Alignment of strokes of open paths

I researched a bit, and I read there are solutions for this. I didn't quite understand it though.
If I simply draw a line and want to align the stroke to one side (instead of the centre) how do I do this?
1) Giving a path offset effect.
    I played with this, but didn't got me any result. I mean by giving the offset different values, I didn't saw the
    stroke moving to one side.
2) Creating a new brush for this.
    That's a nice idea.
3) Something by using an invisible rectangle.
At this moment, not one method have worked for me :-(.
What I basically want is to create those 'lineal' lines in the wing below. I already made an outline of the ribs and control of alignment of strokes gives me more options and flexibility to draw this.

You cannot set alignment options for Open paths in the Stroke panel. However, you could use the Width Tool to achieve what you are after, here's how:
- Select the path and with the Width Tool double-click on the end anchor point of the path.
- This will open the Width Point Edit dialog. Side 1 = 0 pt, Side 2 = 20 pt (say) and click OK.
- Do the same at the other end anchor point.
Now if you want to draw the same type of paths repeatedly, uncheck "New Art Has Basic Appearance" from the Appearance panel flyout menu. And keep drawing.
All the paths you draw will have the same appearance as the one you had selected initially (unless you select something else).

Similar Messages

Layer style stroke for open paths

I would like to be able to apply something like the Layer Style Stroke to open Paths non-destructively (so »Stroke path with brush« does not meet my, well, »needs« might be to strong a word).
Currently using a Path as a Vector Mask for a Solid Color Layer and applying Stroke to that causes open Paths to appear closed.

We are happy that you like the new features in CS6. You can request new features from your ideas here: http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family and people can vote on them.
Note: A shape layer stroke is a vector-based stroke and is applied only to shape layers. This is very different from the layer syle stroke.
You can control the settings for this stroke in the options bar for the vector tools (Shape, Pen, Path Selection, Direct Selection). This stroke is an attribute of the shape layer and will not cause the fx icon to display on the layer in the Layers panel.
A layer style stroke is a pixel-based stroke and can be applied to any layer that accepts layer styles (including shape layers). The settings for this stroke are controlled via the Layer Styles dialog.
Pattie

Finding Open Paths

I'm running into an issue where I cannot select the option of aligning a border to the inside, outside, etc. I know this is unselectable when working with an open path. Yet I cannot figure out where my path is open. I'm working with a complex shape with a lot of points (it's a shape of the Americas as one object.) But for the life of me, I cannot figure out where the path is unconnected. Does Illustrator have a way of showing where a path begins and ends?

This .zip archive contains an AI Javascript named JET_X_SelectFirstEndPoints.jsx.
The script selects the first anchorPoint of each open path (or open subpath of a Compound Path) in the current selection. That lets you see where the break is in the path(s).
The "_X_" in the name means I've just written it (as experiment propted by this thread), so have not tested it thoroughly. But it works fine for me here.
The .zip archive on
this page contains (among others) two scripts, one of which closes selected open paths; the other of which opens selected closed paths by removing their closing segment.
JET

Who has a find Open Path plug-in for CS4 Illustrator on WinXP and a close path also?

Can anyone lead me to a plug-ins for finding open paths and closing them in CS4 on WinXP?
Thanks

Just a thought, but, have you tried using Live Paint?

How can I get the Fireworks pen tool to disengage from an open path shape (and stay disengaged)!

I am so frustrated! I can't get the fireworks pen tool to disengage when I am finished creating an open path shape (double clicking the end-point isn't working). The only way I can disengage the pen tool is to click on a different tool, BUT ...if I do that (i.e., click on a different tool), and then go back to the pen tool (with the intent to create another open path shape), the pen tool automatically engages the last point of my prior open path shape ... and ... no matter what I do, I can't get the pen tool in Fireworks to stop doing this with my open path shapes.
If anyone has any helpful advice, it would be much appreciated!
Thank you!
(note: I prefer not to have to go back and forth creating open path shapes in Illustrator then bring them into Fireworks, but if all else fails, I suppose I'll have to as a work-around.)

Have you tried holding the Command key and clicking away from the last point? The Command (⌘) key will bring up the Subselection tool; clicking on the canvas with it will allow you to disengage from the path. Once you release the key, the Pen tool will return and you can begin another path.

Feature Request - True strokes instead of path fills...

Love Adobe Ideas on iPad - better than a tablet as you can see what you are sketching including tracing over your hand drawn sketches. Love the smoothing option - can create more formal illustrations and refine in Illustrator CS6 or CC.
One thing I noticed is that lines are not strokes but are path fills for the pencil brush. Can we have a brush that is a real stroke line - so we can use manipulate colors and thicknesses in Illustrator using strokes. Right now all lines are fills - it makes sense for pressure sensitive brushes where line thickness varies but not for a simple line brush.

I have just been pulling my hair out with this same issue! I'm fairly new to Illustrator, so figured it was me just not knowing how to do something simple.
Also I don't think the pen tool in Ideas is really a pen tool as we know it.

