Erasing portions of brush strokes that have effects

I have made some brush strokes and applied the 'gaussian blur' effect to them. I want to erase the portions of the brushstroke that extend over the outline of the drawing. I have tried the 'expand appearance' command but after doing so it will not let me use the eraser on the selected object. Not sure what to do! Very frustrated- I would appreciate any help, thanks.

Basically, you're thinking of Illustrator brushes as if they were raster or pixel based like they are in Photoshop. They are not. You can not simply erase the "overspray" areas outside the keyline. That's just not how Illustrator brushes work.
You would be better served by either A) using shapes and filling them with a gradient rather than using brushes at all. Or B) add a clipping mask to hide the overspray appearance of the brushes.
The help files will explain Clipping Masks further. Using the brush+mask method will easily double or triple the amount of work needed to color any piece. Not to mention, eventually cause the app to get a bit slower becuase it will have to redraw all teh brush strokes as you add new ones. It's just not an efficient way of working much of the time if you want hard edges on shapes.
Essentially, you're expecting raster-based results in a vector-based application. You need to reevaluate your workflow.
Of course, you could always take your vector keyline into Photoshop and paint color there in the manner you are attempting. That's what Photoshop does.

Similar Messages

What is the quickest way to paint a straight brush stroke that is NOT on 90 or 180 degrees?

I do perspective drawing for interior designers and do the colouring in Photoshop. Think of old fashioned painting with a brush/copic marker against a ruler to get a straight line, but with varying thickness or opacity. I would like the same effect in Photoshop.
The closest that I have come is to press Shift before the brush stroke. That constrains the stroke, makes a very neat line AND allows me to vary the line/brush thickness as I paint.
Often the lines may need to be at an arbitrary angle which is NOT 90 or 180 degrees. The only way I know of for getting that brush stroke in the correct position is to make sure that each stroke is on a separate layer. Select the stroke/transform/rotate. Quite a few steps as opposed to the one it takes to draw the line in the correct position and angle with a brush/ copic marker on paper.
This becomes time consuming and difficult once you have many lines to paint and if you need to be accurate (as with perspective drawing). If you are working on a very large canvas the point of rotation can sometimes be very far from where you are working (i.e. on a vanishing point) and difficult to see without a lot of Zooming and moving around on the canvas.
To Stroke a path with the brush gives an unrealistic and even line thickness which does not look hand painted.
Any suggestions?
Has anyone ever used a ruler while drawing on a Cintiq? That may give the desired effect and be much quicker than selecting and rotating.

Thank you R_Kelly! Though it is still a bit tricky judging the angle as you rotate the page, your workaround is actually a bit quicker than having to rotate each line individually.
This allows me to see the line as it develops in place and I also don't necessarily need to create a new layer for each new brush stroke, if I work carefully. Very close to placing the ruler on the work space before drawing a line!
Thank you!

How do you use pathfinder on objects that have effects applied?

I outlined a bit of text, and then applied Effect > Warp > Arch. What I'd like to do is cut apart parts of the now outlined letters. I tried to use the pathfinder palette, but it applies the pathfinder to old, non-arched shape. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.

In case it is important to keep the Warp effect alive you would have to use rather complex Pathfinder Effect constructions (see Effect > Pathfinder).
Probably it's easier to just expand the appearance of your Warp effects (see Object menu), then use the Pathfinder palette.
Which version of Illustrator are you using?

Bug - PDF export missing brush strokes

Can anyone reproduce this apparent bug in FHMX?
1. Apply a brushstroke to an object.
2. Group with 'Transform As Unit' checked.
3. Duplicate object several times. Scale some of the copies
larger and some
smaller.
4. Export document to PDF.
Open exported PDF in Acrobat, Illustrator or Preview.
Unexpected results:
All of the scaled copies of the object are missing from the
PDF.
Judy Arndt
FHMX 11.0.2, Mac OS 10.4.6

