Breaking up a stroke & stroke styles

As you'll see from the attached I have a file with a double lined stroke. I'd like to "break it" (where I've placed a red square) to create space for an object. How do I do that?
Also, I'd like to experiment with playing with the space between the double line in the stroke. To do this, I thought you needed to go into stroke styles and create a new "stripe" stroke style and play with the space between the two lines with the slider. However, when I do that, I lose the width of my existing stroke and it becomes thinner on both lines. Is there a way to avoid that?
Thanks!

Other options for making the gap would be to use the scissor tool, or to draw the shape with the pen tool, leaving the gap.
Stripe style strokes are built using a percentage of the total stroke weight for each element. You don't set an absolute weight in the style definition. To have a wider gap with the same apparent line widths you need to apply a larger value to the stroke weight.

Similar Messages

Expanding the appearance of live transform breaks up fill and stroke

Okay, so I never ever use Effect > Distort & Transform > Transform, but with all the hubbub about the stroke scaling bugs in Illustrator CC 2014, I've been fiddling with it lately, and I'm confounded by something: once you perform a "live" transformation of an object, how do you expand the transformation so it's not live anymore, while retaining the integrity of your object? When I use Object > Expand Appearance, it breaks the fill and stroke of the object into two objects. Am I doing it wrong, or is this a bug?
This can't be the normal behavior, since it is impossible to expand the appearance of an ordinary stroked/filled object (the menu item is grayed out).

I can't accept that; the two issues remain:
1) How do you expand/commit the transformation so it's not live anymore, while retaining the integrity of your object? If you can't, that's ridiculous.
2) If this was the normal behavior, then you ought to be able to separate the fill from the stroke on a newly-created shape with Expand Appearance as well, but you can't because it's grayed out.
Furthermore, common sense dictates that the user would rarely—if ever—want their shapes to be exploded like that. Seems more like an egregious oversight than "normal" behavior.

Blend modes in "stroke"-layer styles not working ?

Hi. Anybody else got problems with the the blend modes in the "stroke" layer style, or am I doing something wrong?
right click on layer > blending options > stroke > blend mode
(position=inside)
I want to use "fill type"="gradient", but the blend modes do not even work with "fill type"=color. For both fill modes, the stroke does not let any pixels of the layer shine through, no matter what blend mode I choose.
I often use blend modes, for example "darken", etc. I know how they work, but somehow for the stroke layer style it seems not to work at all.
I know, it's pretty basic, but I have spent several hours on that and simply don't succeed. Thanks for any help.

Ed Hannigan wrote:
So it seems. But the Stroke doesn't seem to work that way.
A question for Adobe techs?
Mylenium wrote:
... (or maybe it isn't and the bug has now become commonly accepted behavior?). It is strange, I grand you that. Maybe one day it will be changed/ fixed for the better.
As there's only a single sentence refering to the stroke layer style in the CS3 manual, I'd also be thankful for an Adobe comment, clarifying whether this is a bug or not and if it will be improved.
Just to depict the current behaviour in a more graphic way:
test image: layers:
stroke settings:
expected results:
actual results:
I'd suggest to add a checkbox "knockout", which would let the user choose between the two results.

Inside stroke layer style and opacity.

When i apply an inside stroke with transparency to a layer, the opacity seems to cause a knock-out effect on the layer itself rather than applying the transparent stroke.
How do i apply a semi transparent inside stroke without making the object it's applied to become transparent rather than the stroke itself?
Rob.

Unfortunately i'm already using inner glow
Basically i'm doing some old paper, so inner glow's being used for the browning around the inner edges.
I'm trying to use gradient stroke to give a thin highlight around the innner edge of the paper that fades to nothing. Bevel and Emboss can work for this sort of thing sometimes, but in this case it's not, hence why trying stroke.
Unfortunately the gradient stroke's transparency makes the object i'm applying everything to go transparent (i've exagerated the effect here by setting stroke to 100px, but the problem is obviously also present at 1px and just looks wrong).
Mind you - generally i'd like to understand why stroke behaves this way, as it's not the first time i've wanted to do something with stroke transparency that causes me this problem.
Rob.