Is it possible to join an open path with a closed path?

I am using Illustrator to show territorial changes to Germany after World War I.
My problem is this: I need to join an open path to a closed path.
With the pencil tool I drew a blue line to illustrate the Rhine river on an SVG map of Weimar Germany.
I need to connect the river (open path) to Germany's borders (closed path) so that a new closed path is formed: the Rhineland (Weimar Germany west
of the Rhine).
I am totally stumped as to how to achieve this. Thank you very much for any help anyone can provide.
- Nicholas

Two ways you can make it a Live Paint Group then you actually d not hvve to join it in order to get it to react like a closed path.
The other way is to the select the portion of the closed path with either the direct select tool or lasso tool and hit Command C the hit Comand F paste in front and in the same position. then select the end points on one end of both path and hit Command J then do the same for the other ends of the path and now you have a new closed path and the old closed path under it still intact.
I think the live paint group though will open up a much more powerful workflow for you if you do this type of work often.

Has anyone else noticed that on CC the pentool does not allow you to create an open path? When I try to make two open paths(eg; two separate lines), the pentool connects them automatically. Also it does not automatically close a path. This is both a probl

This is a big headache having the pentool respond this way. Does anyone else have this problem? I have also installed CC 2014 on my home computer and have the same problem. so it seems to be a problem with the program.

Hi Doug,
I'm sure I did not notice a difference in Esc key behavior simply because I have never tried to use the Esc key to stop the Pen Tool from picking up the current path.
I just tested with all these versions of Photoshop: 6.0, CS2, CS3, CS4, CS5, CS6, CC 14.x, and CC (2014) on my PC workstation running Windows 8.1.
Observations:
Photoshop versions 6.0, CS5, and CS6 DO terminate the creation of the current path at the current point upon pressing the Esc key. However, Photoshop versions CS2, CS3, CS4, CC 14.x, and CC (2014). do not terminate the creation of the path upon pressing Esc, and will continue the path with another pen click. Photoshop CC 14.x and CC (2014) may make it SEEM like the path creation is terminated because they hide the points, but the next click continues the path and causes all the points to reappear.
In every case holding the control key down (to temporarily choose the Direct Selection Tool) and clicking off the current path terminates the creation with an open path and allows the creation of another separate path.
No version closes the path (made the path into a closed shape) upon pressing Esc. The only way I know to close a path is to bring the cursor back to the starting point, watch for a little o to appear next to the cursor, then click the mouse.
With Photoshop 6.0, CS2, CS3, CS4, and CS5 the response of the Pen Tool was instantaneous. There was a definite slowdown / sluggishness in Photoshop CS6 and CC 14.x, which is now corrected in Photoshop CC (2014), which is again instantly responsive.
The only other thing I can think of regarding closing a path might be that when using the Pen Tool there are choices in the Options Bar about whether you're creating a shape or a path. Are you ensuring you have that set the same way as you have had it set in the past?
-Noel

Illustrator CS4 makes invisible open paths with the 3D tools. We need a close paths feature.

Illustrator CS4 (mine is for Windows) is faulty in the 3D effect tools because of the invisible open paths it creates upon saving as EPS (or expanding the appearance). This is very dissapointing. My only hope of correcting this that is a free plugin and script that may or not be created by Graffix. Adobe probably can do this. : (
I also had this problem in CS.

Illustrator CS4 (mine is for Windows) is faulty in the 3D effect tools because of the invisible open paths it creates upon saving as EPS (or expanding the appearance). This is very dissapointing. My only hope of correcting this that is a free plugin and script that may or not be created by Graffix. Adobe probably can do this. : (
I also had this problem in CS.

The selected objects cannot be joined as they are invalid objects,( Compound paths, closed paths, Text Objects, Graphs, Live Paint group). You can use Join command to connect two or more paths, paths in groups; ot to close an open path.

Hi I was trying to join two Ractangle Tool objects but getting this type of Error in illustrator cs6 :-
The selected objects cannot be joined as they are invalid objects,( Compound paths, closed paths, Text Objects, Graphs, Live Paint group).
You can use Join command to connect two or more paths, paths in groups; ot to close an open path.
Please assist me asap.

Yes, I know this is an old post, but I’m trying to clean them up. Did you solve this problem, if so what was the solution?
This sound like a firewall issue. I would start by disabling the firewall and seeing if you can connect. If this works then you know where the problem is,
Garth Jones | My blogs: Enhansoft and
Old Blog site | Twitter:
@GarthMJ

Open path when outlining stroke...

If I have an object that has a large stroke set to align to inside and I outline that stroke, the resulting inner shape isn't a closed path. While this is easy enough to fix, I was wondering if there was a way to avoid it alltohether?