Rich Hudgins wrote:
> Confirmed in FH10 - OSX 10.4.x. I tried opening the PDF
back into FH
> just for kicks... very interesting. There are the exact
number of
> originals and dupes directly on top of the original.
i.e. I made an
> original and two smaller and two larger dupes, offset
from the original.
> In the FH opened PDF there were 5 exact copies of the
original item
> directly on top of each other. There were also 5
nostroke-nofill copies
> of the original shape without the brush stroke.
Wow! Yes! Same here.
Any transforms done to an object after being grouped with
'Transform As
Unit', are being ignored by the PDF Export.
This series of steps will produce the same problem described
by Makate.
1. Apply a brushstroke to an object.
2. Duplicate object and move it to another location on page.
3. Group the duplicate object with 'Transform As Unit' (TAU)
checked. Then
scale it larger.
4. Export document to PDF.
Unexpected results:
The duplicate object will be the same size as the original
object.
This will happen not only with brush strokes but with
ordinary strokes. PDF
Export is missing all transformations made after TAU is
applied. If I
remember correctly, TAU, which has been in FH since very
early versions, is
a kind of Postscript envelope. My theory is that because FH
doesn't have a
Postscript interpreter, it's missing the Postsript
transformations.
This limitation in PDF Export is very unfortunate because the
default
preference setting in a new FH installation is "Groups
transform as unit by
default". It is the logical way to preserve the appearance of
artwork with
strokes, brush strokes and vector effects. New users could
not possibly know
that this is one of the many limitations of PDF export. It's
not listed in
the technote, but it may be the reason for 'missing objects'.
http://www.adobe.com/go/tn_13496
Using Acrobat Pro/Distiller is the only safe way to generate
PDF files from
FreeHand.
Judy Arndt

WHY DON'T YOU AT LEAST IMPROVE THOSE BRUSH STROKES?!

I'm a professional digital artist-illustrator for about 7 years now. using photoshop since early years of my career. CS2, CS4, CS5.. on more than several mashines, top line HP workstations and EliteBook.
and one thing that bothers me and most of my colleagues is the quality of the brush strokes that PS provides.
why don't you improve em for christsake?!?
I must admit, this is a software issue, not mashine. neither the resolution, some options or tablet series has anything to do with this.. and it's especially visible on thicker strokes.
we work on intuos3, intuos4, intuos5, apple, win and whatnot. ant it's most obvious that the brush lines are as ugly as hell in this program entirely through all series.
when it comes to non-vector lineart, thats' basically why most of the artists/designers go for other progams, such as paint tool sai, sketchbook pro, manga studio and etc, and do the effects/coloring only in PS.
here's an ex. how the brush lines end. + if you work slower/move your pen more precise they go even worse!
I won't go further, like talking about the LAG with mixer brtushes and etc. most of the CG forums and communities are allready full of those discussions. you cannot even compete on this issue with other products.
that might be also a solution to rise your sales around the globe. cos now - why to buy a <1200$ worth PS program in europe when you'll probably end up mainly using paint tool sai or sketchbook pro for around 90$ and go for GIMP (free software) for effects.

I can understand a certain level of frustration, PAUZAK, but really? Are you a part of the same universe I'm in?
Your answer seems defensive; I'm just trying to help.
Points answered:
>then why other products managed to make it work?
I was only commenting on the points made in the thread YOU linked to. Apparently at least some people see the shoelace thing in the Wacom control panel. Given that evidence, which I doubt was manufactured, your pretense seems to need questioning. I suppose it's possible (actually, a certainty) that some products send different commands to the drivers than others, and that the drivers are doing things wrong only under some conditions. That's why I asked whether the Smoothing setting affected your setup.
>just like this forum.. can't make a reply like in other normal forums, or edit anything
I'm having no problems replying, or editing using any of the major browsers, including Firefox. I can't edit posts on an iPhone or iPad (not allowed to even try), but if you're using an actual computer and you can't even make the forum work, you have problems on your system.
>adobe is. cannot make the most simple things to work right and not LAG
Some operations in Photoshop are complex and when done with big brushes and all kinds of stuff (fuzzy edges, mixing, etc.) turned on they slow down, but with reasonable sized brushes I've been able to paint stuff, and I certainly don't have the world's fastest computer by today's standards. And even so, I'm not sure that's a situation where it's not working right per se... Maybe just one where a better computer is needed to paint with really big brushes and all the fancy stuff turned on. That *could* be a better computer than any invented yet, but that's okay - see next year's lineup...
>looks like the staff is obviously looking somewhere else
Wow, and you posted that *right* after one of the senior Photoshop scientist/engineers at Adobe responded specifically to you. When's the last time an engineer from any other big software company responded to you?
>Photoshop is still a huge and expencive disappointment so far. ask any pro
Yeah, all the pros just avoid Photoshop. That's why Adobe is doing so poorly as a business. They can hardly sell any copies at all!
PAUZAK, I'll go out on a limb and say making things up and trolling for shock value and blaming the world for your own problems probably aren't going to help you reach a solution.
-Noel

CS6 is messing up my brush strokes?

