I recently received an email from Zosia asking me an Illustrator question. Zosia had a vector shape of Africa in Illustrator and wanted to fill the shape with a texture. It’s not as difficult as you might think, but for those of you new to Illustrator, this is a very useful thing to know. You can’t actually “clip” or “cut out” the shape from your texture, but it’s very easy to make a mask, and you still get the same effect.

Step 1

Make sure your vector shape is on top of your texture.

Step 2

Select BOTH your texture and the vector shape, then right click or control click and select “Make Clipping Mask.” (You can also go to the Object menu and select Clipping Mask > Make, or hit Command/Control +7.)

Step 3

Done! Now, that you have your texture masked to fill your shape, you’ll notice that Illustrator has made the texture and the path into a new group. You can move the group as a whole with the Select tool, or you can use the Direct Select tool to move the texture itself, without moving the path, and vice versa.

a

If you’ve ever run into this annoying little Illustrator problem, it can be very frustrating, but it has a simple fix. Every so often you may find that no matter what color you select, Illustrator converts your selection to grayscale…

Why? Well if you open your Color palette (Window>Color), you’ll most likley find that it’s set to grayscale. (like below)

All you have to do is set your color palette to something else, like RGB or CMYK. Now you’re good to go. Personally, I have no idea why this problem has made it all the way to CS4. If I wanted to fill a shape with a gray, I’d choose a gray.

a

I gotten a few emails recently about how to create a seamless diagonal pattern in Illy, so here we go! Illustrator comes with some default pattern brushes, but no diagonal love. Diagonal patterns are a bit more tricky to make than a simple horizontal, or vertical pattern, but with some rock solid alignment, and some manual input into the Transform palette, you’ll be making diagonal patterns in no time. Let’s get started.

1. Start with a “square” artboard.

It doesn’t really matter what size but if you want to follow along, I’m using a 600px x 600px artboard.

2. Create your vertical line.

Again, the size and shape is up to you here.

3. Align your shape to the top right corner

Here we are going to be using the Transform pallete to make or shape align exactly to the upper left corner. Select your shape and in the Transform, set the “X” value to 0, and the “Y” value to 600 (or the document size you chose). The middle of your shape should now be aligned exactly to the upper left corner.

4. Rotate 45 degrees.

Next, rotate your shape 45 degrees either using your mouse and holding Shift, or right click, and enter the value in manually.

5. Duplicate your shape and align it to the opposite corner.

Now we need to duplicate or shape, and align it the same way we did above, but to the opposite corner. Again,select your new shape, and using the Transform pallete, set your X value to 600 (or the document size you chose) and the Y value to 0. Now your two shapes should be aligned perfectly to opposite corners of the artboard.

6. Make a Blend between the 2 shapes.

Using the Blend tool click on 1 of your shapes, then immediately click on the other to make a blend. Then double click on the Blend tool, and you should see the ‘Blend Options” dialogue box. Set it to “Specifed Steps” and then select a number that you think looks good. I recommend making this an odd number. You should have something that resembles the image below.

7. Expand your blend.

Select your new blend, and then go to Object > Expand, then click “OK.”

8. Create a square to crop with.

Select the Rectangle tool, and click once on the aretboard. You can now enter in the exact dimensions you want your square to be. Set it to 600 x 600px (or the document size you chose), and click “OK.”

9. Align your square to the artboard.

Select your square, and in the Align pallete, make sure you have “Align to Artboard” selected.

Now hit these 2 buttons to align your square exactly on top of the artboard.

10. Crop.

Do a Select All (Command/Control + A), and then hit the Crop button in the Pathfinder pallete.

Done!

Now you have a nice, seamless diagonal pattern that can be put to use.

If you want to add this pattern as a Pattern Swatch, just select it, and then go to Edit, Define Pattern, and it will appear in your swatches pallete.

a

Here’s a quick and dirty way to space objects using Illustartor’s Blend tool. Havent done a video in a while, or an Illy post, so it’s back to the basics this week! Hope you like it :)

Illustrator: Blend Tool Spacing from Jay Hilgert on Vimeo.

a

Here’s round 2 of the Ask BB series. Some of these questions came in via email, and others via twitter (@bittbox), so If you have a question, let me know. When I get enough questions that I can answer, you might see your question here next time around :) Thanks to everyone for sending in your questions. Let’s get started.

1) Amy asks:

How do you save a pattern in Illy, so that you can use again and again in different Illy files? I know how to save a pattern for use in the file I created it in, but I’m looking to be able to pull up a palette of my created patterns in files other than the one the original pattern was created in.

