Vertical Type in Illustrator

Illustrator provides us with three different tools for setting vertical text. The Vertical Type Tool, Area Type Tool and Type on a Path Tool. For this exercise I’m using the first of the three available tools: The Vertical Type Tool.

With this tool, just click anywhere in your artboard area and start typing… and tadaa…. vertical type appears… How easy is that? (Let’s put this tool on our wishlist for future version of InDesign…)

To decrease or increase the spacing between the characters, change the Tracking value. You can do this at Character level (using the Character panel and tracking settings), or you can amend this setting as part of a Paragraph style you might be using.

Save the text (image) as a native Illustrator file.

Into InDesign

Time now to bring the vertical type into Illustrator. Although you can copy and paste from Illustrator into InDesign. I wouldn’t recommend doing this with vertical type, especially if you intend to edit the text at some point.

Copying and pasting Illustrator artwork into InDesign can be useful, for instance when you are interested in bringing logo-type shapes as editable paths into InDesign. One thing to consider is that the artwork would from that moment forward be edited in InDesign itself. In some circumstance that might be desired. However, when copy and pasting vertical text from Illustrator into InDesign, you’ll find that although the colour of the text and the size (of the placed artwork) is still be editable, the text itself can no longer be altered.

Instead Place the .ai file as a graphic using the File > Place command. To have control over the size of the image that is brought in, enable the Show Import Options.

To reduce the image area that is imported, set the Crop to Art. Assuming that the vertical type is the only artwork on the artboard in Illustrator, this crop sets the crop-size to the bounding box size that you’d see in Illustrator when you select the artwork. To place the text at the exact size that you’ve created it in Illustrator, simply click with the Loaded Graphics Icon on the page, then use InDesign’s Selection tools to position the text on the page.

Editing the text

To change the text itself in the future, the Illustrator file would need to be edited. With the text-graphic placed in InDesign, Option/Alt double-click the graphic. This will edit the original in Illustrator (the default application for placed .ai files). Make the changes in Illustrator, save the Illustrator file and return to InDesign and witness an immediate update.

Updated: 5-Jan-2010: Added Video Tutorial at end of transcript

During our InDesign Trivia night at the Perth InDesign User Group in December, we had some fun with colours in InDesign.

Here’s one of the scenario’s we used: So you’re working on a layout in InDesign, and although you know you can use the Eyedropper tool to pick up colour from a placed image for use in InDesign, you’ve got the sudden urge to build a series of colour swatches based on the colours found in one of the images used in the layout.

The ingredients

Ok, so let’s have a look at how this works. The ingredients and tools we need are:

• a placed image in Adobe InDesign
• Adobe Illustrator

Getting the colour out of your image

I’m assuming you’ve already placed the image in InDesign. So let’s start by selecting the image that is to be the source of your swatches with the Selection tool.

Next either right-click the image (and choose the contextual menus) or choose Edit > Edit With > Adobe Illustrator CS4.

Illustrator???? Hang-on this is a photo, shouldn’t we be opening this in Photoshop? Nope   Illustrator has a very cool feature called Live Trace, and that’s what we’ll be using in this case to extract our swatches from the image.

The cool thing is that you can now choose in which application you’d like to Edit a placed file. This is something you couldn’t do before CS4.

In Illustrator select the image with the Selection tool. As soon as you do that you should spot the Live Trace button in the Control panel at the top.

We could just click this button, however, doing so means that we have no idea of the settings that are being used, so we’re taking a different approach.

From the drop down menu next to the Live Trace button, choose Tracing Options… This will allow us to determine exactly how many colours we want to extract to swatches.

The Tracing Options dialog appears. Yay! We’re not going to do too much in this dialog. Just a few minor changes in the Adjustments section of the dialog.

Set the Mode to Color. Leave the Palette on Automatic. and choose how many colours you’d like to create by setting the Max Colors option. The most important thing comes next: Enable the Output to Swatches option.

We’re now ready to start extracting those colours.

Click Trace.

Back in Illustrator display the Swatches panel. Notice all those cool colours in it? These have all been created from the original Photoshop file that was opened in Illustrator through the Edit > Edit With option in InDesign.

Now all we need to do is get these colours to InDesign…

Click the first colour in the Swatches panel, then whilst holding down the Shift-key, click the last of the Swatches and from the panel menu choose Save Swatch Library as ASE… (Adobe Swatch Exchange).  This Swatch Exchange is a way in which you can share swatches between various Adobe applications.

You’ll be prompted for a save location. Save the .ase file in a spot where you can find it later on. An additional Swatch Exchange Alert, will explain that only solid swatches may be exchanged..

Once you’ve got the .ase file saved, there’s no need for the open Illustrator document anymore. Close it (don’t save) and let’s get back to InDesign.

Back in InDesign

Time to return to InDesign. In InDesign choose Load Swatches from the Swatches panel and navigate to the previously saved .ase, select this file and click Open.

All the Swatches from the .ase file are now added to the Swatches panel in InDesign. Their names however are a little meaningless. You could opt to edit each name manually, however as we’ll be using the swatches as a colour palette it’s probably enough to know the breakdown in C-M-Y-K.

Select the first of the swatches, then whilst holding down the Shift key (same as previously in Illustrator), click the last swatch to select all Tracing swatches, and from the Swatches panel menu choose Swatch Options…

The Swatch Options dialog appears. To give the swatches a slightly more meaningful name, enable the Name with Colour Value option.

Click OK, to accept this change and return to the InDesign document.

You’re now ready to go wild with colours in InDesign. Enjoy!

Video tutorial

Sorry for the crackling noise… my headphone makes noises when I move my head!!! and the fan of my computer is running non-stop, as it’s too hot in my office… (summer here and 32C inside)…

How do we create strays?