I've had some trouble with Photoshop lately with my tablet. Whenever I'm trying to draw, it suddenly creates a brush stroke that I didn't do. Basically, it takes the brush stroke, extends it, brings it back, and thickens it like pen pressure was freaking out. I have a Genius tablet (not sure what model), and it never does this in Paint Tool SAI for me. Is my tablet just not compatible for CS6? I've tried it on CS5, too, and it does the same thing, so maybe it's not Photoshop friendly?
Is there any setting or something I can change to fix it?
Thanks
Stilanion

This is what I mean by it messing up my strokes.

Brush strokes disappear upon to Flash

I've created an Illustrator CS3 illustration that includes a few different art brush strokes at different line weights.
The brush strokes that appear small (small in size/shape/width) in the file disappear entirely when I import the file onto the stage in Flash. Thicker brush strokes look fine.
I tried expanding the brush strokes (turning them into polygons) before import but they still disappear when brought into Flash.
Does anyone know why this is or if there's a workaround?
Thanks,
Joe

Hi Wade,
Thanks for your quick response.
I tried importing it as a symbol into Flash but the small brush strokes still disappeared.
A hint to what might be causing the problem: When I enlarge the artwork in Illustrator by 500%, some of the smaller brush strokes that disappeared earlier suddenly appear successfully after importing to Flash. Not all of them. Enlarging the artwork even further adds a few more brush strokes but some of the tiny ones still drop out.
Can I e-mail you the file directly rather than posting it on the public forum?

How to achieve less smoothing with brush strokes and wacom?

Is there a smoothing setting for brushes? When I draw certain shapes with sharper corners (like squares) illustrator rounds them out very excessively. I know there has to be a certain amount of smoothing to convert a stroke made by the user into a vector, but is there a way to reduce the amount. Interestingly, if I draw the shape really fast, I get the desired result, however if I draw slowly, it rounds it tremendously. I would think it would be the other way around because with a slower stroke you are giving more input points and therefore more precision but this is obviously not the case. Basically, I want to achieve brush strokes that more accurately represent my input. Thanks in advance for the help.

thanks so much for the quick reply! It couldn't be any easier. I just lowered the fidelity setting to the minimum and it is behaving perfectly.

BRUSH STROKE in/out configuration WON't WORK why ?

I use photoshop for years now, I'm not a noob.
I've been trying to fix this problems since I started to use it, but I HAVEN't found a single solution to it !
I customized the brush strokes to have a thin STROKE out/in but every time i get these bumps at the end of a stroke
I reinstalled the program a couple of times, and it's not only photoshop CS6, every photoshop has this problem.
But when I try another drawing program, there it works fine. SO I DON't KNOW WHAT TO DO.
PLEASE HELP ME !!!

thanks for the list of all shortcut keys -
exemple for MixUp: I click Shift+F5 in order to get the unsharp mask and end up with the Fill window...
Most of the simple shortcut work just fine - and now I have even figured out how to add my own shortcuts to the list So I might be even able to fix my MIXUP......
Thanks, you helped me a lot.
Best, Bee.

Effects not working/takes numerous brush strokes to apply?!

Hi there...Maybe I messed something up on accident..
But in lightroom cc, When I hit 'k' to bring up an effect it barely works...
Say "31" for full desaturation (bw)
I used to be able to achieve the effect in one drag and click of the mouse. Now to get it, I have to apply the brush stroke in the selected area it 10-20 passes of the brush. The slider is still at -100 for Saturation..Is this an update to the program or did I somehow manage to mess up my settings somewhere?
Same for every other effect (just re-tried with 01 - Burn...) does nothing really
What happened or how can I get my effects back to how they were before?!
Thanks,
Eddie

Thanks, my flow was at 10, not sure how it got there from 100, but thank you so much! Played around with both sliders and get what they do now! Thanks Bob!

