Am I Wearing Too Many Effects?

My subject today is the differences between Effects and Filters. If you look at the Illustrator menus for effects and filters, you will notice that there is a lot of duplication. First, within each menu there are duplicate stylize and distort choices. Of course, we already know that's because the top half of the menu is for vector graphics and the bottom half for raster graphics, right? But why do distort and stylize appear in both effects and filters? Just how much stylizing and distorting are we supposed to do anyway? What exactly is the difference between filters and effects?

Surgery vs. Cosmetics
Let's say you get up in the morning and take a good hard look at yourself in the mirror. Your looks just aren't that exciting anymore and you are decide to glam yourself up a bit. You call a plastic surgeon. Get a nose job. Have those saggy eyes lifted up a few inches. Get some eye liner and rosy cheeks tattooed on. A few thousand dollars later, you look in the mirror and realize you look atrocious. Too bad. It can't be undone. You instituted permanent changes. That's how filters are.

Now, let's say that you had decided to keep your options open. So, instead, you bought some new eye shadow, rouge, lipstick, hair color, powder, and mascara and you went into a makeup putting-on frenzy. Again, you look in the mirror and realize you look atrocious. Ah, but this time you can grab a washcloth and wash it all off. Behold the magic of effects. Effects are always under your control and can be altered, adjusted and undone anytime you want.

Undo for you
If you apply three filters to an object and decide you only like the last two but not the first, you have to undo everything. (And you can't even do that if you have already saved your file.) But, if you use effects instead, you can undo the first effect without undoing the last two. Even after you have saved and closed the file, you still have the option to reselect your object and edit its effects.

My, How you've changed

Filters change the structure of an object and effects merely change their appearance. I drew two star on my page. The one on the left was treated to two filters: a drop shadow (stylize) and a 68% bloat (distort). The right got the same treatment, except instead of using filters, I used effects.

They look exactly the same don't they? When I look at the stars in outline view, though, I get a different picture.

The effect star was only "made-up" to look pretty, it's still just a star. The filter star, though, will never be the same.

So, the question for today is:

"Why would anyone ever use filters instead of effects?"

Fun at Play

One of my favorite Christmas presents as a child was a spirograph. The spirograph kit included a drawing board, a handful of plastic disks and some round paper. If I remember correctly, you put a pencil point through holes in the disks and then spun it around on the paper. The result was a "way cool," totally useless piece of paper with spirals drawn all over it. The downside of the kit was that it came with a very limited number of precut papers. Once the paper supply was depleted (after the first 3 minutes of play,) you had a bunch of useless plastic disks. These would eventually be strategically scattered around the house--attracting and slicing bare feet late at night. They made good ninja stars too.

There is a little trick you can do in Illustrator that lets you draw designs that remind me of those old spirographs. And, since it is done in Illustrator--you never run out of paper!

You can use any of the basic drawing tools, but my favorite is the Star Tool.

• Choose a Stroke color
• Choose No Fill
• Click on the drawing tool you want to use.
• As you begin drawing your shape, hold down the ~ key. (This should be at the top left of your keyboard, directly under the Esc key. I have never had any call to use this key for anything other than this. Do you suppose it was created for this one purpose?)
• Slowly move the drawing tool around on the page while you continue holding down the ~.
• This will create some 22 billion shapes in about 2 seconds, so unless you want your computer to explode, don't get carried away with it.

If you want to get fancy, use more than one color.

• Open the Layers Palette (Windows>Layers).
• Expand the layer by clicking on the little triangle to the of the layer.
• You should see a ton of separate sublayers. Select some of the sublayers by clicking on the small targets to the right of the sublayers. Hold down the Ctrl. key if you want to select more than one at a time.
• Use the swatches palette to change the stroke color for the select sublayer objects.

If this just seems like too much trouble, but you would kind of like to play around with a spirograph, try playing with the digital spirograph here.

Can anyone tell me how I applied the gradient to the spiro at the top of the page? There is a trick to it!

You Say Raster, I Say Vector

There are two kinds of computer graphics--raster (lots of pretty pixels), and vector (paths and points).

