood from the bottom up.
| | 00:20 | Here is what's going on: these modes break
up the color spectrum into Hue, Saturation,
| | 00:26 | and Luminosity. And just by way of a recap,
Hue is the base color traced around the perimeter
| | 00:32 | of the big Color Wheel, whether it's an RGB
Color Wheel or in this case something closer
| | 00:37 | to the Lab Color Wheel, like the one we discussed a
couple of chapters ago when we were looking at color.
| | 00:43 | Saturation is the intensity of the color,
from drab gray all the way up to vivid red
| | 00:49 | or vivid yellow or vivid what-have-you.
| | 00:52 | And then Luminosity is brightness as
measured from black to white, and of course all the
| | 00:57 | range of grays and
intermediate colors in between.
| | 01:01 | Color, by the way, is a combination of Hue and
Saturation working together and is therefore
| | 01:06 | the exact opposite of Luminosity.
| | 01:09 | Let me show you what I am talking about here.
| | 01:11 | In the interest of coming up with a decent
looking document when we are done, I am going
| | 01:15 | to click on the Dark Beast layer
here inside of the Layers panel.
| | 01:18 | And then I click on the flyout menu icon
and choose Duplicate>Dark Beast, and for
| | 01:22 | the present I'll go ahead and turn that Duplicate
layer off, and then I will meatball the Dark Beast layer.
| | 01:29 | And that way I can apply the Blend mode to
the entire layer at a time, and I will press
| | 01:33 | Ctrl+H or Cmd+H on the Mac in
order to hide the selection edges.
| | 01:37 | All right, so now I am going to change the
Blend mode from its current state, which is
| | 01:41 | Multiply,to the final mode, Luminosity.
| | 01:44 | And what happens is we keep the Luminance
levels of the selected object and we mix them
| | 01:49 | in with the Hue and Saturation, that is
the color of the objects in the background.
| | 01:56 | Now if you've watched the previous movie you
may be thinking you're seeing something familiar.
| | 02:00 | After all, this effect ends up
oftentimes looking a lot like Hard Light.
| | 02:05 | So I'll go ahead and compare the two here.
| | 02:07 | This is Hard Light and notice as soon as I
choose the mode that we end up with a lot
| | 02:12 | more color being infused into the object.
There is a lot more saturation going on and
| | 02:17 | those bright strokes are turning very colorful,
and we don't end up with the degree of darkness
| | 02:22 | either that we saw a moment ago.
| | 02:24 | As soon as I switch from Hard Light back to
Luminosity, we end up with the lower Saturation,
| | 02:29 | higher Contrast effect.
| | 02:31 | Now let's say you want the opposite effect
of this: that is to say, you want to keep the
| | 02:35 | colors associated with the selected object, and you
want to merge them with the Luminance levels--a.k.a.
| | 02:42 | the brightness values--of
the objects in the background.
| | 02:45 | Then you would switch from Luminosity to its opposite,
Color, and you would end up getting this effect here.
| | 02:51 | So we have all the colors that are associated
with the creature but all the Luminance levels
| | 02:57 | that are associated with the background.
| | 02:59 | Now oftentimes you will find this to be
useful; in this case, maybe not so much.
| | 03:04 | However the thing to bear in mind
is it's all based on who's in front.
| | 03:08 | So if I have this background in front of the
creature and I change the background to Color,
| | 03:14 | I would end up getting the same effect we
saw just a moment ago when the creature is
| | 03:17 | set to Luminosity, because after all,
the two are the opposite of each other.
| | 03:22 | Now Hue and Saturation are
a lot less commonly used.
| | 03:26 | Basically what's happening here is you are taking
color and you are dividing it into its components--
| | 03:31 | that is to say the core color--
Hue and the intensity Saturation.
| | 03:35 | So if I choose Hue, I go ahead and mix those
core colors associated with the selected creature
| | 03:41 | along with the Saturation and
Luminance levels of the background.
| | 03:46 | So I end up getting a very highly saturated
effect. We can barely see what's going on, however.
| | 03:52 | Whereas if I choose Saturation I'm going
to mix the Saturation values, which are very
| | 03:57 | low, associated with the creature along
with the Hue, which is why we are seeing those
| | 04:02 | greens there, and the
Luminance levels of the background.
| | 04:06 | Actually this is the effect, believe it or
not, that I am going to stick with. Even though
| | 04:09 | I have never before in my life found a use
for Saturation inside of Illustrator, I'm
| | 04:15 | going to accept this effect, and then I am
going to go ahead and turn on the Dark Beast
| | 04:19 | Copy layer right here and I'll meatball it
and I'll change its Blend mode to Screen and
| | 04:25 | I'll do that same thing I did when I was
showing off Multiply, a few movies ago.
| | 04:30 | I'll go ahead and grab my Rotate tool,
which of course I can get by pressing the R key,
| | 04:34 | and I'll just go ahead and rotate this guy
slightly like so, in order to come up with
| | 04:39 | this sort of Ghosty Drop Shadow Effect.
| | 04:42 | Now I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A or Cmd+Shift+A
on the Mac in order to deselect the artwork,
| | 04:48 | and you can see throughout my manipulations,
the Difference blend mode that's assigned
| | 04:52 | to this text keeps on working.
| | 04:55 | So the text keeps on interacting with
everything in back of it which is why it now appears
| | 04:58 | dark because after all,
everything behind it is light.
| | 05:03 | And that, friends, is how you work with the
final four blend modes, that is to say Hue,
| | 05:07 | Saturation, Color, and Luminosity.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Combining the effects of multiple blend modes| 00:00 | In this movie, we will apply several different
Blend modes working together in order to convert
| | 00:05 | this base art into this kind of digital
cave painting, and I just want you to see what
| | 00:10 | happens when you combine the effects of
all 5 different styles of Blending modes.
| | 00:16 | So we'll have a Lightening mode, a Darkening mode,
a Contrast mode, an Inversion mode and an HSL mode.
| | 00:22 | So I'll go ahead and switch
over to the base art here.
| | 00:24 | And I am going to turn off all the layers
but the Paint layer by dragging at that eyeball
| | 00:28 | column, and then I'll twirl open the Paint
layer, so you can see that it contains two items.
| | 00:34 | If I turn off the image out in front for a moment,
you can see that we've got a boring brown
| | 00:38 | rectangle in the background and
then on top of it is an imported image.
| | 00:43 | I am going to go ahead and meatball that image.
| | 00:45 | So this is a pixel-based image from Photoshop.
| | 00:48 | It is very low-res--just 180 x 190 pixels
per inch--and the reason we have two different
| | 00:53 | values is that I stretched the
image using the Scale tool.
| | 00:57 | Now, what I want to do is blend this image
with that brown rectangle in the background
| | 01:02 | and I want to keep all the Luminance information,
because I want to infuse my document with texture.
| | 01:09 | I want to keep all the Luminance information from
this painting, and merge it with that color brown.
| | 01:14 | And so I'll do exactly that by going over
here to the Transparency panel, clicking on
| | 01:19 | the Blend mode pop up menu and choosing
Luminosity, and I end up getting this effect here, which
| | 01:25 | is going to be perfect for the texture, as I say.
| | 01:28 | Now I'll go and turn on this Gradient layer
and I'll meatball it as well so that the entire
| | 01:33 | layer is active. And by the way, in case you
are wondering what in the world this thing is,
| | 01:37 | this is a Gradient mesh and I'll be devoting
an entire chapter on Gradient mesh--because
| | 01:42 | it's incredibly powerful, one of the most
complicated features in all of Illustrator--
| | 01:46 | in my final mastery course.
| | 01:49 | But in the meantime I want to take these colors and I
want to merge them with the texture in the background.
| | 01:54 | I could apply the Color mode; the problem is that gives us
a pretty weak and overly-bright effect as you can see.
| | 02:02 | So I went with Hard Light instead which
ends up giving me this high-impact effect here
| | 02:07 | and notice that even though I'm retaining
all the color information from that Gradient
| | 02:12 | mesh, I can see through to the
textures of the imported image.
| | 02:16 | All right, the next step here is to turn on
the Details layer and I'm going to go ahead
| | 02:21 | and twirl close the Paint layer, so I have
little more room to work, and I'll select the
| | 02:25 | sun and I am going to change it to the most over-the-
top lightning mode, which is Color Dodge right there.
| | 02:32 | And then I'll go ahead and select these waves,
which are all grouped together, just as the
| | 02:36 | sun was grouped, by the way.
| | 02:38 | And I'll change the Blend mode for these to
once again Hard Light, because that happens
| | 02:42 | to work out really nicely and then I'll reduce
the Opacity value to 50% and in my case, because
| | 02:48 | of loaded dekeKeys.
| | 02:49 | I can do that by pressing Shift+5.
| | 02:50 | All right, now I want to use these guys
right here, this collection of guys in the canoe.
| | 02:55 | I will go ahead and click on their outline
and you need to make sure to click on an edge,
| | 03:00 | kind of hard to find these things, because
they're all rounded polygons- that goes with
| | 03:04 | the sun and the waves as well.
| | 03:06 | And I'll press Ctrl+H or Cmd+H
on the Mac in order to hide the edges.
| | 03:10 | I want to go ahead and burn them into the
background, and so I started by just choosing
| | 03:15 | Color Burn in order to achieve this effect
here, but for some reason my strokes drop out.
| | 03:21 | So, I went ahead and pressed Ctrl+Z or Cmd+Z on
the Mac and I switched over to the Appearance panel.
| | 03:26 | You can apply Blend modes to
independent attributes if you so desire.
| | 03:31 | So for example, I went ahead and clicked on
the fill for this Compound path right here,
| | 03:37 | and I changed the fill to Color
Burn and ended up with this effect.
| | 03:41 | Now I didn't want that full-on black stroke,
so I went ahead and clicked on the black stroke
| | 03:46 | and did something you wouldn't think would work.
| | 03:48 | I changed it to Color Burn and I
ended up getting this effect here.
| | 03:53 | My theory for why we're getting this effect--
| | 03:56 | why it is a little darker than it was before--
is because we're getting an interaction between
| | 04:01 | this stroke and it's fill, because
there'd be a half-point overlap there.
| | 04:06 | Anyway, I'll go ahead and zoom in and you can
see that this is the effect that I'm getting.
| | 04:11 | And in fact I am right; we do
have a half-point overlap, so great!
| | 04:14 | All right, now I am going to press Ctrl+0
or Cmd+0 on a Mac to center my zoom.
| | 04:19 | Switch back to the Layers panel and I'll turn
back on that top layer in the stack and I'll
| | 04:25 | meatball it as well, and I went ahead and
changed it to a representative of the only
| | 04:29 | style of Blend mode, we were missing so far,
the Inversion modes, and the one I came up
| | 04:34 | with was Difference.
| | 04:35 | Now, then I ended up creating kind of a
colorful stroke effect and I really wanted the strokes
| | 04:39 | to just completely vanish, and
here is how you make that happen.
| | 04:43 | I will press Ctrl+H or Cmd+H on
the Mac to bring back my selection edges.
| | 04:47 | And I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A or Cmd+Shift+A
on the Mac to deselect the artwork and then
| | 04:51 | I'll click on one of these items
that has a stroke assigned to it.
| | 04:55 | Now all these strokes are of the same color,
so I'm going to select them all, by clicking
| | 05:01 | in this down pointing arrowhead and making
sure that Stroke Color is selected, which
| | 05:04 | it is in my case, and then I'll click on the
Select Similar Objects icon to select everything
| | 05:09 | that is stroked with that color.
| | 05:12 | And then I am going to Shift+Click on the
second Color Swatch in the Control panel there
| | 05:16 | to bring up my CMYK values.
