Bungee Jumping: Entering a Sea of New Functionality


If the previous section was "the bad," there is also a middle ground. Some features in Illustrator both delight and disappoint the FreeHand user at the same time. Some are bittersweet and fall short of a FreeHand user's expectations in some ways, and yet also contain certain aspects that are better than what they are accustomed to.

Of course, just as FreeHand has many taken-for-granted "minor" features that make major differences in efficiency and capability, so does Illustrator. These are wonderful surprises that reward the FreeHand user who takes the time to explore their potential.

Aligning and Distributing Objects

In Illustrator, locked objects are not selectable. This means they cannot be used as anchors to which you can align other objects. But when performing alignments in Illustrator, you can designate one of the selected objects as the anchor by simply giving it an extra click before performing the alignment (refer to Chapter 4 for more about defining key objects).

Illustrator's Align palette functions do not work on individually selected points, only on whole objects. That is, if a path's point is included in the current selection, the alignment occurs just as if the whole object were selected in FreeHand. For points, you are limited to the very basic horizontal or vertical options offered in the Object>Path>Average dialog.

The sweet part, though, is the additional functionality of Illustrator's Align palette, especially the Distribute options, which are shown when you select Show Options from the palette flyout. Unlike in FreeHand, you can specify a distance between distributed objects. For example, if you want a series of different-sized objects to neatly abut, just enter zero in the Distribute Spacing field.

Employing Round Corners

How often have you performed the goofy positive/negative inset path trick in FreeHand to round the corners of a path? Illustrator has a Round Corners command that you can apply as either a literal Filter (Filter > Stylize > Round Corners) or as a Live Effect (Effect > Stylize > Round Corners). However, it doesn't actually give you corners of the radius you specify; the value you enter is actually the distance from the corner at which the curve is begun. Also, it works on whole paths, not on specific selected points. Still, this should be a welcome feature to FreeHand users.

Expanding Strokes

As in FreeHand, Illustrator provides a means by which you can outline the edges of a stroke with unstroked paths, thereby converting them to closed, filled, and unstroked paths. Illustrator's counterpart to FreeHand's Modify > Alter Path > Expand Stroke command is its Object > Path > Outline Stroke command. (The functionality also resides as a check box in the Object > Expand dialog.)

Illustrator's version of this important command holds a fundamental advantage over FreeHand's: Whereas FreeHand's version invokes a dialog in which you specify the thickness, caps, and joins of the expanded strokes, Illustrator's abides by the already-applied characteristics of each path individually.

Besides just being more intuitive and "sensible" Illustrator's behavior is also more versatile. For example, if you have a line drawing in which several different stroke weights and caps are used, you can turn the entire thing into closed paths in one whack, without giving all the lines the same treatment. An example of where this can be especially useful is in preparing artwork for sign vinyl cutting equipment. Applying Illustrator's Outline Stroke, followed by the Merge Pathfinder, performs much of the necessary preparatory work.

Automation with Illustrator

Appendix A, Automation with Illustrator, is devoted entirely to working faster and more efficiently with Illustrator, but it's important to emphasize here that Illustrator supports both AppleScript on the Mac and Visual Basic scripting on Windows. More importantly, there's the cross-platform JavaScript support as well. Adobe has similar built-in scripting support for all of its applications (including Bridge), so what you learn by scripting in one program augments your efforts in the other.

If scripting just isn't for you, you can still create your own custom features by stringing together very simple or quite complex sequences of operations in Illustrator's built-in macro feature, the Actions palette. Many useful examples are provided with the program for common tasks, but you can also build your own specialties; for example, you can perform a series of Expand and Pathfinder operations to prepare artwork for your own sign-cutting workflow, or you can scale and rotate objects to fit the top, left, and right planes of an isometric drawing. Like its JavaScript support, the automation of Illustrator's Actions palette can help make up for some of the features you consider missing relative to FreeHand.

Exploring Illustrator's Live Features

Since version 8, Illustrator has become increasingly centered on more and more elaborate live behavior. These are treatments that remain adjustable until they are nailed down by an Expand command, or by being exported to a format that does not support the effect.

Of course, FreeHand has its share of live behaviors, too. They range all the way from things as mundane as blends to newer Illustratorish features such as transparency. In fact, when you think about it, even something as common as an ordinary stroke weight can be considered a live behavior. But here, we're talking bigger than that. These are major feature sets that the FreeHand user should explore (see Chapter 3, Objects, Groups, and Layers, and Chapter 7, 3D and Other Live Effects) to appreciate their potential.