What generates Stray Points? Well, you can simply click with the Pen Tool found in InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop anywhere in your document, then choose another tool and… you’re left with a Stray point. A more common way for people to end up with Stray points in their documents – and that doesn’t necessarily need to be an Illustrator document – is through deletion of line segments, using the Direct Selection tool (Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop).

Why does this happen? A line, straight or not, can not exist without two points, in fact the line segment is a connector between two anchor points.

Line segment – Closed path or closed path with 3 or more segments

Q: So what happens when we grab the Direct Selection tool and select a line segment on a closed path? Or when we select a line segment in the middle of an open path that contains at least 3 or more segments and press Delete?

A: The line segment is removed and the two points that were previously joined by this line segment stay behind and are joined to the remainder of the line segments with which they shared anchor points.
In other words all works as expected: A closed path turns into an open path, and single open path turns into two separate paths.

Line segment – End of path with 2 or more segments

Q: But what happens if the line segment we delete is the segment located at the either end of an open path?

A: In this case we’re left with one stray anchor point, simply because this happens to be a point that isn’t shared with a joining line-segment.

Q: So how can we prevent getting stray points?

A: There is an easier method to prevent the stray point from appearing when you want to remove a line segment positioned at the end of a path.

A: Instead of deleting the line segment itself, which leaves the orphaned point behind, select the end point of the path, then press delete. As the line segment can only exist as a connector between two points, the removal of its end point results in automatic removal of the line as well. And… NO strays!

Single line segment

Q: So what about deleting a single line segment I hear you say? Am I not going to be left with at least one stray point, even if I select an anchor point?

A: Well, that is true, but why use the Direct Selection tool at all? Unless you have a reason for wanting to retain at least one or two stray anchor points, just use the Selection tool to select and delete this line and its points.

Stray point deletion script for InDesign

Well, after all of this you’ll probably inherit artwork that still has stray points distributed throughout the document. In Illustrator, the Clean Up command will help out, but InDesign doesn’t have a Delete Stray Point or Clean Up command.   Dave Saunders has come to the rescue!

A very recent post — the reason I thought I’d write this one up – at the Adobe User 2 user forums, prompted Dave Saunders, InDesign script-writer extrordinair, to write two scripts for InDesign. One which locates stray points within a selection or entire document, the other simply removes stray points found.

Copy the text from this post into a new ExtendScript Toolkit file and save the file as “Delete Stray Points.jsx” into your InDesign Scripts Panel folder inside the Scripts folder located in the InDesign application folder on your system. You can even assign a Keyboard shortcut to the script if you think you’ll be using this script a lot.

Did I see that right? A total of five menus and about a dozen tools?

Illustrator 88 was the very first Adobe application I used, the second one was Photoshop.

I remember constructing stars through placement of a single anchor point, rotating and copying the point around a centre point, than creating a second copy of the previously create points that was rotated and scaled — similar to how John demonstrates creating the petals of the flower he draws in this video — the individual anchor points were then joined, to created a closed path.

Without a gradient tool, gradients were created by blending two lines.  Logo’s were scanned in and manually redrawn using the pen tool and a combination of then available shape and transformation tools. Graphs, pie-charts etc. for annual reports were created using the graph tool.

Web-reference: TechNote (2008, Adobe Systems)

Illustrator has had a graph tool for as long as I can remember. The following trick shows how you can use Illustrator graphs to create a 3D pie graph for which the graph data can still be edited.

Let’s get started by entering some basic numbers

Create Graph

Start by selecting the Pie Graph Tool from Tool panel.

Click and drag the area you’d like the graph to cover, when you release the mouse button, the graph data window appears. Alternatively click in the artboard to set width/height for the Graph in the Graph dialog.

Enter the graph data or copy and paste data from an Excel worksheet into the graph data window. Click the Apply button in the top right corner of the graph data window to view the ‘flat’ pie graph. And close the graph data window when the data entered is OK.

Set Graph Colours

Graphs are groups. It is important to remember that when you’re working with Graphs in Illustrator and wish to edit colours or other parts of the graph, you do not ungroup the Graph at any stage, especially if you still want to edit the graph data at a later stage.

As far as I can tell the Isolate Group functionality from Illustrator CS2 and CS3 does not work on graphs. I guess that makes sense in a way, as it would allow you to add non-graph objects to the graph.

So how do we select parts of the graph if we want to change say colour? Well this is where the good old Group Selection Tool comes in handy It’s hidden behind the Direct Selection tool (or if you have the Direct Selection tool selected will be accessible when you press the Alt/Option key in combination with this tool).

Using the Group Selection Tool select the different pieces of the pie (don’t eat them!) and change their colours.

Putting some depth in the pie

Time to put some depth in the pie graph Select the graph with the Selection Tool.

Select Effect > 3D > Extrude and Bevel.

Tick the Preview option in the dialog to preview the 3D effect you are creating. As I’d like to get the yellow part to be positioned to the front of the graph I’m dragging the various edges of the X, Y and Z axis to specify the correct rotation angles.

To change the depth of the pie graph, reduce the Extrude Depth setting. The slider is a bit sensitive, so I generally enter the value manually.

Click the More Options… button in the dialog to edit shading effects. I’m adding an extra highlight and have changed the intensity a bit to generate a different lighting effect.

For commercial printing I’d advice increasing the Blend Steps, as this will create smoother blending of the shading effects. In the past RIPs might have had issues processing a high amount of blend shades but now-a-days I doubt that would be much of an issue.

Once you’re happy with the 3D view of your graph click OK.

Moving a piece of the pie

Once you’re viewing the 3D chart it appears to be difficult to select that piece of pie you’d like to ‘eat’ Changing the View mode to Outline mode will help, but you can’t preview at the same time. A little trick you can apply is to create a New Window for your document (Window > New Window). This allows you to set one window in Preview mode and the other in Outline.

