Blending Objects Continued

blends02.ai.zip

It can make a difference
where you click
with the blend tool

Blended Gradients. Only works with two unique blends, and not a flipped blend (taking the first blend, copying and pasting it, then rotating it 180°. It's a bug. You can do a workaround by choosing the pasted blend and using the Gradient panel to flip the direction of the blend)

Blended Spiral Paths

Blended Bexér Paths

Blended stars on straight path with Menu > Object > Blend > Replaced Spline, and number of step increased from 16 to 48

A Cool Trick for Measuring

Make a rectangle, square, or circle and use it as a measuring device to provide consistent spacing and alignment.

The Magical Appearance Panel

The Magic is in the sorting of layers and adding strokes, fills, and FX

Saving appearance settings as a Graphic style

Type example (graphic_style2.ai.zip)

Any set of attributes you apply to an object, as seen in the Appearance Panel, can be saved as a style and applied to other objects

Select the object you want to create a style from

Click on the Create New Style button in the Graphic Styles panel

Then select the objects you want to apply the style to and click on the style in the Graphic Styles panel

Styles applied. In the latest version of Illustrator, sometimes trying to style text doesn't work.

Clipping Masks

Very important feature!

brush file

• Select two or more objects
• The top object must be a closed path
• Menu > Object > Clipping Mask > Make

• Placed bitmaps can be inside clipping masks
• You can create clipping masks for objects within clipping masks
• While the shape of the mask loses its fill and stroke, you can always copy it first, make it a mask, then paste it in front to make it align perfectly

Illustrator & Color II

Working With The Color Guide

Great slide show: Everything you know about color is wrong...

The color guide uses Harmony Rules to create color sets you can use.

Pick a Harmony Rule from the popup menu, then double-click on the left-most color tab to apply the rules.

Click on any color to apply it to the current object.

Color Harmonies: Analagous (source .ai file)

Color Harmonies: Complementary

Color Harmonies: Pentagram

Color Harmonies: Tetrad

Color Harmonies: Triad

Color Harmonies: Shades & Tints

Changing Colors With The Recolor Artwork Button

Recolor Sample File (images_4recolor.ai.zip)

Recolor Sample File (frank_04.ai.zip)

Select one of the samples

Click on the “Recolor Artwork” button in the control panel

The Recolor Artwork dialog

First things first:

Click on the eyedropper icon to get the colors from the original art

Click on the file icon to make those colors a color group. This helps if you need to return to the original colors later on

Re-Assign Current Colors With:

Randomly change color order button

Randomly change saturation and brightness

Find colors in your artwork, with the idea of locking them out or doing special processing on them

Select a color and click this button to lock it out from being recolored

You can globally adjust colors too (very similar to the next process of Editing with locked harmonies)

Saturation

Brightness vs. Luminosity: I have no idea what the difference is. There is no consensus regarding this in the literature. It is likely a trick of mathematics in the way the R G and B values are calculated. They do look different. I thinks it's about luminosity maintaining saturation better than brightness.

Temperature: The only place (true for the previous as well) used in Illustrator. Warm vs Cool, basically

You can apply color harmonies to your existing colors as well

Edit Current Colors

Changing Colors, But Keeping The Same Relationships

Choose Edit at the top of the dialog

To maintain the color relationships, choose "Link harmony colors"

Let's walk through the options...

Save sets of colors you like

Recolor Artwork Videos

There used to be more of these but, unbelievably, Adobe pulled them down.

Recoloring Artwork Illustrator How-To

Recolor Artwork YouTube Tutorials

Illustrator CS6: Recolor Artwork Menu on YouTube from ZNGGraphicDesign

Adobe Color CC

color.adobe.com

Has same set of Color Harmony rules as Illustrator, but individual colors are really easy to edit and adjust.

Sign in with Adobe ID to save color sets or do a screen capture and sample colors with eyedropper tool.

Save the color set with Save Color Theme .

Once saved, it will show up in the Adobe Color Themes panel in Illustrator