| | 05:17 | If you don't see CMYK, then you need to
choose CMYK from the flyout menu, and what you need
| | 05:23 | to do is change every single one of these
values to 100%, just so you can see it work here.
| | 05:28 | I am going to press Ctrl+H or Command+H on
the Mac to hide my selection edges and then
| | 05:33 | I Shift+Click on that swatch again and I'll
change the C value to 100% and notice that
| | 05:40 | goes ahead and drops out
the strokes on the Cyan plate.
| | 05:43 | Now I'll change Magenta value to 100% and
that drops up the strokes on the Magenta plate.
| | 05:49 | I'll change Y value to 100%, that drops
them out on the Yellow plate and then finally,
| | 05:54 | I'll set the K value to 100%, which drops
out the strokes on the final plate, Black.
| | 06:00 | And so, what you have to do, any time you
want objects to completely disappear--you
| | 06:05 | want the color to totally disappear--when it's
set to either of the Inversion Modes, Difference
| | 06:11 | or Exclusion, or any of the Lightening Modes,
Lighten, Screen or Color Dodge, then we
| | 06:16 | need to set all 4 CMYK values to 100%.
| | 06:20 | All right, now my strokes are still selected.
| | 06:23 | I want to make them thicker.
| | 06:24 | So I am just going to dial in a Line Weight value of
1.5 points like so, in order to produce the final effect.
| | 06:31 | And that's one way at least to create an
interaction between all 5 styles of Blend Modes: Lightening,
| | 06:38 | Darkening, Contrast, Inversion and HSL.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Isolating blending and Knockout Group| 00:00 | In this movie, I am going to show you how
and why you might create a Knockout Group,
| | 00:05 | which prevents objects inside of a group
or layer from interacting with each other.
| | 00:09 | Now that might sound just like meatballing
an entire layer and applying a Blend mode
| | 00:14 | to it because after all, that prevents the
path outlines inside of a layer from interacting
| | 00:19 | with each other, too.
| | 00:21 | But it's more nuanced than that. I know, I hate
nuance too, but you may run into a situation like this.
| | 00:28 | Imagine that instead of the effect I just
created, I want something more like this, where
| | 00:33 | the strokes are nice and bright white and
then I've got a bunch of gradients that are
| | 00:37 | essentially multiplied into the background.
| | 00:40 | Now, if I were to apply the Multiply Blend
mode to the entire layer, then those strokes
| | 00:44 | would become invisible, because there's no
way to get white out of a Darkening mode.
| | 00:49 | So I had to apply the Multiply Blend mode
to the gradient fills independently of the
| | 00:53 | white strokes, which means there was no
way to apply a Blend mode to the entire layer
| | 00:58 | at a time, which is exactly
where Knockout Groups come in.
| | 01:02 | So now that I am finished with that
setup, let me show you how to do it.
| | 01:04 | I'll go ahead and switch over to the document
I created in the previous movie and I'll turn
| | 01:09 | off the top Mishipeshu layer and then I'll
turn on this White Lines layer right there.
| | 01:15 | And notice that I have a bunch of shapes with a
bunch of gradients interacting with each other.
| | 01:19 | I'll go ahead and assign the Blend modes to
the main body shape here so you can see what's
| | 01:25 | up, because it's fairly indicative
of what I did all the way around.
| | 01:29 | Now I'll switch over to the Appearance panel,
and notice that I have a series of three gradients
| | 01:34 | built up on top of each other
along with this 1.5-point white stroke.
| | 01:39 | Right now we're seeing just the bottommost fill.
| | 01:41 | I'll turn on the next one up, and notice that
it darkens things very slightly. If I go ahead
| | 01:46 | and grab the Gradient tool--which you can
get by pressing the G key--you can see that
| | 01:50 | I've got a radial gradient that extends from
outside of the animal's body to just barely
| | 01:56 | into his body, so that we're
creating a little bit of shading down below.
| | 02:01 | In order to turn that into effective shading,
I need to apply the Multiply Blend mode.
| | 02:06 | So with the fill selected, I'll click on
the Blend mode pop-up menu and choose Multiply
| | 02:12 | and then because I loaded dekeKeys, I can just
press Shift+7 to reduce the Opacity value to 70%.
| | 02:19 | The next gradient fill also turned off
--I'll go ahead and turn it on here--is designed
| | 02:23 | to add a little highlight to this foot. And
so you can see that it barely extends into
| | 02:29 | this selected path outline here.
| | 02:31 | Now, in order to make the highlight brighter,
I need to assign the Screen mode so I could
| | 02:35 | go back up here to the Transparency panel
or I could just click on the word Opacity
| | 02:40 | underneath this fill. That brings up the full
Transparency panel and I'll change the Blend
| | 02:45 | mode from Normal to Screen this time around.
And then I'll press the Esc key in order
| | 02:49 | to hide that sub-panel and I'll press Shift+5
to reduce the Opacity to 50%. All right!
| | 02:55 | Finally, I want to change this background
fill here to Multiply as well so that it's
| | 03:00 | interacting with the objects behind it.
| | 03:03 | So I'll go ahead and click on that fill to
select it. I'll click on the word Opacity
| | 03:07 | there and I want you to see something
about this version of the Transparency panel:
| | 03:11 | When the whole panel is expanded--and I'll
show you how that works in just a moment--
| | 03:15 | you can see a preview of the selected object,
which is actually really useful sometimes.
| | 03:20 | Let's say I press Ctrl+H or Cmd+H on a
Mac to hide the selection edges and I switch
| | 03:25 | back to my Black Arrow tool, so that I'm not
seeing the gradient annotator and I am really
| | 03:30 | not sure if anything is selected or not.
| | 03:32 | Well if I click on Opacity, then I can see a
little preview of just the selected object.
| | 03:38 | And notice, if I go ahead and press Ctrl+Shift
+A or Cmd+Shift+A on the Mac to deselect
| | 03:42 | everything, I will see no selection up here
at the top of the Appearance panel. But even
| | 03:47 | better is the fact that when I click in
the word Opacity, I see nothing and therefore
| | 03:51 | I don't have anything selected. All right!
| | 03:53 | I am going to go ahead and click on this
path outline again and I can confirm that it's
| | 03:57 | selected by clicking on Opacity, there it
is and I'll change the Blend mode from Normal
| | 04:02 | to Multiply and we end up getting this effect
here, which is great except for the fact that
| | 04:07 | all of these shapes are interacting with
each other which I don't want them to do.
| | 04:12 | So, here is what you do next.
| | 04:14 | You go ahead and switch back to the Layers
panel and you either assemble all of these
| | 04:17 | path outlines into a group, or in my case
they are already assembled inside of a layer. So
| | 04:22 | I'll just go ahead and meatball the layer. So
you want to select the thing that's encompassing
| | 04:27 | all of these interacting path outlines and
then I'll go up here to the Transparency panel
| | 04:32 | and I'll click this little Double Arrow icon
a couple of times in order to expand the panel
| | 04:38 | so that I am seeing the entire thing.
| | 04:39 | There is the preview of all of my selected
shapes, and notice that I've got a few different
| | 04:44 | checkboxes down here; they are
all designed to solve problems.
| | 04:47 | Now this last checkbox here is not anything
you need to worry about, but these two are
| | 04:51 | quite useful; Isolate Blending will go ahead
and do exactly the opposite of what we want to do.
| | 04:57 | So if I turn on that checkbox, you can see
that the blending is isolated to the active layer.
| | 05:02 | In other words the path outlines inside the
layer will interact with each other, but they're
| | 05:06 | not going to interact with any other layers.
| | 05:08 | That's exactly what we don't want,
so I'll turn that checkbox off.
| | 05:11 | We've got this other one next door called
Knockout Group and that's the one we want to apply.
| | 05:16 | That turns this layer into a Knockout Group,
so that none of the path outlines inside the
| | 05:21 | layer interact with each other; they just
interact with everything outside the layer.
| | 05:26 | Now, by default you may see a
little bar inside this checkbox.
| | 05:31 | If so, just go ahead and click on it and that will turn
the checkbox on and we get the effect we're looking for.
| | 05:36 | If you turn the checkbox off, then we end
up with the path outlines interacting again
| | 05:42 | and then for some reason if you turn on the
checkbox again, you get the bar and it doesn't
| | 05:46 | make any difference.
| | 05:48 | So I just want you to know that you cycle
through three different states often times
| | 05:52 | with this checkbox and the state we're
looking for if you want it on, is the checkbox and
| | 05:57 | we get this effect here. All right!
| | 05:59 | I'll go ahead and press Ctrl+Shift+A or Cmd+
Shift+A on a Mac in order to deselect the artwork
| | 06:03 | and incidentally--I want to share one more
thing--I am going to bring back that top layer
| | 06:09 | there, so we can see the version of
the artwork from the previous movie.
| | 06:12 | So I'll turn off the White Lines
layer and turn on this top blue layer.
| | 06:17 | If ever after applying a bunch of Blend Modes,
you see some ragged edges here and there inside
| | 06:22 | your artwork, especially around strokes, that's
generally because you're zoomed out and you're
| | 06:27 | seeing the results of the screen anti-aliasing.
| | 06:31 | So it's just the screen artifact. It has
nothing to do with how your artwork is going to print.
| | 06:35 | And if you ever want to confirm that, just
go ahead and zoom way in by pressing the Ctrl
| | 06:41 | and Spacebar keys or the Cmd and
Spacebar keys on the Mac and dragging, and then zoom
| | 06:45 | way in on your artwork and go ahead and check
out those strokes in detail, and they should
| | 06:51 | end up looking really great.
| | 06:53 | The only problem where this artwork is
concerned--I'll go ahead and back out and zoom back in
| | 06:58 | right there at this location--is these guys
right there which are the result of the Color
| | 07:03 | Dodge Blend mode hitting some very hot spots and
exaggerating the contrast inside of these areas.
| | 07:10 | However, they will still print smooth; you're just
going to see these red lines right through these areas.
| | 07:17 | So it's just something to bear in mind. You
should always get nice sharp smooth strokes
| | 07:22 | regardless of the Blend
modes that you apply. All right!
| | 07:26 | So that takes care of the Opacity value,
all the Blend Modes and Knockout Groups.
| | 07:31 | In the next movie, we'll take a look at a few
ways to combine Blend modes with dynamic effects.
| | 07:34 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Combining blend modes with dynamic effects| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to combine
Blend modes along with Dynamic effects, and
| | 00:05 | in the course of doing so, we'll transform
this base art right here, these primitive
| | 00:09 | forms--such as this ten-pointed star and
this circle and this kind of crescent--into this
| | 00:15 | finished light bulb art.
| | 00:17 | So I'll go ahead and switch back to my starter
document here and I'll click on the path outline
| | 00:21 | for the light bulb to select it and then I'll
switch over to the Appearance panel and you
| | 00:26 | can see that I've assigned an
Outer Glow effect in advance.
| | 00:29 | If you click on Outer Glow, you'll see that
the color is set to that same shade of green
| | 00:34 | that I've assigned to the star.
| | 00:36 | And the Blend mode is by default set to Screen.
| | 00:39 | Now you can change it to any other mode you
want--and notice that Illustrator goes ahead
| | 00:43 | and organizes the most popular modes at the
top here--but this should tell you that Screen
| | 00:48 | is your Blend mode for glows
inside of Illustrator as well it is.
| | 00:53 | Now I'll go ahead and press the Esc key
because I don't want to change the settings,
| | 00:56 | but we do have a problem here; notice that
the glow extends not only around the lightbulb,
| | 01:00 | but around its base as well, and that doesn't
make any sense because the base isn't glowing.
| | 01:04 | So we need to resolve that problem.