If you’re working on a Mac you won’t have an option available that allows you to tile the two windows. So you’ll have to resize your windows and move them around to display them side by side.

It’s time to select the Group Selection Tool again and start moving that piece of pie. I’ve noticed on my mac that the preview doesn’t quite update but an incremental zoom-in/out on the preview window will refresh the preview without any problems.

When you’ve achieved the required result you can close the second window you opened and set to Outline mode.

Editing the graph data

As I mentioned earlier, you will be able to edit the graph data as long as you haven’t ungrouped your graph at any stage.

Select your graph with the Selection Tool and choose Object > Graph > Data. The data window will reappear. Make the desired changes and apply the new data settings to the graph, then close the data window.

Editing the 3D effect

If you’re not happy yet with the actual 3D effect, you can continue to make changes to the various 3D Extrude & Bevel settings you’ve applied.

Select the graph with the Selection tool and display the Appearance panel.

Locate the 3D Extrude & Bevel Effect that’s been applied and double click this to return to the 3D Extrude & Bevel Options dialog.

Although this tip is kind-a cool, I have to admit the whole editability (not sure if that’s actually a word…) doesn’t quite work as nicely when your graph contains labels.

If you happen to have found a work-around to this that works, let me know and I’ll happily add a note to this tip to include the extra information.

Modified 20-Apr-2008 (added Scott C. tip)

The following tip shows how you can create a relatively simple continuous pattern using Illustrator. It’s been sitting on the back-burner for well over a month, but is finally here

So where do we start. Start by creating a bit of artwork that is going to form the basis for your artwork and draw a transparent rectangle or square around the artwork partially overlapping some of the edge objects.

I’m keeping things pretty simple here, just using some coloured blobs

To make it easier to see the rectangle and ‘blobs’, change the View to Outline mode (View > Outline).

Next select all of the artwork including the rectangle, and start dragging it from one of the corners and whilst pressing the Shift+Option (Alt) key on the keyboard to create a copy. Snap the copy to the opposite corner.

Continue to create more copies until you have a grid of nine.

Next remove any artwork that does not overlap the center rectangle in any way.

To continue work, it’s probably easiest to work two different Windows. One set to preview mode the other to outline mode. To do this select New Window from the Window menu.

At this stage you’ll probably spot overlapping objects, that might need repositioning. Select two related objects at time and reposition them simultaneously.

You might find that more objects need deleting. Ultimately you’ll end up with the base of what will become our continuous pattern.

Having cleaned up the pattern, now select all of the artwork again and deselect any artwork that doesn’t overlap the rectangular pattern tile. Display the Pathfinder panel and click the Divide button to break the artwork into small pieces.

It’s now time to remove any pieces that don’t belong to the pattern.

Once you’re left with just the pattern pieces select Edit > Define Pattern.

Name the pattern and click OK. The pattern is added to the Swatches panel.

You can now apply the pattern as a fill to an object in Illustrator. Things might not look too crash hot, and you’ll probably find that with a small pattern like this you’ll easily spot the pattern.

To scale just the pattern and not the object itself, select Transform > Scale and only check the Patterns box in the Options section of the dialog that appears. Enter the Scale percentage and click OK to apply the transformation to the pattern.

Use other transformations such as Rotate to further apply changes to the pattern fill you’ve created earlier.

Scott Citron kindly added the following note to this tip: “… pattern objects can also be scaled or otherwise transformed by dragging. For example, to proportionally scale a pattern choose the Scale tool and drag at 45º degrees while holding Shift + ~ (tilde). Same thing works with the Rotate tool.”

As my headset isn’t working with Leopard OS, I can’t yet add a video podcast to this tip, but hope to do so at a later stage.

Ok, not really an extensive tip… more an observation and question – at the end – with some tip elements in it that I thought I’d share.

Pressing the Command (Mac) or Ctrl (Win) key whilst you are working with another tool in InDesign will give you temporary access to either the Selection or Direct Selection tool.

As far as I can tell all tools except the Pen tool, Pencil tool and Scissors tool default to temporary access of whichever selection tool was last used.  The Pen, Pencil and Scissors tools default to temporary Direct Selection tool access when pressing the Command/Ctrl key.

The Note tool, seems to have a mind of its own… Visually it appears to become the Type tool, yet it is a Type tool that behaves like either the Direct Selection tool or the Selection tool.  Ive been trying to figure out whether there would be a reason for this, but have come up with nothing… Maybe it’s a reminder that Notes can only be inserted inside Text frames and viewed in the Story Editor?

Getting to the right selection tool on Mac OS

So what happens if the temporary selection tool that becomes active when pressing Command or Ctrl is not the one you were after? Hmmm… well if you’re working on a Mac, press Command+Ctrl, then whilst holding down these keys click the Tab-key once.  This toggles between the two selection tools whilst your current tool remains the active tool in the Tools panel.

Getting to the right selection tool on Win

So how can we get this temporary access to either selection tool working on Win?  Ctrl+Tab should toggle between Selection and Direct Selection tool when the tool is selected according to Help Viewer. On my Dell laptop, running Vista Ultimate I can’t even get that working, even after resetting my InDesign preferences.. So I’m a bit at a loss on this one…

Naturally we can still press V or A to select our “pointy”-tools in the Tools panel, but that’s not temporary access. And to enable use of such shortcuts in all situations, we could add a Contextual Text shortcut, or set these two shortcuts to another Default shortcut that enables usage when our cursor is flashing inside a text frame

Also if the temporary selection tool that appears is the Direct Selection tool, then you could still select and move the entire path by pressing Command+Option or Ctrl+Alt. This will give temporary access to the Group Selection tool (white pointer with +). Click on the path to select, then start dragging to move the selected path. Release the Option/Alt key if you don’t want to make a copy though

The question

I’m really hoping that someone out there has figured this one out and I’ll gladly update this post with the solution. The question is ”How can I toggle between Selection and Direct Selection tool when I have temporary access to either, when holding down my Ctrl key on the keyboard whilst in another active tool on Windows XP or Vista?”

