Re: TimeTracker

JETalmage · ‎Jan 13, 2019

...to track design time...to track design time? To track design time? Seems a false premise in the first place. 😉 Design is not button-pushing grunt work. The count of computer cycles expended during use of a particular graphics program is no measure of the time (let alone skill or talent) I expend in a design project. Now, I am familiar with what I call graphics "sweat shops" such as those in which a team of clock-punching "illustrators" spend every billable hour tediously editing pixels to "clean up" scans of legacy paper-based documents, but I'd hardly call that design. And even then, proficiency (i.e., productivity per hour) varies widely between the individual users. Just making the point that tracking the time Illustrator (or any other graphics program) is running may not be meaningful for billing creative work. JET

JETalmage · ‎Jan 13, 2019

I will hand draw some elements of the logo which I am hoping to combine with font and other digital features. It might be a trivial question... It's not a trivial question; it's an impractically broad question that applies to any kind of illustration work in a program like Illustrator, not just graphics used for a logo. You're basically just asking how to use the program for illustration work. Procedures for "combining...hand drawing, tracing and...digital elements" are the same for any kind of vector-based illustration, are in principle the same in all mainstream general-purpose vector-based drawing programs, and are covered in the documentation. I'm not being flippant. It's just not practical to explain such broad-based topics in a single thread of a user forum. Start your project and post a more specific question when you run into a specific problem and can't find an answer in the provided documentation or by means of a forum search. (Countless threads exist pertaining to the general topics you have mentioned.) JET

JETalmage · ‎Jan 13, 2019

Your note about mousing over the icons got me to it, though, disguised as the subscript/superscript option in the lower left. Birck, Baseline shift and subscript/superscript are two different things. In most programs, Subscript and Superscript both move and scale the characters by predetermined proportional amounts. Baseline shift does not scale the characters, and lets you specify the amount of vertical shift. Baseline shift is used for various stylistic purposes on characters within a text object without affecting all the other text in the same text object. In the above baseline shift example, the text was set in all caps. All the characters except the initials were manually set to a smaller size, and then baseline shifted so as to visually center-align them vertically with the initials. Another common use would be to vertically align dingbat characters or drop-cap initials within a text block, without affecting the other text in the same text object. Even when used to affect all the characters as in the ubiquitous case of pathType curving above and below a circular emblem, one advantage of using baseline shift is that you can apply it so as to vertically center the heights of the all-caps characters on the spine path, and thereby maintain the same visually spacing both above and below the emblem without having to tediously tweak the text above and the text below separately. A similar example is road maps; it's an easier way to make road names that are bound to the actual road paths remain centered on the roads as they curve in any direction. JET

JETalmage · ‎Jan 12, 2019

Just as in most any object-based graphics program: Select something. Copy the value from the Height or Width field. Select something else. Paste into the Height or Width field. You can't do both height and width at once in the standard interface, but it would be a fairly trivial scripting task, and has no doubt has been done by multiple scripters for various use-specific purposes. JET

JETalmage · ‎Jan 12, 2019

Baseline shift is a character-level setting. It is available in the Character palette. Mouseover the icons and read the tooltips. You can include it in a Character-level Style definition. JET

JETalmage · ‎Jan 03, 2019

Each of your circular paths is a discrete 2D object (as is any other element in the document). Each object in the document has a position within the "stacking order" of the document. An object cannot actually be partially above and partially below another object in the stacking order. That's why you have to use cutting or masking or partially deleting in order to get the appearance of the results you want: You either need two objects that just look like one object; or you need to either hide or actually remove the portion of the top object that needs to look like it is behind the rearmost object. That's just the way it's done in this kind of program. JET

JETalmage · ‎Dec 27, 2018

Only stylus I ever actually cared for was the one on my Palm Pilot. And progress is replacing that with blunt fingers?! I've kilt men for putting fingerprints on my monitors. 😉 JET

JETalmage · ‎Dec 24, 2018

This is why I generally have no interest in touch-based tablet OSes for any kind of graphics work. I gave up finger-painting before kindergarten, and only engage in finger-drawing when scratching a route in the sand with my off-road riding buds. That said, take a look at Serif Affinity Designer, and the functional similarities between its iPad and desktop versions. You do yourself a disservice by limiting your tools to those from a single vendor. JET

