Scatter brush artifacts

Question

I need to use scatter brush to create about a thousand circles. But scatter brush creates artifacts that make it hard to do further adjustments to color and position. The screen shot is a small version I created for isolating the issue.

I created 4 circles using scatter brush, then did Expand Appearance, Ungroup, set Fill to red, and set Stroke to black. The North circle shows the result. Note the black-red-black-red at the perimeter.

On the East circle, I set the Stroke to 2 which hides the issue. However, the stroke is not 2; it’s maybe a 5?

The South circle was Ungrouped again, then separated to show the two components. Note that the one that is not filled cannot be filled.

The obvious solution is to simply delete the artifacts like I did in the West circle. Then I have full control over the position and the RandomSwatchesFill script works well. But I have maybe a 1000 circles I need to create.

Is there a way to easily delete all of the artifacts?

tromboniator · Accepted Answer

When you said "The brush is merely a circle" I assumed that meant it was a round shape drawn by the Ellipse Tool with a fill and stroke applied, then turned into a brush. That turns out not to be the case.

This illustration shows the deconstruction of the brush into its constituent parts, including a color change simply to show that the body of the circle is a filled path with no stroke.

The isolated black circle is revealed as a closed path with black fill, so it's not a stroke. In outline mode you can see the two rounded, overlapping "ends". When a black stroke and red fill are applied to this path you get something like your North result. So, I think a brush that is in fact merely a circle would get you where you want to go.

Peter

Monika Gause · Answer

Please show the artwork for the brush

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded