Strokes to Objects

I am new to Illustrator and use CorelDraw for a couple of years. I wanted to the know the equivalent to transforming a stroke into an object in Illustrator and how to create a contour outline around an object to be able to break it away to create its very own object?

Navarro,
If you want the full extension of the fill with one colour outside it, you may just open the Appearance palette, drag the Stroke beneath the Fill, and increase it Stroke Weight and/or recolour it if desired.
If you want a normal stroke over fill and then an additional colour round it, to get a single path you may Add New Stroke as suggested by Steve, change the colour, and drag it beneath the fill; to get an additional path you may either Object>Path>Offset path with a suitable Offset, which will place it behind the original, and possibly change the Stroke Weight along with the colour (and possibly remove the fill), or you may copy the path to the back and proceed similarly.
With these ways there is no need for outlining the Stroke, unless wanted for other reasons.
So it all depends on the exact case in question.

Similar Messages

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.)

Remove stroke from object in CP4

Hi everyone
Apologies if this question has been asked before.... I did look for a relevant thread but couldn't find one.
I'm new to Captivate and am trying to create a simple rectangle with a semi-transparent fill, but with no stroke/outline. I can sort out the fill, but cannot find a way to set the stroke to "none" or the width of the stroke to zero. When I look at the Properties of the rectangle (below) I cannot see a way of doing this?
Is there a way I can create a simple shape without a border?
Many thanks
Laura

Hi there
If all you want is a rectangle, you should consider a Highlight Box object. ( Insert > Standard Objects > Highlight Box )
Cheers... Rick
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How do I slice an object in half without a stroke appearing where I sliced it?

I want to be able to draw an object that has a stroke and a fill, and then slice a line through the object so I can give it two separate fills. This is effectively what I'm trying to do: http://imgur.com/Obqwg
What is the easiest, most efficient way to do this? Right now I have two fill-only objects (the top color object and bottom color object) framed by another stroke-only object on top. The method I'm using makes it very difficult to edit the shape later since I'm now dealing with three separate parts.

This is actually possible below is a rectangle with one stroke two fills on of the fils has a tranfsform effect scaling it vertically and and moving it downward
then I made a Envelope Distort with mesh giving it 2 columns and 12 rows so that I only had to work with some of the rows that were positioned where I want to create the bend or wave.
I could do avideo if the OP cannot figure it out.

Changing Fill/Stroke tint on Text/Objects

Maybe it´s possible to create scripts as for example:
1 - Script increase 10% tint Black fill for Frame Text (to apply in text) selected by Selection Tool (I hate Type tool)
2 - Script increase 10% tint Black stroke for Frame Text (to apply in text) selected by Selection Tool (I hate Type tool)
3 - Script increase 10% tint fill Black for Object
4 - Script increase 10% tint Black stroke for Object
Application:
The Script (Alt+>) on selected object with 10% Tint Black go to 20% Black, So apply the same script (Alt+>) and the object go to 30% Tint Black, on the on till 100% Black.
Other Script (Alt+<) to decrease till 0% Black (no fill)
4 Scripts (1,2,3,4) to increase and 4 Scripts (1,2,3,4) to decrease.
I hope you understand me. Thank you very much!

