Tuesday, January 21st, 2014

Illustrator for Photoshop Users

Learning Illustrator is different and easier if you already know Photoshop

So, you’re pretty handy with Photoshop but Illustrator is different – isn’t it? It is not easy to understand when you first start and you might be scared off by an interface that looks both familiar and foreign at the same time. I certainly was when I started out. Illustrator was like a foreign language and it took a lot of time to learn it.

But learning Illustrator when you already use Photoshop can be simplified. You see you already know a lot about Illustrator so we can start out with that knowledge and build on it. You need to know what is the same and what is different between the two programs and you need to know what is important and what you can ignore for now.

So, to help you, I created this video. It’s for anyone who knows Photoshop and who wants to learn Illustrator. I will build on your knowledge so we don’t waste time on things you already know but so you learn quickly how Illustrator is different and how to get started with it.

No laborious “how to use the Pen tool” stuff here. Just quick and fun and interesting stuff guaranteed to get you on your way to loving the creative potential of Illustrator.

 

 

Helen Bradley

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Categories:Illustrator

posted by Helen Bradley @ 11:45 am1 Comment links to this post

Monday, January 13th, 2014

Dotted edges in Illustrator

 

Learn to add multiple strokes to a shape in Illustrator

One way I force myself to extend my knowledge of Illustrator is to take an existing illustration and to try to reproduce it. I don’t use these for anything but for learning and improving my skills. It’s a great tool because, when you try to copy someone else’s illustration you have to work out how to do things you may not typically do. You can’t just fluff yourself off and do the same old thing – if you don’t know how to achieve an effect you have to think about the problem and work it out using your existing skills or go research solutions.

Today I’ve been working on shapes that have neat edges and, in particular shapes with solid edges and dots – all in the one shape!

Start by drawing your shape – mine was a speech bubble but you can do it with anything. Then add a fill color and a stroke – this stroke is the thick band around the shape so make it the right size for the edge effect.

Now open the Appearance panel and add a second stroke by choosing the Add New Stroke icon. Make sure this is the top stroke – if not you can drag it up as if it were a layer. In the Appearance panel select a different color for this stroke and size it smaller than the previous one. You can now make it dots by setting up the panel so it looks like this – just note that your gap value should be the same or just larger than the stroke to make dots and that the cap shape is rounded – to get dots!

 

Helen Bradley

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Categories:Illustrator

posted by Helen Bradley @ 10:32 amNo Comments links to this post

Friday, April 19th, 2013

Illustrator – Create a Vector Sunburst

Learn to create a vector sunburst in Illustrator – This works with all versions of Illustrator including the new CS6. The process is simple and uses a stroke to make the sunburst – it is quick and doesn’t require a lot of fiddling to create.

Transcript:
Hello, I’m Helen Bradley. Welcome to this video tutorial. In this tutorial I’m going to show you how you can create a sunburst vector shape in Illustrator.

Before we get started creating our sunburst effect let’s have a look and see what it is that we’re aiming for. Here I have a sunburst and it’s just offset in this rectangle, but you could have a circular one if you like.

We’re going to start with circular and then we’re going to crop it to a rectangle. So if you’re ready let’s have a look and see how we create this effect in Illustrator. And we’re going to start by creating a brand new document so I’ll just choose File, New. It doesn’t matter too much what my document looks like.

I’m going to start with the Ellipse tool. So, I’m going to select the Ellipse tool and drag a shape on my image. And I need this to be a perfect circle so I’m going to hold the Shift key as I draw it and then just let go. I want this to be black stroke and no fill so I’m just going to click on the fill here and turn the fill off.

Now let’s go to the Appearance panel for this selected path and I’m going to click the Stroke option. And I’m going to set the stroke to about 200 points. And when I do you’ll see that we get this sort of circle all the way around our shape which is pretty near exactly what we want when we click the Dash Line option. Now with the Dash Line option I can set the dashes to whatever I want and this is going to affect how many of these sunbeam things there are around the shape.

So let’s just go to 20 and try that. This is what I’m a little concerned about. You can see that there’s an uneven spacing here, but you’ll see that you can adjust that by clicking this option here. So just work out how many points you need to get the number of sunrays that you want for your particular shape. I’m going to do a few more in this one rather than less so I’m going to 10 points. And when I’ve got what I want I’m just going to click away from this. And this is the basic shape. Now before we can do anything with this shape we’re going to first have to expand its appearance.

So with the shape selected I’m going to choose Object and then Expand Appearance and then Object, Expand because I want this dialogue here. And I’m going to expand both fill and stroke So I’ll select both of those and click Ok. And now each of these sunbursts is a separate shape and I need now to close up the middle. And I can do that by grabbing the Lasso tool. It’s the easiest tool to use. And all I’m going to do is just drag around because I want to select all the nodes and pointers’ handles in the middle.