Raster Graphics

Raster graphic images are made up of a grid of colored pixels and each pixel can be edited individually (although that would be a tiresome thing to do.) This is the best choice when photo editing and Photoshop relies primarily on this process. Raster graphics are commonly called bitmap images. In class, I always compare raster graphics to the old toy Lite Brite. Try playing with Lite Brite but don't forget to come back.

Vector Graphics

Now, Illustrator is mostly a vector graphics program. Vector graphics use mathematical relationships between points and the paths that are connecting them to describe your image. Vector images are generally found in drawing programs. I compare these graphics to a learning tool sometimes used in math classes called a Geoboards. (Try playing with a geoboard.)

Advantages/Disadvantages

There are advantages and disadvantages to each type of graphics and the choice you make should depend on what you are up to. Raster graphics are best with photographs and other images that require subtle shading. But to look good, bitmaps need higher resoltuion and anti-aliasing to in order to look smooth. When you resize a bitmap image you are likely to get some distortion and if you enlarge it too much, it will start looking pixelated and come down with a bad case of the jaggies. (see image below.)

If you are creating type, drawing line art, or simply needing some nice crisp edges to an image, vector graphics is the way to go. You can draw an itty-bitty teeny tiny image in a vector program and then scale it to 1000% and it will still as clear and crisp as the original. You don't get the same distortion with vectors as you do with bitmaps. I created the flower in Illustrator. The original was less than 1/2 inch. I then copied it and rasterized the copy. Next, I scaled them way up. Notice the jaggies on the raster image.

Raster Graphics in Illustrator

Although Illustrator is predominantly a vector program although there is nothing preventing you from rasterizing objects or placing a photograph in your design. Also, there are several Photoshop filters available in Illustrator. These filters are in the bottom half of the Filter menu. They will be grayed out unless you rasterize your object first. (Object>Rasterize) As a further challenge, you must also remember that the file's color mode must be RGB to rasterize the object. You can change color mode by choosing: File>Document Color Mode.

About Filter Menus

For a long time I didn't know about this rule and attributed the randomness of my ability to use filters to current atmospheric pressure. Notice that there are some filters in both the top half and the bottom half of the menu (style/distort). Normally, unless you are working with raster graphics, you will be using the filters on the top half of the menu.

So, those of you who have dabbled in both Illustrator and Photoshop, which do you prefer to work with--raster or vector graphics?

How Do I View Thee, Let Me Count the Ways

Look closely at your monitor. Is there a round oily spot in the center of it? Is that spot the same size as the tip of your nose? If you answer yes to these questions, you are sitting too close to your screen. (And you should consider buying a face cleanser for oily type skin.)

I am frequently reminding students that squinting and pressing up to the screen to see every path and anchor point is unnecessary. Illustrator affords us many techniques for zooming into the objects for painless editing. In fact, there are a plethora of zoom options. Let just look at some of them.

View Menu

• Zoom In
• Zoom Out
• Fit in Window
• Actual Size

These work perfectly well, but if you are zooming in and out a bunch, it gets tiresome having to keep reaching up and pulling the menu down. There are, of course, short cuts for these--Ctrl ++(in) Ctrl -- (out), Ctrl +0 (fit) and Ctrl+1 (actual size). Many students use these all the time. Normally, I am a big fan of shortcuts, but I don't use these because I always miss the mark on that back row of the keyboard and end up hitting backspace or Insert.

Status bar

This is at the bottom left of your screen. You can type in a percent magnification or pick one from the pop-up list. This works just fine, but it doesn't give you any control as to what part of the image you are zooming into.

Navigator Palette

This is a wonderful way to zoom in to objects and the only reason I don't use it is that I forget that it's there. When it is not showing on your screen, you can open it by choosing Window>Navigator.

You can type in your zoom percentage at the bottom left of the palette. Click on the little mountains to zoom out and the big mountains to zoom in. You can stay zoomed in and move to different parts of your image by dragging the red rectangle around. Best of all, if you ever get lost on the scratch board and can't even find your page, you can click on the image in navigator and the page pops right back to the center of the screen.

Zoom Tool

This is the magnifying glass in the toolbar. Clicking on the page with the Zoom Tool enlarges the magnification. Every time you click, the closer you get. If there is a particular area you want to zoom into, click right on it. The place you click will be centered on the page. If you want to zoom out, hold down the Alt key as you click with the tool. I have only one problem with the Zoom Tool. I forget to change tools when I am done with it and do a lot of unintentional zooming.

