Adobe Illustrator Tutorials - lesson 4

Lesson 4 - Some Fancy Tricks

Exercise 1 - Wrapping Text around a Photo

Here's how to use Illustrator to make text wrap text around a scanned Photoshop image, as if by magic. To do this, we are going to explore some of the features that Adobe built into Photoshop that makes it a perfect companion to Illustrator, and we shall see how the two programs can share files and clipboard data.

As we saw in the last lesson, some interesting effects are possible when we combine Illustrator "paths" with scanned, photographic images. However, sometimes, the photographic images are so complex that it is not viable or economical to hand-trace the object's outline. It is, however, possible to create a "Clipping Path" around an object with Photoshop's Magic Wand tool, and export the resulting outline to Illustrator. (Illustrator has a magic wand tool, too. In the next lesson, we'll learn about how it works, as well.)

Let's say that, instead of the basketball in our example from our last lesson, the image we need to trace is the outline of a fairly complex leaf (on your course diskette, the file is called LEAF.EPS). We *could* hand-draw the outline and make the mask, but let's let the computer do the hard work for us, shall we?

1. open the file in Photoshop. Use the Magic Wand to select the background.
2. Choose Select:Inverse to select the leaf.
3. Open the Paths palette (Windows:Palettes:Show Paths).
4. From the menu that pops up when you hold the mouse down on the small arrow at the right of this palette, choose Make Selection. Click OK to choose 2.0 pixels tolerance.
5. Control-click on the path.
6. Copy to the clipboard (edit:copy). Switch to Illustrator; paste, position outline to suit. (Don't forget the cursor keys!) *or*
7. In Photoshop, File:Export:Save Paths as Illustrator.... Open file in Illustrator, position to suit.
8. Make Mask... or... use Text on Path function... or... use your imagination!

Exercise 2 - More Magic Wand Magic

Remember back in lesson one, when we traced those templates by hand? I hope you won't be too disappointed to discover that Illustrator can trace shapes automatically. Here's how:

1. Open the template called Dingbat.TIFF (shown above) using the File:Open command. Be sure to choose to open it as an Illustrator Template (TIFF). IMPORTANT NOTE: This template is a scanned image, saved as a Photoshop file and as such, must NOT be opened by double-clicking it from the Finder (we do NOT want to open it with Photoshop, we want to open it from within Illustrator's File:Open menu.)
2. From the toolbox, hold down the mouse button on the freehand drawing tool. A pop-out menu will appear with the Autotrace tool. Select it.  
3. Simply click on the lines of the leaf to autotrace. For best results, click on the inner “football shape” first, so that you can easily select the larger shape afterwards. For the final step, select both shapes and select Compound Paths>Make from the Object menu.

Easy, isn’t it? Note that not all shapes auto-trace this well. Auto-trace is great for organic shapes, though.

Exercise 3 - Fancy Blends

Let's say your client wants her ad to depict a purple and yellow sphere sitting on the ground. To create this image, we'll need what looks like a 3-dimensional sphere and a realistic shadow. Here's how to create it.

1. Choose the oval tool. Click and drag on your page, holding down the shift key as you drag to constrain it to a perfect circle.  
2. From the Paint Styles palette, choose the purple-yellow Radial fill. If auto-apply is not selected, Apply the fill.
    
3. Using the  gradient tool, select a point in the upper left area of the circle and drag the gradient tool down and to the right. When you let go, the gradient fill should be centered where you started, and end where you dragged the mouse to before letting go of the button. If it is not to your liking, repeat step 3 as desired.
   
4. to create the shadow on the ground, set the fill color to White. Draw a large oval, about the size of the "sphere." Position so it looks as though it is on the ground.
   
5. Change the fill color to a medium gray. Draw another, smaller oval, about half the size of the white one, and make sure the gray one is roughly centered inside the white one.
    
6. Select both objects by holding down Control and Shift as you click on each one. After selecting them in this way, use the  Blend Tool (Square+Circle icon) to select a similar point on both ovals. When the dialog pops up, click OK.
7. If necessary, Control-click on the Sphere and select Arrange:Bring to Front (or Press Control = to bring it to the front).
8. That's it!

More Blend Tricks

Exercise

You don't have to choose the default number of blends. Try this.

1. Make a red square (Shift-rectangle): Paint Style:fill=red
2. Make a Yellow Circle (Shift-oval): Paint Style:fill=yellow
3. position the objects about 6 inches apart on your page (select and drag)
4. rotate the square 45 degrees. (rotate tool)
    
5. Select both objects by holding down Control and Shift as you click on each one.
6. After selecting them in this way, use the Blend Tool (Square+Circle icon) to select a point in a similar position on both shapes.
7. When the "Number of Blend Steps" dialog pops up, type "6" click OK.
   
   
8. That's it! You can use this effect for animation, realistic shading, morphing effects, and much more.