Creating Painted Effects with illustrator 7.0

Creating Painted Effects with illustrator 7.0

by: Carla Ballatan

Newer versions of the software program Illustrator gave us useful features to dig in. Still, no matter how happy we are about the new features, time after time, in the process of making our designs more creative and innovative, we turn on old tricks of the program. Creating painted effects using Illustrator is an old trick. Now and again, you’ll find this trick useful.

So, we give you some tips and directions on creating your very own painted image with Illustrator. If some of you have newer or older versions than the Illustrator version 7.0, you might find that some paths in the directions here have been slightly altered. So here we go…

First, type out a letter of your choice, let’s say a letter E, and create some polygon shapes to fit behind it. Try out small squares for the letter E and make sure the shapes would fit behind the letter. To send out the four squares at the back of the letter E, select the squares with your ขblack arrowข selection tool and click OBJECTARRANGESEND TO BACK and voila! You have now four boxes behind your letter E.

Then, select the letter E and create outlines for it by clicking TYPECREATE OUTLINES. To change the shapes into compound paths, Select CTRLA and then OBJECTPATHFINDERDIVIDE. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. The CTRL Z command will take you back to every step you took.

Now, it’s time to select parts of your shape, change its colors and pull the individual shapes apart from one another. You can do all of this by using directselection tool. After pulling the shapes apart, rotate some slightly by selecting your rotate tool. After doing that, add some effects that would make the shape’s paths slightly roughened. Choose FILTERDISTORTROUGHEN to create this effect.

Not satisfied, yet? Use your TWIRL tool and twirl the shapes around. Ooops…no twirl tool on your old Illustrator version? Try using FILTER, then. Twirl the shapes around as much to your satisfaction, but make sure it’s still recognizable and readable especially if you’re using text. Want to see the shapes without the selected paths? Hit CTRL H and be gone with the blue select marks, though the paths are still selected. To make the blue select marks reappear, hit CTRL H again!

Finally, use OBJECTPATHFINDERSOFT with a value of 100%, to blend the colors and give you the painterly effect. It’s best to select an appropriate color format, aside from the default CMYK. You may see a rasterized image by selecting OBJECTRASTERIZE.

A word of caution, though, go back one step by hitting CTRL Z since once you saved the image rasterized and closed, you won’t be able to edit it anymore. You can also copy/paste your creation into a new document inside the Photoshop and if you need to print from Illustrator for spot colors, select Split Along Path option in the Document Set Up, first. Keep on painting!

About The Author

Lala B. is a 26 yearold Communication Arts graduate, with a major in Journalism. Right after graduating last 1999, she worked for one year as a clerk then became a Research, Publication and Documentation Program Director at a nongovernment organization, which focuses on the rights, interests and welfare of workers for about four years.

Book reading has always been her greatest passion mysteries, horrors, psychothrillers, historical documentaries and classics. She got hooked into it way back when she was but a shy kid.

Her writing prowess began as early as she was 10 years old in girlish diaries. With writing, she felt freedom – to express her viewpoints and assert it, to bring out all concerns imagined and observed, to bear witness.

For comments and inquiries about the article visit http://www.ucreative.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on March 03

by Carla Ballatan

10 Time Saving Keyboard Shortcuts

10 Time Saving Keyboard Shortcuts

by: Steve Robson

Time is money. And when you constantly have to divide your time between your mouse and your keyboard, your workflow rate really slows down.
Thatกs particularly true when you’re working on a laptop, where the pointing device is even slower.
The answer short of growing another arm is to learn a few กhandyก keyboard shortcuts. Here are 10 of the best:
1. Make a quick exit:
ALT F4 will terminate any program immediately.
2. Flick don’t click:
ALT TAB to flick through open programs.
3. Make a quick selection:
CTRL SHIFT and move cursor with left / right / up / down arrows to quickly select areas of text.
4. Cut, copy and paste to the chase:
CTRL X / C / V to cut, copy and paste selected text.
5. Undo what youกve done:
CTRL Z will undo anything. (And to redo: CTRL Y although this varies between programs.)
6. Page don’t scroll:
In MSIE use Page Up & Page Down to save time fiddling with the scroll bar.
7. E for explorer:
WINDOWS KEY E to open windows explorer. Use up and down arrows to quickly navigate through folders.
8. Rapidly rename:
F2 rename a file or folder in Windows Explorer
9. Find it fast:
CTRL F to find text on a page (And CTRL H replace it).
10. Fly through forms:
Use TAB to move forward through forms and SHIFTTAB to move backwards
After a little practice, your fingers will be flying across the keyboard like a shortcut pro.
And youกll save a huge amount of time too.

About The Author

Steve Robson is a successful technical author and contributor to http://HowToBuyALaptop.com For more computer tips and advice, visit the following web page: http://howtobuyalaptop.com/laptopcomputertips.htm

This article was posted on May 23, 2004

by Steve Robson