My favorite ways to zoom

Marquee Zoom: I do this when I want to work closely on an object. To do a marquee zoom, take the zoom tool, and drag an imaginary box around the area that you want to magnify. The area that is within the box is what fills the screen. This is quick and easy.

Hand Tool/Zoom Tool: This is a handy way to recover from high-intensity zooming. Double-clicking the Hand tool returns the view to "fits in window,' and double-clicking the Zoom tool gives you 100%.

All right, who can tell me? What have I missed? Does anybody have a favorite way of viewing that I have not considered?

I am going to wipe down my monitor now and go wash my face.

Behavior Modifcation

Unlike children, Illustrator's behavior is easy to control. You can choose Edit/Preferences from the menu and dictate how you want Illustrator to behave. Your preferences are retained until you either experience a change of heart or someone sneaks onto your computer and messes them all up.

Some of the preferences are way too techy for me and I avert my eyes when I see them. I trust that the programmers who determine the defaults know tons more about that stuff than I do. Far be it from me to argue with the folks at Adobe.

Some of the prefs that I won't mess with include:

Plug-ins and scratch disks (my cat and I know all about scratched disks) and plug-ins make my bathroom smell clean and fresh. Every once in a while I try to better myself by reading up on scratch disks and such, but I always drift off mid-paragraph and start dreaming about warm cookies and milk.

Version cue and files: "Use Low Resolution proxy for linked EPS" is the default, and that's okay with me. There's nothing worse than having those high resolution proxies thinking they can link stuff all over the place.

There's a whole decision box dedicated to determining the Appearance of Black in the type. Inasmuch as I have trouble telling the difference between black and navy blue socks, I don't lose much sleep worrying about how black the black text is. Adobe offers both 100% black and Rich black. Decisions, decisions.

There's also a check box where you can turn Japanese crop marks on and off. Just imagine the hijinks that would ensue if we accidentally had those Japanese crop marks activated!

The preferences that I do take more than a passing interest in:

• Use Precise Cursors. Most students prefer not to have precise cursors. Regardless of whether you are using the paint brush, pen tool, or pencil, your precise cursor is just a boring X. (but in its defense--it is nicely precise). If you have precise cursors turned off, depending on what tool you are using, your cursor may look like a brush, a pen or a pencil, Students seem to find these life-like icons more comforting. Warning: if you have precise cursors turned off, but you have the Caps Lock on, the evil precise cursors take over. So if your beloved pen looks suspiciously like a giant X, look to your Caps Lock.


• Scale strokes and effects. If you draw an object that is 3 inches in diameter and then shrink it down to 10% of its original size, you need to have this preference checked. Otherwise, the object will be tiny, but the stroke will be humongo (same thing with effects like drop shadows.) If you have it checked, the strokes and effects shrink proportionally with the object.


• Units and Display: Change general Units to inches to points to pixels and back again as much as you want. But, don't change the Stroke or Type from points to inches. It's simply an unreasonable thing to do.


• Guides and Grids: I used to make the mistake of thinking that I was changing the preferences for my guides, only to accidentally change the grid prefs instead. If you take the time to read, these preferences are very easy to control.
  
• Smart Guides: I love smart guides, but some people find two aspects of them distracting--object highlighting and construction guides. You can turn these off in Preferences. They are actually very useful for drawing lines at perfect angles, but it's like watching a laser light showing when there are a lot of lines involved.

Play around with the preferences until you get Illustrator in sync with your personal rhythm--it doesn't hurt anything to experiment around a bit. It's fun and not nearly as dangerous as experimenting with drugs. If you get things totally out of kilter and can't remember how they were before you started messing with the preferences, no problem.


Unlike the rest of us, Adobe Illustrator can always revert to back its virgin state. You can delete the preferences.

To delete the preferences:

First, you must close Illustrator. Then, click Start on your desktop and choose Search. Click "All files and folders" and if it is your first time, click "more advanced options," and check "search hidden files and folders." Type aiprefs in the search box and when it shows up, hit the Stop button and click the Delete button to delete the file. When you reopen Illustrator it will be fresh and dewy as a spring morning. (You don't even need a plug-in.) The program will have the same defaults as it had the day it emerged from the factory.