If my iphone, ipad, MAC and macbook pro are all linked, and then I upgrade only my phone to iOS 7.0, does that have an effect on my calendar, etc. It doesn't seem to be showing the same data it was before the update. Lost lot of info from calendar.

If my iphone, ipad, MAC and macbook pro are all linked, and then I upgrade only my ipone to IOS 7.0, does that have an effect on the linking to my other MAC products. It seems my calendar has lost a lot of information since the upgrade.

If you purchased Lion for your iMac, just log into the Mac App Store from your MacBook using the Apple ID under which you purchased Lion and go to the Purchases page. You will be able to download and install Lion there.
searching the internet i found a link to upgrtade to 10.7
The only place you get get Lion is from the Mac App Store. If you found some other site, that was an illegal copy and almost certainly tied to someone else's Apple ID and hence unusable by you. If the link was just to the Mac App Store, see above.
As to the problem with synchronization to iCloud, that's not a 10.6 question, so I'd suggest you take up that specific issue in either the Lion or iCloud forums, providing full details, and someone there can probably help you sort things out.
Regards.

Is ther a way to speed up a Mac? Mine has gotten slower and slower over time. When memory comes close to full would that have an effect on performance? Is there a way to determine unused programs/software to remove and free space?

Is there a way to speed up a Mac (similar to de-fragging on a PC)? Mine has gotten slower and slower over time.
When memory/disc comes close to full would that have an effect on performance? How should I determine what programs/software to remove and free space?

Things You Can Do To Resolve Slow Downs
If your computer seems to be running slower here are some things you can do:
Start with visits to:     OS X Maintenance - MacAttorney;
                                  The X Lab: The X-FAQs;
                                  The Safe Mac » Mac Performance Guide;
                                  The Safe Mac » The myth of the dirty Mac;
                                  Mac maintenance Quick Assist.
Boot into Safe Mode then repair your hard drive and permissions:
Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions Pre-Lion
Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.
Repair the Hard Drive - Lion/Mountain Lion/Mavericks
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the Utilites Menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD disk icon and click on the arrow button below.
When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported, then click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu. Select Restart from the Apple menu.
Restart your computer normally and see if this has helped any. Next do some maintenance:
For situations Disk Utility cannot handle the best third-party utility is Disk Warrior; DW only fixes problems with the disk directory, but most disk problems are caused by directory corruption; Disk Warrior 4.x is now Intel Mac compatible.
Note: Alsoft ships DW on a bootable DVD that will startup Macs running Snow Leopard or earlier. It cannot start Macs that came with Lion or later pre-installed, however, DW will work on those models.
Suggestions for OS X Maintenance
OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are scheduled to occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. The maintenance scripts run in the early AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep.) If this isn't the case, then an excellent solution is to download and install a shareware utility such as Macaroni, JAW PseudoAnacron, or Anacron that will automate the maintenance activity regardless of whether the computer is turned off or asleep. Dependence upon third-party utilities to run the periodic maintenance scripts was significantly reduced since Tiger. These utilities have limited or no functionality with Snow Leopard or later and should not be installed.
OS X automatically defragments files less than 20 MBs in size, so unless you have a disk full of very large files there's little need for defragmenting the hard drive.
Helpful Links Regarding Malware Protection
An excellent link to read is Tom Reed's Mac Malware Guide.
Also, visit The XLab FAQs and read Detecting and avoiding malware and spyware.
See these Apple articles:
          Mac OS X Snow Leopard and malware detection
          OS X Lion- Protect your Mac from malware
          OS X Mountain Lion- Protect your Mac from malware
          About file quarantine in OS X
If you require anti-virus protection I recommend using VirusBarrier Express 1.1.6 or Dr.Web Light both from the App Store. They're both free, and since they're from the App Store, they won't destabilize the system. (Thank you to Thomas Reed for these recommendations.)
Troubleshooting Applications
I recommend downloading a utility such as TinkerTool System, OnyX, Mavericks Cache Cleaner, or Cocktail that you can use for removing old log files and archives, clearing caches, etc. Corrupted cache, log, or temporary files can cause application or OS X crashes as well as kernel panics.
If you have Snow Leopard or Leopard, then for similar repairs install the freeware utility Applejack. If you cannot start up in OS X, you may be able to start in single-user mode from which you can run Applejack to do a whole set of repair and maintenance routines from the command line. Note that AppleJack 1.5 is required for Leopard. AppleJack 1.6 is compatible with Snow Leopard. Applejack does not work with Lion and later.
Basic Backup
For some people Time Machine will be more than adequate. Time Machine is part of OS X. There are two components:
1. A Time Machine preferences panel as part of System Preferences;
2. A Time Machine application located in the Applications folder. It is
    used to manage backups and to restore backups. Time Machine
    requires a backup drive that is at least twice the capacity of the
    drive being backed up.
Alternatively, get an external drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
1. Carbon Copy Cloner
2. Get Backup
3. Deja Vu
4. SuperDuper!
5. Synk Pro
6. Tri-Backup
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files. For help with using Time Machine visit Pondini's Time Machine FAQ for help with all things Time Machine.
Referenced software can be found at MacUpdate.
Additional Hints
Be sure you have an adequate amount of RAM installed for the number of applications you run concurrently. Be sure you leave a minimum of 10% of the hard drive's capacity as free space.
Add more RAM. If your computer has less than 2 GBs of RAM and you are using OS X Leopard or later, then you can do with more RAM. Snow Leopard and Lion work much better with 4 GBs of RAM than their system minimums. The more concurrent applications you tend to use the more RAM you should have.
Always maintain at least 15 GBs or 10% of your hard drive's capacity as free space, whichever is greater. OS X is frequently accessing your hard drive, so providing adequate free space will keep things from slowing down.
Check for applications that may be hogging the CPU:
Pre-Mavericks
Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder. Select All Processes from the Processes dropdown menu. Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order. If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time (>=70,) then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar. Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process. See if that helps. Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.
Mavericks and later
Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder. Select All Processes from the View menu. Click on the CPU tab in the toolbar. Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order. If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time (>=70,) then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar. Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process. See if that helps. Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.
Often this problem occurs because of a corrupted cache or preferences file or an attempt to write to a corrupted log file.

