Cari Jansen

"Information, tips, tricks and tutorials"

• Home
• About
• Scripts
• Resources
  • Adobe Acrobat
  • Adobe Illustrator
  • Adobe InDesign
  • Adobe Photoshop

Site Info

Subscribe

Recent Posts

• Stray points removal in Illustrator and InDesign
• 10.5.4 + 5.0.3 = fixedalot
• Typefi AutoFit short video added
• Nostalgia
• The deke Pod

Topics

Select Category acrobat adobe adobe eseminars adobe labs adobe licensing adobe reader audio breeze colour creative suite digitip distiller dreamweaver fonts framemaker GREP illustrator indesign language Lightroom Mac OS miscellaneous pagemaker pdf photoshop plug-in podcast premiere elements print technology scripting standards typefi systems unicode video web technology Windows XML

Archived Posts

Select Month July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 May 2006 April 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 July 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 October 2004 August 2004 July 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003

Search

Google Ads

« Tracing the Trace Graphic | Main | Automatic Frame Resizing with AutoFit »

Masked Text

By Cari Jansen | January 4, 2008

Digitip 065 - Illustrator CS3, Photoshop CS3

This tip is Part 3 of a three-part tip and generates the masked text. Part 1 describes how the Photoshop artwork is created and Part 2 outlines how to apply Live Trace and maintain colour editing ability.

I’m adding my standard “Bogus” text. Select Text and Background (shift-click each with Selection Tool, or click drag Selection Tool around both objects). Ensure the Transparency panel is visible. From the panel menu enable “New Opacity Masks are Clipping” and “New Opacity Masks are Inverted”, then select Make Opacity Mask.

I’m not entirely happy with the result here.

I would have liked to trace a darker image. Fortunately I retained the Link to the original Photoshop file that Live Trace was applied to… so let’s go and edit that…

Edit the original Photoshop file

In the Transparency panel, ensure the graphic (not the mask) is selected. Display the Links panel, then select Edit Original.

The image that is being traced in Illustrator opens in Photoshop.

Double click the Filter Gallery layer in the document, and make preferred adjustments. Click OK and Save and Close the Photoshop document.

When you return to Illustrator, Illustrator will notices you’ve modified the original Photoshop file that was placed and asks if you’d like to update the linked Photoshop file. Click Yes to enforce the update and view the new result.

The cool thing about this technique is that you can:

a)  edit the original Photoshop file that is being “Live Traced”, as long as you retain a Link to that file when placing it in Illustrator. This way you can take advantage of using Photoshop’s Filter Gallery, which I prefer to use over the more limited version that Illustrator has.

b) edit the Live Trace options…

c) edit the global colours generated by Live Trace

d) edit the text.

Edit Text

To edit the text ensure the Mask is selected in the Transparency panel. Next select your Type tool and make the text change.

Well, that completes a long overdue tip with lots of extras…

Topics: digitip, illustrator, photoshop |

Comments

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

© 2003-2008 Cari Jansen

Powered by WordPress - Theme design: RFDN, Theme modification: Cari Jansen

Home | About | Contact | RSS Feed

Trademarks: Adobe, the Adobe logo, Acrobat, Creative Suite, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, PostScript are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated.

Disclaimer: While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this web-site, the creator shall not have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any liability, loss, or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information or instructions contained in this web-site, or by the computer software and hardware products described therein.