Answer:

In your swatches palette, go to “Save Swatch Library as AI…”

Name your new library, and make sure to save it in your Illustrator CSX > Presets > Swatches folder.

Now, no matter what document you have open, you can load your custom (in this case pattern) swatches by going to Open Swatch Library, and choosing your file from the list.

2) dbslone asks:

How to create a dotted line along a path in either Illy or PS?

Answer:

I already have a tutorial on how to do this is Photoshop, so I’ll show you an easy way to do it in Illustrator.

There is more than one way to do this, but I like to use a pattern brush. First, draw a circle on the artboard, and from the Brushes palette, select “New Brush.”

Select “New Pattern Brush” and hit OK.

You can always come back and change these settings later by double clicking on the brush from the Brushes palette, but for now the only 2 settings you need to worry about are spacing and colorization method. Set the spacing to 50% and the colorization method to “Tints.” (Tins is so you can change the color of the brush later if you need to.) Then click OK.

Now you can apply your new pattern brush to any path and get a nice dotted line. (You may need to adjust your stroke size, depending on how big of a dot you drew) Then you can go back in and adjust the spacing as needed.

3) Kaje asks:

I read your tip about pixelated brushes, but was wondering if there was a quick fix for pixelated fonts? Sometimes I will type in some text and the font, no matter what it is looks pixelated, so I have to go to the drop down and select “reset character”. Am I doing something wrong? It is quite annoying to have to reset each time this happens.

Answer:

I’m not 100% sure if this is your exact problem, but I’m quessing that your antialiasing setting is set to “None.”

To fix this, simply change your antialiasing setting in the Character palette to “Sharp” or “Crisp.” Then save your workspace by going to Window > Workspaces > Save Workspace. This way Photoshop will remember that you changed the setting and you won’t have to change it manually every time.

Your type should now be nice and sharp.

4) malarts asks:

I’ve had a unique Illustrator problem lately…every now and then the “Send To Back” command stops working, under the Object >Arrange menu… Any idea as to why?

Answer:

Actually I have 2 ideas. Maybe one of them can help…

A) The “Send to Back” command only sends an object to the back of whatever layer it’s on. So if you send an object to the back and it’s not on the bottom layer, you’re still gonna have stuff underneath it.

B) An object that’s inside a “Group” only goes to the back of the group.

1) iheartrendering asks:

What is the “make it awesome” keyboard shortcut? I found it once, and it rocked my world. But now it seems to hide from me.

Answer:

Hmmm… not sure about that one one, but have you tried “Make My Logo Bigger Cream?” If you hurry, they’ll throw in some “Whitespace Eliminator” for free.

a

This is my first Question/Answer post here at BittBox, and I plan on doing this more often. All of these questions came in from twitter, so if you have a Photoshop or Illy question you need answered, you can leave a comment here, or send me a tweet. I’ll save all the questions that come in and try to answer as many as I can. To kick things off I have some answers below, just remember, I can’t answer every single question that comes in because of 2 fundamental reasons: 1) I may not know the answer, or 2) I may not understand what you were asking. Ok, lets try to de-mystify Illy and PS a little, shall we? Thanks for everyone who send in the tweets :)

1) SuperLame Asks:

Any good plugins for AI to make choosing fonts more visual, like flash?

Answer:

As far as plugins go, I haven’t been able to find one that does what you want, however, there is one Illustartor quirk to ba aware of. If you choose your fonts from the top toolbar you’ll get a plain list of fonts. But if you choose fonts from the Character palette itself, you get a small visual preview, similar to the way Flash works. And if you have an extra $100, this software might be what you need.

VS.

2) deluzione asks:

How do I convert and illy doc from 72dpi to 300?

Answer:

Good question. This is one of those settings that you would think you should be able to find under “Document Setup,” since it’s a setting you choose every time you create a “new” document. However, our friends at Adobe thought it should be in a different place. You’ll find the “Document Raster Effects Settings” under the “Effects” menu.

Just change your setting to 300dpi, and click OK.

3) GrandmasterB asks:

I’ve tried to use Object > Expand… to make a uniform space around text after creating outline, but it doesn’t seem to work…why?

Answer:

Your on the right track, but that’s not what “Expand” was meant for. The command your looking for is “Offset Path.” We can achieve the results you want in 3 easy steps:

1. Type > Create Outlines.

2. Go to Object > Path > Offset Path.

3. Check the preview box and enter a value for the amount you want to offset. (use a negative number to offset inside instead of outside).

