AI: Power of Appearance

[synthetic]

Hey Mog... here's one of the tut's I was promising. I had this already built in PDF format. Figured I would upload the pdf as is. Hope that is ok.

Basically... this is probably for CS and later Illustrator showing some of the really cool non-destructive things you can apply to strokes, fills etc. using the appearance palette to create complex objects. Probably an intermediate type thing.

[unleash]

COOWL~!

I like Damn this is the first tutorial in a very long time that I completely read! Way to go synth!

[synthetic]

Originally Posted by unleash

COOWL~!

I like Damn this is the first tutorial in a very long time that I completely read! Way to go synth!

thanks Unleash... when I first got AI CS at work... spent a lot of time learning anything I could with it and the appearance palette blew me away with its possibilities.

[Man1c M0g]

Whoa, I completely missed this thread until now! Sorry about that! Can you send me a zip with the original images in? Its very hard to extract them from a PDF.

Oh, and what program did you use for the PDF generation? Its come out really nice, and I do need our tutorials outputting in PDFs...

[Tamlin]

Originally Posted by Man1c M0g

Oh, and what program did you use for the PDF generation? Its come out really nice, and I do need our tutorials outputting in PDFs...

We use CutePDF quite a bit at work:
CutePDF - Create PDF for free, Free PDF Utilities, Save PDF Forms, Edit PDF easily.
It seems to do the job - and it's free!!

[synthetic]

I will see what I can do about the images Mog. The whole thing was built in Illustrator. If I remember correctly, I basically took screen shots of the palettes and added them to actual examples of FX in action within Illustrator and added text. I created several Illustrator pages then made each one of those a PDF in which I used Acrobat to combine all the pages into one PDF.

As to whether you need PDF versions... might be worth a poll. I can print any web page to PDF from my computer myself but I use an uncommon computer

I think there is a nice plus to using AI to create this as PDF though... I "think" (can't remember and check right now) you can open this PDF in AI and click on the example graphics to see how they were built in the appearance panel. I think the PDF file holds this info because it should retain the AI info.

[unleash]

I always use 995pdf.... its free and it does the job most of the time.

Its one of those print your word documents to pdf converters. So its really simple in use, but also in ability's. Im not sure what you want to do with it though.

Are you planning on printing the web-pages? And save them to PDF, and then disable the printing options for your web-page?

[synthetic]

Ok Mog... sorry for the delay. I have the images for you. Had to make screen shots of them. I have them all as jpgs and zipped here.

I also went through this text and edited it a bit. The current text was designed for use with the posted PDF because its a AI PDF I think which allows a person to select some of the objects to see actual construction if PDF opened in AI and read. I edited as if this option was no longer there.

If you are like me, you probably over-looked one of Adobe Illustrator’s most powerful features, the appearance palette (this is actually window but I like to refer to them as palettes). In this palette lies a great wealth of control and manipulation of vector objects within Illustrator and is even useful in creating a reusable graphic styles using these controls and manipulations.

I started using Illustrator during version 6 of it’s development. During this time period, I was more familiar with Macromedia’s equivalent program, Freehand. It didn’t take long to adjust to Illustrator with the major difference’s for me lying in path editing operations. Even though I could use this version of Illustrator with ease... it didn’t spark that much interest for me and was just a more suitable program for working with logos since it wasn't resolution dependent. I still relied on using Photoshop for most of my creative ad layouts and designs.

Well, back in mid 2004, we were upgraded to OSX and brand new spankin’ Apple G5 computers at my place of work. Along with that came the new CS line of Adobe software (just Illustrator, Photoshop and Imageready for us). I was amazed at all the features in the new CS version of Illustrator and as usual where I work... we had no book or manual for the program and were forced to learn on our own by experimenting or using the online help. So, many features of AI were undiscovered for me during 2004 as we struggled with other software issues and such.

At the end of 2005, I started researching Illustrator on the internet more and played around more with some of its features. It was then I came across a tutorial on the appearance palete.
I couldn’t believe I had overlooked this gem of feature so many times. It was right there in front of me and I never knew it. So let’s see what I found out.

Make sure to bring your APPEARANCE palette forward as we will be using this a lot here. You might even want to expand the length of the palette to about twice its size to make viewing all the layers easier. Notice I said “layers”. The fills and strokes in the APPEARANCE palette act just like layers in a sense. But, compared to layers... the fills and stroke views can’t be turned on or off without trashing the complete stroke or fill or dropping opacity down and they cannot be labeled like layers for easy reference. So keep this in mind as you work.

