Illustrator Help

[kphealey]

I'm a complete Illustrator newbie.

Is there a way to keep outline width constant without just drawing a smaller path and then creating an offset path by a few pixels?

[epper]

I'm a complete Illustrator newbie.

Is there a way to keep outline width constant without just drawing a smaller path and then creating an offset path by a few pixels?

Have you tried adding a stroke to an object, then 'expanding' (object > expand) to turn the stroke into an editable object?

[rmered]

Where did the Photoshop Help thread go?

I am trying to find a way of creating a layer over the top of a footy jumper to make it look realistic.

One for wool jerseys:

One for polyester

Any ideas?

Am guessing it's going to end up being desgined in Illustrator (which these were) then have a layer added to it in Photoshop.

But how to create that Layer.

[Gordie]

- Find an image of a solid-coloured shirt made of the material you want to simulate. (I used a red polyester soccer jersey)

- Using an image editor (Photoshop or whatever) desaturate the colour so you have a grayscale (black & white) image.

- Next, adjust the brightness and contrast so that the highlights of the wrinkles are white and the flat areas are pale gray. The darkness of your shadows will depend on the material. For polyester, you want a bit more contrast than you'd have for a duller material like cotton or wool. You may have to play with these settings a bit until you get the desired effect.

(Any areas you don't want visible should be coloured white so that they're fully transparent when you overlay the texture on your jumper.)

- Save your texture.

(I used CorelDRAW for the following steps, but they ought to work in Illustrator as well)

- Open up an existing jumper and add your texture image.

- Place the texture atop your jumper, and adjust the size and position.

- Set the texture image's opacity to 100% - Darken. (Play with the opacity settings until you're satisfied with them.)

- Mask the area of the texture outside the borders of your jumper so it isn't visible.

- Done?

[rmered]

looks amazing.

But I can't seem to make the Photoshop template transparent.

Am I missing a step?

[Mings]

You might be working with a locked or background layer. See if one of your layers has a lock on it, that may be the issue.

Also, welcome back sir. Haven't seen you around in a while.

[rmered]

You might be working with a locked or background layer. See if one of your layers has a lock on it, that may be the issue.

Also, welcome back sir. Haven't seen you around in a while.

Thank you, it's nice to be back.

And this thing is driving me mental.

So I did have a background layer, but I deleted it and still have the same problem.

[Gordie]

Opacity setting - try 'Multiply' instead of 'Darken'. (And slide the percentage from 0 to 100 and back to see which setting is correct)

[rmered]

Wasn't doing Darken.

I guess reading the instructions and following them was what you expecting, well, I saw your little plan and avoided it.

Have now Darken-ed and it works. Just need to find a better piece of material to take the shape out of

[Gordie]

Just to be clear -

The texture is created in your photo editor, then saved as a .jpg, and is not transparent at that point.

You apply this image over your jumper in Illustrator with opacity set to 'multiply', at 100%.

[rmered]

Multiply. 65% opacity.

Do you think this looks like Polyester or Wool?

[DeFrank]

For some reason, my illustrator has been acting quite strangely. Whenever I select anything, either with the white or black arrow, I don't get a full size box to move it around. Only an outline. This happens with ALL my files, no matter what they are.

[oddball]

For some reason, my illustrator has been acting quite strangely. Whenever I select anything, either with the white or black arrow, I don't get a full size box to move it around. Only an outline. This happens with ALL my files, no matter what they are.

Control or Command H. Your box is hidden and either Control-H or Command-H will turn it on or off.

[DeFrank]

For some reason, my illustrator has been acting quite strangely. Whenever I select anything, either with the white or black arrow, I don't get a full size box to move it around. Only an outline. This happens with ALL my files, no matter what they are.

Control or Command H. Your box is hidden and either Control-H or Command-H will turn it on or off.

Whenever I do that, it just alternates between me being able to select the object without the box or not at all.

[DeFrank]

Anybody?

[Shumway]

If I'm getting what you're saying, you want to go to View > Show Bounding Box (....or Command+Shift+B )

[Quillz]

I've been having an issue in Illustrator, and wondering if anyone can help me with it:

Say I have an image that has numerous objects within. What I want to do is add just a single stroke around all of them, rather than each individual object. I can't figure out how to do this. Here's my image (a recoloring of the Marlins logo):

What I want to do is add a black stroke/outline around the two distinct regions. But if I try to do this now, even if I create compound paths, it creates a stroke around all the objects, which I don't want.

I think my solution is somewhere in the Pathfinder settings, perhaps joining/merging something. But I'm not sure.

[MEANS]

select all the items you want to outline, copy, paste behind, choose unite in the pathfinder and add a stoke to the new united shape you have created.

[Quillz]

select all the items you want to outline, copy, paste behind, choose unite in the pathfinder and add a stoke to the new united shape you have created.

Wow, thanks a ton! That's exactly what I've been trying to figure out for a very long time. That really helps me out a lot.

[drdougfresh]

select all the items you want to outline, copy, paste behind, choose unite in the pathfinder and add a stoke to the new united shape you have created.

Wow, thanks a ton! That's exactly what I've been trying to figure out for a very long time. That really helps me out a lot.

Pathfinder is your BFF for stuff like this.