| | 01:07 | First step is to go up to the Edit menu and
choose the Copy command or press Ctrl+C or
| | 01:11 | Cmd+C on the Mac, and now let's modify
the existing shape here by switching over
| | 01:18 | to Layers panel. And I'm going to turn off
the Accents layer in order to get rid of that
| | 01:22 | stuff in the foreground there, and I'll
press the A key to switch to my White Arrow tool.
| | 01:27 | And I'll marquee very carefully around this
region right there, just below the anchor points
| | 01:32 | at the base of the bulb, and that will select
all these anchor points as well as the bottom
| | 01:37 | anchor point in the star, which I don't want.
| | 01:39 | So I'll go ahead and turn off
that star and shadow layer as well.
| | 01:43 | And then I'll press the Backspace key or
the Delete key on the Mac to get rid of those
| | 01:47 | selected anchor points and now I have just
got the glowing portion of the bulb selected.
| | 01:52 | Now I'll go up to the Control panel and
I'll click on the second Swatch and change that
| | 01:56 | stroke to None and then I'll click on the
on the first Swatch and just change it to
| | 02:00 | Black, so there's some kind of fill going on.
| | 02:03 | In that way, it'll serve as a placeholder.
| | 02:05 | Now return to the Edit menu and choose the
Paste in Front command or press Ctrl+F or
| | 02:10 | Cmd+F on the Mac to paste the full light bulb
outline into place and switch back to the Appearance panel.
| | 02:16 | We don't need the Outer Glow for this shape,
so just go ahead and grab it and drag it to
| | 02:20 | the Trashcan at the bottom of the
Appearance panel to get rid of it. All right!
| | 02:24 | Now let's switch back to the Layers panel and turn
on those two layers that we turned off a moment ago.
| | 02:30 | And I'll press the V key to switch back to
the Black Arrow tool and I'm going to click
| | 02:34 | on the star shape and then Shift+Click on
this crescent and this circle in order to
| | 02:38 | select all of those shapes, and then I'll
go to my Transparency panel and I'll change
| | 02:43 | the Blend mode to Screen, so that
we're using the shapes to create glows.
| | 02:48 | Now I'll Shift+Click on the circle to
deselect it--that's very important, if you're working
| | 02:53 | along with me--and now because I loaded
dekeKeys I'll press Shift+5 in order to reduce the
| | 02:57 | Opacity value to 50% and I end up
with this effect here. All right!
| | 03:02 | Now I am going to Shift+Click on the star
to deselect it, so only the crescent remains
| | 03:06 | selected. And I want to blur it, and there
are two ways to blur in Illustrator. One is
| | 03:10 | to go up to the Effect menu, choose
Blur and then choose Gaussian Blur.
| | 03:15 | That's going to create a bi-directional blur.
That is to say, the blur is going to go outside
| | 03:19 | the shape as well as inside.
| | 03:21 | If you want to create a more discreet blur
that only goes inward, then you go to the Stylize
| | 03:26 | submenu and choose the Feather command. And
now I am going to dial in a Radius value of
| | 03:31 | two points--turn on the Preview checkbox if you
want to see what it looks like--and then click OK.
| | 03:36 | All right!
| | 03:37 | That takes care of that
little bit of glow there.
| | 03:39 | Now I'll select the star and let's feather
it as well by returning to the Effect menu
| | 03:44 | and you can choose that second command--the
one with a dot, dot, dot after it--which
| | 03:49 | repeats the last effect but with different
settings, or you can press the keyboard shortcut.
| | 03:53 | Mash your fist E, Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E on the PC,
or Cmd+Shift+Option+E on the Mac and
| | 03:59 | this time I want a Radius value of 4, and now
I'll just go ahead and click OK. All right!
| | 04:03 | Now what I want to do is exaggerate the
starburst effect and I am going to do so using another
| | 04:08 | Dynamic effect, but I want to be
able to see exactly what it looks like.
| | 04:12 | So I'll press Ctrl+H or Cmd+H on the
Mac to hide my selection edges, and then I'll
| | 04:17 | go up to the Effect menu, choose
Distort & Transform and choose Pucker & Bloat.
| | 04:22 | Now by default its value is set to 0, so you
are neither puckering nor bloating. Make sure
| | 04:27 | to turn your Preview checkbox on and then go
ahead and drag that value upward, and notice
| | 04:31 | what happens; you get these puckers on both
sides of the star points, that bow outward
| | 04:36 | as you see right there.
| | 04:38 | So it's a pretty interesting effect. I am going to
change that Bloat value to 150% and then click
| | 04:44 | OK in order to accept that change. All right!
| | 04:47 | Now for the circle. Go ahead and click on
it in order to select it and we might as well
| | 04:51 | see the selection edges, so I'll press Ctrl+
H or Cmd+H on the Mac to bring them back.
| | 04:57 | Now I want to bloat this circle as well.
| | 04:59 | So I'll return to the Effect menu and
choose that second command, this time it's Pucker
| | 05:02 | & Bloat, or you can press the keyboard shortcut, and
this is a little bit too much bloat as you can see.
| | 05:09 | If I take the value down, we get
something a little more reasonable.
| | 05:12 | I am going to take it all the way down to 15%,
like so, in order to achieve this effect, and click OK.
| | 05:20 | Now notice that we have one
bulb as bloat per segment.
| | 05:24 | I want eight bloats in all instead of four.
| | 05:27 | So I need to increase the number of segments
by going up to the Object menu, choosing Path
| | 05:32 | and choosing Add Anchor Points.
| | 05:34 | And if you loaded my dekeKeys shortcuts, then you can
also press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+A or Cmd+Shift+Option+A
| | 05:40 | on the Mac and that just goes ahead and
doubles the number of anchor points, doesn't change
| | 05:44 | the shape at all, but it does add
more bloats as you can see. All right!
| | 05:48 | Now let's blur this shape by going up to the
Effect menu, choosing Stylize, and once again
| | 05:52 | choosing the Feather command. And this time
I came up with a high value of 32 points.
| | 05:57 | I'll turn on the Preview checkbox so you can
see what it looks like, and notice now that
| | 06:01 | we have these very soft blobs here that results in a
kind of glow on the inside of the bulb. Now click OK.
| | 06:09 | Finally, we need to approach this shadow down
here and we really just want to turn it into
| | 06:13 | a kind of radial gradient as
in this final effect right here.
| | 06:17 | And you can do that by assigning a radial
gradient of course. But to get it to be exactly
| | 06:22 | the right shape would take a fair amount of work,
whereas blurring this existing ellipse is very easy.
| | 06:27 | So I'll just go ahead and click on it to
select it, and then I'll go up to the Effect menu,
| | 06:32 | choose the second command which is now
Feather and I'll change the value to 8 points this
| | 06:36 | time around, turn on the Preview checkbox and you
can see that the deed is done with one exception.
| | 06:42 | Go ahead and click OK. Anytime you're
creating a colorful shadow inside of Illustrator, you
| | 06:47 | want it to blend with the background and the
best way to achieve that effect is to change
| | 06:52 | the Blend mode from Normal to Multiply.
| | 06:55 | Now that's going to create too dark of a
shadow so I'll press Shift+5 in order to reduce the
| | 07:00 | Opacity value to 50% and that takes care of it.
| | 07:04 | So there you have one of many ways that you
can combine Blend modes along with Dynamic
| | 07:09 | effects to create custom glows
and shadows inside Illustrator.
| | 07:14 | The question now becomes, are all these
Transparency and Blend modes and Dynamic effects going
| | 07:19 | to print correctly?
| | 07:20 | And I'll show you how to guarantee
that they do in the very next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exporting transparency from Illustrator| 00:00 | So one of the most common questions I get is,
"Will this stuff print?" and the thing is this:
| | 00:07 | When you're sending out a job to a commercial
printer, you want it to be PostScript friendly,
| | 00:11 | and PostScript RIPs--which are the Raster Image
Processors, the pieces of hardware that interpret
| | 00:16 | the PostScript and set into the image setter, or
the plate maker--they don't support any of this stuff.
| | 00:21 | The RIP doesn't support Transparency; it
doesn't support Blend modes and so forth.
| | 00:26 | But the soft RIP built into the computer
which is PDF does. So 99% of the time when you are
| | 00:33 | printing directly from Illustrator you should
have no problems. Where I've found that problem
| | 00:37 | sometimes occurs is when you are going to
take the document and place it inside of another
| | 00:42 | program such as Adobe InDesign,
which is a page layout program.
| | 00:47 | And in those cases I have run into situations
where Blend modes don't print properly, Opacity
| | 00:52 | doesn't work properly and where
Gradients might not even print properly.
| | 00:57 | Now it's still rare but it happens frequently
enough, let's say about 2% or 3% of the time,
| | 01:03 | that it's not a bad idea to protect
yourself and create a bulletproof file.
| | 01:07 | And there are all kinds of options
available to you inside of Illustrator.
| | 01:10 | If you go to the Window menu, you can choose
Flattener Preview which brings up this panel
| | 01:15 | and if you expand it, it's got just a ton
of very complex options that allow you to
| | 01:20 | essentially determine how vectors are
going to be converted to raster art.
| | 01:25 | But I find rather than muddling through that,
the easiest thing to do is just export
| | 01:30 | a TIFF file, and here is how that works.
| | 01:32 | Go up to the File menu and
choose the Export command.
| | 01:36 | If you loaded dekeKeys I have given you
a keyboard shortcut of mash your fist X.
| | 01:40 | So Ctrl+Shift+Alt+X or Cmd+Shift+Option+X
on the Mac, and I have already created this
| | 01:45 | guy right there, Rasterized lightbulb.tif.
And by the way, you want to make sure to set
| | 01:49 | your Save As Type option to TIFF
not AutoCAD Drawing as by default.
| | 01:55 | And the reason we use TIFF instead of for example,
JPEG, is because TIFF offers lossless compression.
| | 02:01 | So you are going to get the best file possible.
| | 02:04 | And in my case I have already saved the
file out in advance, so as soon as I click the
| | 02:07 | Save button Illustrator is going to ask me
if I want to replace it, I will just say Yes
| | 02:11 | for now, so we can get to the next dialog box.
| | 02:14 | You probably want to leave your Color Model
set to CMYK. You can set it to RGB if you
| | 02:18 | are planning on creating Web art let's say,
or printing to an Inkjet printer, but if you're
| | 02:23 | preparing an image for commercial
output you want to leave it set to CMYK.
| | 02:28 | The Resolution by default is going to be
set to High--300 ppi--which is just fine.
| | 02:33 | That's going to work out beautifully.
| | 02:35 | You can go higher than that if you want to.