JETalmage · ‎Dec 07, 2018

I figure that the Handles are the endpoints of the handlebars, right? I think those would be the "grips." Mine are orange. JET

JETalmage · ‎Dec 04, 2018

"Handlebars." I like that. JET

JETalmage · ‎Nov 17, 2018

That was the closest or maybe the workaround for what OP has asked. It's a case-in-point example of the sub-standard results of just using a typical auto-trace tool, which is one of the most over-rated features, the marketing claims of which are the continual cause of unrealistic expectations pandemic among beginners to vector based drawing. Poor advice for someone asking how illustrators actually achieve results like the specific example he posted. JET

JETalmage · ‎Nov 14, 2018

This is not a good example that I have made I rest my case. 😉 JET

JETalmage · ‎Nov 13, 2018

The basic style is called posterization (limiting the colors in an image to just a few), which can be done in most raster imaging programs. Getting professional results like the sample, though, is not a simple matter of invoking an automated command. That just yields a rough beginning with which to work. Start with a quality image; one artfully composed, well lit, and having good dynamic range. Garbage in; garbage out applies. Perform the posterization. But don't just take the default results. Study it. Do the color breaks occur at optimal places to most clearly and cleanly and pleasingly suggest the shapes and contours of the subject? Default results seldom do, even starting with a quality image. You can improve the initial results by undoing the posterization, adjusting tone curves, and trying again. Once you've got what seems the best that the automated posterization algorithm is going to give you as something to start with, commit it, save it, bring it into a vector drawing program, and manually trace it with artistic discernment. That's how you get professional quality results: with work, not with just the take-it-or-leave-it results of a completely unintelligent algorithm that doesn't know a smooth forearm of a damsel in distress from the sweaty forearm of a burly iron worker. Doing it with an auto-trace feature in a drawing program is technically performing the same operations, but more crudely and without the all-important artistic discernment. Autotracing: Posterizes the raster image, but not with the amount of image tweaking controls you have in a full-blown raster imaging program, and not with any discernment about whether where the color breaks occur is good or bad. Tries to trace around areas of contiguous same-colored pixels. That it. That's all it does because that's all it can do. It has no idea whatsoever about which details are important, which are not, which need to be smoothed or roughened, which should represent actual geometric shapes (circles, for example), which "blobs" should actually be combined into simpler and fewer, but more recognizable and meaningful shapes. Does all that even while yielding sub-optimal paths that are more tedious and time-consuming to clean up than just manually drawing optimally to begin with. Most important of all, drawing paths manually—by nature of the process—imparts a stylistic consistency. That's the difference between drawing with human discernment and just resorting to an instant-gratification automatic algorithm. That's the difference between a pleasing, professional result and just yet-another amateurish attempt at something-for-nothing. The judge is the audience. The audience instinctively knows the difference. The audience is human, not a piece of software. Autotracing is a crutch for hobbyists. JET

JETalmage · ‎Nov 11, 2018

I agree that this is rather unrealistic, and reminiscent of what dear old Aunt Mollie would probably call "straining at a gnat to swallow an elephant." If it's a proper logo, (i.e., one expected to be color-critical as all real logos should be), the color should be part of the logo specs, and should simply be obtained from the client or its design firm, not something to be interpreted from an instance of final print, whether by automation or otherwise. However ostensibly "sophisticated" the scanner, it would still be interpreting, for example, an array of translucent halftone dots of CMYK process inks on some particular paper printed under some day- and ink- and press- and weather- and mood-specific press somewhere with who-knows-what level of hairsplitting colorimetric "accuracy." Pressmen can, and commonly do, make inkwell adjustments in the middle of a press run. It's analogous to the pre-computer color house dictate to always strive to "match the original" before designers came to understood that mere algorithmic color calibration and real-world color correction are two different things. JET

JETalmage · ‎Nov 08, 2018

Since Adobe is immovably determined to extract continual rent for its software; and since software is…well, software: Perhaps Adobe would simply rent its software to you by the duration of time you actually use it. I mean, it's software. It loves to "phone home" all the time. Why should you be paying rent for it while you are asleep? 😉 JET