New stroke options for the layer style "Stroke"

Hi,
The new stroke options are fantastic where you can edit gaps, align and corners. And I love the ability to add layer styles to groups which makes it much easier to work with separate parts in a group that should be treated as a common object.
BUT! Why haven't you updated the stroke (layer style) options to include these new awesome stroke features? I would love to be able to make dashed strokes as a layer style that can be applied to groups, and I don't see why this should be excluded as an option.
Thanks for an otherwise great application!
On twitter: @uxhannes

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

Breaking link with Symbol loses brush strokes

I'm disappointed to find that if a symbol instance containing brush strokes, is scaled and the symbol link is broken, all the brush strokes are converted to filled paths. I find, if I place an instance at 100%, then break link, the brush strokes are intact. This is also true of symbols containing Live Paint objects.
Has anyone else experienced this? I wonder why AI cannot just scale the brush width, instead of converting them to shapes.

For you, anything, Kurt.
I'm actually talking about the default CMYK artbrushes that ship with AICS2 (and maybe 10). More specifically the Chalk Scribble brush. That one seems to convert to filled paths when it's included in a symbol that's delinked once on the artboard.
I've also seen this with some custom made brushes of my own... usually complex with lots of points and curves. And I suspect what Ray sees happens with more complex brushes in symbols... scaled or otherwise depending on the particulars.

Erasing - Has Stroke??

Ok, I was simply trying to create something. I had overlapping shapes with the stroke layer style and I wanted to erase part of the shape so it was white there rather than a line from the overlapping. Apparently now with CS4 you cant just simply erase lines if the layer you are in has a stroke layer??? Cuz when I erase, it just like pushes the line, which ultimately is very cool, if I wanted to keep the line but erase the shape to create a custom one. But I just want to get rid of the line. I think I knew how to merge shapes in CS3 for them to share the same outline, but I dont know how now. Plus I dont think that is what I want cuz I only want the shapes to share the outline in a specific area. Please help this is very fustrating. I had about 30min between school and work and wanted to create something and it completely failed and only wasted my valuable time.
Can someone tell me how to merge shapes though? Like if you put two circles together like a ven diagram and then merge them so they have 1 outline not intersecting it gets rid of the middle lines that create a sort of () shape and instead you have 1 big outline of 2 circles?

Courtejoie, I really appreciate your input, unfortunately, I am very confused, lol. Ok, to begin with, I changed the settings of each of my shape layers to "layer mask hides effect" as you said, no problem. However, I did not see what it did or how it helped. When I erased, it still pushed the line around rather than just getting rid of it. First of, in order to even erase any of the shape I have to rasterize it, which is why I thought it might be convenient to merge the shapes instead.
"You are using layer masks and not erasing destructively, right?" I have no idea. What is a layer mask and what do you mean by erasing destructively? I am sorry, I know how to use the program..sort of..just not good with technical wording.
Each of my shapes are in a different layer, because for each new shape I make, it makes a new layer, however, if I try to copy one of the shapes to another shape's layer, when I "paste" it puts it in a new layer. Maybe because I am not selecting the "vector mask"? What's that? Lol. I learned how to mask in Flash and I know you can "mask" in photoshop, but I dont think I am trying to mask anything, or maybe that is what I am supposed to be doing?
I really did try to do everything exactly as you said it, I'm really sorry. = /

Text stroke not creating sharp corners.

Hi Everybody,
I've run into a peculiar problem.
I've got a text layer with quite a thick stroke (13 pixels). "Line Join" is set to "Miter" (for sharp corners). The problem is the stroke on one letter ("t"), is not sharp, but "cuts off". I know in Illustrator, you have a "Miter Limit" setting to fix this. Is there a way in AE to fix this? I need the text to animate, so I can't use a path of bitmap layer. Any thoughts on this?
Regards,
Nico

I would assume that this is not an AE problem. In the place where it doesn't behave correctly, most likely two nodes in the text contour are very close, resulting in unfavorable calculations. Short of editing the font there would be no way to "fix" this. You can, however, just use the Stroke layer style. If you make the text larger and set it to Inner Stroke, it willl be sharp. Since it is calculated as pixels, not vectors, it would not suffer the problem of the text outline...
Mylenium

"stroke" around letters in indesign?

