From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

720 Simulating an adjustment layer in Illustrator

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

720 Simulating an adjustment layer in Illustrator

- Hey, gang, this is Deke McClelland. Welcome to Deke's Techniques. This week, I've got a question for you. Have you ever been working inside Adobe Illustrator and you've got this piece of artwork and it looks just swell but then when you go to print it, it ends up darkening up. Well, if you were working inside Photoshop, you could apply a temporary adjustment layer in the from of Brightness/Contrast or Levels or Curves even if you wanted to work too hard. But Illustrator doesn't offer adjustment layers. It should, Adobe. People would go nuts for it. So there you go, some free feature advice. But in the meantime, I've got a workaround that allows you to either brighten or darken your artwork entirely temporarily and of course, non-destructively with almost no work at all. Here, let me show you exactly how it works. All right, so here we are looking at a sample document that I've created in Adobe Illustrator. I wanna open it in Photoshop as well so we can compare apples to apples or really, more like comparing apples to pineapples. But we do wanna have the document open in both programs so we can see what's going on. And one way to do that is to go up to the File menu, choose Export and then choose Export As and then you can choose a file format such as JPG or TIF or PSD, what have you. But a quicker way to work is to go up to the File menu and choose Browse in Bridge in order to bring up Adobe Bridge. And notice that I have three documents inside this particular folder. I'm gonna go ahead and right-click on this guy, Sample Illustration, which is the one we were seeing just a moment ago. And I'll choose Open With, followed by the current version of Adobe Photoshop CC. Doesn't have to be CC however. It can be any version of the program. And then notice that in here that the mode is set to RGB color, very important. The bit depth is eight bits per pixel and then the resolution is 288 pixels per inch. The reason I've chosen 288 is because it is a multiple of 72 and that way, we'll have a pixel for pixel match at the 25% view size. And then you would just go ahead and click OK in order to rasterize the artwork. I'm gonna cancel out here because I've already done it in advance. So notice, here I am in Photoshop looking at the rasterized version of that illustration. And if I were to switch back to Illustrator, you can see that the artwork's looking the same. So this is Illustrator, this is Photoshop. And I'm trying to make this crystal clear that I am indeed switching back and forth between the two programs because after all, the illustration itself is looking more or less identical. All right, let's switch back over to Photoshop. Now, when I'm printing to my inkjet printer, which is an Epson R3000, for what that's worth, it's a fairly high-end, older model printer and it works beautifully. But we do have the issue where the screen is calibrated brighter than the printer. And so what I would normally do is go up to the Layer menu, choose New Adjustment Layer and then choose Levels. And that way, I'll bring up the New Layer dialog box and I'll go ahead and call this guy For Print and click OK. That's gonna bring up the Properties dialog box. To select the first numerical value right there, I'll press Shift-Enter or Shift-Return on the Mac and then I'll Tab over to the gamma value and press Shift-up arrow twice in a row in order to take that gamma value up to 1.2, which generally works out great. And then I would go up to my File menu and choose the Print command and that's gonna bring up the Print dialog box. Now, everything's looking kind of messy right now so I'll just go ahead and change a few settings here. I'll switch to my vertical layout and then switch to horizontal. Notice that my printer is set to the R3000. If I were to click Print Settings, then you can see that Borderless is turned on and this is all applicable to this specific model. But if I click on Expansion, I've got it set to Retain Size so it's not gonna grow as it prints. Anyway, I'm just gonna cancel out of these two dialog boxes. Now, what I want you to see is that the preview inside the Print dialog box more or less matches the image here inside the image window. But if I were to click the Print button and then respond to this alert message by clicking Proceed, then a moment later, I'm gonna see the Epson preview. This is a specific function of this printer working on a PC. And notice that its preview is darker. And that's because the output is gonna darken up. But it's going to darken to the tune of compensating for that adjustment layer so it's going to look more or less like the original. All right, I'll cancel that. And so the reason I'm demonstrating this is because this is the way I used to be work all the time. But then I decided, wouldn't it be great if I could simulate that kind of brightness adjustment inside Illustrator? So here's what I came up with. I'll go ahead and switch back over to Illustrator where things