JETalmage · ‎Nov 03, 2018

I know how to use the Zig-Zag tool, but I can't figure out how to stretch the resulting line.. Draw the zig-zag path with uniform spacing. Leave it selected. Use the Reshape Tool to select one of its endpoints and drag it. JET

JETalmage · ‎Nov 01, 2018

Text on a Path is not necessary. 1. Text Tool: Click (don't drag). Type the text. 2. Black Pointer: Select the Text object. 3. DoubleClick the Rotate Tool. Enter 45° (or -45°, to go the other way). 4. DoubleClick the Scale Tool. Enter 100% for Horizontal. Enter 57.74% for Vertical. The text will be appropriate for the top of the cube. 5. DoubleClick the Rotate Tool. Enter 60° (or -60°, to go the other way). Once you get three text objects oriented the way you want, drag them to the side of the Artboard. Whenever you need another, AltDrag a duplicate from the appropriate one and just edit the text as normal. JET

JETalmage · ‎Oct 29, 2018

Those who never had opportunity to get accustomed to FreeHand's Inspector-based interface don't know what they're missing: Everything you need to know or set about a selection in one elegantly tidy palette. As I've long argued, a so-called "properties panel" like Illustrator's is kind of schizophrenic in that it can't decide whether it's for showing tool options, object properties, or both. The result is confusion for the beginner and unnecessary tedium for the rest. JET

JETalmage · ‎Oct 29, 2018

The functionality you're referring to is generically called a "contact sensitive" option for the selection tools. Other programs provide that option. When it's on, a selection marquee selects anything it touches. When it's off, a selection marquee selects only the objects it encloses. Illustrator—at least as of version CS6—does not provide that common option. It's an age-old feature request. For my own purposes, I devised a couple of Javascripts that I can run after making a marquee selection with the white pointer, as an awkward workaround. The "Select Partials" script adds the unselected nodes of partially-selected paths to the selection. The "Deselect Partials" deselects paths of which only some nodes are selected. JET

JETalmage · ‎Oct 29, 2018

Delete your red line. Draw another vertical line, tracing as much of the white scale in the image as you want to be scaled to 50mm. With that line selected, look at its Height field, select and copy the value (which will be given in mm, assuming you have mm set as your current unit of measure). Select the image. DoubleClick the Scale Tool to open its dialog. In the Uniform field, enter "50/" and paste after it the value you copied. Click outside the Uniform field to commit it so it will do the division. Convert the resulting value to a percentage (move its decimal two positions rightward). Click OK. JET

JETalmage · ‎Oct 29, 2018

Mary, You're probably making this more complicated than it is. Full details are needed to answer your specific questions, but as general advice: Consider what a vinyl cutter does: It just cuts along paths. After cutting, you then "weed" the unwanted portions from the carrier sheet of the material by hand, be they the "background" material surrounding the feather or the "hole" in the feather shaped like its quill. As you draw, always bear in mind that the cutter is going to simply cut along the paths you send to it, and the whole of the paths. For example, if you have two same-colored circles that partially overlap, the cutter is not going to cut according to "what you see," which looks like one solid "binocular view" shape. It's going to cut both of the circle paths, resulting in three pieces of vinyl. In other words, you are going to have two unwanted "cross cuts." In other words, for vinyl cutting, the cutting program doesn't "need to know" which paths are "holes" and which paths aren't. It just needs the paths for its knife to follow. Your goal is to draw paths exactly representing the paths you want the knife to follow; nothing more and nothing less. So there're probably no need at all to create what are called "compound paths" by using the so-called Pathfinder commands for the sake of the cutter; doing that is just for the sake of your own visualization. For example, if you…: Drew a path in the shape of the outline of the feather, with a white fill and no stroke applied to that path. Drew another path in the shape of the quill that runs down the center of the feather, with a white fill and no stroke applied to that path. …Then to your eyes, you have a white-filled path in front of another white-filled path. You can't see the quill shaped path. The feather would, as you say, "still look solid." But two paths are still there, and the cutter is going to cut them both. So just for the sake of what you see, you could use a Boolean subtract operation (Pathfinder) so that the fill of the quill shape visually "punches a hole" in the feather shape. But even if you did that, and the raster image you are tracing is still behind the paths you are drawing, chances are, the feather would still "look solid," because you'd still be seeing the white of the raster image you are tracing inside the "hole." Nonetheless, the cutting program just cares about the paths. The two paths to cut are still there, whether you compound them or not. Bottom line is, when tracing images to create cutting paths, you'd do yourself a favor by making this your habit: Set your current fill color to none, your current stroke color to black, and your current stroke weight to a thin value. Draw the paths, exactly as you want the knife to follow, nothing more; nothing less. Now, as you do so, you can see what you're doing. Don't worry about which paths for a particular color vinyl are "holes" and which are not. The cutter isn't printing. It's just cutting. That way, as you draw the paths, you're always just looking at a representation of what the cutter knife is going to do. The "color" of those paths is just a function of whatever color vinyl you've loaded into the cutter. Which cut paths are "holes" is just a function of which portions of the cut vinyl you weed out and discard. JET