Hello.
I want to do in InDesign (CS5.5) that, what i get in Photoshop if i make a "stroke" around the letters.
Is it posible?

You will have more control using the Stroke and Swatches panels.
Select your text
Click the icon in the Swatches panel for the Stroke color
Click the swatch you want applied (such as Red)
Move to the Stroke panel
Set the stroke weight, style, alignment (inside or outside of text glyph), etc.

(new to scripting) Only allow certain paragraph styles to break to next column/page

Hi all,
As stated, I'm very new to scripting. I've done a few small scripts to automate Photoshop tasks and such. I'm in the process of trying to learn Javascript as much as possible, with the hope of bringing about more efficiency for our small production department. It's a daunting task, but I'm trying my darnedest.
One of the number one goals I have is the find a way to automate pagination of weekly transaction records. These records run between 32 to 48 pages normally, with each page having 5 columns. Creation of these pages is very systematic, so it would seem that this process should be able to be automated, but there are some challenges I'm having a hard time thinking about how to attack.
One of the key tasks needing to be figured out is getting the records to go in with headings and subheadings always starting at the top of a page/column. Just about all the copy comes in with predetermined paragraph styles, so a script should easily be able to search for instances of each style. What needs to eb accomplished is only allowing the flow of copy to break on certain styles and not others ... (counties, towns, etc.)
For example: if you have the following ...
Countyland <styled "county">
Utopiatown <styled "town">
46 Appletree Lane ...... $500,000 <styled "listing">
Sold by: Some Guy   <styled "listing">
Bought by: Other Guy <styled "listing">
Mortgage: This Bank <styled "listing">
Date: 12/14/11 <styled "listing">
Dystopia Village <styled "town">
47 Orangeplant Road ...... $400,000 <styled "listing">
Sold by: Some Guy   <styled "listing">
Bought by: Other Guy <styled "listing">
Mortgage: This Bank <styled "listing">
Date: 12/14/11 <styled "listing">
If the two records above were to fall near the end of a column, the break to the next column should NOT occur anywhere except:
- Before the county (causing the county to start at the top of the next column
- Before the second town (Dystopia Village, forcing that town to the top of the next column)
- After both (forcing whatever town/county is next to goto the top of the next column)
So basically, I need to find a way PREVENT column breaks where they should not occur. Inserting column breaks is one thing (I know how to do that). Prevention is the issue though that confounds me.
Does anyone have any thoughts of how to achieve such a thing? I know there are "non-breaking space" characters ... is there, or could there be, some kind of a "non-breaking return" character? Or would it be more feasible to test for the paragraph style at the bottoms of columns and insert column breaks in once it finds an appropriate match?
Am I going about this all wrong?
Again, any help or suggestions are more than welcome.
Thanks much.
~Nate
FYI .. using InDesign cs5.5