How about Illustrator?

Out of curiosity, I thought I’d see how Illustrator compared…

On the Mac things are different for temporary toggling: Press Command+Alt, then Tab. Release the Alt-key if you need temporary access to Direct Selection Tool not Group Selection Tool. Or if you are moving an object and don’t want to copy things.

On Win?  Once again, I have no idea

Pressing the Command or Ctrl keys when you have either selection tool selected is a temporary toggle to the other selection tool, this doesn’t work in InDesign b.t.w.

Dear Adobe,

It would be super cool, if the behaviour of the selection tools across Adobe applications could be similar.

Yours Truly,

Cari

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…

This tip is Part 2 of a three-part tip. Part 1 describes how the Photoshop artwork that is placed into the Illustrator file was created and Part 3 will create the Text Effect that will give our finished result.

We’re ready to place the previously created Photoshop graphic in Illustrator now. But let’s create a New Illustrator document first that has the same width and height as the Photoshop file.

File > Place. Enable the Link option in the Place dialog. This will allow further editing of the Photoshop file at a later stage.

Tracing the Graphic

From the Live Trace menu in the Control panel select Tracing Options…

What I’d like to do is generate two colour swatches that I can easily edit, whilst retaining Live Trace ability. To generate these swatches on the fly as part of the Live Trace functionality, change the following Adjustments settings:

Set Mode to Colour, Set Max Colours to 2 and Enable Output to Swatches. With the Preview box ticked you’ll be able to see the Live Trace result. Feel free to make additional adjustments.

Click Trace to apply the settings and generate the swatches.

To make it a bit easier to identify the two swatches that are generated, shift-click the swatches in the Swatches panel, then select Create Colour Group from the Swatches panel menu. Name the Colour Group and select Create From: Selected Swatches.

Click OK.

Amending the colours

Editing the colours of the Colour Group is as easy as double clicking the colour and amending the settings.

We’re now ready to get the text part of this three-part tip happening, let’s continue at Part 3.

A month or so ago I demoed a masking technique that works well with text in Illustrator during an Adobe eSeminar I delivered. At the time I promised to write this technique up as a digitip, however, an extremely busy workschedule meant I’d not yet gotten around to posting the tip. But a promise is a promise. To make up for the delay in posting this tip, I’ve spruced up the tip with Adobe Photoshop CS3 artwork creation, and that’s where I’ll start Part 1 of this three-part tip.

There are many different ways of achieving this end result, some much quicker than my tip, purely using Photoshop or Illustrator. The tips uses Photoshop’s Filter Gallery, Illustrator’s Live Trace, Colour Groups and Opacity Masks…  and will show you how you can still edit each of those components at the end…

Part 2 of the tip will take the Photoshop artwork we’re creating here into Illustrator and trace it, and Part 3 will create the Text Effect.

Creating the trace graphic

We’re starting in Photoshop CS3 and are creating a new graphic. As I’m imagining this might become a header of some sort, I’ll stick to A4-width and about 8cm height. (File > New).

Because I want to limit the colour effects for the final result I’m restricting myself to creating a greyscale image.

Fill the image with 100% Black (Edit > Fill). I want to be able to edit the Filter settings after initially applying them. In order to do this the Background must be converted to a Smart Filter Layer. Select Filter > Convert for Smart Filters.

With the use of a few filters the scattered look is generated. Select Filter > Filter Gallery and expand the Sketch filters and click Graphic Pen.

A diagonal pattern appears. Let’s stick to the default settings for now. We’re going to add apply another Filter. Click the New Effect Layer icon .

Question for Adobe: why is this caled a New “Effect” Layer and not a “Filter”Layer?

Two Graphic Pen Effect Layers appear in the Filter Gallery dialog.

The top one is the newly created one. With this Layer still selected, expand the Brush Strokes Filters and click Accented Edges.

Click OK.

Now let’s look at the Layers panel. It displays our Smart Filter layer, and in addition shows us the Filter Gallery that’s been applied to the image.

To further edit the two Filter Gallery effects or add additional Effect Layers, double click Filter Gallery.

The previous dialog appears again, and you can make changes to the settings for the two Effects Layers. I’m pretty happy with my default result at this stage, so will leave things as they are.

Time to save the image and bring it into Illustrator…

I’m saving as a Photoshop file with Layers in tact.

Part 2 of this tip will bring the graphic into Illustrator…

Web Reference: ArtFiles (2007, Code Line Communications)

The following tip looks at using screen patterns as a fill for selected objects in Illustrator. I must thank Sylvia for asking about benday (or Ben Day) dots on the CTP-Q, Page Layout: Adobe, Quark, MS, PDF forum, as it triggered the creation of this tip. Part 2 of this tip is outlined in tip 54.

Creating a simple pattern

To start this tip, create a small rectangle with the rectangle tool, click and drag whilst holding down the shift key to create a perfect rectangle. Ensure that the fill and stroke is set to ‘none’.

Next create a small circle and fill it with a colour. Then select both the circle and the rectangle and using the Align palette centre the objects vertically and horizontally.

To create a new pattern drag the two shapes into the swatches palette.

If you want to make the dot larger within its rectangular pattern tile, select just the dot, then double click the scale tool and enter a uniform percentage larger than 100%. By default the dot will be scaled upward from the centre point outward.