You can choose Other and dial in your own
| | 02:38 | value which could be as high as you like.
| | 02:40 | However, it's going to take longer to
render and most likely the PostScript printer is
| | 02:44 | going to down sample it to
300 pixels per inch anyway.
| | 02:47 | Anti-aliasing: if your document doesn't contain
any text, you should leave it set to Art Optimized.
| | 02:52 | If it contains small text, then you might want
to go with Type Optimized so that Illustrator
| | 02:58 | takes advantage of the hinting, which is useful
generally for type sizes that are 12 points and under.
| | 03:04 | In my case I am not going to worry about it,
I'm just going to set it to Art Optimized.
| | 03:07 | You want LZW Compression to be turned on.
| | 03:10 | That's going to result in a smaller file
that is lossless compression. It's not going to
| | 03:14 | create any problems and you definitely want
to Embed an ICC profile and then you click OK.
| | 03:19 | In my case, I am going to click Cancel because I
have already created the file in advance for you.
| | 03:24 | Now I am going to go to the File menu and
choose Browse in Bridge in order to switch
| | 03:29 | to Adobe Bridge as you can see here, and I
will double-click on Rasterize lightbulb.tif
| | 03:34 | in order to open it in
Photoshop. And it looks great, right?
| | 03:38 | Everything is rendering just perfectly.
| | 03:40 | We don't have any problems. Nothing is
disappearing on this. All of the Blend modes and Transparency
| | 03:45 | settings and Dynamic effects are being
respected; they are all rendering great.
| | 03:50 | The problem is, what's
with this white at the top?
| | 03:53 | And a little bit of white at the bottom?
| | 03:55 | Well the culprit is this star.
| | 03:57 | You can see if you look very closely here
that the top of the star shape exceeds the
| | 04:03 | artboard, and so Illustrator
was rendering that out as well.
| | 04:06 | We can solve this problem because
we don't want to send this anywhere.
| | 04:09 | We can solve this problem by turning on
a checkbox that is turned off by default.
| | 04:13 | It shouldn't be, I don't think, but it is, so I
will go ahead and switch back to Illustrator
| | 04:18 | and here is the option.
| | 04:19 | You go up to the File menu; you still
choose the Export command just as before.
| | 04:23 | You still want the File type to be
TIFF; the rest of my advice still holds.
| | 04:27 | The only difference is you want to turn on this
checkbox right there, Use Artboards, and it does not stick.
| | 04:32 | So just because you turn it on now
doesn't mean it's going to be on tomorrow.
| | 04:35 | Every time you bring up this dialog box,
you are going to want to turn on Use Artboards
| | 04:39 | again. Presumably you want to export all your
artboards, but if you want to dial in a Range,
| | 04:44 | you most certainly can.
| | 04:45 | I only have one artboard, so I would just
click Save and run through the other steps.
| | 04:50 | But instead I am going to click
Cancel and show you what that looks like.
| | 04:53 | By going back to the File menu and
choosing Browse in Bridge and it's this file right
| | 04:58 | here, Green light artboard-01. Illustrator
automatically adds the 01 or if there is more
| | 05:03 | artboards, 02, 03 and so forth.
| | 05:05 | And you can see now that Illustrator has managed
to create a file that's cropped to the artboard
| | 05:10 | exactly as designed, and
so again it looks great.
| | 05:15 | Everything is working out perfectly.
| | 05:16 | Let's see one more scenario.
| | 05:17 | I will go ahead and switch back to
Illustrator and I will switch to this file right here
| | 05:22 | called White Outlines. And the thing is
sometimes you will run into situations where you see
| | 05:28 | stuff on screen and you are
curious, "Is this how it's going to print?"
| | 05:32 | For example, can you make out those seams
right there at the shoulders and at the hip?
| | 05:38 | If I zoom in on the artwork, they continue
to appear which generally indicates--if you
| | 05:43 | don't see things fading in and out at
different zoom levels--that generally indicates that
| | 05:48 | that's a genuine problem and I
could look into the culprit here.
| | 05:52 | For example I will click on this hip shape
right there in order to select it and my selection
| | 05:57 | edges are hidden. If I press Ctrl+H or Cmd+H
you can barely see these yellow selection edges.
| | 06:03 | Anyway I will press Ctrl+H or Cmd+H again
to hide them; we don't want them to be visible
| | 06:07 | as we are trying to figure this out.
| | 06:09 | Now I will switch over to the Appearance panel
and I had just naturally assumed that the stroke
| | 06:13 | was the culprit because Illustrator is
trying to draw a mini stroke back here, but if you
| | 06:17 | turn the stroke off, then
that doesn't solve the problem.
| | 06:20 | We do have these little edges still around
the shape, but it's not the stroke's fault.
| | 06:25 | So go ahead and turn it back on.
| | 06:27 | The problem is this guy right here,
this fill that's set to 50% Screen.
| | 06:31 | It's a gradient and if I turn it off, notice the
seams goes away, turn it on, the seam comes back.
| | 06:37 | The thing is transparent and if I press
the G key to switch to the Gradient tool, you
| | 06:42 | can see that it starts opaque way down
here and ends transparent at this point.
| | 06:47 | So there is no way it
should be affecting this region.
| | 06:50 | So naturally what you would do right is
print the document, but I'd like you to get out of
| | 06:56 | the habit of printing unnecessarily to test
problems, because you're probably not printing
| | 07:00 | to a PostScript device.
| | 07:01 | And so unless you have got PostScript locally,
you are not going to know how things are going
| | 07:05 | to render from your commercial printer.
| | 07:07 | Instead what you want to do is go
ahead and export the file to TIFF.
| | 07:12 | So I went to the File menu, chose the Export
command, went ahead and turned on Use Artboards
| | 07:18 | of course, clicked the Save button and switched the
Resolution to Other and cranked it up to 600 ppi.
| | 07:25 | Now I am not going to save that out in front
of you because the progress bar would be on
| | 07:29 | screen for quite a few moments because it takes a
while for Illustrator to render out these files.
| | 07:34 | I have done it in advance.
| | 07:35 | So I will just click on the Cancel button,
go back to the File menu, choose Browse in
| | 07:39 | Bridge again and then double-click on this
guy, Gradient monster-01. Because I turned
| | 07:44 | on the artboards--and we end up with this
version of the file, and sure enough as I zoom in--
| | 07:50 | we do not have any seams either
at the hip or at the shoulders.
| | 07:55 | And if I go ahead and scroll over to the face
here and zoom in to 100% I can see that everything
| | 08:01 | is looking absolutely pixel perfect, down
to every single Transparency and Blend mode
| | 08:07 | setting that I've applied to countless
gradients inside of this file, being intact. And not
| | 08:13 | only that, the Knockout
group has survived nicely as well.
| | 08:18 | So the moral of the story is, when in doubt,
go ahead and export the file as a flat TIFF
| | 08:23 | image, that way the pixels are all baked.
The vectors are gone. There's nothing for
| | 08:28 | the PostScript RIP to interpret. And then
my recommendation is that you go ahead and
| | 08:35 | send that file--for example this one right
here--to whomever is going to lay out the artwork
| | 08:40 | into InDesign or what-have-you.
| | 08:43 | And not to be pedantic but I've laid out
hundreds of manuscripts and I have created more than
| | 08:48 | 80 of my own books as well and I can tell
you from experience, this works out beautifully
| | 08:54 | and the artwork ends up
printing super sharp and super smooth.
| | 08:58 | And that's the most reliable way to prepare even complex
artwork for commercial reproduction inside Illustrator.
| | 09:04 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
29. The Appearance PanelThe Layers panel for dynamic attributes| 00:00 | The Appearance panel works a lot like the
Layers panel, except instead of stacking objects
| | 00:06 | on top of each other, you stack Dynamic
Attributes, starting with fills and strokes, and as many
| | 00:13 | fills and strokes as you like.
| | 00:15 | The fills may include solid colors, gradients,
or tile patterns set to different Opacity
| | 00:21 | values, or Blend modes, which
is true for the strokes as well.
| | 00:25 | But, the strokes may also include
brushes, dashes, and arrowheads.
| | 00:30 | This train track isn't a bunch of path
outlines; it's a single path with a bunch of dashed
| | 00:36 | strokes heaped on top of it.
| | 00:38 | This bedrock and grass are tile patterns
stacked below the other attributes, and this top view
| | 00:44 | of the locomotive is nothing more than a
collection of strokes--including an arrowhead for the
| | 00:50 | cowcatcher--applied to a single straight line.
| | 00:54 | Edit that one path outline, and all
its fills and strokes move along with it.
| | 01:00 | This is Illustrator at its dynamic best.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying attributes in the Appearance panel| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you how to combine a
pixel-based tile pattern along with a couple
| | 00:04 | of strokes along a single path
outline inside the Appearance panel.
| | 00:09 | So here's my final train running along the
train tracks, and just about everything that
| | 00:14 | you're seeing here was built inside
the Appearance panel using strokes.
| | 00:18 | We're going to start things off by creating
this top horizontal train track effect that's
| | 00:22 | found on the first artboard, and we're going
do so inside of this base file right there.
| | 00:28 | So these are all the path
outlines I'm giving you.
| | 00:31 | This thing is going to be the train.
| | 00:32 | This thing is going to be the big train
track around the enclosed artboard, and so forth.
| | 00:37 | So you'll be doing all of
the work yourself. All right!
| | 00:40 | I'm going to press Shift+Page Up in order
to zoom in on the first artboard and I'll
| | 00:45 | go ahead and select this top
horizontal line to make it active.
| | 00:49 | Then go to the Window menu and choose the
Appearance command in order to bring up the
| | 00:53 | Appearance panel, which is where we're going to
be spending about 99% of our time in this chapter.
| | 00:58 | Now, notice we've got a Stroke and no Fill.
| | 01:00 | I might as well just
build on that existing stroke.
| | 01:03 | I'm going to change its line weight to 130 points,
and these are just some values that I came up with.
| | 01:09 | Then I'll click on the word Stroke in order
to bring up the panel, and I'll turn on Dashed
| | 01:14 | Line, because I want to
create those railroad ties.
| | 01:17 | Now, I want each tie to be 24 points wide and I
want the distance between the ties to be 40 points.
| | 01:24 | So we've got a total of 64 points in all.
| | 01:27 | And once you make that
determination, you've got to stick with it.
| | 01:31 | But here's the problem, if I go ahead and
hide the panel for a moment, you can see that
| | 01:35 | we end up with half a dash at
each endpoint, and I don't want that.
| | 01:40 | I want every single one of
my dashes to be complete.
| | 01:44 | So I'll click on Stroke again and I'll change
the first dash value to 0 and then I'll change
| | 01:49 | the first gap value to half of 40, which is
20, change the dash value to 24 points, and
| | 01:55 | then I'll change the second gap value to
the other half of the gap, which is 20, and we
| | 02:01 | end up with this effect here.
| | 02:03 | The unfortunate part is, even though I ordered
up a 0-point dash, I end up getting this little
| | 02:08 | sliver of a hairline, which will
show up when you print the document.
| | 02:12 | So we'll take care of that in a moment.
| | 02:15 | Now, the next thing I want to do is
introduce a wood grain pattern into these ties.
| | 02:21 | So I'm going to go ahead and scoot over to
this empty region to the right of the first
| | 02:25 | artboard and I'll go ahead and click in
it to make the second artboard active.
| | 02:30 | I'll switch back to the Layers panel and
click on the Tiles layer to make it active.
| | 02:34 | Then go up to the File menu
and choose the Place command.
| | 02:38 | If you have access to my Exercise Files, then
go to the 29_appearance folder in which you'll
| | 02:43 | find this file called Wood Grain.psd
that I created inside Photoshop.
| | 02:48 | Then go ahead and click the Place button
in order to place it into the illustration.
| | 02:52 | Now, this image happens to
look best at the 300% view size.
| | 02:56 | That's when you can see each and every pixel.
| | 02:59 | This is a seamlessly
repeating pattern tile by the way.
| | 03:02 | If you're a Photoshop user and you're
interested in how I created it, I'll show you in the
| | 03:06 | final movie of this chapter.
| | 03:08 | But in the meantime, let's turn it into a
tile pattern by going up to the Object menu,
| | 03:13 | choosing Pattern, and then choosing the
Make command, or if you loaded dekeKeys back in
| | 03:17 | Chapter 22, you can press
Ctrl+M or Cmd+M on the Mac.
| | 03:22 | Unfortunately, that doesn't work.
| | 03:24 | The problem is that patterns
don't support linked images.
| | 03:27 | You've got to embed them first.