I am now wondering about a possible solution. It would be one hell of a challenge for me to figure out how to code it, but I at least need to figure out the theory first, then I'll try to figure out how to code it.
Again, the issue at hand is preventing column breaks for the "listing" style in the following example. Please note, the number of "listing" lines varies. If the following two entries (in a long list of similar entries) were to be near the end of a column, I'm trying to cause the flow of text to break only before a county style, or a town style (if it's not the first town in the county). Basically, no breaks in the middle of listings.
Countyland <styled "county">
Utopiatown <styled "town">
46 Appletree Lane ...... $500,000 <styled "listing">
Sold by: Some Guy   <styled "listing">
Bought by: Other Guy <styled "listing">
Mortgage: This Bank <styled "listing">
Date: 12/14/11 <styled "listing">
Dystopia Village <styled "town">
47 Orangeplant Road ...... $400,000 <styled "listing">
Sold by: Some Guy   <styled "listing">
Bought by: Other Guy <styled "listing">
Mortgage: This Bank <styled "listing">
Date: 12/14/11 <styled "listing">
Naomi previously suggested messing with the "keep options" in the styles. This will solve the issue of preventing breaks before listing details start. But it won't help in keeping listing details from breaking, since the number of lines can vary.
I'm now thinking ... might it be possible to have a script search all copy, looking for the last line of listings, and then apply a second listing style with a different keep option setting? The "normal listing" style would "keep next 1 line". The "last listing" style would not, therefore, allowing a break.
Here's a map of what I'm thinking: (bear with me on the terrible syntax, this is just for illustrative purposes)
listingNormal has keep with next 1 line applied
listingBreak does not keep with next line
if currentLineStyle == listingNormal
AND
style of next line != listingNormal {
currentLineStyle = listingBreak
Does this make sense? If so, does this sound feasible?
Thanks any and all.
~Nate

Attaching page break to a paragraph style. Can I?

I know that we can set a paragraph to start on the next, left or right page, but is it possible to make a paragraph style that makes that para. the last one on the page? So I want the page break function attached to a style.
thanks
jon

[Jongware] wrote:
Did you try Scott's advice: set the Space After of that last paragraph to 20 inch?
When I tried this, it seemed to work, but I decided against suggesting it because I was also playing with some other settings that affected subsequent paragraphs, and I wasn't sure if the combination was making it appear to work. Growing up in FrameMaker, I learned that space before a paragraph is ignored at top of frame/column/page, and space after a paragraph is ignored at bottom of frame/column/page.
Well, lah de dah, InDesign honors space after a paragraph. Bingo. Simplest.
However, I'm curious why it's important to mark the end of one contributor's work this way, rather than marking the start of another contributor's work by applying the start at top of frame/column/page property. Unless the first new contribution paragraph is moved to another position in the sequence, first is always first; Next Style assures that pressing Return at the end of the first paragraph when authoring, or selecting multiple paragraphs and applying the top-of-container style to the first paragraph and letting the Next Style option handle the rest of the selection.
When the last paragraph moves forward in the text flow, or a paragraph is added after it, the new contributor's first paragraph at the top of the next container is not affected; if sufficient content is added or removed upstream to reflow the later contributors' work top-of-container always works as expected.
Is there some compelling reason not to mark the author change by the first-paragraph-at-top method?
HTH
Regards,
Peter
Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices

Break link to Character Style with JS (CS4ME)

Hi,
I'm wondering how to break a link to a character style in JS. By break
link I mean removing the character style but preserving the formatting.
Given a selected textStyleRange, say, in the UI there are two ways of
doing this. One is to click "Break link to Style" in the flyout meny of
the character style palette.
The other is to right-click and select "Apply character style."
It's a little unintuitive, because CLICKING on removes overrides,
but right-clicking and selecting the menu option doesn't.
So when I saw that, I said to myself aha! Probably:
myText.appliedCharacterStyle = myCharStyle
is equivalent to clicking on , while
myText.applyCharacterStyle(myCharStyle)
is equivalent to right-clicking on and choosing "Apply character
style."
But it isn't.
They both apply None and remove all formatting.
So, anyone know how to break a link to character style without removing
formatting in JS?
Thanks,
Ariel

Thanks Peter. That's interesting. After Shabbos I'll have to try figure
out how to apply a character style without removing overrides as well.
It may be a two-step procedure.
Thanks,
Ariel