Four scripts? Sure. (Disclaimer: all typed directly into the forum, it May Not Work.)*
1.
if (app.selection[0].hasOwnProperty("texts"))
app.selection[0].texts[0].fillTint = app.selection[0].texts[0].fillTint < 90 && app.selection[0].texts[0].fillTint != -1 ? app.selection[0].texts[0].fillTint + 10 : 100;
2.
if (app.selection[0].hasOwnProperty("texts"))
app.selection[0].texts[0].strokeTint = app.selection[0].texts[0]. strokeTint < 90 && app.selection[0].texts[0]. strokeTint != -1 ? app.selection[0].texts[0]. strokeTint + 10 : 100;
3.
if (app.selection[0].hasOwnProperty("fillTint"))
app.selection[0].fillTint = app.selection[0].fillTint < 90 && app.selection[0].fillTint != -1 ? app.selection[0].fillTint + 10 : 100;
4.
if (app.selection[0].hasOwnProperty("strokeTint"))
app.selection[0].strokeTint = app.selection[0].strokeTint < 90 && app.selection[0].strokeTint != -1 ? app.selection[0].strokeTint + 10 : 100;
The reverse, 10% lighter, would be this
1.
if (app.selection[0].hasOwnProperty("texts"))
app.selection[0].texts[0].fillTint = app.selection[0].texts[0].fillTint < 0 ? 100 : app.selection[0].texts[0].fillTint > 10 ? app.selection[0].texts[0].fillTint - 10 : 0;
2.
if (app.selection[0].hasOwnProperty("texts"))
app.selection[0].texts[0]. strokeTint = app.selection[0].texts[0].fillTint < 0 ? 100 : app.selection[0].texts[0]. strokeTint > 10 ? app.selection[0].texts[0]. strokeTint - 10 : 0;
3.
if (app.selection[0].hasOwnProperty("fillTint"))
app.selection[0].fillTint = app.selection[0].fillTint < 0 ? 100 : app.selection[0].fillTint > 10 ? app.selection[0].fillTint - 10 : 0;
4.
if (app.selection[0].hasOwnProperty("strokeTint"))
app.selection[0].strokeTint = app.selection[0]. strokeTint < 0 ? 100 : app.selection[0].strokeTint > 10 ? app.selection[0].strokeTint - 10 : 0;
* Not entirely true anymore -- I just had to try, and fortunately found a bugfeature (or possibly a featurebug): when the Fill or Stroke reaches 100%, it is reported as "-1".

What is the difference between Object Outline Stroke, Object Expand..., and Object Compound Path/Make?

Could anyone explain the differences between these three commands? I created a circle with a stroke, applied all three commands, and ended up with the same thing, a compound path. Are there situations where this is not the case, or situations where one of these commands is more appropriate?

Cleveland,
In the case of the straight stroke/nofill, object>outline stroke and object>expand seem to do the same thing.
In the Layers palette you can see the three different outcomes for Expand if you have both Fill and stroke ticked, only Fill ticked, and only Stroke ticked. Only the last one corresponds to Outline Stroke.
You should use Outline Stroke as the simplest one if that is what you need. Compound Path is for creating something with one or more holes from multiple paths, or for collecting paths to forrm the Clipping Path of a Clipping Mask. Expand is for the rest.

How do I get 1 object to appear behind and in front of different parts of a Letter?

Hi, I'm using Illustrator CC, there are 4 orange objects and the letter A in the image below. The blue arrow is to point to where I want the orange object to appear in front of that part of the black letter A. The green arrow points to where I want the orange object to remain behind that part of the letter A. Can anyone suggest how I make only the orange part (blue arrow) appear in front of the letter A, while still retaining the orange gradient? I tried using the scissor tool to slice the object in half and then re-arrange, but that tool seems to 'reset' the gradient.

Obelix,
You may (keeping the A as live Type if you wish):
1) Create a stroke/nofill object that covers the part of the orange object to go in front of the A;
2) Copy the orange object and move the topmost one in front of the A (or the bottommost behind it);
3) Select the object from 1) and the topmost orange from 2) and Object>Clipping Mask>Make.
With this, part of the topmost orange object will be clipped out so you can see the bottommost one go behind the A where it should.

Big problem, Live Paint Bucket changing strokes

Hi all, so in the first picture you can see the finished line work. When I fill the face with a color in Live Paint, it changes the strokes and makes them appear jagged in varying widths, it's especially obvious on the eyes, ears, and hair - it looks like it is applying Pathfinder>Divide. I have the stroke set to nothing when I apply the fill, please help!

how about this?
1. duplicate the lineart and put it underneath the layer and lock the original
2. convert the lineart into an outline stroke by going to Effect>Outline Stroke then Object>Expand Appearance
3. Open Pathfinder Pallete and then select all and Unite/Add it.
4. change everything to no stroke and no fill
5. select all then convert it to live paint
6. deselect the converted path and start using live paint bucket.
7. after that expand it and ungroup so you can move the fill path. also you'll notice that it will remove all path you have been converted.
reply if it works,