Make several patterns this way, and change the colour of the dots as per your requirements.

Filling with a pattern

Select the object you want to fill with the dot pattern, then click the pattern swatch in the swatches palette.

To make the pattern smaller make sure you have the object filled with the pattern selected, then double click the scale tool and set a value smaller than 100% to make the dots smaller. To only scale the pattern, you must untick the scale strokes and effects option and untick the objects option. Click the Preview box, so you can see in the background what effect the transformation has. Click OK when you’re happy with the result.

Next you can change the angle of the pattern, by double clicking the rotation tool, make sure you still have the object selected with the pattern fill.

This time set the preferred angle for your pattern.

Ok, I’m no Roy Lichtenstein, but hopefully this gives you an idea on how you can manipulate patterns by applying different transformation effects to them without affecting the object size itself.

Little did I know that these dots were named after Benjamin Day, who invented a shading technique based on use of similar sized dots, that could be used in colour printing. Or that I actually worked with Benday dots back in the dark ages, when using screen sticker sheets and scalpel to apply tints to line-art drawings. Or that I saw Benday dots at the Guggenheim museum in New York 27 years ago…, when standing face to face with one of Roy Lichtenstein’s artworks.

I’ve dedicated the two digitips to working with Benday dots in Illustrator CS2.

This tip succeeds the previous tip, and show cases how the dotted patterns created earlier can be faded, whilst retaining their vector and spot colours.

Spotted dots

The dotted patterns created in tip 53, can also be spot colours, by ensuring that the colour of the circular component that forms part of the pattern is filled with a spot colour.

Add Black and White Gradient

Draw a rectangular shape over the top of the dotted pattern object and fill this with a Black and White Gradient.

Turning Gradient into Mask

Using the selection tool, select both objects by roughly click dragging with the selection tool over one of the corners. This will ensure the top and the underlaying objects are both selected.

Ensure the Transparency palette is visible and select “Make Opacity Mask” from the palette fly-out menu.

The gradient effect is now complete. Spot colours are retained. When saving this file as an Illustrator file and placing it in InDesign, spot colours are also honoured.

For more information on Opacity Masks, please also refer to tip 007. Although this tip was written for an earlier version of Illustrator, the technique is valid today.

Video Tutorial

In today’s eSeminar “Discover Illustrator CS2″, I ran through the usage of the appearance palette as a powertool in Illustrator CS2. As promised I would post at least one eTutorial at the end of the seminar based on the End Poll question “which feature covered today would you like to see made into a podcast or eTutorial.”

What about appearances?

So what is it about the appearance palette that makes it such a cool palette? We can shuffle around with strokes and fills, add multiple strokes or fills to a selected path and apply all sorts of Effects found under the Effects menu in Illustrator. We can edit what we have done to our artwork in Illustrator and … we can save our coolest effects as Graphic Styles.

Settings strokes

Let’s start with the inside and outside stroke setting. Rather than distributing the stroke width to either side of the path, we’ll select the path and from the stroke palette select “Align Inside”. The stroke will now appear on the inside of the path.

Adding the second stroke

To add the second stroke, select Add New Stroke from the Appearance palette flyout menu.

The second stroke is added and is automatically selected in the Appearance palette. We must now amend the settings for this second stroke. This time we’ll set the stroke alignment to outside, as indicated in the screen capture below.

Whilst we’re in the control palette, we can also access the Swatches palette from the stroke dropdown menu, and select the second stroke colour.

If you access this same menu whilst holding down the shift key on the keyboard you will access the Colour palette instead of the Swatches palette.

At this point we’ve assigned two strokes to the single path. You can edit the shape of the path with out any problems, as the stroke settings will continue to follow the active path.

Let’s add the third stroke now, by adding another stroke from the Appearance palette.

This time we’ll set the stroke weight to 2pt and we’ll enalbe the Dashed Line option.

Next select the colour for the third stroke from the swatches palette.

Adding the Effects

It’s time to start adding some effects now. Select the yellow stroke we created earlier from the Appearance palette (as it is this stroke to which we are going to add an effect).

We’ll start by adding an Inner Glow to the yellow stroke by accessing Inner Glow from the Effect > Stylize menu

I’m applying a darker red with a multiply blend mode to the yellow stroke.

Next let’s select the Green stroke.

We’ll add a dropshadow, to this.

Enter your preferred dropshadow settings.

Then click Ok. The stroke appearance has now been achieved.

Creating the Graphic Style

To reuse these settings on other paths in your artwork without the need to remember all of the steps we’ve just gone through we’ll create a Graphic Style.

Graphic Styles store all of the settings. To create a graphic style drag the Path icon at the top of the Appearance palette into the Graphic Styles palette.

Select another path in your document and click the Graphic Style.

Editing a graphic style

If you want to edit a graphic style, then, start by selecting a path that has the style applied to it and edit any of the settings in the Appearance palette. For instance you might want to change one of the stroke colours.

To edit the effect settings for the applied effects, double click the effects in the Appearance palette and the related dialog boxes will reappear. Make the preferred changes then click OK to update the settings on the selected path.

The Graphic Style won’t update. Instead drag the icon from the Appearance palette back to the graphic style, whilst this time pressing the Alt or Option key on the keyboard, and drop the style onto the existing one to replace it.

Any artwork that had the previous style applied to it is now automatically updated.

As promised during the Poll at the end of the seminar, I’d submit the most requested feature showcased either as a podcast or eTutorial. As I’ve been pretty busy the rest of the day, I haven’t actually had time for the podcast but have added the eTutorial instead

The following tip was based on an a recent Photoshop TV podcast tip by Matt Kloskowski, where a photographic image was nicely masked in Photoshop.

