Distort Transform: The Power of Change


Distort & Transform: The Power of Change

Throughout your design process, you are constantly making changes to your artwork. Sometimes, you need to alter paths by distorting them and other times you need to transform them using functions like Scale or Rotate. Illustrator features a variety of these functions as Live Effects, which make it easy to go back and perform tweaks or changes to these settings as necessary.

Distortion Effects

Illustrator features six different distortion effects, each providing a different type of look and feel. Distortion effects in particular are useful when applied to strokes or fills individually, and this is especially so when you're building complex appearances that contain multiple fills and strokes. You can find each of the effects listed here by first choosing Effect > Distort & Transform and then by choosing one of the following distortion effects:

  • Free Distort. The Free Distort effect displays your art with a rectangular bounding box. You can drag any of the four corners to stretch or apply a distortion (Figure 7.69). This is useful if you want to add perspective to make art appear as if it has a vanishing point, although the 3D Rotate effect offers similar functionality in that regard.

    Figure 7.69. The Free Distort effect lets you stretch artwork to apply perspective or distortion.


  • Pucker & Bloat. The Pucker & Bloat effect offers a slider that applies distortion to your objects by spiking paths. When you're looking for a really funky shape, this distortion effect probably fits the bill.

  • Roughen. The Roughen effect allows you to take straight paths and make them appear as if they just experienced an earthquake (Figure 7.70). The Roughen dialog offers the ability to adjust size and detail; you can also specify whether you want the result to have smooth (rounded) or corner (straight) path segments.

    Figure 7.70. You can use the Roughen effect to create torn paper effects, or simply to apply an uneven look to vector art.


  • Tweak. At first, the Tweak effect appears to be similar to the Pucker & Bloat distortion, but the Tweak effect adjusts control points in addition to anchor points on paths. The result is a path that is far less predictable.

  • Twist. The Twist effect allows you to twist art from its center using a specified angle.

  • Zig Zag. The Zig Zag effect is similar to the Roughen effect, but it creates methodical zigzag patterns on selected objects.

Illustrator also has other distortion tools and effects. The Warp effect, covered later in this chapter, provides a way to stretch art using predefined warp styles. Other distortion features like Envelopes and the Liquefy set of tools are covered in Chapter 9.

Transform Effect

If you want to rotate or scale an object on your artboard, using the Transform effect is overkill. Rather, the Transform effect is useful when you want to apply transformations to parts of an object. For example, you might scale two different fills within the same object so they are different sizes. To do so, apply the Transform effect, choose Effect > Distort & Transform > Transform.

The Transform Effect dialog is actually identical to the one that appears when you use the Transform Each function (which we covered back in Chapter 4, Advanced Vectors). There is, however, one huge addition in the Transform Effect dialogthe ability to specify copies (Figure 7.71).

Figure 7.71. The Transform Effect dialog mimics the Transform Each dialog and it includes the ability to set the number of copies you want transformed.


Transforming Objects with Effects

Because we're on the topic of transformations, there are a few things you should be aware of when performing standard transformations on the artboardspecifically when scaling or rotating objects that have Live Effects applied to them.

By default, when you scale an object on the artboard, Illustrator does not scale the values that you may have specified for any Live Effects applied to that object. For example, if you specify a 30-pixel Gaussian Blur effect and then scale that object 200 percent, the Gaussian Blur is still set to 30 pixels. In order to scale an object's Live Effect attributes, you must turn on the Scale Strokes & Effects setting, which you can find in Illustrator's General Preferences panel or by double-clicking the Scale tool in the Toolbox.

It's also important to realize that the values of certain effects have limits. For example, you can't set a Gaussian Blur to anything higher than 250 pixels. Even if you have Scale Strokes & Effects turned on, you can only scale your artwork up until the limit, at which point Illustrator just uses the maximum value it allows. If you need to scale objects to extremely large sizes (for creating signs or banners, for instance), you first have to expand the effect and then scale it as you would any object.

Finally, the values that are specified in the dialogs of Live Effects are relative to the rulers of your document. In many cases, modifying your object may cause unexpected results. For example, say you apply a drop shadow to an object and specify an offset that sets the shadow down and to the right. If you rotate the object 180 degrees on your artboard (effectively turning it upside down), the drop shadow still displays at the lower right of the object. In order to get the correct appearance, you need to edit the drop shadow effect and set the offset so that the drop shadow now falls up and to the left. Alternatively, you can expand the effect before you perform the rotation. This issue requires special attention from printers who often impose files or create work and turn layouts for their presses. It should be noted that InDesign's drop shadows suffer from the same symptoms.





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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