The appearance panel, or as it used to be known, the appearance palette. This is where it all goes down. The key to making versatile, live art that will allow you to shrug off your boss changing the name of the project from “Penguin Playset” to ” Arctic Adventure” This will allow you to create art that can rival the raster effects you get in Photoshop and at times do it better and more extensibly (Did I just make that word up? Nope!) So, instead of setting your text, copy/pasting it behind, adding your stroke, copying to the front, adding a glow, etc… and making a stack of objects to get one result, you can do this all from within one object. Multiple strokes, multiple fills, effects applied specifically to a single fill or stroke. Gradients on a stroke. Live text with a gradient. Yeap.
That’s live text. Grab the live .ai file. Use your own fonts if you don’t have these.
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Tutorials at April 20th, 2010.
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If you’ve ever had your drop shadows look gray instead of black, try using a “rich” black instead of a pure K black and be sure that your drop shadow’s blending mode is set to “multiply”
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Tips at April 7th, 2010.
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I use it for die lines and for margins among other things. You’ll find uses for it. I use it often enough that I’ve given it a keyboard shortcut.
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Tips at March 29th, 2010.
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What are they, why are they, and how do you use them?
Simply put, they are layers that are visible on screen as you’re working with your file but won’t print. I use them mainly to create margins that I can snap to with smart guides (that’s a whole other post…) I also use them as a place to hold elements of my art that I’m working with bits and pieces of. Things to eyedropper and such…
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Tips at March 23rd, 2010.
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A nice, detailed look at the Align Panel.
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Tutorials at March 15th, 2010.
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