About the tip

This video tutorial shows how you can use the brush tool to paint an image mask in Adobe Illustrator CS2. To learn more about opacity masks also look at tip 007, an Illustrator 10 tip I wrote a while back about Clipping vs. Opacity masks.

I’ve played with the sound controls a bit in the hope that the sound quality of the tutorials has now improved.

Web Reference: Photoshop TV (NAPP, hosted by Scott Kelby, Dave Cross and Matt Kloskowski

Ok, this one ‘bleeped’ at the CS Conference, Quick Tips session in Sydney for some mysterious reason (gremlins, probably…) but here are the notes on how to create 3D blending shockwave movie from Illustrator CS, using the new CS2 Isolate Selected Group feature.

Creating shapes and blend

For the purpose of this tip I am keeping things simple. Starting by creating and filling a circle with a solid colour, then Alt (Option)-dragging a copy to another spot on the page. Give your second object a different colour.

Next select both objects with the selection tool so you can see their anchor points (selecting is not actually necessary by the way).

Blend tool (left), smooth blend between circles (right).

Select the blend tool from the tools palette, then click the top anchor point on the first circle and the top anchor point on the second circle. The blend that appears between your objects will vary depending on your default blend options settings.

Select the blend with the selection tool and access the blend options from the Object > Blends fly-out menu.

Now chane the Spacing setting to Specified Steps and depending on what you have in mind for your animation enter a number of steps. Remember that each blend object is going to be a frame in your animation. I’m selecting ‘3′, again to keep it simple

Now double click your blend to isolate the group (yep, that’s what that grey box around your artwork is for…) — Don’t ask me why in the Control Palette fly-out it is referred to as Focus Mode though

Creating the effects

Now let’s start creating some magic… With your selection tool still in hand… select the bottom circle and from the Effects menu select Distort & Transform > Zig Zag.

Depending on your preference change the shape of the circle to a smooth looking star, by playing with your size and ridges settings. Click OK to accept your settings.

Now, click the top circle. And apply a 3D > Extrude & Bevel Effect (Effects menu) to your circle. You should see the first bit of magic now Click OK to accept your settings (In my example I’ve not edited the settings at all and stuck with the defaults).

Now select the bottome circle/star (technically speaking it is still a circle, as the star was only created using an effect).

Again access the 3D Extrude & Bevel effect, this time make a rotation around one of the 3 axis (I opted for the gree /vertical axis). You can also drag the ‘cube’ preview by the side to generate the rotation. Click OK to accept your settings.

Next, double click outside ‘off’ your artwork. This takes you back to your group. The grey box around your artwork should disappear… Now select your artwork, and from the Object > Blend menu select Extract. This generates a group consisting of individual 3D objects… (nice right!!!)

Ok, we’re not done yet. You must ungroup the group (Object > Ungroup), then select all group elements and using your Align palette, verticallly and horizontally centre your objects. As a result the will all be stacked on top of eachother.

Working those layers

Now go to your Layers palette and target the layer you’ve created (by clicking the ciircle icon to the right of the Layer name).

From the Layers palette fly-out menu select Release to Layers (sequence).

As a result all individual 3D shapes are assigned to layer (in sequence).

Next, shift click Layer 2 to 6 to select them and start dragging, till you can drop them just above Layer ‘21′ (in your case that will probably be Layer 1…) Once the drop is completed, delete the layer from which you pulled the Layer 2-6 layers. (i.e. Layer 1). You should now only see your 3D objects in individual layers.

Animation

You are now ready to create your shockwave animation. From the File > Export menu select .SWF as your preferred output format. The Macromedia (soon to be Adobe) Flash Format Options dialog box will appear.

Export As: AI (Adobe Illustrator) Layers to SWF frames. Set your animation options (frame rate, looping etc.), and your image format. and click OK. Your .swf will now be created.

If you change the file association for .SWF in your system to Quicktime Player, you can play your Shockwave movie within Adobe Bridge or else using QT Player, or open the file in your web browser.

Pertty cool right?

Now remember, this is only a simple example… try making things a little bit more difficult and you can see some real morphing happening

Have fun!

(Revision 1.1)

You might have wondered about this grey box that appears around your artwork occassionally in Illustrator CS2. Well, it is a new feature included with Illustrator CS2: The “isolate selected group mode”. It works on any group, clipping masks, blends, pathfinder (unextracted) and much more.

The group

Ok, so you’ve got a (bogus) group and have it selected with the selection tool.

The isolated selected group

To isolate the selected group and see the grey bounding area either double click the group or click the isolate selected group button in the control palette, which incidently is only visible when the Focus Mode features are enabled as part of the Control palette features that are displayed .

Isolating a group enables you to move individual group components without the need to select the direct selection tool.

Amend blending modes, transparency settings

Other than moving group components, you can use the isolate group feature to easily amend blending modes of individual group objects, transparency settings etc.

Adding components to group

Whilst working in isolated group mode any object that is added to your artwork either falling within the marked group area or outside it automatically becomes part of the selected group.

Group exit

To exit the isolated group mode and return to your grouped object double click outside your artwork or click the exit isolated group button in the Control palette.

Other uses

Try some of the other uses. They are amazing, you can for instance apply 3D Effects to objects in a blend, and extract the blend, then generate animations in .SWF from that using an Adobe Bridge Automation link to Illustrator (See Tip 38).

Just remembering how as kids we used to paint Easter eggs, using coloured die. When leaving the eggs in the die too long, your egg-white would turn green, purple or any other colour we might be painting. Today I prefer the chocolate Easter egg variety over the hard boiled eggs. And after overeating these, I’ll have to resort to the digital variety made in Illustrator.

So this tips looks at using the 3D Revolve and map art effects for creation of digital Easter eggs.