I forgot a step. Let me explain it step by step
Create a square with a 20pt stroke and no fill
Set align stroke to "Aligh Stroke to Inside"
Go to Object>Path>Outline Stroke
Select the resulting shape and go to Object>Compound Path>Release
Select the top/right anchor point of the inner shape and drag, you will have two anchor points not joined.

How do I align stroke brushes on path starting at the end of a path?

Hello,
I made a path with no fill and a stroke. I copied this path in place and made a "brush-arrowhead" as you can see in the image below. This allows me to get a look that arrays my arrowhead across the entire path. My issue is that where I started the path (not show in image), the brush applies the first "arrowhead" brush (which I created) at the beginning of my path. As you can see, the end of the path doesn't look so nice because the arrowhead brush does not end evenly based on the varying distances of each path. I would like my paths to end with an arrowhead, yet still have this "array" look.
Simply put, is there a way I can dictate which end of my path (end point or start point) my brush "arrowhead" begins from?
Many thanks,

naturescape_peopletecture wrote:
and made a "brush-arrowhead" as you can see in the image below.
To answer your questions need to know who you made a brush arrowhead.
The default arrowhead are specifically designed with a bounding box designed to not have this problem, and even have this option
You are wanting arrows in the middle of a line so would recommend a scatter brush.
And a stacked appearance with 2 strokes.
Though you may not like who the dashes are lining up here so if you go back to the first method I show, you can do a few paths too get this.

Stroked type in ID not aligning w/stroke in PDF

I have a weird situation, and I'm thinking it's related to the particular font, not anything in InDesign, per se.
I have some black type with a tiny (.05pt) stroke applied in ID (CS5.5). Everything looks fine on screen. However when I export a PDF, the type doesn't align with the strokes — it's as if different kerning/tracking has been applied to the type, but not the strokes. It's not all the type, and not on every line, but most of it has this "ghosting" or "halo" look to it when you zoom in to the PDF.
We've run similar type treatments in different fonts, and this didn't happen. I've tried a variety of PDF export settings (Press Quality, PDF/X-4, 1a) even exporting to IDML and bringing it into CS4. I'm not changing the fonts to outlines (I've read threads about how outlined text w/strokes caused issues) and there is no transparency. (As a test, I did try Isolate Blending and flattening, but that rastered all the type into jaggy bitmaps.)
There's also something I haven't normally seen (because I don't normally look) but it looks like the font is listed twice in the Fonts list in the Document settings — once ansi encoded and once again with Custom encoding.
This is what makes me think it's the font.

This is how it appears in Acrobat X:
The font is Cochin LT Std (OT) Roman. This is how it's listed as an embedded font in the PDF:
For what it's worth, because it may be related, I've seen weirdness with some fonts when rendered in a PDF before. Sometimes it appears if the type is improperly kerned. (We started seeing that, rarely, when we moved to CS5 from 4 and started using PDF/X-4 instead of 1a.) I've actually seen it on occasion where the letters transpose, as if there were negative kerning amounts in the hundreds applied, the letters appearing on top of each other and in different order. (CS2 & 3)
All these instances look as they should in InDesign, but the aberrations appear in the PDF (typically viewed in Acrobat, but also visible in Illustrator and Preview).
Further testing suggests that the stroke and type are rendered independently of each other. If I open the PDF in Illustrator, I need the font installed for the type to render properly. However if I turn the font off, the type is rendered in a substitute font but the strokes are not — they are still rendered as outlines in the shape of the original glyphs.

Adjusting Stroke Width Warps Path Shape

When I try to adjust the width of the stroke on a closed shape by increments of one point at a time it warps the shape a little bit each time i add more width. But if I use the drop down menu, the storke changes width without affecting the shape of the closed path. What the heck is happening?
Here's whats the shape looks like with 1pt stroke.
And this is what it looks like after I adjust the stroke with to 386pt by clicking and holding the up arrow to adjust it one point at a time:
I almost never would use such a thick stroke but i wanted to accentuate how much of the original shape is being lost.
Any ideas?

You've got a problem with align to pixel grid:
Illustrator: Problems with Align to pixel grid

Changing Stroke Weight Alters Path

Hello!
At some point over the last couple of days, I did something in Illustrator (probably an accidental key combination) that causes the physical structure of the path to change whenever I alter the thickness of the stroke.
I took a screen capture and uploaded it to YouTube as an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hAA7YIrVwY. You'll notice, in the video, that as the stroke becomes smaller, the path actually shifts down the artboard.
How do I stop this from happening? OR what is the setting that got changed, so that if it happens again in the future, I can fix it? It's been difficult trying to find an answer, since the keywords are pretty relevant to just about ALL Illustrator questions.
Thanks for your help!

steve fairbairn wrote:
Sounds like that "snap to pixel grid" thing that some bright lad at Adobe thought might be a good idea for CS5.
Actually is a godo idea just takes edutacting users to some degree.
Select the path and uncheck Align to Pixel Grid on the Transform panel. Does the problem go away?

Alignment of strokes of open paths

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