4) katzw asks:

What is the correct way to save custom brushes so that others can download and use them? EPS files don’t seem to work. Thanks :)

Answer:

I assume you mean Illustrator brushes, so I’ll try and answer this as best I can. When you save Illustrator brushes, illustrator outputs an .AI file. It’s not a normal AI file, but a “Brush Library.” All you have to do is place that AI file into …Illustrator CSX > Presets > Brushes, and you’ll be able to load the brushes via the Brushes Palette.

Hope that helps, guys:) Remember, you can send me questions via twitter whenever you want. The more questions, the better!

a

Today we are going to go over Dynamic art, vector art that isn’t destructive to the vector paths. Basically this keeps things like text editable. Why would you do this? Well for example, if your designing a post card that has variable data and is going out to 10,000 people and you want it so the receiver gets their name printed on the card, but you want it to look designed and not just plain tex, then you need Dynamic text. Kodak, Epson, and Cannon either offer or are working on printers that support Variable data and Dynamic text. Today we will look at designing it so the printers can re-type the text on the fly.

Here is the goal of today’s tutorial.

We are going to be working on a Burberry theamed type. First you’ll need to create the pattern. You could do a quick google image search and find the pattern. Here is a link to the file I created based on those images. Its daunting at first glance, but once you get your head wrapped around it, you can do some amazing stuff (examples are at the end of the tutorial). Ok lets get started.

Step 01

Open the .AI file in our trusty Illustrator and open up the swatches pallet. Here you’ll just drag and drop the vector pattern to create a patterned swatch.

Step 02

Type out some text. Here i’m using the font Arno Pro with the Caption style set at 215.7 points.

Next open up your Appearance Pallet, this is where the magic happens.

Step 03

Add a new fill and add the Burberry swatch to it.

Next make sure your transform is set to Pattern Only.

Click in the Width dialog box then using your arrow key, press down till the pattern is scaled right with in the text.

Step 04

Add another fill, and fill it with the Cream/Off White swatch from the pallet.

Then move it below the patterned fill, by dragging it downward like you would a layer in photoshop.

Select the that fill and add an Offset Path from the Effect menu.

Set your Off Set to 2 px.

This makes this fill 2 pixels wider than the patterned fill. Its hard to see because the color is light.

Step 05

Now select Transform, again from the Effects menu

Then set the Vertical Move to -0.5 px.

This bumps that fill down a tad.

Step 06

Now grab that fill in your Appearance Pallet and duplicate it by dragging it down to the New icon.

Make a new swatch and use the colors: C=39 M=77 Y=44 K=70. Now apply it to the new fill.

Again go to Effect -> Path -> Offset Path, and set it to 4 px.

Next transform that fill with the Effect -> Distort & Transform -> Transform. Give it a -3.0 in the Vertical Move field.

This is where you should be at:

Step 07

Now were going to give a little more depth showing some lighting effects.

Create a new fill and fill it with white, move it below the stroke.

Open your Transparency Pallet and set the fill to Multiply.

Now apply a gradient to it.

Due to the lengthy tail in the lowercase "y" we are going to make this all caps. In your Character Pallet click the fly out in the top right and select "All Caps".

Grab the dark red swatch we created last and drop it on the right end of the gradient.

Set the gradient Mid Point Slider to 87%,

and the White slider around 69%.

Go to your Offset Path in the Effects menu again and set this gradient fill to 4 px.

Here is what your appearance pallet should look like:

Step 08

Lets add a highlight now. Add yet another fill.

Apply the a gradient to it.

Set the first Slider to White at 6%,

the Mid Point Slider to 64%

and the last slide at 30% with a black fill.

Next open your transparency pallet and set the Layer Mode to Soft Light.

And there you have it a nice Burberry text that also has a sense of depth. Tweak each fill till you like it, then save the graphic style so you can use it later on other text.

Now take your text tool and click on the text and just start typing.

Imagine getting a post card in the mail with your first and last name printed like this! Pretty impressive. Oh and here are some examples of Dynamic editable type.

(Last tip: To save your style for later use, or to apply to other text, by opening your Graphic Styles pallet and and click on New Graphic Style.)

About the Author:

Hello, my name is Gautch (Josh). I’ve been working in Illustrator since version 7 (pre-bounding box, and floating pallets) and in Photoshop since version 3, when we got layers and tabbed palettes. I’m a successful designer (for print, motion, and web) working out of Southern Oregon for an in house design department that does 75 to 115 ads a week. Yes you read that right, 115 per week.

a

Hey everyone, before you blow up the comments about how you already knew this, let me say one thing. Not everyone is an avid user and these little tips are meant to help rid people that are learning Illustrator of some daily frustration with simple answers to simple problems. Today’s question was sent in by Morgan, and it has to do with rulers. Have a watch.