Pattern first

To commence, start by creating a continuous pattern in Illustrator. The thought behind such a pattern is think “symmetry”… I’m using simple stars placed on a square, using the “Show Center” option in the Attributes’ palette to align the 4 stars to the corners.

Then divide the shapes by selecting all four corner stars and selecting the underlaying square shape, and click the “Divide” option in the Pathfinder Palette.

Note: for non symmetrical pattern objects, you can generate a continuous pattern, by drawing your objects over a single pattern shape and then repeating this shape as if you were doing a tiling job in your bathroom, then remove overlapping pattern sections)

I’m writing down the exact width/height of my pattern : 39.1115mm in my case. The reason for this will be clear a bit later (you can find the width / height measurements, in the transform palette).

After this shift click the corner elements falling outside the pattern square using the group selection tool and delete these.

My pattern is now ready and can be dragged to the Swatches palette and named by double clicking the swatch (or select Edit > Define Pattern).

Symbol next

The next step is to generate a symbol that will function as the ‘egg wrapper’ that will cover your three dimensional egg.

Create a rectangle that is filled with the pattern, that is about 4 or 5 times the shape width and height. No need to use a calculator. Illustrator will do that for you. Click with the rectangle tool in your artboard and enter the width then height of your pattern (in my case 39.1115mm) and next add ‘*4′ behind the numbers (to multiply).

Now click OK to apply and fill your rectangle with the pattern you added to you swatches earlier.

The reason for this precise ‘egg wrapper’ creation is to enable cylindrical wrapping where the patterns overlap seamlessly when joining ends.

Then fill the shape with the pattern you’ve created.

This ‘egg wrapper’ is going to be your symbol that is used to by the 3D Revolve Effect as art to be mapped around the egg. Drag and drop it to the Symbols palette to create the symbol.

Drawing the egg

Start by creating an elliptical shape and move select the top anchor point using the direct selection tool and move it upward (click drag a marquee around the anchor point to select it).

Then select the two anchor points on left and right hand side of the egg shape and move these down a bit (use the arrow keys on the keyboard to ‘nudge’ them down).

Once this is completed, select the anchor point on the right and press delete. You’re now looking at half an egg. You are ready to make your Easter egg now.

3D Revolve

Select the half egg and Effects > 3D > Revolve and set your Revolve settings.

For the surface settings I’ve added an extra highlight point, and amended the plastic shading sections as well as rotated the egg a bit. The Revolve settings are kept basic, with just a change to the rotation axis from left to right edge (the axis around which your shape is revolving to create the 3D appearance).

Click the Map Art button and select the star egg wrapper symbol created earlier as the surface wrapper.

Size the wrapper to be a perfect fit on the surface area you’ve selected. Click OK and you’re egg is ready!

The 3D stuff just remains amazing!!!

In previous Illustrator tips I’ve covered the Appearance palette, possibly one of the most powerful tools in Illustrator. The following tip looks at how multiple fills and stroke effects can make my Bogus Text look snazzy… (am I having a creative moment??)

The text

Start by typing some ‘bogus’ text and format it (size, font etc.). I’ve used Chaparral Pro Bold at 93pts.

In the layers palette click the target next to text to select it (the double circle indicate you have targetted/selelected this object).

Set the default Fill Colour to ‘none’ (Activate Fill, then press the ‘/’ on the keyboard). You text will now be ‘invisible’ and the baseline and target icon next to the text will indicate your text is still selected.

We’re ready to scribble now…

Scribbled stroke

From the Appaerance palette fly-out menu select “Add New Stroke”.

Then Select  Effects> Stylize > Scribble to apply your scribbling affect only to the text outline (stroke).

I’m using a small scribble with minimal variation. Tick the preview box to see your effect on the selected text. Once you’ve got the desired look, click OK to apply the settings.

Wobbly fill

Now that the scribbling has been added, we’ll amend the fill settings. Click Fill in the Appearance palette and apply a fill colour (I picked Green).

Then with the Fill still selected in the Appearance palette apply a slight smooth zig zag effect to the fill shapes. Select Effects > Distort & Transform > Zig Zag.

Again I’m applying a minimal zig zag effect (you’ll get some wierd effects if you overdo the zig-zagging…)

Now select the Fill again, and from the Appearance palette fly-out menu select “New Fill”.

Apply a contrasting fill colour to this second fill (I picked yellow), this time we’re not zig-zagging or scribbling, instead we’ll apply a pretty decent feather to the fill.

With only your new Fill selected in the Appearance palette, select Effects > Stylize > Feather.

Using the Appearance palette, you can now still amend any of the scribble, zig-zag or feathering effects that were applied and amend any colours if needed.

And if Bogus isn’t your favourite word, you can still alter the text to any other word or line of text you prefer.

Misconception: “You can’t apply a gradient to text in Illustrator, unless you convert the text to outlines, which means you can’t edit it anymore”. Well, that was true in some earlier versions of Illustrator, but the use of graphic styles allows for text to be coloured with a gradient whilst retaining its editability.

Quick envelope distort

Just to be a bit more creative, I thought I’d show this quick tip on an envelope distort & text. Start by setting some type in your document.

Then with the type selected, choose: Object>Envelope Distort > Make with Warp.

Editing content & easier previewing of original

To edit the content of the envelope distort select: Object > Envelope Distort > Edit Contents…

Access the type in its “original” format, by changing the document view to outline mode. Although it is possible to edit the text whilst in preview mode, the outline mode will allow for easer selection of text, which is especially handy when working with paragraph text.

Highlight the text, then from the graphic styles palette, select the gradient style to be applied to the text, and view the text in preview mode again to see the effect.

