Illustrator confusion

obsean3 · 04-21-2006

Hey folks I need a little help.

I have a pretty simple design I'm working on for a decal, but I'm having a problem with one of the paths. It is just a circle, but I want to put 2 strokes on it. I go into the appearance pallet and create one stroke at a certain color with a width of 10 pts, I then make a duplicate of this stroke, change the color and set the width to 5 pts. Here's the problem, the second stroke will not sit in the middle of the stroke below it. It always moves out to the edge of the stroke. I want it in the middle. Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong?

One other problem I'm having is that part of the design is an image of a comic strip character that I got off the internet. I took it into Photoshop and erased the background, it had a white square around it. I then brought it into Illustrator and put it in the design. On screen it looks great but when I print I can still a ghosting of the original white square.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Little_T · 05-07-2006

Well the stroking problem spunds like a allignment problem. That is click the Stroke in the upper-left-corner (next to stroke width) and choose a different allignment. If you choose outside allignment for both strokes and the inner stroke is on top of the outer stroke you should be fine.

You other problem isn't something I've encountered, but I make sure you've embedded the image (while the selection tool and the image is selected the "Embed" button will appear in the top of the screen.

stiney51 · 05-08-2006

I haven't seen this problem, but I usually do this a different way:

Create your circle and give it a 5pt stroke. Then copy the circle and use the paste in back command. You should still have that 2nd circle selected so change the stroke width of that one to 10pt. It will automatically be aligned and it is very easy to adjust one or more of the strokes if you decide you need a bigger stroke.

Hope you figured out a way, or that this might help.

labanthedog · 05-20-2006

Or, just select both paths and use the align command under the object menu