Illustrator 101: Reset Your Rulers from Jay Hilgert on Vimeo.

a

This is a quick Illustrator tip, but in my opinion, a priceless one if its new to you. Have you ever been typing in Illustrator and hit the “V” key to select the move tool (or any other tool shortcut for that matter), but instead, Illustrator just types a v? Yeah, it happened to me all the time, until I figured this out. Are you tired of having to click on the move tool, then click on the artboard, then click the text tool, and then click again, just to start another empty text box? It’s truly annoying to be stripped of your tool shortcuts while you’re editing an active text box, but help is only one keystroke away.

While editing an active text box, like above, chances are there are 1 of 3 things you’d like to do next. 1) Move the text box, 2) Change something about the font (size, color, etc), or 3) Select a different tool once your done in order to continue doing something else. If you try to type a shortcut for a tool, you’re just typing letters. Man that can get annoying…

Instead of using the mouse to select a new tool to get out of your text box, all you need to do is hit the “Escape” key (Windows + Mac). This will get you out of the editing mode of the text box and keep the text box selected. It also automatically selects the Move tool (Black Arrow). From there, you can hit your keyboard shortcuts for any tool you want, adjust your font (since the text box is still selected), or move the text box with your mouse or keyboard nudges. Truly a time saver. I hope you all get to know this keystroke intimately. :) Believe it or not, this doesn’t work in Photoshop. In Photoshop, hitting the Escape key deletes the current text box, as well as the layer.

a

This is a very quick Illustrator CS3 tip that will hopefully save you some time in the long run. I’m sure a lot of you, if not all of you, know how to load a Brush Library. There are 3 ways, actually, but my favorite, and quickest way is the Brush Library icon.

In the screenshot above, you can see that it takes 3 menu levels to get to the brush libraries that are grouped into folders. If you use the “Brush Library Icon” in the bottom left corner of the (any) brushes palette, you eliminate the first menu and jump strait to the libraries. Again, just a small tip, but I know from experience that it’s easy to get used to doing things the same way every time. If you can find a way to break a habit, maybe you can save a few of those precious seconds throughout your day :)

a

In this tutorial, I’m going to cover several things that effect the way we use Illustrator brushes. Remember, there are 4 types of Illustrator brushes, and this tutorial will be covering “Art” brushes. There are many things that effect the way your brush stroke will take form, and I hope by the end of this tutorial, you have a better idea of what you can tweak to get the results you’re looking for when using your art brushes.

1. Document Size

This one might be a little obvious, but the same stroke size will appear smaller as the document gets bigger.

2. Stroke Weight

Another obvious but necessary mention. The same brush can appear much different by simply changing the stroke size.

3. “Scale Strokes and Effects” Option

In the Transform palette, there is an option to “Scale Strokes and Effects.” When turned on (checked), Illustrator will adjust the Stroke weight as you scale things up and down, often leading to undesirable results.

Scale Strokes and Effects on:

Scale Strokes and Effects off: Illustrator will scale the path itself, but retain your current Stroke Weight.

4. Color Options

Illustrator Art Brushes have individual options that can be set within the brush itself. One of these options is colorization method. To open the art brush options, double click on the brush itself from the “Brushes” palette. Note: You must double click from the original Brushes palette, not one that you loaded. If you don’t see your brush in the Brushes palette, just click on it once from your loaded palette, and it will appear in the Brushes palette.

If you’ve ever downloaded an Illustrator brush, and you weren’t able to change the color, this is why. In order to change the color of your brush strokes, you need to select a colorization method. I recommend “Tints,” as this will allow to simply change it to any color you like, but you’ll just have to play around with it and see what you think works best for you.

5. Proportional or Not Proportional

This one can sometimes save the day if you feel like your brush just isn’t coming out right. The “Proportional” option is another individual brush setting. Just like above, open the brush options by double clicking on your brush from the Brushes palette.

When you enable the “Proportional” option, Illustrator will keep the aspect ratio of the original brush when applying it to your path. Think of it as “Constraining Proportions” when scaling an image. You might notice in the example below what a big difference this option can make, especially apparent on the round end of the stroke below.

There are other brush options that you can play with, but most of the others are more helpful for duplication and flipping the orientation of the brush, more than actually adjusting during application. So there you have it, the 5 things I typically rely on when working with Illustrator “Art” Brushes.

a

In the spirit of April Fools day, I wrote a tutorial on something I once considered “tricky.” If you’ve ever run into problems while trying to “Expand Appearance” on your brushes in Illustrator, you’re not alone. Expanding the appearance of your brush work has many helpful uses because you can get paths that outline your shapes, instead of just the brush stroke itself. This helps preserve the shape of your brush work when scaling and allows you to send files to print with outlined paths that prevents problems when the printers open your files, among other things. Let’s get started.