Break link to Cell and Table Style and keep the style setting

For cell Selection is work (but can't keep the style setting after break the link), but I also want to break the table style, but error
For both Break link to cell/table style, I want to keep the style setting after break the link
BreakLinkToTableStyleSelection();
BreakLinkToCellStyleSelection();
function BreakLinkToTableStyleSelection () {
var
     mNone = app.activeDocument.tableStyles.item(0),
     mSel = app.selection[0];
if(mSel.constructor.name === "Cell" || mSel.constructor.name === "Table") {
    mSel.tables.everyItem().appliedTableStyle = mNone;
    return;
if(mSel.hasOwnProperty("baselineShift")){
    mSel.tables.everyItem().appliedTableStyle = mNone;
    return;
function BreakLinkToCellStyleSelection () {
var
     mNone = app.activeDocument.cellStyles.item(0),
     mSel = app.selection[0];
if(mSel.constructor.name === "Cell" || mSel.constructor.name === "Table") {
    mSel.cells.everyItem().appliedCellStyle = mNone;
    return;
if(mSel.hasOwnProperty("baselineShift")){
    mSel.tables.everyItem().cells.everyItem().appliedCellStyle = mNone;
    return;

For cell Selection is work (but can't keep the style setting after break the link), but I also want to break the table style, but error
For both Break link to cell/table style, I want to keep the style setting after break the link
BreakLinkToTableStyleSelection();
BreakLinkToCellStyleSelection();
function BreakLinkToTableStyleSelection () {
var
     mNone = app.activeDocument.tableStyles.item(0),
     mSel = app.selection[0];
if(mSel.constructor.name === "Cell" || mSel.constructor.name === "Table") {
    mSel.tables.everyItem().appliedTableStyle = mNone;
    return;
if(mSel.hasOwnProperty("baselineShift")){
    mSel.tables.everyItem().appliedTableStyle = mNone;
    return;
function BreakLinkToCellStyleSelection () {
var
     mNone = app.activeDocument.cellStyles.item(0),
     mSel = app.selection[0];
if(mSel.constructor.name === "Cell" || mSel.constructor.name === "Table") {
    mSel.cells.everyItem().appliedCellStyle = mNone;
    return;
if(mSel.hasOwnProperty("baselineShift")){
    mSel.tables.everyItem().cells.everyItem().appliedCellStyle = mNone;
    return;

Break link to style

I've just had a situation where the font in a masthead has changed.
I am guessing that when the masthead was built, a default paragraph style was in place so that the masthead represented style overrides, and that somehow the overrides have been removed.
To prevent it happening again I have broken the link to the style and I was expecting the type spec to then be bullet proof. But if I select it, although it no longer appears as a selected style in the paragraph panel, I am still able to use the panel to clear overrides, which returns the type to Times New Roman.
I guess the TNR comes from the No Paragraph Style on which the original style was based. But having broken the link, I would not have expected this behaviour.
Breaking the link to a style will obviously protect the type if the original style is edited, but shouldn't it also prevent regression to the base style?
If not, I guess that means that the only way to make a piece of text unchangeable is to edit No Paragraph Style to exactly represent each piece of text before setting it.
Any thoughts?
k

Thanks Dave.
Deck = sub editor oldspeak for a line of headline.
Maybe I'll go the styles folder route.
I'm only assuming that the problem came from removing overrides. The magazine is set mostly in Myriad Pro, but the masthead is three decks of Helvetica Bold condensed at different sizes, leading and tracking to form a square. Some of the words are solid black, others are tinted.
The magazine went to press with the Helvetica substituted by Myriad Pro Regular, but the size, leading and tracking seemed preserved so the headline looked right, just the wrong face. So perhaps removing overrides wasn't the culprit.
This was on an inside page. The cover masthead, thank goodness, was as it should have been, which makes me rule out font substitution.
The designer says she never touched the type at that point, so it's going to remain a mystery.
I'm just trying to prevent accidents in the future.
k

Animeted text stroke

Desired stroke around my text which is animated
I have a text which is animated. There is to the text layer added a Range selector, so I can choose which part of the text, to be influenced. I've added Stroke color and stroke Stroke Width is set to value 3 - but there will not be shown a stroke around my text - what am I doing wrong?

Does the original text have a stroke? Animators do not add properties, they modify existing ones. If you did not add a stroke using the character palette, there is nothing to modify. Also check the colorization method. If your initial stroke was black, using Hue animation would not work all too well. You may then need to use RGB or any other method...
Mylenium

Breaking up a stroke & stroke styles

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