| | 03:29 | So, fair enough. I'll go ahead and click OK
and then click the Embed button up here in
| | 03:33 | the Control panel, and that brings up the
Photoshop Import Options dialog bo. Just
| | 03:37 | make sure Flatten Layers is selected and
then click OK in order to embed that image.
| | 03:44 | Now I'll press Ctrl+M or Cmd+M on the Mac
in order to switch to the Pattern Edit mode.
| | 03:50 | If you get an alert message,
just go ahead and click OK.
| | 03:53 | Notice that in addition to seeing the pattern
repeat seamlessly, that Illustrator has sized
| | 03:57 | the tile to the exact perimeter of the image, so all
you have to do is go ahead and name your new pattern.
| | 04:04 | I'll call mine Wood Grain, and press the
Enter or Return key to accept that name and press
| | 04:08 | the Esc key in order to exit the Pattern
Edit mode and add a new pattern swatch here
| | 04:14 | to the Swatches panel.
| | 04:16 | Now, I'll press Shift+Page Up in
order to return to my first artboard.
| | 04:20 | I'll go ahead and click
on this line to select it.
| | 04:23 | It's a little hard to find.
| | 04:25 | So you might just want to go
ahead and marquee it, like so.
| | 04:28 | Then return to the Appearance panel. Go
ahead and click on that color swatch right there
| | 04:33 | and change it to Wood Grain, and you
end up with your wooden ties, like so.
| | 04:38 | Now let's go ahead and eliminate these
hairlines between the ties by adding another stroke.
| | 04:43 | So I'll go ahead and click on the little
Page icon at the bottom of the Appearance panel
| | 04:47 | in order to duplicate this stroke.
| | 04:50 | For now, let's change it to black,
just so we can easily keep track of it.
| | 04:54 | I'm going to make it slightly thicker than the
other stroke, just so it entirely covers up everything.
| | 04:59 | And then I'll click on the word Stroke, and we
need to come up with some new dash and gap values.
| | 05:04 | Now, these hairlines appear at the endpoints, so I
don't need this second pair of dash and gap values.
| | 05:10 | So I'll just go ahead and delete them
like so, and then press the Tab key.
| | 05:14 | And that makes a fair mess of things, as
you can see here, but we'll take care of that
| | 05:18 | by entering a dash value of 8.
| | 05:21 | That should be more than
enough to cover up that hairline.
| | 05:24 | Then I'll change the gap value to 64 minus 8,
because remember we're working with 24-point thick
| | 05:31 | ties that are separated by 40-point gaps.
| | 05:35 | So these two numbers or however many
numbers you use always have to add up to 64.
| | 05:40 | So I'll go ahead and change this guy to 64 minus 8,
which is 56, and we end up with this effect here.
| | 05:46 | So now that I've successfully managed to cover
up all those hairlines with these thick black
| | 05:51 | strokes, I'm going to change the color of
the stroke from black to white in order to
| | 05:55 | match the background.
| | 05:56 | Then if I set it against some other
background, I'd have to match its color instead.
| | 06:02 | That's how you combine a seamlessly repeating
pixel-based tile pattern along with a couple
| | 06:06 | of strokes along a single path outline.
| | 06:09 | In the next movie we'll give our wooden
ties some depth by adding still more strokes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating depth using translucent strokes| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you how to create the
perception of depth using Strokes. Specifically,
| | 00:05 | we'll be creating these shadows and
highlights around the railroad ties.
| | 00:09 | I'll go ahead and switch over to my image
in progress here and I'll marquee this line
| | 00:13 | in order to select it, since it's difficult to
see where it really is here in the Preview mode.
| | 00:18 | With the Appearance panel open, I'll go
ahead and select the bottom stroke, the one that
| | 00:22 | represents the wooden ties, and I'll go
ahead and create a copy of it by clicking on the
| | 00:27 | little Page icon down here at
the bottom of the Appearance panel.
| | 00:30 | This first stroke will serve as my highlight.
| | 00:33 | So I'll go ahead and change its color to
this one right there, Dark Wood, which might be
| | 00:38 | kind of a head scratcher.
| | 00:39 | Why would I use Dark Wood as a highlight?
| | 00:41 | Well, because I'm going to
combine it with a Blend mode.
| | 00:44 | But for the present I'll just
go ahead and select Dark Wood.
| | 00:47 | Now, at this point we want to leave the line
weight set to 130 points so that the highlight
| | 00:53 | is the entire height of these tracks.
| | 00:56 | However, I do need to
change the Dash and Gap settings.
| | 00:59 | So, I'll click on Stroke.
| | 01:01 | We want to leave the first pair of dash and
gap values alone, but then I want to change
| | 01:05 | the second dash value to 5.
| | 01:08 | So in other words, I'm reducing it by 19 points in
order to create a sliver of a highlight like that.
| | 01:15 | Then I need to give back the 19 points
that I just took away to the next gap value.
| | 01:20 | So I'll raise it to 39 and I end
up getting this effect right here.
| | 01:25 | Now, it doesn't look the least bit like a
highlight, so I'll go ahead and twirl open my Stroke.
| | 01:30 | I'll click on the word Opacity and I'll change
the Blend mode to Screen, and we end up getting
| | 01:35 | this highlight effect here.
| | 01:37 | That's why I went with
the dark color, by the way.
| | 01:39 | If I'd gone with a bright color, such as
Highlight Wood, then I would have such a bright highlight
| | 01:45 | that we wouldn't even be able to
recognize the wood grain anymore.
| | 01:48 | So oftentimes when you're using the Blend
modes, you want to combine dark colors along
| | 01:52 | with the lightening modes and lighter colors
along with the darkening modes, which is going
| | 01:57 | to be our next step.
| | 01:58 | So with this Stroke still selected, I'll click on the
little Page icon at the bottom of the panel once again.
| | 02:04 | And next, I'll go ahead and click on Stroke
again, and we just want to reverse the gap
| | 02:10 | values, so I'll change the first one to 39
and I'll change the second one to 20, and
| | 02:15 | we end up with this effect here.
| | 02:17 | Now I'll change the Blend mode from Screen to
Multiply in order to create a darkening effect.
| | 02:24 | That's too dark.
| | 02:24 | As you can see, again,
we're losing the wood grain.
| | 02:27 | So I'll go ahead and click on the color
swatch and I'll brighten it up to Medium Wood in
| | 02:32 | order to create this effect here. All right!
| | 02:34 | Now, to create the dark shadow along the bottom
of the tie, again I'll duplicate my most recent
| | 02:39 | stroke by clicking on the Page icon.
| | 02:42 | Because this is going to be a horizontal line,
we're going to do the work of the perceived
| | 02:46 | line weight using the actual line weight value.
| | 02:49 | So I'll go ahead and change the weight to 5
points, and you can see it right there by the way.
| | 02:54 | I'll zoom in so I can make it more evident.
| | 02:57 | This guy right there is our stroke, and because of
these big gap values, we only see it every so often.
| | 03:03 | So let's change that.
| | 03:05 | I'll click on the word Stroke in
order to bring up my dash and gap values.
| | 03:08 | I'll leave the first dash value set to 0.
| | 03:11 | I'll change the gap value to 25.
| | 03:13 | Then I'll change the second dash value
14 and the second gap value to 25 as well.
| | 03:19 | Again, 25 plus 25 that's 50, plus 14,
that's 64. That's the increment we're going for.
| | 03:25 | So you can see these lines appearing
right through the middle of the ties.
| | 03:29 | The problem is, we don't want them in
the middle; we want them at the far end.
| | 03:33 | So remember that the size of our ties, the
height in this case, is 130 points as defined
| | 03:39 | by the line weight value.
| | 03:41 | So we need to move this shadow, half of 130
--which is 65 points down-- or at least so it would seem.
| | 03:48 | So in order to test this out, go to the
Effect menu, choose Distort & Transform, and choose
| | 03:53 | the Transform command.
| | 03:55 | Or if you loaded dekeKeys, you can press Ctrl+E
or Cmd+E on the Mac, and it's very important
| | 03:59 | by the way that, that Stroke is
selected before you choose the command.
| | 04:04 | Then go ahead and enter a
Vertical value of 65 points.
| | 04:08 | That will move it down, because positive
Vertical values go down, negative values go up.
| | 04:13 | Then I'll turn on the
Preview checkbox, and that's wrong.
| | 04:16 | The reason is because we just moved
the middle of the stroke that far down.
| | 04:22 | Because when you're working with
multiple strokes they're always centered.
| | 04:25 | So now I know that the Line Weight is 5 points.
| | 04:28 | That's how thick this stroke is.
| | 04:30 | So I need to move it up half that far.
| | 04:32 | So what I need to do is take 65
and subtract 2.5 from it, like so.
| | 04:38 | So I'll just enter 65 minus 2.5, press the Tab key,
and that's 62.5 points. And that goes ahead
| | 04:45 | and nails it, as you can see there.
| | 04:46 | Then click OK in order to apply that change.
| | 04:50 | Next, go ahead and click on the Stroke to
make it active, click on the little Page icon in
| | 04:54 | order to make a duplicate of it.
| | 04:56 | And the first thing I'll do is just click
on the word Transform there, assuming that
| | 05:00 | the Stroke is twirled open, and
change the Vertical value to -62.5.
| | 05:04 | Turn on the Preview checkbox and that puts
the highlight--it will be a highlight in a
| | 05:09 | second--where it needs to
be, and then I'll click OK.
| | 05:12 | Go ahead and click on the word Opacity,
change the Blend mode from Multiply to Screen.
| | 05:16 | That's too bright, as you can see there, so
go ahead and click on the color swatch and
| | 05:21 | change it to Dark Wood in
order to produce this effect here.
| | 05:26 | That's how you add bright, vibrant, stylized
highlights and shadows by adding Stroke set
| | 05:31 | to the Screen and Multiply Blend
modes, here inside the Appearance panel.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding, layering, and offsetting strokes| 00:00 | In this movie we'll add a rail along with base
plates using a series of seven slightly offset strokes.
| | 00:07 | My path is still selected, so I'll click on
the top white stroke in the stack here inside
| | 00:12 | the Appearance panel, and I'll just go ahead and
add a new stroke, without anything special going on.
| | 00:17 | I can do that either by clicking on the Add
New Stroke icon in the lower left corner of
| | 00:22 | the Appearance panel or pressing its keyboard
shortcut, Ctrl+Alt+/ or Cmd+Option+/ on the Mac.
| | 00:29 | Then I'll change the color of the stroke to
Light Rail, which is a light shade of gray.
| | 00:33 | And notice that the stroke is
coming in with the dash and gap pattern.
| | 00:37 | I don't want that because
there's no gaps in a rail.
| | 00:40 | So I'll click on the word Stroke
and turn off the Dashed Line checkbox.
| | 00:44 | Then I'll reduce the line weight to 8
points in order to create this effect here.
| | 00:49 | Now, I'll create a copy of the stroke by
clicking on the Page icon at the bottom of the panel
| | 00:53 | and I'll click on the rear
Stroke to make it active.
| | 00:57 | The idea is I want to create a kind of
series of beveled shadows and highlights.
| | 01:02 | So I'll start things off by changing the color to
Dark Rail and I'll increase the line weight to 10 points.
| | 01:08 | That will make that new stroke
visible on both sides of the one above it.
| | 01:12 | I don't quite want that.
| | 01:14 | I want to step it down a little bit.
| | 01:16 | So with this stroke selected I'll go up to
the Effect menu, choose Distort & Transform,
| | 01:21 | and choose Transform, or press Ctrl+E or
Cmd+E on the Mac if you loaded dekeKeys.
| | 01:27 | Then I'll turn on the Preview checkbox and
I'll click in the Vertical value and I'll
| | 01:30 | press the Up Arrow Key a couple of times to
nudge that stroke down, which is little non-intuitive
| | 01:36 | that I'm pressing the Up Arrow Key in order to
nudge the stroke down, but that's the way it works.