1. Open a new Illustrator document, and create some overlapping shapes using a brush or two.

(For those of you wondering, I haven’t released the brushes you see here yet, but I will very soon. If you would like to use some similar brushes to follow along you can download a similar brush set here and here.)

You should now have something like this:

2. Go to Object > Expand Appearance to create your outlines.

You should see your outlines, as well as the left over brush strokes that we don’t need anymore.

Now, if the reason for the next few steps isn’t clear, let me tell you why we don’t stop here. By the end of this tutorial, we will have a single path that outlines what was originally 3 brush strokes. In order to do that, we need to use the Pathfinder palette to combine the 3 shapes into 1. If you try it at this point, you’ll see something similar to this:

That’s obviously not what we want. The key to getting it to work is to either select only the outlines (deselect the brush strokes), or just get rid of them all together. I like to just get rid of them, especially if you have a complex piece of work and deselecting them one by one would take forever.

3. With everything selected, right click and “Ungroup” them.

4. Now with the Select tool (black arrow), select one of the outlines.

5. Go to Select > Same > Fill Color.

This is a simple example, but in complex documents, this would be much faster than selecting them all by hand. Since the brush strokes don’t have a fill, you’ll be able to select everything else all at once. (assuming they’re all the same color)

So you should now have everything except the left over brush strokes selected:

6. With all of your fills selected, go to Select > Inverse.

This will select all of the left over brush strokes, making it easy to delete them.

7. Delete the left over brush strokes.

Note: there are other ways to select the strokes, but this is just what I consider the easiest. Also note that this selection method only works when you “Ungroup everything after “Expanding Appearance.”

8. Select all (Command/Control + A) and you should see only your fills remain. Now we can combine the shapes without all the mess.

9. Open the Pathfinder palette (Window > Pathfinder) and with all your fills still selected, hit the “Add to Shape” button, then “Expand, ” in that order. (see below)

Done! You should now have a single path created from 3 Illustrator brush strokes, as you see below.

I like combining my paths because it not only simplifies the mess, but it cuts down on file size and makes scaling a breeze. If you’ve ever scaled brush strokes in Illustrator it can get frustrating fast, depending on what kind of brush it is, wether or not the brush is set to “proportional, ” and wether or not you have “Scale Strokes and Effects” on or off. However, if you do start outlining your artwork, it’s probably a good idea to keep a copy of the original brush strokes somewhere, incase you want to go back in and adjust a stroke size before you outline it.

a

Workflow is always important for productivity. Avoiding as many clicks as possible is an everyday battle, and, with this little Illy tip, I hope to help you avoid yet another 3 clicks. For some reason, the folks at Adobe decided that Illustrator shouldn’t have a ‘Preset Manager’ like Photoshop, so here we are working around it. I’d like to share with you one way I get around a lack-of-a-preset-manager in Illustrator when it comes to brushes.

It’s pretty simple. If you ever grow tired of loading a set of Illustrator brushes that you use regularly, click on the palette options in the upper right corner and select “Persistent,”and that brush set will automatically load the next time you launch Illustrator.

a

It’s important to note that this will also work in Photoshop, but I’m using Illustrator as an example. If you’re anything at all like me, you have a ginormous font collection and scrolling through the entire list to find the one your looking for can be cumbersome at times. Here’s a quick tip to spend less time scrolling and more time designing.

It’s really quite easy (hence the “101″), when you are looking for a certain font in your enormous list, simply type first letter of the font name to ‘jump’ to that letter in the list. This eliminates quite a bit of scroll time if you have a lot of fonts. In the example below, I just hit the M key to jump to the M fonts so I could find Myriad Pro faster.

a

This is by far the most-emailed question I get here at BittBox. How can you make vector halftones from raster images? Well, our friends at Adobe haven’t seen the need to throw us a bone in this situation yet, but there are some brave souls out there taking on the challenge themselves, and answering the call. I’m going to show you 3 different ways to create vector halftones from raster images, 2 of which are free, and the 3rd is only $15. Grab a random image from your archive, and let’s get to it. . .

First things first, the image I’m using in these examples is a CC liscensed portrait by *Zara over at Flickr.