are a little darker. So notice, here's Illustrator, a bit darker. Here's Photoshop, a bit brighter. And so here's what I'm gonna do. Inside the Layers panel, I'm gonna drop down to this little page icon and I'm gonna Alt or Option-click on it to force a display of the Layer Options dialog box. I'll call this guy For Print and then I'll change the color to, let's say, gold. That doesn't really matter by the way. I'm just looking for some variety where these various layers are concerned. And then I'll go ahead and zoom out like so. I'll go up to the View menu and make sure Smart Guides are turned on. In my case, they aren't so I'll choose the command to turn them on. And then I'll select the Rectangle tool which you can get from the Shape tool fly-out menu. And I'll go ahead and draw a rectangle from one corner of the red bleed boundary to the other like so. Now, I don't need a stroke and in my case, there isn't one so that's great. But I do wanna brighten things up so I'll set the color, the fill color, to white. And then I'll just go ahead and escape out of that panel and I'll press Ctrl-Shift-A or Command-Shift-A on the Mac to deselect my artwork. And then I'll go ahead and zoom in. Now, what you wanna do is target this entire layer here inside the Layers panel by clicking on its circular, so-called meatball. And now, I'll click on the word Opacity up here in the horizontal control panel and I'll change the blend mode, not to any of the lighten modes right here, but rather, we can start with Overlay. But notice that it's way too harsh and so we're gonna go with Soft Light instead. And then I'm gonna take that opacity value down to 25% and we get this effect here which is all but identical. It's very, very close to creating a Levels adjustment layer inside Photoshop and setting that gamma value to 1.2. So here we are, looking at the artwork in Photoshop subject to a Levels adjustment layer. And here we are, looking at the artwork inside Illustrator subject to a white rectangle that covers the entire artwork set to the Soft Light blend mode and an opacity of 25%. All right, so that's gonna work well for print. But what if we wanna darken things up for video? I'll just go ahead and change the name of this layer to For Video like so. And then with the rectangle still selected, I'll go ahead and click on that first swatch on the far left-side of the control panel and I'll change it to black. And I don't need to make any other modifications because the layer itself is still set to the Soft Light mode at an opacity of 25%. And so notice if I were to turn this layer off, you will see the artwork brighten up. And this is the original version of the artwork, by the way. And now, if I turn this For Video layer back on, you'll see things darken. All right, now, let's see the equivalency inside Photoshop. I'll go ahead and switch over to that program. I'll double-click on the thumbnail for this Levels adjustment layer here inside the Layers panel to bring up the Properties panel. I'll just go ahead and select that gamma value and I'll reduce it to 0.85. And we get an almost exact match. So here's the original version of the artwork and here's the darker version, once again, subject to a Levels adjustment layer with a gamma value of 0.85. So anything below one is gonna darken. Anything above one is gonna lighten strictly the mid-tones. And notice that we have almost the exact same effect here inside Illustrator. And so here are the rules of thumb. I'll go ahead and turn on this equivalencies layer right here. Working inside Illustrator here, a big white rectangle subject to the Soft Light blend mode at 25% opacity approximately equals a Levels adjustment layer inside Photoshop with a gamma setting of 1.20. Whereas a black rectangle inside Illustrator subject to that same blend mode, Soft Light, and that same opacity level, 25%, is approximately equal to a Levels adjustment layer inside Photoshop with a gamma reduction of 0.85. So you can see that these aren't exactly linear results. 1.2 versus 0.85. And that's just a function of the way gamma works inside Photoshop. And that's at least one way to simulate a Photoshop adjustment layer here inside Illustrator. Now, I knew I forgot to mention something. Everything I just showed you is designed specifically to work in RGB. Now, you may be able to pull it off in CMYK but it's gonna work best in RGB. Now, your response to that might be, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you just showed us the technique for brightening an image for print and we were working RGB? And the answer is yes. And that's because we're going to a local inkjet printer or a local laser printer, that would be fine too. CMYK is designed exclusively and solely for pre-press. And that's not conjecture, by the way. That's just the way it is. Now, for those of you who are still looking forward to next week because some of you might be thinking, why is Santa lecturing me? If you're still looking forward to next week though, I'm gonna show you how to create type out of computer keys. Deke's Techniques, each and every week. Keep watching.

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