Curve a pen stroke into a circle

I need to make a gear with VERY specific curves. I would pay someone if they could help me with this project, it's that important. I need to make a gear with spokes that can be reshaped, and adjustments will be automatically mirrored around the entire gear.
To do this, I want to create a noncircular segment of two spokes in the gear. Then this segment must be curved along a circular angle, then repeated to go all the way around and complete the whole gear.
For Part 1, I was thinking about putting the noncircular segment onto a circle path, forcing the baseline to follow this angle. Kind of like how you can put text on a path, but instead I want to use a shape. I haven't been able to figure out how to do this.
For Part 2, I want to use a mirror effect to copy the two spokes around the rest of the circle OR copy the spokes along the rest of the circle.
For Part 3, I want to be able to adjust the original two spokes and the rest of the mirrored or copied spokes follow suit. I also need a null controller for stroke width.
So far part one, does anyone know how to force a shape's baseline around a circular path? Or a better method? I'm in great need and seeking a genius or three!

I would build your gears in Illustrator then import the AI file as a comp and convert vectors to shapes. Then I would set a keyframe where you want to end up and then move to the start of the timeline and deconstruct the gear. In other words, build what you want to end up with first and then break it apart rather than take something that is only a small part of what you want and form that into the final product.

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Merge a photo and pen strokes into a single image

Good day.
I need to add a Camera and Pen control so that I take a picture, and then write with the pen above it. Is there any way to merge both photo and pen strokes into a single image, so I can stored them in a collection??
Thanks,

You cannot merge them into one physical image, but you can still store them in a collection for later display. Collect them, just like you would anything else, just store the photo as one name, and the pen as another.
Where you want to display them, just use two image controls, directly above each other. Set one to the photo, and one to the pen.
-Bruton
Thanks, I stored the photo url and strokes in the same collection, and then I did what you suggested: two image controles, one above the other. Thanks!
Antonio S.

Need info about making brush strokes into objects

I have been using a Wacom graphics tablet and Freehand to create my illustrations for many years (since Freehand v.2). Since Freehand's days are obviously numbered, I have finally decided to make the switch. So far, it hasn't been that difficult, but I seem to get stuck on one problem, and for me, it is a pretty big one.
In Freehand, I select the "variable stroke" tool in order to make a variable width line. It actually doesn't make a stroke, though. It makes a shape. I can then select the points anywhere on the edge of the shape and make adjustments.
In Illustrator, I do basically the same thing. I make a stroke, and the more pressure I put on the tablet the thicker the line gets. So far, so good. But, I can't do any adjustments to the thickness, make the ends of the line taper to a point, etc. So in order to make that stroke into a shape (with points along the outside edge) that I can adjust, I have to select the stroke, go to Object, then Expand Appearance for each stroke I make. This is a tremendous timewaster for me.
My question: Is there any way to make the "Expand Appearance" function stay on so that every stroke I make is automatically converted to a shape? Or, is there another function in Illustrator CS1 that I can select that will make all of my strokes shapes as I draw them?
If it will help, you can look at some of my work to see how I use the Variable Stroke tool and how essential it is to my style of illustration at: http://www.norrishallstudio.com