1. Vectoraster by Lost Minds

Price: $15, [Mac only, OS X 10.3 or later]

(PC users skip to #2) Lets start with the best of the 3, Vectoraster by Lost Minds. Unfortunately, Vectoraster is only available for Mac and has a $15 price tag, but it’s well worth the cost once you see the features its packed with. First of all, and probably most importantly, Vectoraster lets you see your adjustments in real-time. This means that as you drag the sliders and adjust the settings, you don’t have to wait for a preview, or publish the file multiple times to see what you get. The software waits to process anything until you export the file. Pretty nice. Vectoraster is also a breeze to use. Let’s take it for a test run…

Download and install Vectoraster and lets dive in.

After you install it, if you’re not sure if you want to purchase it yet, just close the registration box. You can purchase a license later.

Now with Vectoraster open, you won’t see any windows at first. You have to go to File > New, or hit Command + N to bring up the interface.

Once you have the interface in front of you, drag your raster image to the “image well,” not the blank window. Or you can click on “Browse” in the upper right.

Now that you have your image loaded, Vectoraster will automatically display a halftone over the top of your image with the default settings.

I like to take the slider at the bottom all the way to the right, so all I see is the halftone, not the image, but do what you like.

Now all you have to do is start playing with the settings to get your desired effect. You can change things like the shape of the dot, spacing, rotation, grid size, minimum and maximum dot size, and much more, in real-time. You can even invert the image itself, or choose to make the halftone only hit a specific color.

You can even apply effects to the grid itself. Like twist, wave, bulge etc:

Once you have your halftone the way you want it, go to File > Export as EPS… and save your file. Now you’ve got a nice Vector Halftone that you can open in Illustrator and apply it to an infinite amount of uses.

2. Scriptographer Plugin for Illustrator

Price: Free [PC + Mac, Illustrator 9+]

The Scriptographer plugin is a handy set of scripts for Illustrator that will do vector halftones, but the plugin itself does a lot more than just vector halftones. And best of all, it’s free. (the author does accept donations though). For the longest time, Scriptographer wasn’t available for Intel Macs, but in late 2007, the new scripts were released. (sweetness).

Download and install Sciptographer and we’ll get started.
Installation instructions are here

First, open Illustrator and place your image on the artboard. Go to File > Place, then navigate to your image file to place it.

Now, I’ve only dabbled with Scriptographer and I manage to get desirable results somewhat consistently, but I’m pretty sure that the size of your placed image really doesn’t matter, so I typically scale my image way down, to almost thumbnail size. My artboard is about 500 x 500px, and here is the size of my placed image: (quite small)

/////////////// ! Important ! //////////////////

You need to ‘Rasterize’ your placed image. I’m not 100% sure why, but from poking around some documentation and a few google searches, this seems to be an important step in order to get Scriptographer to behave properly. If you skip this step (which I did a few times) it will take much longer to run the script, and possibly crash Illustrator at the same time. Select your image and go to Object >Rasterize.

Choose “72 dpi” for your Rasterize setting and click OK.

The next step is to draw a dot (or a star, square, whatever you want your halftone to consist of) on the artboard. Keep in mind that you can set the scale of the dot later, when we run the script, so any dot will do fine. Here’s my artboard with my image and my dot:

Now you need to open the Scriptographer window. After I installed Scriptographer, the window automatically appeared, but if you don’t see it, go to Window > Scriptographer > Main.

Next, select BOTH your image and your dot, and in the Scriptographer window select the “Object Raster” script and hit the play button in the lower left corner to run the script.

You’ll now have 2 options before the script runs. Grid size and Object scale. Grid size is the distance between the dots, and Object Scale is the maximum dot size. If you leave Object scale at 100%, your biggest dot will be the same size as the one you drew on the artboard. Play around with these settings later, just click Ok to run the script.

After you click Ok, you’ll see the progress indicator. It might take a moment or two for the script to run, but you might not see anything on the artboard after it finishes. When I run the script, it places the finished product up and to the left of my artboard (out of view). You can zoom way out before running the script if this bothers you.

And after the script is done, the result is typically very large. So I scaled it way down and took a screenshot. Here’s the final product using the Scriptographer plugin:

Now, this is why I ranked Vectoraster higher on the scale. If you use Scriptographer, it’s pretty much trial and error, and there are only 2 settings you can play with to try to get your desired output, nevertheless it’s a gem of a plugin. Repeat this process with a couple different settings to see if you can get what you are looking for.

3. The Rasterbator

Price: Free [PC only Download, Online App for everyone else]

The Rasterbator is meant for scaling images up to huge proportions. In other words, take a jpeg, and make it printable for a billboard. To do this, it creates halftone patterns on a very large scale from a very small image. If you aren’t looking for anything very detailed, it’s not a bad solution, but certainly not the best. If you’re a PC user, you can download a standalone version, and everyone else can Rasterbate images online. Lets give it a go…You can download the desktop version, but since I’m on a Mac, I’m going to walk through the online version.