| | 01:42 | Then I'll go ahead and click OK. All right!
| | 01:44 | Now click on the newest stroke right there and
click on the little Page icon to make a copy
| | 01:48 | of it and let's change its color to Medium Rail
and a line weight value of 10 points is just fine.
| | 01:54 | However, we want to nudge the
stroke in the opposite direction.
| | 01:57 | So click on Transform, turn on the Preview
checkbox, and enter a negative sign in front
| | 02:03 | of that Vertical value.
| | 02:04 | That will go ahead and move that stroke
in the opposite direction. Next click OK.
| | 02:09 | Now I want to create a copy of this most recent
stroke at the top of the stack, and the easiest
| | 02:14 | way to do that is to press the Alt key or the Option
key on the Mac and drag that stroke upward like so.
| | 02:20 | If you do it right you'll see a little plus
sign next to your fist cursor and go ahead
| | 02:24 | and drop it into place in order
to create a copy of that stroke.
| | 02:27 | Go ahead and twirl it open.
| | 02:29 | Let's change its line weight value this time
around to 2 points, and the color of the stroke
| | 02:34 | this time is going to be White.
| | 02:37 | I'm going to move it up a little farther by
clicking on the Transform icon, turn on the
| | 02:41 | Preview checkbox, and this time because we
want to nudge it upward, go ahead and click
| | 02:45 | inside the Vertical value and press the Down
Arrow key a couple of times in order to take
| | 02:50 | that value down to -4 points.
| | 02:52 | Then click OK, and let's create a copy of
this stroke by clicking on it and then clicking
| | 02:58 | on the Page icon at the bottom of the panel.
| | 03:00 | Then, now that you have a copy of the stroke,
drop down to the original one, click on its
| | 03:05 | color swatch, and change
the color to Shadow Rail.
| | 03:08 | 2 point line weight is going to work out fine.
| | 03:11 | Click on the word Transform in order to
bring up the Transform Effect dialog box. Turn on
| | 03:14 | the Preview checkbox and get rid of the minus
sign in front of the Vertical value, and then
| | 03:18 | press the Tab key in order to watch that stroke
move to this location inside of the document window.
| | 03:26 | Then click OK. All right!
| | 03:27 | That takes care of the rail, but we need
to add some base plates that will attach the
| | 03:31 | rail to the ties, and just so we can see what we're
doing, we'll create the plates at the top of the stack.
| | 03:37 | So I'm going to click on that top white
stroke and then I'll twirl these two guys closed,
| | 03:41 | just so I have a little more room to work,
and I'll create a new stroke just by clicking
| | 03:45 | on the Add New Stroke icon in the
bottom left corner of the panel.
| | 03:49 | I'm going to change the color of the
stroke to Shadow Rail, and I'm going to increase
| | 03:53 | the line weight value--and this is just
through trial and error--to 22 points, so that it's
| | 03:59 | thicker than the rail,
which is the way it ought to be.
| | 04:02 | Obviously the rail should only appear in front
of the ties, so we need to add a dash pattern
| | 04:07 | by clicking on the word Stroke, turning on
Dashed Line, and in my case that ends up giving
| | 04:12 | me the dash values that I
assigned to the ties in the first place.
| | 04:15 | The first dash value should be 0, as it is here.
| | 04:18 | I want the width of these base plates to be 10
points, so I'll dial that in for the second dash value.
| | 04:24 | And then you've got to subtract 10 from 64,
which is 54, and divide 54 by 2, and the easiest
| | 04:30 | way to do that is to just enter
54/2 for your first gap value.
| | 04:35 | That gives me 27 points.
| | 04:37 | So I'll just enter 27 points for the second gap
value as well in order to produce this effect here.
| | 04:42 | All right!
| | 04:43 | That's going to be the little
shadow line around the base plate.
| | 04:46 | Now let's add the plate itself.
| | 04:48 | So make sure the Stroke is still selected.
| | 04:50 | Then, drop down to the little Page icon:
click on it. Go ahead and reduce the line weight
| | 04:54 | value to 20 points, and then change the
color to Light Rail to produce that effect there.
| | 04:59 | And because I reduced the line weight from
22 points to 20 points, there is one point
| | 05:04 | on the top and one point at the bottom. So
I need to do the same thing on either side
| | 05:08 | of the base plates.
| | 05:09 | So I'll click on Stroke in order
bring up the dash and gap values.
| | 05:13 | I'll take the first gap value
up one just by nudging it up one.
| | 05:17 | I'll also nudge the second gap value up one, and
I'm doing that pressing the Up Arrow Key, by the way.
| | 05:23 | Then I'll nudge the dash value down
two in order to create this effect.
| | 05:27 | Now, of course I need to move the plates
below the rails, so I'll click on one, Shift+Click
| | 05:33 | on the other, to select them both, and
then drag them below the rail lines, like so.
| | 05:38 | But that's not enough, because notice that
we have these hairlines, which means I need
| | 05:43 | to move these dashes below the
white cover-up, which is directly below.
| | 05:47 | So I'll go ahead and select
them both and drag them one down.
| | 05:51 | So you can see how the Appearance
panel works like a kind of Layers panel.
| | 05:56 | The difference is it accommodates Fills, Strokes,
and Dynamic Effects assigned to a single object.
| | 06:02 | So that's how you create the first
rail associated with these train tracks.
| | 06:06 | In the next movie we'll duplicate this rail
and shift things around to create the second one.
| | 06:10 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Duplicating entire groups of attributes| 00:00 | In this movie I will show you how to duplicate
an entire group of strokes or other attributes
| | 00:06 | and then move the original and the duplicate
in opposite directions, but equal distances.
| | 00:11 | Now in our case, what we've got is a kind of
old-fashioned monorail, which isn't what we
| | 00:16 | want and it really doesn't make any darn sense.
| | 00:18 | So we need to duplicate both
the rail and the base plate.
| | 00:22 | So with the path selected, click on the first
stroke--the top stroke there in the Appearance
| | 00:26 | panel--and then Shift+Click five strokes
down in order to select the entire rail.
| | 00:32 | As you can see Shift+Clicking
selects a range of attributes.
| | 00:35 | Then we need to jump over this white cover up
layer and select the two base plates strokes.
| | 00:41 | You do that by pressing the Ctrl key here
on the PC or the Cmd key on the Mac and
| | 00:46 | clicking to select the nonadjacent strokes.
| | 00:48 | Now at this point there's two
ways to duplicate the strokes.
| | 00:51 | One is to drag them and drop them onto the
little page icon down here at the bottom of
| | 00:55 | the panel or if you prefer to work with the
command, click on the flyout menu icon and
| | 01:00 | then choose Duplicate Item.
| | 01:03 | Now this is where things get a
little confusing, for a couple of reasons.
| | 01:06 | First of all, it looks as if we just duplicated a
single stroke, because only one stroke is left selected.
| | 01:12 | But in fact we actually
duplicated all seven of them.
| | 01:16 | Also confusing, in my opinion, is
where these two strokes have landed.
| | 01:21 | That is, the two base plate strokes have
landed in the midst of the original rail.
| | 01:26 | So you need to go ahead and select them and
then drag them down the stack underneath
| | 01:31 | one 40-point white cover up stroke.
| | 01:33 | That'll put them where they need to be.
| | 01:34 | Now, you can see we've got two combinations of 20
and 25 point strokes which represent the base plates.
| | 01:42 | Then we have two combinations of these
five strokes that represent the rails.
| | 01:47 | Now we need to move these guys around.
| | 01:49 | In a perfect world, there would be some tool that
would allow me to drag strokes to new locations.
| | 01:55 | But such a tool does not
exist inside of Illustrator.
| | 01:57 | So instead I'll go ahead and click on this 8-point
stroke right here; this is the original rail line.
| | 02:03 | If you twirl it open, you can see there
is no Transform effect assigned to it.
| | 02:07 | Now make sure that the stroke is selected.
You should see the line weight active like
| | 02:11 | so, and then go up to the Effect menu, choose
Distort & Transform, and choose the Transform
| | 02:16 | command or if you have loaded Deke Keys
you can press Ctrl+E or Cmd+E on the Mac.
| | 02:20 | Now I want to stress something.
| | 02:22 | You should not see that
Apply New Effect warning.
| | 02:25 | If you do, that indicates that Illustrator is
going to apply the effect to the entire path outline.
| | 02:31 | Cancel out and then click on that
stroke again to make sure it's active.
| | 02:35 | Now at this point I want to
move the stroke 40 points downward.
| | 02:39 | So I am going to change a Vertical Move value
to 40 points and turn on the Preview checkbox
| | 02:44 | and that sends that stroke downward.
| | 02:46 | Now I just need to keep in mind that
everything else needs to move 40 points as well.
| | 02:50 | So I will click OK in
order to apply that change.
| | 02:53 | Now let's do the same with
these two shallow strokes below.
| | 02:57 | I will go ahead and twirl them open and I'll
click on Transform for the bottom of the two
| | 03:02 | in order to bring up the
Transformer Effect dialog box.
| | 03:05 | I've got to add 40 to 2 points.
| | 03:07 | So I just change it to 42, like so.
| | 03:10 | That's easy, and click OK.
| | 03:12 | That goes ahead and moves this guy down.
| | 03:14 | Now I will click on the other Transform effect, this
one is a little tougher, because it's a negative value.
| | 03:19 | All you've got to do though is click in front of the
minus sign and enter 40 and then press the Tab key.
| | 03:25 | 40 minus 2 is 38.
| | 03:27 | So go ahead and click OK.
| | 03:28 | Now let's go ahead and twirl these guys
closed just to tidy things up so we can keep track
| | 03:32 | of what in the heck we are doing.
| | 03:34 | I will twirl these 2 points strokes open and
I will click on Transform for the bottom of
| | 03:38 | the two. And notice that the Vertical value is set
to 4, so I will just change it 44 and then click OK.
| | 03:45 | That goes ahead and moves that guy down.
| | 03:47 | Then I'll do the same for the white stroke.
| | 03:49 | It's set to -4 so I am going to enter 40
before the minus sign and then press the Tab key.
| | 03:55 | Illustrator does the math for me and
figures out that I want 36 points. Click OK.
| | 04:01 | All right! So you can see it's terribly
exciting stuff.
| | 04:03 | I will go ahead and twirl those two guys
closed and I will click on the top 8-point stroke.
| | 04:08 | Make sure it's active.
| | 04:09 | Then go up to the Effect menu, choose the
second command at the top of the menu, Transform,
| | 04:15 | and change its Vertical value this time to
-40 point and click the Preview checkbox to
| | 04:19 | watch that guy move upward. Click OK.
| | 04:23 | Then let's modify the other ones here.
| | 04:25 | I will twirl open the two top 10-point strokes.
| | 04:28 | I will click on Transform for the top one.
| | 04:30 | It's already set to -2.
| | 04:32 | So I will just change it to -42. Click OK.
| | 04:36 | Then go ahead and click on
Transform for the bottom of the two strokes.
| | 04:39 | It's set to two points.
| | 04:40 | So you just want to click after the value and
enter -40 and press the Tab key and you get -38.
| | 04:47 | That goes ahead and scoots that guy up.
| | 04:49 | Now we will do the same thing with the
2-point strokes by twirling each of them open.
| | 04:53 | I will click on the top one--set to -4--
change it to -44. Click OK. Click on the bottom of
| | 05:00 | the two Transforms. It's set to 4.
| | 05:02 | So I need to enter after it -40 in order to
create a value of -36 and then click OK in
| | 05:09 | order to move that guy as well.