Now I’m going to choose Object and then Path, and I’m going to choose Average. And with Average I’m going to select both Horizontal and Vertical and click Ok. And what that does is it just closes up the middle nicely for me. So I’m going to click outside my shape and here is my sunburst shape. So with it selected I can then go to what is now my fill color and I can choose a different fill color for it. And we could fill it with a gradient.

We could do anything we liked at this point. So let’s see now how we’re going to crop it. So I’m going to select the Rectangle tool. I’m going to start by drawing a rectangle and I’m just going to hold the spacebar as I bring it in position over the top of my sunburst because I want to work out exactly where the sunburst is going and where the rectangle is going relative to it. So I think that’s a pretty good position for me. So I’m going to let go of the spacebar and let go of the left mouse button and now select all my objects. I’m selecting other everything, and in the Pathfinder I’m going to select Crop. And that crops the shape to the size of that rectangle. And we lost our fill here so let’s just click on the fill and put the fill back on.

So here is a shape that we could save to our Symbol library. And those sunbursts are very, very easy to create in Illustrator as vector shapes. And of course if you add it to your Symbol library then you’ll have it available anytime you want to use it. And it’s very easy to create ones with different numbers of rays in them.

I’m Helen Bradley. Thank you for joining me for this video tutorial. Look out for more of my videos on this YouTube channel and please like and comment on the videos. Look out too for my website at projectwoman.com. There you’ll find more tutorials and tips and tricks for Illustrator, Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Lightroom, GIMP and a whole lot more.

Helen Bradley

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Categories:Illustrator, video

posted by Helen Bradley @ 6:36 amNo Comments links to this post

Friday, April 12th, 2013

Illustrator – Using the Halftone Hearts

See how to create some effects such as rotations and a transparency heart effect in Illustrator. This is Part 2 of the videos on halftone hearts.

Transcript:
Hello, I’m Helen Bradley. Welcome to this video tutorial. In this tutorial we’re going to take a step further from our halftone hearts tutorial and have a look and see what we can do with the halftones that we create. In this video we’re going to go one step further than the last video.

Click Here for Part 1

In this video we’re going to create this sort of circular effect from the string of hearts that we created using the Blend tool in Illustrator. And then I’m going to show you how you can use a transparency mask to create this sort of effect in Illustrator as well.

We’re going to start with a brand new file. And I have some of the elements left over from the first video here that we’re going to use. And we’re going to bring in this heart shape. And I also have a spare set of this string of hearts that we created so I’m going to bring that in. That just saves us having to recreate those. Now I want two sets of this so I’m just going to drag a second set away from the first.

Let’s have a look first at how we would create that sort of spiral. I’m going to size the hearts down in proportion so I have a small set because I’m going to rotate these around to create the full rotation. To do that I’m going to choose Effect and then Distort and Transform and I’ll select Transform. I’m going to click Preview so I can see what’s happening, and I’m going to rotate these around at this bottom point. So this is the very bottom point of this chain of hearts and I’m going to rotate them 10 degrees. Now I haven’t got Copy set so this individual string is going to be rotated 10 degrees but I want enough rotations that I can go all the way around a circle. And if I rotate something 10 degrees in 10 degree increments I need 36 of those to go around the circle because a circle has 360 degrees. And that’s all I need to go to create this shape so I’ll click Ok.

And now that shape is created but of course it is still really just a string of heart. And to make it into the individual shapes we’ll choose Object and then Expand Appearance. And now it is those little heart shapes individually. The other thing I want to do is to create a set of halftone hearts that we can use as a transparency mask for this particular heart.

First of all I’m going to switch the foreground and background colors here so that we have a pink heart. And I need to create a box, a sort of rectangle of these hearts. So again I’m going to shrink these down so they’re about the same size or height as this heart is because they’re going to be used for a transparency mask for that. I’m going to select these and again I’m going to do is the transform so I’m going to choose Effect, Distort and Transform and then Transform. This time I’m going to create about 20 copies. And I want to move these so I’m going move these in a horizontal direction about 7 or 8 pixels, let’s say 8 pixels here, and just click Ok.

I just want a block of hearts big enough for me to put my heart on top of that. So they just need to be that size. I’m going to expand the appearance of this halftone effect so I’ll choose Object and then Expand Appearance. And then I want to copy it to the Windows clipboard so I’ll select it all and choose Edit and then Copy. So it’s now in the Windows clipboard and I can just tuck it outside out of the way because we don’t need it anymore.

With the heart shape selected I’m going to use the Transparency palette which we can get to by choosing Window and then Transparency. And I’m going to click to make a mask. And because I want this mask to be clipped to the heart shape I’ll click Clip. I’m going to select on the mask here and I’ll just choose Edit and then Paste. And here is the halftone heart shape. And I’m just going to position it into position here. And I want the little hearts to be pretty much up around the top curve of the heart so it’s really quite well defined. So I’m thinking that’s probably going to be about the right position. And then to go back to working with my heart I’ll click on the heart in the Transparency palette. And that’s how the final effect looks.