Norris,
Illustrator 7 and earlier drew all brush strokes as filled shapes. (It only had calligraphic brushes.) The live centerline arrived in AI 8, along with the other brush types.
While Illustrator does not have any "auto Expand" option, and one could theoretically be added, I wonder if it might not instead be preferable to give direct user interface control over the data collected by the tablet.
For example, take the following brush stroke:
If expanded, it would look like this:
But even though the individual anchor points of the fill shape would then be editable, it would still not be convenient to do most kinds of editing. The centerline kind of edits would become very difficult. But even doing things that preserve the centerline, such as thickening the stroke or adjusting the apparent pen tilt, you would have to move anchor points on both sides, possibly adding some, adjusting handle lengths, etc.
What if there was an option, possibly available via a button on the Control Palette when a brush stroke was selected, to show control handles for the pressure and other tablet data, something like this:
The controls would have sensitive regions that activated different kinds of variation, similar to how the Bounding Box transform controls do. Possibly it would be workable to control them via the Direct Select tool, but if that turned out to interfere too much with other Direct Select tool operations (such as adjusting the direction handles of the centerline, which would be likely to often be near the pressure controls), then there could be a dedicated tool or mode for adjusting them.
There are up to 5 kinds of tablet data that are collected at each sample point: pressure, tilt, bearing, rotation, and stylus barrel pressure. But only at most four can have meaning for any brush stroke, since there are at most four brush options that can be assigned tablet data to vary by. (For calligraphic brushes, the options are angle, roundness and diameter. For scatter brushes, they are size, spacing, scatter and rotation.)
If the tablet data controls had the I-beam shape shown above, there are four easily distinguishable aspects of the control: its length, its angle relative to the centerline, the width of the crossbars, and the tilt of the crossbars relative to the I-beam vertical.
(One could imagine assigning more variation, such as controlling the two crossbars independently, or moving the I-beam offcenter, but the more variables one allows, the trickier it gets to manipulate.) One could say that the length controlled whichever tablet data point was attached to the diameter or size of the brush, the I-beam angle controlled whichever tablet data point was attached to the brush angle or rotation, the crossbar width controlled whichever tablet data point was attached to the brush spacing or roundness, and the crossbar tilt controlled whichever tablet data point was attached to the scatter distance of a scatter brush. (One could also imagine calligraphic brushes having a symmetry setting, that controlled whether the brush shape was elliptical or squashed like a pear, and attach that to the crossbar tilt.)
Since there would be way too much visual clutter to show every sample point, I think it should be sufficient to show them at anchor points, and possibly at max and min values for the variable data. If the user wanted to gain control at a position where there was no marker displayed, they could always add an anchor point.
Although I am calling it "tablet data", a path drawn with a mouse or with one of the shape tools could still have the controls. It would start initally with all "average" values since no data was collected, and tablet data would be artificially constructed by moving the controls and then saved.
If controls like that were available for live brush strokes, would you still prefer to auto-expand your brush strokes on mouse up instead of leaving them live?
(For all I know, there may be some third-party plugin that already provides some such controls. The tablet data can be accessed and modified through the AITabletData suite in the public SDK.)

Is it possible to place a video into a circle frame for export as interactive PDF?

I've been trying to figure out how to embed video files into a circle shape frame for export as interactive pdf. Every time I export the document as interactive PDF, the video frame reverts back to a rectangle shape. Basically what I'm attempting to do is embed a .gif like animation of a face (saved as mp4 because it's my understanding that PDF can't support gif files) in a circle frame that plays on document load when exported as interactive pdf. Any suggestions, bypasses, solutions would be much appreciated.

Correct! Good solution!
But you missed a couple steps in your directions:
(1) Make a rectangle filled with Paper color.
(2) Make a circle filled with None (this will be the mask for the movie).
(3) Move the circle over the rectangle. Select both and choose Object > Path > Make Compound Path. This creates a paper-color rectangle with a hole.
(4) Position the rectangle-with-hole object over the movie to position the mask.
(5) Use the Buttons and Forms panel to make that object into a button. Give it an action of playing the movie.
(6) Choose File > Export > PDF (Interactive).
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Brilliant!

In PSE11, how do I "crop" a photo into a circle?

I would greatly appreciate step-by-step instruction on how to "crop" a photo into a circle in PSE11.
I've created an invitation for my daughters 1st birthday and I want to add a circular photo of her on the invite, but I can't seem to figure it out.
I understand that I can't technically "crop" it but I need the image to appear to be circular by using the transparency feature.
Again, I need a step-by-step as I'm still new to PSE11...
Thank you!

I'm curious as to why reply#1 didn't work. That is basic PSE stuff. Was the selection still active with marching ants as asked in reply#3? Perhaps somehow the selection was deleted before doing the inverse.
If you do get that to work, note that you first must convert the picture to a "regular" layer by renaming it from "Background" to anything else. Then the deleted portion will be replaced by transparency. If you do the delete on the Background layer the deleted portion is simply replaced by the color defined in the background color chip on the toolbar.