| | 05:12 | The same goes for the base plates.
| | 05:13 | So I will just go ahead and twirl these guys
closed and I will scroll down to the base plates here.
| | 05:19 | These bottom two right here need to move down.
| | 05:21 | So I'm going to twirl open my 8-point
stroke, which is the bottom rail.
| | 05:25 | I'm going to click on its
Transform effect in order to select it.
| | 05:29 | Then press the Alt key or the Option key on
a Mac and duplicate that effect by dragging
| | 05:34 | it and dropping it onto the
bottom 22-point dashed stroke.
| | 05:38 | That will go ahead and
automatically move it down.
| | 05:41 | Then repeat that process
for the 20-point strokes.
| | 05:45 | So go ahead and click on
Transform and make it active.
| | 05:47 | Then Alt+Drag or Option+Drag it down to
that second 20-point dashed stroke right there.
| | 05:54 | You'll end up automatically
moving that guy down in the place.
| | 05:57 | Now I will just go ahead and do it again,
even though the other base plate has to move
| | 06:00 | in the opposite direction.
| | 06:01 | The easiest thing to do is click on Transform
and Alt+Drag or Option+Drag it onto the first
| | 06:06 | of the two 22-point dashed plates.
| | 06:09 | That will move it on top of the other one.
| | 06:12 | Then twirl this guy
closed and twirl this one open.
| | 06:16 | This is the one that we just transformed.
| | 06:19 | Click on its Transform effect right there
and change it from +40 to -40, click OK.
| | 06:25 | That will go ahead and move it up and then
with Transform selected, press the Alt key or the
| | 06:30 | Option key on the Mac and drag and drop onto 20
point in order to duplicate that newest effect.
| | 06:36 | That'll move that base plate upward.
| | 06:40 | One last thing I want to mention is that we
now have a total of 20 different strokes that
| | 06:46 | are assigned to this path.
| | 06:48 | That's important because once you exceed 16
attributes assigned to a single object then
| | 06:53 | you get some strange behavior
here inside the Appearance panel.
| | 06:56 | What happens is every attribute below the 16th
attribute--this guy right there, so everything
| | 07:03 | that was applied earlier in our case--ends
up twirling open and staying twirled open.
| | 07:09 | Notice that I could go ahead and twirl
these guys closed like that. No problem.
| | 07:13 | However, if I make the slightest change,
notice I will just go ahead and turn off say the
| | 07:19 | rear stroke in the stack.
| | 07:21 | Then the Illustrator goes ahead and not only
twirls everything open as you can see here,
| | 07:25 | but it also auto-scrolled me to a new location.
| | 07:29 | So that's just something to be on watch out for.
| | 07:31 | I just want you to know, because it's kind
of a gotcha and if you get terribly ambitious
| | 07:36 | with your attributes--as I have here--then it's
something you are going to have to contend with.
| | 07:40 | In any case I will go ahead
and turn my stroke back on.
| | 07:43 | So that's how you go about duplicating entire
groups of attributes and then modifying them,
| | 07:47 | albeit one at a time.
| | 07:49 | In the next movie I'll show you how to
expand the attributes and simplify the results.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Turning stacked strokes into editable paths| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to expand the
appearance of this path, convert the strokes
| | 00:04 | to fills and clean up the results.
| | 00:07 | The great thing about working from the
Appearance panel--go ahead and zoom out here--is that
| | 00:12 | you can draw by the numbers and then you can
easily replicate the appearance of one path to another.
| | 00:17 | Now it doesn't, however, mean
things are always going to work.
| | 00:21 | I'll go ahead and select this curving path
for example, and then I'll drop down to the
| | 00:26 | Eyedropper tool and double-click on it in order
to bring up the Eyedropper Options dialog box.
| | 00:31 | Make sure that the Appearance checkbox is
turned on. If it isn't, scroll up and go ahead
| | 00:36 | and click on it and then click OK.
| | 00:39 | Now we need to click on this path with the
eyedropper--fairly impossible to find however--
| | 00:43 | so press Ctrl+Y or Cmd+Y on the Mac to
switch to the outline mode, and then click
| | 00:49 | on that horizontal line like so. And you can see
I've gone ahead and duplicated all 20 of those strokes.
| | 00:56 | So I'm expecting when I press Ctrl+Y or Cmd+Y
on the Mac to switch back to the Preview mode
| | 01:01 | --that I'll see a nicely curving railroad track--
but instead, I see this, which is I have to
| | 01:06 | say, is really pretty cool in a kind of cubist
way, but it is falling apart and the culprit
| | 01:13 | here is the Transform effect. Because I
told the Transform effect to move, for example,
| | 01:18 | the base plates straight up and straight down,
it doesn't matter whether the path is straight
| | 01:23 | or curving; that's the direction that those
plates are going to go in, and as a result
| | 01:28 | everything is out of kilter.
| | 01:30 | So I'll go ahead and press Ctrl+Z
or Cmd+Z on the Mac to undo that.
| | 01:34 | The same thing happens, by the way, if you
were to rotate that top path outline. So I'll go
| | 01:39 | ahead and switch back to my Black Arrow tool
for a moment. Switch over to the Layers panel
| | 01:43 | as well. Twirl open the Tracks layer, and
then I'm going to turn off this third item
| | 01:48 | down in order to hide the curving line, and
I'll go ahead and marquee the horizontal line
| | 01:52 | and drag them down while pressing the Shift
and Alt keys--the Shift and Option keys on
| | 01:56 | the Mac--that way I'll create a copy of it.
And I'll get the Rotate tool here which you
| | 02:01 | can get by pressing the R key, and I'll just
rotate the tracks slightly. And you can see
| | 02:05 | it falls apart there, too.
| | 02:07 | Now I can remedy that problem by converting
this Dynamic effect into a series of static
| | 02:13 | path outlines and let me
show you what that looks like.
| | 02:16 | I'll go ahead and press Ctrl+Z or Cmd+Z
on the Mac to undo that rotation, and then
| | 02:20 | I'll go up to the Object menu and choose Expand
Appearance, and that doesn't convert the strokes
| | 02:25 | to fills by the way, it just goes ahead and
separates all the strokes into independent
| | 02:30 | path outlines and sometimes then some.
| | 02:33 | Notice that this first tie is for some
reason separated to an independent path.
| | 02:37 | Now to get to the bottom of things and
just to clean up the edges as well--because we
| | 02:41 | have these little bits of paths over here
on the sides--the best way to clean those
| | 02:46 | up is to convert these strokes into fills.
| | 02:50 | Now you don't absolutely have to. At this
point I could go ahead and rotate these paths
| | 02:54 | and everything is going to work out fine.
| | 02:56 | However, if you want to be able to clean
things up, then press Ctrl+Z, Cmd+Z on a Mac
| | 03:00 | to undo the rotation. You want to
make sure the paths are still expanded.
| | 03:04 | And then to convert the strokes to fill
path outlines, go up to the Object menu choose
| | 03:08 | Path and choose Outline Stroke. Or, if you
loaded dekeKeys, you can press Ctrl+\ or Cmd+\
| | 03:15 | on the Mac and that'll go ahead
and deliver these results right here.
| | 03:19 | Now notice that we have these collections
of hidden paths here between each one of the
| | 03:24 | ties and you can leave them if you want to.
It's not essential that you get rid of them.
| | 03:28 | But if you do want to get rid of them,
here is the best way to approach it.
| | 03:32 | Press the A key to switch to the White Arrow
tool and then press the Alt key or the Option
| | 03:37 | key on the Mac, so that you select entire
path outlines at a time, and marquee in between
| | 03:43 | the ties and those white path outlines, but
around both of the rails like so, in order
| | 03:49 | to select all the lines that make up the rails.
| | 03:52 | Then press Ctrl+X or Cmd+X on the
Mac in order to cut them to the clipboard.
| | 03:57 | Now I'll press Ctrl+Y or Cmd+Y to switch
to the Outline mode, so that you can see all
| | 04:01 | the paths, and here is where it gets a
little brutal. We're using a White Arrow tool by
| | 04:06 | the way, because Illustrator went ahead and
converted the railroad tracks into a group,
| | 04:11 | but you've got to select
each one of these guys manually.
| | 04:14 | So I recommend you just marquee around them like
so and then Shift+Marquee around the other ones.
| | 04:20 | Obviously, this is little tedious and it
would get more and more tedious depending on how
| | 04:25 | many ties you had in the first place.
| | 04:28 | So if you had a very long line, then you
would have to repeat this process many times.
| | 04:33 | But as soon as you've selected all those guys,
press the Backspace key or the Delete key
| | 04:38 | on the Mac in order to get rid of them,
press Ctrl+Y or Cmd+Y on the Mac to go ahead
| | 04:42 | and switch back to the Preview mode and then go
to the Layers panel and locate that group of ties.
| | 04:48 | It should be the second item down in the
Tracks layer. Go ahead and twirl it open and then
| | 04:54 | go ahead and meatball the top item inside
of that group--which is itself another group,
| | 04:59 | as we can see over here on a left side of
the Control panel--and then press Ctrl+F or
| | 05:04 | Cmd+F on the Mac to not only place the
rails in front of that item, but also place
| | 05:09 | the rails into a larger group. And then you
can go ahead and twirl the group closed like so.
| | 05:14 | Now I'll switch back to the Black Arrow tool.
Click on any one of these path outlines to
| | 05:20 | select all of them, and then switch to the
Rotate tool and go ahead and rotate those
| | 05:25 | tracks any way you like.
| | 05:26 | All right, I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A or Cmd+Shift+A
on the Mac in order to deselect those path outlines.
| | 05:32 | And that, friends, is both how and why you
expand the appearance of a very complex path, as
| | 05:38 | well as convert the strokes to fill
path outlines and clean up your artwork.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Simplifying a multi-stroke effect| 00:00 | In this movie I will show you how to simplify
the Multi-Stroke effect in order to accommodate
| | 00:05 | a curving path outline, which means
getting rid of the Transform effects.
| | 00:09 | And as a result, I'm not able to
achieve those highlights and shadows.
| | 00:13 | Also notice, by the way, that we have a little bit
of distortion associated with these wooden ties.
| | 00:18 | But, that's because we have a
lot of curvature going on here.
| | 00:22 | As soon as we create the final track effect,
which has more gentle bends in it, as you
| | 00:28 | can see, we're going to get rid of
a lot of that distortion as well.
| | 00:32 | And despite the weird lighting that's going
on--the fact for example that I don't have
| | 00:36 | any highlights on the wooden ties and the
highlights are coming in from different angles
| | 00:41 | on the two rails--the final result
ends up looking pretty darn good.
| | 00:45 | So I will go ahead and switch over to my
document in progress and twirl open the Tracks layer.
| | 00:49 | Then I will turn off that new group that
we just created and I will turn back on this
| | 00:53 | curving outline here. And I will click on
it with the Black Arrow tool to select it
| | 00:58 | and then I will switch to the Eyedropper, which
is still set up to lift the Appearance attributes.
| | 01:03 | I'll just go ahead and click on this rail
here in order to duplicate the strokes that
| | 01:07 | we've applied so far, many of which
will remain useful to us. All right!
| | 01:11 | Now I will switch over to the Appearance panel.
| | 01:13 | We're going to get rid of a lot of things
here--not quite everything, but an awful lot--
| | 01:18 | starting with the second-to-bottommost stroke.
| | 01:19 | So, I will click on it, and then I will
Shift+Click on this brown stroke here.
| | 01:24 | And we'll go ahead and get rid of them just
by clicking on the Trashcan in the lower-right
| | 01:27 | corner of the panel.
| | 01:28 | Then, I'll go ahead and select these two
guys directly below the white cover-up stroke,
| | 01:33 | and I will delete them as well.
| | 01:34 | And then we want to delete
everybody else above that white stroke.
| | 01:38 | So go ahead and click on this 10-point stroke,
and scroll up the list, Shift+Click on the
| | 01:42 | top one, and click on the Trashcan icon.
| | 01:45 | So, you're going to be
left with just four strokes.
| | 01:47 | The great thing is these strokes contain
the dash and gap information, so that we won't
| | 01:52 | have to reenter those values.
| | 01:54 | I'll go ahead and click on that bottommost
stroke, and then click on the little Page
| | 01:57 | icon at the bottom of the panel to duplicate
it, and turn the Duplicate off for a moment.
| | 02:02 | And then go ahead and change the color of
the bottom stroke to Shadow Wood, and that
| | 02:07 | will be the base for our tracks.
| | 02:08 | Then, go ahead and turn the Duplicate
stroke back on, and reduce its line weight value
| | 02:13 | to 120 points, and then click on Stroke.
| | 02:17 | And we do have to adjust
these dash and gap values.
| | 02:19 | I am going to take the dash value from 24
down to 14, which means I am reducing it by
| | 02:24 | 10. And so I need to split
that 10 between the gap values,
| | 02:29 | meaning that I need to add 5 to each one.