I am going to borrow a lesson from Ergodraw.com on creating a 3D ball effect for this tutorial. I wanted to use their lesson as an example of just what can be done with appearance palette versus using layers. My method has a couple of drawbacks and a couple of advantages compared to the layers method shown at Ergodraw and I will point those differences at later in the lesson. In the original lesson, the user was instructed to create 4 layers each containing the same duplicated circle filled with orange hue of your choice. We will be doing the same, except we are going to create multiple fills rather than layers in the APPEARANCE palette and we are going to create them one at a time since we cannot label or hide view easily.

So, starting out... we should draw one circle and size it roughly to 140 points in diameter. Make sure it is filled with an orange hue (just for this exercise... you can change it to another color for different results if desired). Let’s leave the stroke for this circle blank. Now if you select this circle, you should see we have one fill with the orange color and a stoke with nothing (Example A). You can now go to the flyout menu on the APPEARANCE palette (upper-righthand-corner button) and select add new fill (Example B) or you can make it easier on yourself and just select the fill layer in the APPEARANCE palette (while the circle is still selected) and choose DUPLICATE ITEM which will duplicated the orange fill with new fill on top. The same can be done by dragging the fill layer to bottom of palette and releasing it over the button to the left of the trash can located at the bottom of palette or just select the fill or stroke and click the button. The latter 2 methods work best because if you choose NEW FILL from the flyout menu, you have to select the same orange hue to fill it, adding more steps to the process.

Now if we look at our appearance palette, we should have 2 fill layers that both contain the orange color we started with and a stroke layer with no color (as seen page 1, Example C). If you selected NEW FILL from the flyout menu instead of duplicating our original fill and don’t have orange for the top fill layer... simply select the top fill layer and then select the same orange hue for the color fill that we used in the first step. Then it should look like the appearance palette on page 1 (Example C).

Not much about our circle should look different right now. Its still the same circle of orange we started with... only now with 2 stacked fill layers. This is where you will begin to see the magic of the appearance palette. Select the top most fill layer of orange and then go to the transparency palette. We want to set the blend mode of this fill to MULTIPLY. Just like any other vector object in AI, we can change the opacity, and the blend mode of our fills and strokes within the appearance palette. Setting our top fill to MULTIPLY, doubles the orange fill to make a darker and more saturated orange color because it lays on top of the solid orange we created before. You can now see the results on our circle and in the appearance palette (Example D). Notice how the top layer now has a subgroup below it containing our transparency settings. You can click this fill layer and change the opacity or blending modes again in the transparency palette later if desired (Example E).

Now let’s select the bottom color fill. We want to use this to start adding some depth to the circle so we do this with the same method as the Ergodraw lesson. With the bottom fill selected, we go to the EFFECT menu at the top of the screen and select STYLIZE > INNER GLOW. Here is one the best and most magical features of Illustrator. As everyone should know by now.... anything from the EFFECT menu applied to a vector object in AI shows up in the appearance palette for the object and can be edited or deleted at any time in future. Using this same great feature, we can apply these same effects to individual fills or strokes within the appearance palette allowing for the same editing capabilities later if desired. Use the settings shown (Example F) for this exercise. We change the blend mode to MULTIPLY and select a dark color or black for the glow and spread it out about 18pt to get the example shown (Example G) with about 60-70% opacity.

Example F (art)

Once you have added the INNER GLOW EFFECT from the menu. You should see this effect show up in the appearance palette on the bottom fill layer as a subgroup and the dark orange circle should look very similar to the example (Example G). It should be easy to see how this process works now. We are just adding layers within the appearance palette to build our 3D looking button. Should you apply the wrong effect to the wrong fill... don’t worry. You can reposition the fill and stroke layers or delete layers and effects almost the same as in our layers palette.

Now this is where my lesson takes a left turn from the Ergodraw lesson. I have a few more steps to get the look of my finished button. Once you are comfortable with this process and understand how to use the appearance palette to its fullest potential, you may find other methods that are shorter or work better for your purposes. Feel free to experiment with this but for now... we are doing things my way, hehe.