Problem filling a stroke with white

I'm no Illustrator expert so forgive me in advance if I use the wrong terminology.
I want to produce a white image of a stag without a background. I traced the image and have it rendered with a path using the stroke tool. You can see the stroke selected below.
My goal is to remove the green circle in the background and save the white stag only. Right now the stroke is not filled -- the white color is the transparent background. This is what the image looks like in Illustrator without the background and no color applied to the stroke.
Of course if I deselect the stroke, the object disappears, and when I save it, there's nothing visible. My goal is to print a white stag on a green T-shirt. Do I need to convert the stroke object to something else, then apply a fill? I don't know how to proceed.
Can you please advise me how to get from where I am to where I need to be?
Thanks very much for your guidance.
Brian

Just fill it with black. Then tell whomever is doing the printing to print it with white.
The printer needs an image that will print as a black-and-white solid, not a tint. Any color other than black (including shades of black) will print as a tint (array of dots) unless the color is defined as a spot color and the file is printed as color separations. So without knowing the kind of printing you intend to use, the simplest method of providing single-color artwork is simply to provide a black image and tell the printer the color you want to print.
A design like that might be put on a garment by silkscreening (most common), or by cutting the shape from heat applied vinyl, or even by embroidery. Either way, simply providing a black image will work.
JET

Clipping masks in ai CS5 deletes strokes and other crazy things

When creating a clipping mask, Illustrator CS5 deletes the stroke on the mask itself and when I add the stroke back in, it adds the same stroke to objects within the clipping mask.
In the file below, Figure 1 shows a rectangle with a black stroke and an orange circle with no stroke. Figure 2 shows the result of creating a clipping mask - the black stroke on the rectangle has been deleted. Figure 3 shows the result of adding the black stroke to the mask - it adds the stroke to the orange circle as well.
This is one of the many things about Illustrator that lead me to believe that the people at Adobe have never tried to work with their own programs. Why on earth would I want the stroke to be eliminated in the first place and why would I want it to be added to the items inside the mask when I go to replace it?
Is there something I should do differently or is this yet another oversight I'll have to work around forever?

Thank you to Larry and Scott! That's exactly right. I wasn't aware that by making a clipping mask you also make a group (and I'm not entirely sure that it logically should) but using the direct selection tool does the trick.
Thanks again,
Dave

Overprint stroke not working right.

We are in a production environment and have to trap files all the time. Normally it's not an issue but I've noticed my staff are having problems with overprinting colors. I don't know if this is a document setting or preferences problem, or something resulting from a recent update. I am currently running Illustrator CS5.5 (15.1.0 and have all the latest updates).
Here is how to reproduce my problem:
create a (blue) box using the following color: C100, M20, Y0, K0
Overlapping the blue box, create a (magenta) box with this color: C0, M100, Y50, K0
Use the same color for the stroke.
On the magenta box, turn on overprint preview, and enable "overprint stroke".
You will see that the stroke becomes semi-transparent as a simulation of how it will print when the stroke overprints. This is how it should normally work.
Now try this:
Change the stroke on the magenta box from C0, M100, Y50, K0 to C1, M100, Y50, K0 (in other words, change the cyan from zero to 1)
The overprint/trapping disappears entirely!
This happens with other colors as well, and the common denominator seems to be that the overprint fails the moment that any 100% color UNDERNEATH the overprinting stroke is present in the stroke color.
Without the overprint working, we are stuck manually creating stroke intersection objects and jumping through all kinds of hoops where we shouldn't have to.
If there is a setting I've missed or a workaround, please help!!!
Brian

This is often hard o explain but since you have a cyan plate then added a precentage to the Magenta the precentage of 1% is process the Cyan plate only runs once through the press and therefore you canot over print sice it makes up a component of the magenta.
The means that the are where the 1% cyan is will separte onto the the cyan plate wjhich can only run once.
Say you sue only two fills and the magenta had a 5% C the cyan plate would look like this
The Magenta plate would loo like this
So thee is no way to overprint it since is is already overprint by being processed so it is doing what it is supposed to do. And of course you cannot6 have 101% Cyan unless you runb it twice.
Multiply is one wa of doing it but not necessarily the best way, the best way would be to run the cyan and magenta mix as spot colors.
There are other ways as well but time consuming so you may not want to even try to accomplish this.Not sure what you would gain with 1% C?