Working with Brushes

FreeHand has live brushes, but not to the extent of Illustrator's selection. Roughly speaking, Illustrator's Art brush is analogous to FreeHand's Paint brush, and an Illustrator Scatter brush is similar to a Spray brush in FreeHand.

But FreeHand has nothing like Illustrator's Pattern brush, with its separate tiles for ends, sides, and corners. Pattern brushes can be used for one-time setups of complex objects ranging from border frames with special treatments at the corners, to nuts and bolts with adjustable diameters and lengths (Figure B.14).

Figure B.14. Pattern brushes can have ends and corners that are different from the artwork used along their length. You can draw complex objects once and apply them to simple spine paths.


There are some capabilities in FreeHand's brushes that are not replicated in Illustrator. For example, FreeHand's Spray brush lets you apply multiple different symbols within a single brush definition, whereas Illustrator's Scatter brush does not. Both treatments have their advantages. However, we suspect you will come to agree that Illustrator's brushes are, overall, more satisfying in terms of capability and results.

Using Warps

Think of Illustrator's Warp commands (under the Effect menu) as presets of the most commonly needed Envelope shapes, but within a dialog that presents the most commonly needed distortions in the form of sliders. You can use the Warp effect in a blend, as explained in Chapter 9, Graphs, Distortion, and Blends, (Figure B.15). This feature set is a huge timesaver.

Figure B.15. If you apply the same Warp effect to two copies of the same artwork, you can blend it; the ends of the blends are still live and editable. This is a great technique for export to Flash.


Exploring the Symbolism Toolset

FreeHand's Graphic Hose can be much more down-to-business productive than Illustrator's Symbol Sprayer when you just want to spray a bunch of same objects in a line or within an area. But oh my, the things you can do with the other Symbolism tools after you put the Symbols down! A crowd favorite is the Symbol Stainer tool. To use it, spray a bunch of symbols on the page and then softly and subtly colorize them en mass: very cool and very useful. Be sure to check out Chapter 5, Brushes, Symbols, and Masks, for more details.

Adding Dimension With the 3D Effects

FreeHand's Extrude feature is not 3D. It is a 2D construction for simulating 3D objects, much like perspective construction on a drawing board.

Illustrator's 3D Effect is 3D. It renders to a 2D image, of course, as does any 3D program, but it renders as vector paths, rather than pixels. An actual 3D engine is used to generate the model (Figure B.16).

Figure B.16. The simple paths at the top of this figure are all you need to generate the 3D chess piece renderings at the bottom.


Understand, this is not meant to denigrate FreeHand's approach. Both 2D construction and 3D modeling have their purposes and advantages, depending upon what you are trying to do. But the greater realism of the 3D Effect in Illustrator is plain to see when you first use it. It also offers two major capabilities that FreeHand's does not: Parallel perspective (essential to tech illustrators, online game builders, etc.), and artwork mapping (great for package designs, labeling, and much more).

You can also blend between objects that have the same type of 3D Effect applied. For example, apply a 3D Effect to a path, make a copy, and blend between the two. Then modify the parameters of 3D Effect applied to one. The Blend updates accordingly. Release to layers, export to SWF, and you've got a frame-by-frame animation in much less time than you'd need to build something similar in FreeHand. Be sure to read Chapters 7 and 10 for more information on this subject.

Getting Creative With the Scribble Effect

Scribble is not a single effect; it's a whole feature set. The obvious use, of course, is to make a fill or a stroke look . . . well, scribbled. But you can also use this to quickly render a wide variety of effects from embroidery to television interference. Be sure to read Chapter 7, where this is discussed in more detail and explore this feature set into the wee hours (Figure B.17).

Figure B.17. The shimmer effect used here is based on the Scribble effect applied to two fills. By using two slightly different Scribble angles, you can produce the interference pattern.


Combining Live Effects

Here's where it really hits home: the major Live Effects in Illustrator can often be combined to produce elaborate treatments that would be very time-consuming to replicate in FreeHand; these capabilities are not always evident in a mere surface exploration of the individual features.

For example, you can create a blend between two copies of the same 3D object that have different orientations. This greatly expedites the process of building frame-by-frame animations to use in Flash.

Another example of combining effects involves blending between two symbol instances. To achieve this, drag two instances of a symbol onto the page. Blend them. Now direct select one and use the Symbol Stainer tool to colorize it. The possible combinations go on and on.




Real World Adobe Illustrator CS2
Real World Adobe Illustrator CS2
ISBN: 0321337026
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 147
Authors: Mordy Golding

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