The next step is to create a gradient fill which we will screen over the previous layers to help give the circle more shape and dimension. So let’s start by duplicating the top most fill again. Once you have duplicated this fill, lets change the opacity settings that were attached from the previous fill. Let’s set this third fill layer to screen and about 70%. Then, go to your swatches and open the gradient swatch palette. There you should see a default set of gradients. Choose the white to black radial to fill to replace the orange fill. Now, to deepen the color effect... go to the gradient palette while our gradient fill is still selected in the appearance palette and add some muted yellow to the white on one end and maybe adjust the solid black on the other end to more dark brown (Example H) or leave the other end of the gradient black.

Once we have applied this... let’s add another EFFECT to this fill. Go to EFFECTS > DISTORT & TRANSFORM > TRANSFORM. This will bring up a dialog box as shown below (Example I). Here we want to resize our gradient circle to about 85% using the scale sliders or typing the values into the horizontal and vertical values. Also, we want to move this circle so its offset from the others to give it a more realistic lighting effect as if the light was coming from an angle. So use the sliders to nudge this circle so its up in the left top corner of the other circles. You can click the preview button to see the changes as you make them. Once Ok’d, you will see this effect show up in the appearance palette as a subgroup under this top most fill and it too can be edited later down the road with ease by double clicking the transform effect under the fill (Example J). You should also notice our circle showing more depth now. I am still not satisfied with the look so here I duplicate the orange fill layer with the MULTIPLY blend applied. The top most fill layer is left with MULTIPLY but I drop the OPACITY down to 71%. Then, the middle of the the 3 orange fill layers is changed from MULTIPLY to COLOR BURN and still 100% OPACITY. I also get rid of the TRANSFORM effect by selecting the effect and clicking the TRASH CAN in the bottom corner of the palette.

Example I (art)

Ok... is it starting to look 3D yet? The results may vary according to the colors used for the original circle and the gradient. Don’t forget we can go back and change any of those colors by selecting the object first, and then selecting the fill layer containing the color or gradient we wish to change. Then use the color, swatches or gradient palette to make your color changes.

Now from here... you can add more fill layers to get the desired look of the color. This is another good time for experimenting. Try layering fills with different transparency blend modes to create unique and complex looking results. You'll be surprised what results you can whip up when trying the unknown.

Let’s continue with highlights for a shiny look. I will be skipping the pics for these steps now. Refer to first couple of pages for help with this. Create a NEW FILL from the flyout in the APPEARANCE palette or DUPLICATE a fill. We want to make this either a white or a very light and bright tint of a color for the highlight so set a new color for the fill. To get the one spot glow as my buttons show, you can choose 2 methods. You can use the TRANSFORM effect again to resize the circle into a smaller oval as shown and nudge it into the upper left or right corner for offset lighting. But the soft edge effect can be done by applying a FEATHER effect to the fill or as my example, apply a gradient for the fill and change the blend mode to SCREEN. You might even take the OPACITY to 95% maybe or whatever works best for you.

If you wanted to produce the 3 oval effect from Ergodraw that looks more shiny, simply create the same oval but do not feather as much or don’t use gradient for the fill and reduce OPACITY to around 30%. Duplicate this highlight fill 2 more times but reduce and reshape the ovals to about an 1/8th of original highlight but increase their OPACITY to around 90%. Then position them using the MOVE sliders in the TRANSFORM effect box (Example M).

To add a bevel to your button like the examples, just create new fill layers or duplicate fills and move to the bottom of the stack. From there, you can either enlarge the circle using the TRANSFORM function again or you can go to EFFECT>PATH>OFFSET PATH and define the width to expand. You can then fill with your choice of gradients or colors but I choose to get a metal looking bevel with rounded edges (Example L). You can select the example button to see how I layered 2 metal looking gradients (1 radial and 1 linear) with GAUSSIAN BLUR effect added to top fill layer to blend with bottom fill layer in the APPEARANCE palette. You can see another type of bevel in Example M.

I hope this has been enlightening and helpful. I have found this to be great way to work with common elements. Using the appearance palette to build our FX allows us to save the combination of fill and stroke layers as GRAPHIC STYLES which can be used on other shapes and objects or save to a library for use later. Simply drag your object when look is complete to the GRAPHIC STYLE palette. That will create a new icon in the palette that resembles the look of the object. Now its possible to apply this effect to other shapes or text even. For some inspiration, try applying the WARP EFFECTS to the entire object as in my Examples N and O. You can also experiment with applying the effect to just one fill layer or stroke too. You may find that this give you a great start for an evil monster or weird button. My last tip.... if you select text with the arrow tool, you can set multiple fill and strokes for the text. Move all strokes to the back of all fills to retain the weight of the font when stroking. Great for stacking larger and larger strokes on text.