For further editing of the gradient use the gradient tool (to set angle and “length” of gradient). To apply more “warp”, change the envelope distort mode back to edit envelope and “warp” away with the warp tool

I just love the way text can be spiced up this way. Makes for good heading, titles etc.

(Revision 1.1)

A few days before Australia day, one of my clients was in search of an Australian Flag for a special Australian day spread to be published in a regional newspaper. In a challenging search to come up with an original (not borrowed from the internet) idea… Illustrator cs’s new 3D extrude effect came to the rescue.

Symbols

In preparation of the artwork to be mapped on the extruded object, commence with the creation of the 2D flag. Im my case the Australian flag. Drag and drop the artwork into the symbols to create a symbol element.

The flag can now be deleted from the artboard. Using the pentool (or pencil tool), draw a smooth curved line, with only a stroke colour applied and a fill colour of none.

3D Extrude and Bevel

With this line selected select Effects > 3D > Extrude and Bevel. I’m hoping you’ve got lots of RAM in your computer, as this feature works best when your previewing — especially when applying bevels to extruded objects, your computer might “grunt” a bit, I know my old Pentium III is…–

Experiment a little with the Extrude Depth setting, Rotation and Perspective (Use Plastic Shading to see a more interesting “shiney” surface).

Editing 3D effect and Map Art

The “solid” target in the Layers palette indicates the existance of an editable appearance. Double click the Effect in the appearance palette (after targetting the target) to Edit the 3D effect.

In the 3D Extrude and Bevel Options dialog box, click the Map Art option.

Toggle through the available surfaces and locate the “front” surface of the flag, then assign the Symbol created earlier to the surface. To create a visible lighting effect on the surface of the map, tick the Shade Artwork option.

To amend the shading effect, click the More Options button in the 3D Extrude and Bevel Options dialog box, amend settings, adjust number of “spot-lights”, then click OK to view the finished result.

I must say that the 3D Effect addition –sourced from Adobe Dimensions — brings great new features to Illustrator CS, making the creation of artwork in Illustrator even more exciting!

I often asked the following question during Illustrator training: How can we put an image inside text. There are a number of work methods that can create this result. Two of these methods are Clipping masks and Opacity masks. For both methods the starting point is similar: black text with a placed image underneath it.

Clipping mask

If you’ve placed both objects (image and text) in the same layer, press the layer’s target icon (or meatball as I’ve heard as I’ve heard Alan Rosenfeld from Adobe call it).

From the palette’s fly-out menu select “Make Clipping Mask”.

The text becomes a mask which can be edited using the text tool or repositioned using the direct selection tool. The original layer doesn’t seem to have changed, yet the mask has been created.

If you create the mask by running through the “Object >Clipping Mask>Make” menu the outcome is the same. Only the appearance in the layers palette is different: a group is created.

If anyone knows why there is a difference in the layers palette, please e-mail me and I’ll update the tip.

Opacity mask

Once again start by targetting the layer (to select both text and image). Display the Transparency palette and under the fly-out menu, assure that both “New Opacity Masks Are Clipping” AND “New Opacity Masks Are Inverted” are selected. Then select “Make Opacity Mask”.

Seemingly the result here is similar to the Clipping mask method. That is correct. When using black text the methods do indeed appear to be similar. When comparing the file sizes of both documents you might spot a minute difference in bytesize (we’re talking Bytes here, not even Kilobytes).

To reposition the mask (text), unlink the image and mask, then select the mask and move it to its new position. As long as the link between mask and image exists they will be moved as one. To edit the text, click the mask icon in the transparency palette first.

Difference?

So what is the difference between the two methods? A clipping mask can only clip and display the underlaying objects in full. The top shape behaves like the “hole” in a picture frame. The Opacity mask however is not restricted to displaying the underlaying image fully opaque.

If the object that is to be used as a mask contains various grey tints, the mask result will be considerably different, applying different opacities over the masked image.

With an Opacity mask, you can further apply certain style effects to the text (like applying a pattern), which can create some nice visual effects. The text remains editable in both methods.

Remember the days when we used to create roadmaps, using zillions of paths with various stroke weights and colours. The days when we had no layers in Illustrator? Phew, the appearance palette & styles really have come to the rescue. It’s magical!

Start: creating a simple road

Select a previously drawn path and from the appearance palette fly-out menu select Add New Stroke.

Select the new stroke and amend the stroke weight and colour.

Creating a new style

Styles come in handy when you want to reuse the same settings for various strokes. Select the path with the simple road appearance, then from the Styles palette fly-out menu select New Style. Name the style and change the palette view to “Small List View” to view the styles by name. You can repeat these steps for every style you create.

To apply a style to a stroke, select the stroke, then click the style name in the styles palette.

To generate an overpass look, draw an additional path, select it and select the preferred road style from the styles palette.

To create intersections without overpasses, create a number of paths and group them together before assigning a style to them.

Strokes can contain dashes as well, amend the dash settings and stroke weight , using the same “Appearance” method.

Creating a style library

Styles can be reused in other documents, when they are added to the Presets/Styles folder (inside the Illustrator application folder). Create a simple piece of artwork and remove all irrelevant styles (and brushes, swatches etc). Create all your personal styles and save the Illustrator document (which can have a blank page!) into the Styles folder.

Your personal style library is now available from the Windows>Style libraries menu.

Creating more complex maps

Basic styles can be used to draw simple maps. For more complex maps, you might find that you need to expand your stroke into multiples strokes for which the stacking/layer order can be amended. The Object>Expand Appearance menu “breaks” the single stroke appearance into multiple strokes, each with their own colour, weight and dash (and effects) setting.

Illustrator comes with a range of premade styles, all accessible from the Style Library menu. Load and apply some of these existing styles to get a feel for what styles (and appearances) can do! It’s pretty cool I reckon!