What I did when I showed it to you earlier was I created a filled, a red filled square that was over the top of the heart. I’m just going to create my square. And this needs to be sent behind so I’m going to send it to the back. And the heart itself instead of being filled with pink was filled with black so I’ll just click the fill color and we’ll fill it with black. Now if the mask is not in exactly the right place we can also just select back on the heart, reselect the mask and perhaps adjust the positioning of the mask by a pixel or two, reselect the heart and we’re back working with the heart itself.

So there are some effects that you can create using this sort of halftone effect which we created this time using halftone hearts rather than halftone dots in Adobe Illustrator.

I’m Helen Bradley. Thank you for joining me for this video tutorial. Look out on this YouTube channel for more of my video tutorials and go to my website at projectwoman.com for more tutorials, tips and tricks on Illustrator, Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Lightroom and more.

Helen Bradley

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Categories:Illustrator, video

posted by Helen Bradley @ 6:20 amNo Comments links to this post

Sunday, December 9th, 2012

Create an HTML web gallery in Lightroom

With the increasing popularity of the iPad and iPhone it’s no longer appropriate for most of us to create Flash based web galleries – they just can’t be easily viewed on these devices. If you want almost everyone to be able to see your galleries then you need to create them as HTML galleries and not Flash.

Lightroom has a range of HTML Templates you can use to create a reasonable looking gallery in a very short time.

To make your web gallery in Lightroom start by placing your images in a Collection. This makes it easier for you to work with the images and you can save the gallery so you can edit it in future if needed.

Select your Collection and switch to the Web module. From the Layout Style options, you can select Lightroom HTML gallery or, easier still, from the Template Browser panel on the left of the screen, select a gallery that is HTML based. If you look in the preview area the HTML gallery templates all have the letters HTML in their bottom left corner. Select a template to use.

From the toolbar (press T if it isn’t visible), choose All Filmstrip Photos if you have a Collection selected and this will add all the images to your gallery. What you see on the screen in the editing area is a live version of your web gallery. You can click on any image to view it as it will look on the web.

Open the Site Info panel and type a Site Title, a Collection Title and a Collection Description. If you don’t want to use all of these simply delete the placeholder text for those items you don’t want to use and the space they take up in the template will be freed for use for your images.

For the Contact Info, type your contact name if desired and then complete the Web Or Mail Link and this will be linked automatically to the contact name in the web gallery.

You can add an identity plate to the gallery, if desired, it will sit above the Site Title. You can link it back to your site if desired by completing the Web or Mail Link box.

The Color Palette options let you change the colors for the various elements in the website template.

In the Appearance panel you can set the thumbnail image grid size – it defaults to 3 x 3 and cannot be any smaller but it can be considerably larger. If you want to show cell numbers over the images you can do so – this is useful when you need to give viewers an easy way to identify images they like. Images are numbered sequentially and if you have multiple pages the images on the second page continue sequentially from the numbering from the first page.

You can control the size of the full size image on the Image Page by adjusting the Size slider. You can also add Photo Borders to the images in the Image Pages. Note that the Appearance panel is divided into Common Settings, Grid Pages and Image Pages allowing you to make change that effect the entire gallery, only the grid pages or only the image pages.

In the Image Info panel you can select to add labels to your images. These appear on the Image Page only. You can select a Title which appears above the image and a Caption which appears below the image. For each you can source the text from the image metadata and there is no reason why you can’t set the Title to be the Caption metadata and the Caption to be your Equipment metadata, for example.

In Output Settings select the quality of the larger size JPG images – 0 is low quality and 100 is high quality. If you want to include Metadata with the image select what to include – your choices are Copyright Only or All.

Also add a Watermark if desired. If you select to add a watermark, you’ll see it on the image page and the index pages so you can check to see that it’s what you want.

Select whether or not to sharpen the images – this sharpening is only applied as the images are output so you won’t see it on the screen. If you’re unsure what to use, enable Sharpening and set it to Standard.

When you’re done, click Create Saved Web Gallery – this is a new option in Lightroom 4 and it appears to the top right of the main editing area. Type a name for your web gallery and click Create. Doing this ensures that the gallery is saved and once you have done this, Lightroom will track your changes from now on.

In future you can come back to the web gallery by clicking the special collection that Lightroom creates for you.

If you want to upload your gallery to the web later on, click Export to export it to disk. Otherwise you can upload it direct to your website by selecting the Upload Settings panel and configure your FTP server. For this, you’ll need your server details, user name and password. You’ll also need the server path although you can click Browse to browse your server to find it if desired. Type a subfolder in which to place the gallery – you’ll need to do this if you plan to have multiple galleries in the server folder you are using. Each gallery needs to be placed in a different subfolder or it will overwrite the previously uploaded gallery.

When you have everything configured click Upload to render the gallery images, create the necessary html code and upload it all automatically to your server.

The HTML galleries in Lightroom aren’t the best looking galleries in town but having a gallery accessible to almost any device is definitely and incentive to use them in place of Flash galleries.

Helen Bradley

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Categories:photoshop

posted by Helen Bradley @ 8:00 am1 Comment links to this post