Go to the online version here

Upload your image and you should see something like this:

Hit “Next” at the bottom, and you’ll get a dialogue box. Click Ok.

Now you should see your image on a grid. You can adjust your paper size if you like.

Now scale your image down to fit on a single page. The Rasterbator outputs PDF files, so if you don’t scale your image down to fit on a single page, it will output a multi-page pdf and you’ll only get a section of your image when you import it to Illustrator

Click “Next” and you’ll get another promt. Click “Continue.”

Now all you have to do is select your dot size, then click the “Rasterbate” button. (You can also set color options here if you like)

After your image has been processed, you’ll get a download prompt. Click “Save to Disk” and it will save to your browser’s default downloads folder.

I mentioned earlier that The Rasterbator outputs PDF files, but luckily it outputs PDF’s with vector data. So now all you have to do is open the PDF with Illustrator and you can do whatever you want with it. Save it as an EPS, AI, or whatever.

Here is the final result. Like I said, not quite as detailed, but a vector halftone nonetheless. You won’t find me complaining about a free service, even if it is a little less than I hoped for. The Rasterbator has few options, but if used for the right purpose, you can sometimes get the results you want. (In this case, the portrait didn’t turn out quite as detailed as I’d like, but sometimes you have to play around with the settings (paper size and dot size) to get what you’re looking for.

That’s it folks. Three different ways to make vector halftones from raster images in seconds (literally). So, what are you waiting for? Go make some vector halftones!

a

BittBox Reader Jeff F tipped me off about this neat little Illy trick. It just so happens that if you hold down the “tilde” key on your keyboard, you can get a neat effect using any of Illustrator’s drawing tools. Holding down the tilde key, (the little squiggly line above the tab key, left of the number 1 on your keyboard.) while using a drawing tool will cause Illustrator to repeat the shape rapidly as you move your mouse. Examples after the jump. Thanks Jeff!

For starters, here is a pic of the tilde key:

Here are some quick examples with some different drawing tools:

Also, remember that you can hold shift and/or option/alt at the same time you’re holding the tilde key to constrain your shapes if you like.

Star tool:

Rounded Rectangle tool:

Elipse tool:

Line tool:

a

A hidden gem in my opinion, Illustrator’s “Reshape” tool can come in very handy in a variety of situations. In a nutshell, the Reshape tool allows you to drag a single point on a path and it tries to retain the overall shape of the entire path, while you only move the one anchor point. What? I’ll explain below.

1: Direct Select Tool Adjustment

Start off with a simple path like below. I used the pencil tool to make a simple curved line, and applied a brush stroke. I’ll start by showing you an adjustment with the Direct Select tool (white arrow) as a contrast/comparison.

Now lets say you want to adjust this shape, and you use the Direct Select tool (white arrow) and move the far right point where you want it like this:

And this is what you get. Ok, but you still might have to manually adjust the rest of the points to get what you’re looking for.

2: Reshape Tool Adjustment

Start with the same simple path (or a new one).

Now select your shape with the Selection tool (black arrow), and then select the Reshape tool.

Important: You need to have all points in your shape selected before you move the single point. If you only select a single anchor point before you use the Reshape tool, it will only adjust the path up to the next non-selected point (like the example above)

Ok, with all points on your path highlighted, move the far-right point with the Reshape tool, and you’ll notice a more natural adjustment.

In my opinion, this is a much more pleasing result:

One More Thing:

If you hold Option (Alt PC) while you drag with the Reshape tool, you can easily make copies of your shape that might prove to be useful. (almost like a manual blend tool).

a

This tutorial was requested (by David) and I’m happy to report, it’s really not very hard to do. If you’ve ever used a clipping mask to hide all of the extra artwork that hangs off the edges of your Illustrator artboard, and wished you could just get rid of the excess, here’s how…

Step 1

You can skip this step if you already know your document size, but in order to crop all of your excess artwork to the artboard, you need to know it’s exact size. You can start with a fresh document and enter in your exact dimensions like below, or go to File > Document Setup to check the document size of an existing Illustrator file.

Step 2

So you have something like the example below with some extra artwork hanging off the edges and you’d like to ‘get rid of the extra.’

With the Rectangle Tool, click once on the artboard to bring up the options, and type in the exact same dimensions as your Illustrator document size to create a rectangle that will match your artboard. Mine happens to be 350 X 350px.