What trusted web sites do you use that have free or purchase photoshop brushes?

What trusted web sites do you use that have free or purchase photoshop brushes?

The size and resolution depends on the intended output.
In my opinion relevant zooming shortcuts would be cmd-0 (View > Fit on Screen), cmd-1 (View > 100%) and cmd-spacebar/cmd-alt-spacebar to temporarily switch the current Tool to the Zoom Tool.

I'm using a pc, (windows 8.1,) and I cannot get a thick and thin line with CS6. None of the brush tool settings have any effect, even in the preview. Is there a setting I need because I'm using a pc?

I'm using a pc, (windows 8.1,) and I cannot get a thick and thin line with CS6. I want to draw, but I cannot get any linework like I should. I also use Sketchbook Pro, and ToonBoom, and I get wonderful linework. But not with Photoshop.
None of the brush tool settings have any effect, even in the preview. Is there a setting I need because I'm using a pc and not a mac?

Thanks for your response,
I'm using a Fujitsu T901 laptop, with a stylus pen. Painting works great in Photoshop, but for drawing there is no sensitivity at all. Frans Vischer
author and illustrator of Fuddles, A Very Fuddles Christmas and Jimmy Dabble
www.fransvischer.com
pamperedfatcat.wordpress.com

HT5661 i have an ipad an a iphone im selling my ipad and wanna erase all the content but was wondering if i erase everything will it take that stuff ofmy phone to? i dont want to loss my photos

i have an ipad an a iphone im selling my ipad and wanna erase all the content but was wondering if i erase everything will it take that stuff ofmy phone to? i dont want to loss my photos

Be sure your photos and any other important data/media/pictures
are backed up - iCloud, DropBox, some service of your choice.
If your only copy is on the iPhone and the iPhone is lost/stolen/broken,
you lose your photos, etc.

Erasing portions of brush strokes that have effects

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