So I will change the first value to 25, and
| | 02:33 | the second gap value to 25 as well, in
order to create this effect here. All right!
| | 02:38 | Now, let's take care of these two
strokes which represent the base plates.
| | 02:42 | I went ahead and twirled both of them open.
I will click on this Transform effect. Click
| | 02:46 | on the Trashcan to get rid of it. Click on
this Transform effect, and click on the Trashcan
| | 02:50 | to get rid of it as well. All right!
| | 02:52 | Now, I will change the line weight for the
bottommost stroke to 100 points, and then
| | 02:56 | I will go ahead and take the line weight for
the lighter stroke up to 98 points in order
| | 03:01 | to create this effect here. All right!
| | 03:03 | The white cover-up stroke is just fine.
| | 03:05 | So, all you need to do is click on it to make
it active so that the next strokes we create
| | 03:10 | will be on top of it.
| | 03:11 | Now, I'll click on the Add New Stroke icon
down here in the bottom-left corner of the
| | 03:15 | panel, and click on the word Stroke and turn
off the Dashed Line checkbox, and then change
| | 03:21 | the weight of this line to 90 points. And we
want to change the color from White to Medium Rail.
| | 03:27 | This will serve as the
beginning of our rail effect.
| | 03:30 | Now I'll click Add New Stroke again, or
press that keyboard shortcut, Ctrl+Alt+Slash or
| | 03:35 | Cmd+Option+Slash on the Mac.
| | 03:36 | I am going to change the color this time to
white, and I will reduce the line weight to
| | 03:41 | 86 points, so that we have 2 points
of gray showing up on either side.
| | 03:45 | Then I will add another new stroke. I will
change the color to Light Rail this time around.
| | 03:52 | These are just shades of gray by the way;
there is nothing else going on with them.
| | 03:56 | Change the line weight to 82 points. Click
Add New Stroke. Go ahead and change the color
| | 04:01 | of this one to Shadow Rail, and then I will reduce
the line weight value from 82 points to 72 points.
| | 04:08 | That way each of the rails is 5 points wide.
| | 04:11 | And then finally, I will add another new stroke.
Change its color this time to Dark Rail, and
| | 04:17 | then reduce the line weight
value by 4 to 68 points. All right!
| | 04:22 | Now, we need to add back in the wooden ties and the
base plates in the central area of the train track.
| | 04:28 | So, I will click on this bottommost stroke
and Shift+Click on this Light Gray stroke
| | 04:33 | right there--the 98-point one--in order to select all
four, and then I will Alt+Drag or Option+Drag
| | 04:40 | those strokes to the top of the
stack in order to duplicate them.
| | 04:44 | Now we want to change the line weights to
64 points a piece. So take this guy down to
| | 04:49 | 64. Take this one down to 64 points.
| | 04:52 | Unfortunately, I have to do this one
stroke at a time. And grab this guy; he wants to
| | 04:57 | be 64 points, and so does this one right here.
| | 05:01 | And we end up achieving this effect here.
| | 05:03 | Now, we don't need that brown stroke to be
dashed in this way, because we'll cover it
| | 05:07 | up with white in just a moment.
| | 05:08 | So I'll click on the word Stroke next to the Dark
Brown swatch, and I'll turn off Dashed Line for it.
| | 05:14 | Now, we need to fill in the dark edge of the
plate, and the rail in this central area right here.
| | 05:20 | So grab this stroke and this one--the second
and third strokes near the top of the list--
| | 05:26 | and Alt+Drag or Option+Drag them to the top
of the stack to duplicate them, and then move
| | 05:31 | the Wood Grain stroke on top, and change its
line weight from 64 points to 54 points like so.
| | 05:39 | And then you want to change the line weight
for that second Dark Gray stroke to 56 points
| | 05:43 | in order to create this effect here.
| | 05:45 | And now the final thing we need to
do is fill in the regions of white.
| | 05:49 | So I will grab this guy--the white 140-point
dashed stroke--and go ahead and Alt+Drag or
| | 05:56 | Option+Drag it to the top of the stack, change
its line weight from 140 points to 64 points,
| | 06:03 | so it matches these guys down here.
| | 06:05 | And then click on the word Stroke, and
change the dash value to 40, and then change the
| | 06:10 | gap value to 24, so that they
still add up to a total of 64 points.
| | 06:16 | And that, folks, is a simplified version of the train
track effect that works with a curving path outline.
| | 06:21 | And if I were to switch to the Rotate tool,
you can see that I can rotate this line to
| | 06:26 | any angle I like, and the
effect still remains intact.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying the Convert to Shape effect| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you how to create the
background for the final train track effect,
| | 00:05 | which involves this grass pattern right here.
And we'll create this effect using a combination
| | 00:09 | of three strokes along with two fills, and
I'll also introduce you to an effect known
| | 00:14 | as Convert to Shape.
| | 00:16 | So here I'm looking at the second artboard.
| | 00:17 | I'll press Ctrl+0 or Cmd+0 on the Mac
in order to zoom out so that I can take in
| | 00:22 | the entire scene, and I'll click on this
rectangle that's just slightly outside the confines
| | 00:28 | of the larger artboard.
| | 00:29 | So notice that we have this expanse of grass,
followed by this stroke right here. Then we've
| | 00:34 | got an inset Wood Grain stroke, another black
stroke, and then finally a white fill behind
| | 00:39 | all the objects on the first artboard.
| | 00:41 | That white area is exactly the
same size as the smaller artboard.
| | 00:45 | So let me show you how I did that.
| | 00:47 | I'll go ahead and switch over to our document
in progress here and I'll scroll over to the
| | 00:52 | left side of the smaller artboard. Switch
to the Layers panel, and I'll go ahead and
| | 00:56 | click on the Tiles layer in order to select it.
| | 01:00 | Then go up to the File menu
and choose the Place command.
| | 01:03 | And if you have access to my Exercise Files,
then you'll find a file called Grass tile.psd
| | 01:08 | inside the 29_apperance folder.
| | 01:10 | This is another Photoshop document.
| | 01:12 | I'll go ahead and click
on the Place button here.
| | 01:14 | But this time we're using one of the
patterns that ships with Photoshop.
| | 01:19 | Once again it repeats seamlessly and I've scaled it,
by the way, so it looks best at the 150% Zoom ratio.
| | 01:25 | All right!
| | 01:26 | We need to turn it into a tile pattern.
| | 01:27 | So I'll click on the Embed button up here in
the Control panel, make sure Flatten Layers
| | 01:32 | is turned on, then go ahead and click OK.
| | 01:35 | Then go up to the Object menu,
choose Pattern, and choose Make.
| | 01:39 | If you get the alert message, just click OK.
| | 01:41 | You probably want to turn on the Don't Show
Again checkbox, but I'm just leaving it off
| | 01:45 | in solidarity with those of you who do the same.
| | 01:49 | I'll go ahead and change the name of this
pattern to Grass and press the Enter or Return
| | 01:53 | key, and then press the Escape key in order
to return to my artwork, as well as create
| | 01:57 | a new grass pattern here inside
the Swatches panel. All right!
| | 02:01 | Let's go ahead and zoom back out here by
pressing Ctrl+0 or Cmd+0 on the Mac, and I'll click
| | 02:06 | on this outermost
rectangle in order to select it.
| | 02:09 | Now let's switch over to the Appearance panel, and
notice that we've got a 2-point stroke, no fill.
| | 02:14 | I'll go ahead and click on the Fill, click on
its swatch right there, and change it to Grass.
| | 02:20 | So that will be our rearmost fill in the stack.
| | 02:23 | Then you want to change
the stroke here to 30 points.
| | 02:27 | And notice of course that goes ahead and
strokes the outside of the path outline, but I want
| | 02:31 | to shift that stroke in so that it
exactly traces the smaller artboard.
| | 02:36 | Now, I could try to achieve an effect like
that by going up to the Effect menu, choosing
| | 02:40 | Distort & Transform, and choosing the Transform
command, but the problem with the Scale values
| | 02:46 | is that they're not absolute.
| | 02:48 | They're always relative.
| | 02:49 | In other words, they're always measured as
percentages of the size of the selection.
| | 02:53 | That's not really going to help me
exactly match the size of the artboard.
| | 02:57 | So I'm going to cancel out of here.
| | 03:00 | I'll press Shift+0 in order
to switch to the Artboard tool.
| | 03:03 | You can also just go ahead and select
the tool from the bottom of the toolbox.
| | 03:07 | And then I'll switch from the second artboard,
which is currently active, to the first artboard
| | 03:13 | in order to make it active, and then
I'll note the size of this artboard.
| | 03:17 | The width is 648 points
and the height is 432 points.
| | 03:20 | And it just so happens to be exactly
centered inside of the larger artboard. All right!
| | 03:26 | With that in mind I'll write
those values down presumably.
| | 03:29 | I'll go ahead and press the Esc key a couple
of times in order to first return to the second
| | 03:34 | artboard and then escape
the Artboard mode. All right!
| | 03:38 | With those values in mind I'll confirm that
my stroke is selected, as it is here inside
| | 03:42 | the Appearance panel.
| | 03:43 | Then I'll go up to the Effect menu, choose
Convert to Shape, and choose Rectangle, which
| | 03:48 | may seem a little bit insane.
| | 03:49 | First of all, why would you want to convert anything
to a rectangle or a rounded rectangle or an ellipse?
| | 03:56 | Even more mysterious, why would you want to
convert what's already a rectangle to a rectangle?
| | 04:00 | Well, let me show you.
| | 04:02 | The idea is that you can scale this rectangle.
| | 04:05 | So by default it's going to be 18 points in
either direction bigger than it is now, which
| | 04:11 | is not what I want.
| | 04:12 | I want an absolute size for starters.
| | 04:15 | So I'll go ahead and select Absolute, and
notice that automatically dials in a width
| | 04:18 | and height value of 36 points.
| | 04:20 | So there is our little rectangle now.
| | 04:22 | I want it to be the size of the
artboard, which is 648 points by 432 points.
| | 04:31 | We end up getting this effect here.
| | 04:32 | So notice the stroke is exactly centered
around the smaller artboard. All right!
| | 04:36 | Now click OK and we'll go ahead and make a
duplicate of this stroke by dropping down
| | 04:42 | to the little Page icon and clicking on it.
| | 04:44 | That way I still have the Rectangle effect
applied to the new stroke, and I'll change
|
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