How to divide brush strokes?

Hi everybody,
I have no problem dividing objects using the "divide" tool in the Pathfinder palette, but I was wondering if there was a way to divide brush strokes?
For example, let's say you wanted to paint three brush strokes right next to each other, but not overlapping. Is there a way to select all three strokes and then divide them so no one stroke resides over another, they would be completely separate of each other.
The divide tool only works with objects, or so it seems.
Thanks.
Mark

Hi Kurt,
Here's another pic. I created a path outline using the pencil, then clicked on the "draw inside" button to colorize it with three different colors. As it is, the colors overlap, but I'm looking for a way to select these three different colors and separate them so they no longer overlap.
Is this possible?
Thanks.
Mark

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h,
As I (mis)understand it, (in effect) just by clicking the Reduce to Basic Appearance button in the Appearance palette (and setting the desired Stroke Weight, if different from 1pt).
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Brush strokes very slow to render in PS 2014

Running CC PS 2014 on a MacPro 3.7 GHz with 32Gb RAM
Large brush strokes take many seconds, sometimes tens of seconds, to render.
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I've fiddle with the GPU setting with no joy. I set the system on the MacPro via Migration Assistant from my 17" MBPro. The MBPro suffered the same problem despite 16Gb RAM.
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Two things I would try doing.
Backup to another drive with SuperDuper.
Boot off the clone, see how it runs.
Repair the internal drive with DU and follow up with Disk Warrior.
Fixed things for me when I was getting ready for 10.5.2, but in the end, and because DW 4.1 wasn't yet available to upgrade, did a fresh install when 10.5.2 was available and things have been fine.
Leopard Cache Cleaner or Path Finder 4.8 can both I think delete all those ".DS_" files which might help.
Use to be a phrase "Finder Amnesia" where it was not or was slow to do things like show new files in Finder; not showing folder sizes even when selected (command option I could 'wake it up' somewhat).
Finder is suppose to have been "improved" but it is a huge pile of code.
The only way I find Finder and system to really feel responsive - for me - is to boot from a fast dedicated boot drive, and to have /User/account on another drive or better yet, on a stripped RAID. Not an option for most, and I don't think that should even be necessary but I liked 15K drives and RAID before and addicted to speed I guess.
Outside of faster drives and more memory, not much you can do, but the above cloning (and restore back) does seem to work and worth doing - I do it once or twice a year at least, generally when there is a .x update to OS X.
I would be more inclined to suspect corrupt caches, directory, prefs, DS_Store files.

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.)

Scale Brush Stroke?

Hello... New to Illustrator...
I'd like to scale a brush stroke. How do I do this? Please see below.
Left is original stroke
Right is resized by pressing shift then pulling box to upper right.
I found on the forum to tick preferences - scale strokes & effects but still not working?
Thank you,
RF

This is the default behavior of brushes. They are "live" and are simply reapplied to your path as you adjust your path (scaling or otherwise). This has nothing to do with scaling strokes or effects -- this is a brush, not a stroke, and not an effect.
To get what I think you want, you will need to do one of the following before you scale the path:
- Select the path and choose Object > Expand Appearance. This will reduce the brush to actual art that will scale as you would expect.
- Turn the path into a Symbol. Then scale the symbol.
- Select the path and click the Options Of Selected Object button that appears at the bottom of the Brushes panel. In the dialog that appears, check the Proportional option.
- Double click the brush in the Brushes panel. In the dialog box that appears, choose the Scale Proportionately setting. This will change the behavior of the brush of course.
Mordy

Can you smooth out a brush stroke?

I am using an animated brush stroke to provide the Indiana Jones look on top of a picture of a google map for a trip I took. I can draw the brush stroke and set a key frame on the "end" attribute so that it paints on the stroke, but the stroke is not as smooth as I would like it and I can't find a way to edit the vertices of the brush stroke and can't apply the smoother to it either. Once you draw a brush stroke, can you smooth it out? Also, since I drew the brush stroke on top of my layer, is there a way to put a shadow underneath the brush stroke?
Thanks in advance!

I'd use a shape layer and the Trim Paths path operation rather than a paint stroke.
There's a link to a video tutorial showing how to do this in the
"Alter shapes with path operations" section of After Effects Help on the Web.
But, if you are using a paint stroke, then you can decrease the value of the Spacing property to make the strokes more smooth and continuous. See the
"Brushes and the Brushes panel" section of After Effects Help on the Web.
[Edit: Oh, I just realized that just meant "smooth" as in having fewer and less sharp turns. For this, you should copy the Path property of the paint stroke, paste it into the Position property of a temporary dummy layer, run the Smoother on that motion path, copy the motion path, and then paste that into your paint path. If you just want to edit the path a little bit, then you can copy it into a mask path and use the mask path editing tools and techniques. David Wigforss has a tip about this
on this page. The basic thing to take away from this is that you can copy and paste between the various kinds of paths and use the tools for one to help you with the other. (See
"Create a mask or shape from a motion path".)]
Regarding the shadow: There are many ways to do this. The first that comes to my mind for the paint stroke is to duplicate the stroke, make it a dark grey, reduce its opacity, and offset its position slightly from the other stroke. (Each paint stroke has its own Transform properties, so you can just go into the duplicate stroke's Transform property group and add a little to its Position values.) If you decide to go with the shape layer option, you could do essentially the same thing or you could use a Drop Shadow
layer style.

Illustrator brush stroke - Character arm rig

I found some fantastic tutorials on how to animated cartoon characters going from Adobe Illustrator to Flash. Very useful.
One tip that was tantalizingly mentioned by not spelled out was how you can create a character's whole arm as a brush stroke in Illustrator and then animated it in Flash. See for yourself at the 06:45 marker.
http://www.youtube.com/user/PeaceLoveAnimation#p/u/0/ywONJam2dSg
Anyone have any idea how you can take this brush stroked arm into Flash and have it be as flexible & keyable?
Mahalo for sharing!

Still no reply from anyone here.
I continue on in the wilderness alone.
So I experimented with my last theory. Attempted to use the Puppet Pin Tool in After Effects to achieve the flexiblity I'm looking for. FAILED! It essentially creates a rastered video when exported as either FLV or XFL. The XFL version creates an alias halo as well.
Next I attempted to use the very dodgy IK bone tool in Flash. That created all sorts of overlapping compound path problems.
The solution is out there somewhere!
We've seen it work.
Still it eludes me.
Mai Tai to anyone that can help a fellow animator out!

Brush stroke pattern that i want to use as a background in Photoshop CS4.

I've painted a piece of paper with a brush stroke pattern that i want to use as a background in Photoshop CS4. I know how to make a fill layer and apply a colour to a shape, but can you do this for a pattern you've made? I also want to make the pattern a certain pink, and select an elipse in the middle which would just be a different colour section of the same pattern. Is this possible?

so this first is the pattern/image i want to change the colour of:
and below is how i want the colour changes to be specified to the two areas created by this elipse shape: i want to apply that sort of shape and colour differentiation to the texture/pattern/shape of the brush strokes.

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

How to divide brush strokes?

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