IL CS5 Stroke - Compound path cant be less than 1pt

Just started with IL CS5 and think I found a glitch.
Compound path can't be less than 1pt.
Furthermore when you offset path, the newly created path minumum stroke can't be less than 1pt.
what is going on.
Also turning on and off stroke moves object down and left for 0.5pt
It like IL is taking the inner corner of the stroke as the ancor.
this is weard.
Further more offset path seams to be off.
Has anybody else experienced this.

Nice it worked.
But what a dump setting.
cheers

Keyline around imported rastor object?

How do you add a keyline stroke around an imported tiff, jpeg etc? In InDesign it's as simple as adding stroke to the frame (the frame is automatically created upon import).
OK, I think I figured this out and it is soooo Illustrator:
Add stroke to object (nothing visible happens); apply a 'convert to rectangle' effect to the invisible stroke and... voila, a simple keyline!!!!
Please tell me I missed something and there is a simpler, more intuitive way?
Les

Thanks Scott,
I've grown very sceptical about Illy's 'snap to' guides over the years, as they've never really been accurate in the past (smart guides may be an improvement tho, I will revisit). Still another step tho as you then need to select both objects and group in order that they function as one entity. Just seems like a 'no brainer' that a stroke should be able to be added via the appearance panel
Les

Palettes, toolbar, and control panel don't work in CS3?

I can't select pages from the "Pages Palette" or add or delete pages from the same palette. All of the palettes are having similar issues (i.e. Pages, Info, Layers, Links, Stroke, Swatches, Object Styles, Color, Effects, Gradient, Character Character Styles, Paragraph, Paragraph Styles, etc.) They are just unusable. Most of the toolbar work except for the selection tool which I can only activate by pressing (V). The control panel seems to be having the same issue. I've tried reinstalling and repairing the install on the entire CS3 package. I've tried reinstalling and repairing the install on just InDesign. Photoshop CS3, Acrobat, and Illustrator work fine....not sure about Dreamweaver, Flash, and the others.I've downloaded and installed all available updates for CS3 from Adobe's site.
Any thoughts?
Running on:
Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit
Service Pack 2
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T7200 @ 2.00Hz
2.00 GB RAM

See InDesign tools and panels don't respond to mouse clicks (Windows 7/Vista)

Line width question; Freehand MX

Is it possible to change the line width of all lines in a
document?
I go to Edit > Select > All In Document.
I go to the Properties box and on the Object tab I try to
click Stroke.---, but it is not active.
Thanks for the help.

First, let's get the terminology straight. Strokes (not
lines) can be
applied to paths.
Find & Replace Stroke Width will only replace stroke
widths on objects that
are already stroked. It won't add strokes to non-stroked
objects.
A Hairline stroke is 0.25 pt. wide. If you selected Hairline
as the low end
of the selection range, then strokes smaller than 0.25 pt.
will not be
affected.
Compared with FH9, FHMX adds group-level attributes, so to
stroke every
object at the path level, you will need to Select All and
then Subselect
until you have reached the path level. I have set up a custom
keyboard
shortcut for Edit>Select>Subselect. That allows me to
drill down below group
level.
FH users also need to be aware that groups that have been
scaled after
'Transform as Unit' (TAU) is applied will scale the strokes
according to the
subsequent transformations. If you have unwittingly applied
TAU to groups
you may not see the changes you expect from Find &
Replace Stroke width. I
have unchecked the preference "Groups Transform as Unit by
Default' and use
the Transform as Unit checkbox in the object panel only when
required.
Judy Arndt

Strokes to Objects

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