Step 3

You need to make sure your rectangle is on top of everything else. You can do this (with the rectangle selected) by hitting Command/Control + Shift + ], or Right Click on your rectangle and choose Arrange > Bring to Front. Note: If you have more than one layer, this shape must be in the top most layer, and on top of all other shapes.

Step 4

Now you need to align the rectangle exactly to the artboard. To do this, open the Align Palette (Window > Align) and make sure “Align to Artboard” is checked. CS3 pictured below. CS2 and previous users: you’ll find the “Align to Artboard” option by clicking on the palette options (the little arrow in the upper right corner of the palette).

Now, with your rectangle selected, click on these 2 buttons on the Align palette (in any order) to align your shape exactly to the artboard.

Step 5

First make sure that nothing is locked by either looking in your Layers palette, going to Object > Unlock All, or the shortcut: Option + Command + 2 (Mac) Not sure about PC, commenters? Then do a “Select All” (Command/Contol + A, Select > All) or select everything with your mouse. So you should now see something like this, with your rectangle perfectly aligned to the artboard, everything selected, and the rectangle on the very top.

Step 6

Open your Pathfinder palette (Window > Pathfinder) and, with everything still selected, hit this button. (the crop button).

Done!

You should now have no artwork outside of the document size after the crop. Gotta love the pathfinder :)

Final product with nothing selected:

For a non-destructive way to acheive a similar effect, I have a post on “Layer Masking” in Illustrator. It’s not the same as a clipping mask, and It gives the same effect as this tutorial without deleting any artwork. Basically a clipping mask with more freedom.

a

We all know that alignment is a huge part of any design. The more control we have over alignment, the better. After a certain point, 100% alignment control gives way to new opportunities to make Illustrator even more useful, like making seamless patterns for example. I want to show you how “anchor points” work in Illustrator, and hopefully send you into control-freak bliss.

Understand this first:

1. If you noticed from the screenshot above, you can access Illustrator’s anchor points from the Transform palette. (or the horizontal quick menu in some of the latest versions of Illy)

2. Using Anchor Points to align objects only works when numeric values (x, y coordinates) are entered into the Transform Palette. (i.e., choosing an anchor point and then using the Align palette will not work.)

Get to Know the Artboard:

Here is an example of a default coordinate system on a 400 X 400px Illustrator artboard. Since you must use the (x, y) coordinate system to enjoy this feature, it’s important to familiarize yourself with, at the very least, where Illustrator puts (0, 0)

Example 1:

In this example (from the Transform palette) I chose the bottom left anchor point to do my alignment. I then entered in the x and y coordinates (0, 0) and I’m instantly able to be 100% sure that my shape is perfectly aligned to the bottom left corner.

You might look at the example above and say to yourself, “You can do that with the Align palette.” In this case you would be correct, but in example 2 below, you’ll see something that the align palette can’t do.

Example 2:

In this example, I chose the center anchor point, and aligned my object to the upper left corner by entering a 0(zero) x value, and 400 y value. Now my circle’s exact center is exactly aligned to the upper left corner. Why is this so special? Well, for one thing, this amount of control is great for making seamless patterns. And seamless patterns are file-size reducers, as well as time savers in most cases.

a

Making a custom brush in Illustrator can be easy and frustrating at the same time. No matter which type of brush you create, one of the most important settings to pay attention to is the ‘colorization method.’ If you don’t change the colorization method from the default setting, you won’t be able to customize the colors of your (custom) brush strokes later. Here’s what you need to do…

This tip requires basic knowledge of Illustrator, the Illustrator Brushes palette, and creating a custom brush in Illustrator.

So you have your artwork selected and select “New Brush” in the brush palette options (like above). Now you have the option to choose which type of brush to create (below). I’ll use “Art Brush” in this example.

Make sure you select “Tints” (what I personally recommend) or “Tints and shades” as the ‘Colorization Method’ before you save your new brush. If you don’t, all of your brush strokes will be black, (or the color of your brush when you created it). There are workarounds like expanding the appearance of your brush stroke, then changing the color, but if you do happen to save your brush and accidentally skip this setting, all you have to do is double click on the brush in the Brushes Palette to bring the options panel up and change the options.

This drove me nuts for the longest time, back when I first started experimenting with making custom Illy brushes. I recommend experimenting with custom brushes for 2 reasons: 1. It never hurts to learn more, and 2. Brushes (especially vector) can save you tons of time, if you only take the time to make them. However, it might take a while (experimenting) to learn how it all works in order to make brushes at your leisure and get the desired results regularly. I guess that’s kinda where I come in, but don’t worry, more on Illustrator brushes to come : )

a