All icons on my Macbook have turned into blue circles?

All icons on my Macbook have turned into blue circles. Please help.

Might be corrupted Safari preferences...
Open a Finder window. From the Finder menu bar click Go > Go to Folder
Type or copy paste the following:
~/Library/Safari/WebpageIcons.db
Click Go then move the WebpageIcons.db file to the Trash...
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The apple on the gray start-up screen turns into a circle with a slash.

My G5 has been pretty reliable for the past three (?) years. Lately it's been a bit squirrely booting up--once it went into kernel panic during boot, but powering down and restarting seemed to fix that. Lately, too, when I let the machine run and it goes to sleep I'll come back after a couple of hours to find the fan running at top speed and the machine unresponsive. Yesterday it seemed to have problems booting so I reset the PRAM and NVRAM and ran Onyx and it worked fine all day. This morning when I went to boot, I got the usual gray screen with the whirling gear. After about a minute, the apple in the center of the screen turned into a circle with a slash while the gear continued to whirl. How do I fix this?

I've subsequently tried a number of things. I reset the SMU, which didn't help until I also reset the PRAM. Computer booted normally. I rebooted from the Tiger DVD and repaired the start up disk; there were only two small errors to be fixed. The machine booted normally (and pretty quickly) for about a week before the problem resurfaced. I again went through the first two steps and got things working once more.
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At first, I thought I'd leave it running all night, but when I got to the office in the morning the fans were running at full throttle and the machine was in a coma. All I could do was reboot--which it did, immediately going into kernel panic. I shut it down and rebooted, resetting the PRAM in the process. The computer booted and ran fine all day, although it seems slow (I did have Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom running simultaneously, but I do have 5 GB of RAM).
It's been suggested I may have a corrupt RAM chip (computer doesn't chirp at me, as I'm told it would) or, more terrifying, a processor is about to check out. I also have an ATTO SCSI card in this to run a legacy scanner. Could that be a problem?
Any advice?
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CLOSING A PATH MADE UP OF CURVES USING PEN TOOL AND STRAIGHT LINES USING LINE TOOL

Hi,
I have just started using Fireworks and am unable to close a
figure made up of curves using pen tool and line segments using pen
/ line tools. How do I plot points on any given shape and close it
so that i can colour the shape . Right now I am not able to give
colour to the shapes I have created.
Please help
Regards
Sanjish

SANJISH wrote:
> Hi,
> I have just started using Fireworks and am unable to
close a figure
> made up of curves using pen tool and line segments using
pen / line tools. How
> do I plot points on any given shape and close it so that
i can colour the shape
> . Right now I am not able to give colour to the shapes I
have created.
>
> Please help
>
> Regards
>
> Sanjish
>
A link to the file would be helpful.
Jim Babbage - .:Community MX:. & .:Adobe Community
Expert:.
http://www.communityMX.com/
CommunityMX - Free Resources:
http://www.communitymx.com/free.cfm
.:Adobe Community Expert for Fireworks:.
Adobe Community Expert
http://tinyurl.com/2a7dyp
See my work on Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jim_babbage/

Ibook that will not boot (apple turns into a circle with....

my ibook was clicking the other night. it has already been through the logic board recall. this appears to be the hard drive. after tech tool pro, the disk utilities, etc., and all of the alternate startup sequences, i now have an apple that turned into a circle with a slash through it (a do not allow type of symbol). i bought a new drive today and after reading many forums today, i am wondering if there is a recall, warranty or if i should send it in the my local store to get fixed or just do it myself tonight. any advice anyone?

Well, since I don't know your level of expertise, it's hard to advise you. Take a look at the online instructions:
http://www.pbfixit.com/Guide/50.12.0.html
http://www.powerbooktech.com/knowledge,name-Hard-Drive,type-6.htm
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Drag the rectangle into the Brushes palette.
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That can indicate a too-full hard drive. Highlight your hard drive's icon and then do "Get Info..." from the Finder's "File" menu. That will look something like this:
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See this thread:
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JET

Curve a pen stroke into a circle

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