Deconstructing the Effect Menu


The Effect menu is basically split into four main sections. At the very top are two settings: Apply Last Effect and Last Effect. The former allows you to duplicate the last effect you applied, including all of its settings; the latter opens the dialog for the last effect that you applied so that you can choose different settings. The next section of the Effect menu is something called Document Raster Effects Resolution, which we'll get to in a moment. The remaining two sections are Illustrator Effects and Photoshop Effects; each section contains a collection of effects that fall into those two categories. For the most part, Illustrator Effects are Illustrator-specific features, whereas Photoshop Effects are a collection of filters that were taken from Photoshop (see "Featured Match-Up: Illustrator Effects vs. Photoshop Effects," later in this chapter).

Is It Vector, or Is It Raster?

You already know that a Live Effect is simply an appearance that is added to an object, meaning that the underlying vector object exists in your document in its original state. As you change the underlying object, the appearance updates to reflect that change. If you want to lock in an appearance, you need to choose Object > Expand Appearance to alter the actual vector paths, at which point the effect is no longer live, and can't be edited.

Some effects, such as Drop Shadow, are raster-based. Even though this effect appears grouped under the Illustrator Effects section, when the appearance is expanded, the drop shadow becomes a raster image (Figure 7.2). The same applies when you print a file, because all effects are expanded when they are sent to the printer (your file remains in an unexpanded state however, allowing further editing).

Figure 7.2. Many of the Stylize effects, including Drop Shadow, produce raster-based results, even though they are listed within the Illustrator Effects section of the Effect menu.


Refer to Chapter 11, Prepress and Printing, for more information on what happens when you print Illustrator files.



The following is a list of features that appear in the Illustrator Effects section of the Effect menu; these produce raster images when output or expanded:

  • 3D Extrude & Bevel and 3D Revolve, when raster images or gradients are present in mapped artwork (see "Specifying Mapped Artwork," later in this chapter).

  • Rasterize.

  • Stylize > Drop Shadow.

  • Stylize > Feather.

  • Stylize > Inner Glow.

  • Stylize > Outer Glow.

Each of these is covered in detail, later in this chapter.

Massaging Pixels in Illustrator

If it is true that some effects in Illustrator produce a rasterized result, who determines the resolution of those rasters? When you work in Photoshop, you can't even create a new file without first defining its resolution. But with Illustrator, which is vector-based, you don't think much about resolution. So the question is, what determines the resolution of these raster-based effects? To find the answer, choose Effect > Document Raster Effects Settings.

When you choose to save a file as EPS, all effects are expanded and any raster-based effects are rasterized. This means that Illustrator EPS files can contain raster content and can't be scaled infinitely when placed into other applications. See Chapter 12, Saving and Exporting Files, for information.



The Document Raster Effects Settings dialog is where you can specify the resolution for raster-based effects. In fact, the dialog offers all the necessary settings for determining how raster-based effects eventually print (Figure 7.3).

Figure 7.3. When using Live Effects, choosing the right settings in the Document Raster Effects Settings dialog is key to achieving the best results from your files.


  • Color Model. Depending on the document color mode setting to which your file is set, you'll either see CMYK, Grayscale, and Bitmap listed here, or RGB, Grayscale, and Bitmap. This is because a document cannot contain both CMYK and RGB elements. This setting can be extremely useful, because it allows you to change the color model of an object (even an image) as a Live Effect, which can always be edited. For example, you can turn a colored object into grayscale as an effect.

  • Resolution. Illustrator's default resolution setting is 72 ppi (screen resolution). Contrary to popular belief, Adobe did not choose this setting as the default to make web designers happy. Rather, the resolution setting has a direct bearing on the performance of Illustrator (Adobe doesn't want you to think Illustrator is slow). Just as in Photoshop, working at higher resolutions means more number crunching for your computer and more time for you to stare at your screen watching the progress bars slowly creep along. If your file is destined for print, however, you'll want your effects to print at a much higher resolution. This is an extremely important setting and should not be overlooked. See the sidebar "Featured Match-Up: Illustrator Effects vs. Photoshop Effects," later in this chapter for details on whether you need to change this setting before or after you create your file.

    All of the settings in the Document Raster Effects Settings dialog are sticky, meaning that once you change the settings, the next document you create takes on those new settings.



  • Background. You can choose whether the resulting raster has a transparent background or a white background. If your effect overlaps other objects, you probably want to use the Transparent setting (Figure 7.4), although remember that the file still needs to be flattened (see Chapter 11 for more information on transparency flattening).

    Figure 7.4. In this example, the artwork on the left used the White Background setting, whereas the artwork on the right used the Transparent Background setting.


  • Anti-alias. You can define whether or not the raster image is anti-aliased. Anti-aliasing slightly blurs color boundaries to avoid the appearance of jagged edges. For more information on anti-aliasing, refer to Chapter 10, Illustrator and the Web.

  • Create Clipping Mask. This setting creates a clipping mask around the area of a shape so that you can have it blend into a background (raster images are always rectangular and may block out objects that appear behind them). This setting won't work very well for objects that have Drop Shadow, Feather, or Glow effects applied, because clipping masks have hard edges. You don't need this setting if you specify the Transparent option for the background.

  • Add Space Around Object. This is a very important setting. When certain effects, like Feather or Gaussian Blur, are applied, the resulting raster image has a soft edge. In order to ensure that this soft edge fades into the background correctly, you must make the bounding box of the raster image larger than the actual object. If you don't, the fade stops abruptly and you see a visible line where it ends. By default, Illustrator adds 36 points (.5 inch) of space around an object, but if you have a large blur setting, you may need to increase this amount (Figure 7.5).

    Figure 7.5. On the left is a circle with a 60-pixel Gaussian Blur applied. With the default Add .5 in Around Object setting, the blur is visibly clipped. On the right, that same blur appears correctly with the Add Space Around Object setting increased to 1.5 inches.


  • Preserve spot colors when possible. If your artwork contains spot colors and you want to prevent those from being converted to process colors, this setting instructs Illustrator to preserve those spot colors, employing overprinting where possible. Refer to Chapter 11 for more information on overprinting.

Any Live Effects that you apply in your document will use the settings in the Document Raster Effects Settings dialog, and you can't have different settings for different effects. Well, you can, sort of. Not in any way that Adobe intended though. All Live Effects update when you make a change to the Document Raster Effects Settings, but once you expand a Live Effect, that object no longer updates when you change the settings. So if you need to use different settings for different objects, apply an effect to one object, then use the Object > Expand Appearance function to expand the effect, lock in the Document Raster Effects Setting for that effect, and then apply a different setting to another object. Of course, once you expand an effect, you have no way to go back and perform edits to it.




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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