JETalmage · ‎Oct 23, 2018

I believe quite a few might complain about such a feature unless optional. It would be as intrusive and cumbersome as the Pen tool's infernal behavior of auto-joining to UNSELECTED paths. (The Pen is not a selection tool, and has no business affecting UNSELECTED paths. That violates the whole concept and purpose of "selection" in the first place.) Not that I really care, since I don't rent software anyway. 😉 JET

JETalmage · ‎Oct 11, 2018

There's nothing expressly "isometric" about either of the images you posted. They employ a (probably arbitrary) parallel perspective construction (meaning parallel edges of the subject are drawn as parallel, rather than as if converge toward vanishing points as they recede in the distance), but that alone does not make them isometric. JET

JETalmage · ‎Oct 11, 2018

Illustrator is a vector-based illustration and design program (a "drawing program"). InDesign is a page-layout program (a document assembly program). (Those two general types of graphics programs, along with a third--raster imaging programs--constitute the conventional "full set" of functionality needed for a well-rounded print-centric desktop publishing solution.) Either of those two general types of programs is equally appropriate for the kind of project you describe. Both types are used every day by professional graphic designers to assemble the base elements of graphic objects (raster images, vector paths, text) into print-ready whole documents, start-to-finish. The main difference is that the interface and features of page-layout programs are geared to facilitate longer multi-page "bookish" documents: Many same-size pages Repetitively-designed pages (based on "master pages") Long sections of continuously-threaded text Tables of contents, indexes, footnotes Many externally-stored linked assets (raster images, vector graphics, external text) Combination of separate native files into "books" ...and so on. The whole-document design capabilities of drawing programs generally assume shorter-page count projects:: Business documents (business cards, letterhead, etc.) Product collateral (brochures, fliers, mailers) Product packaging and labeling Placement ads Book covers Multiple pages, sheets, or layouts often of differing size and orientation Such documents typically: Do not have repetitive page-to-page layouts Do not involve long threaded text Do not involve tables of contents, indexes, etc. Are more graphics intensive than text intensive The fact is, for most graphic designers, the latter kinds of projects are by far more common and for a multitude of detail reasons, it is arguably more appropriate to use a so-called drawing program than a so-called page-layout program to produce them. Beyond that, if you have any interest toward delving into actual drawing (illustration), that would be another reason to use a drawing program for projects like the one you mention. JET

JETalmage · ‎Oct 11, 2018

So far I've been trying to group the objects into colors or component groups such as tires...or body parts.... That is the fundamental fallacy of the "auto-magic" beginners (are often led to) expect from auto-tracing features: There is no intelligence in auto-tracing. You see a tire as a tire. You see the body parts as body parts. The auto-tracing algorithm sees none of that. It just sees a rectangular array of pixels. It then tries to draw a path surrounding each cluster of similarly-colored adjacent pixels. It knows absolutely nothing about shape. It doesn't know tire from body. It doesn't even know that a tire is round or that a truck body is boxy. So if you want to "group the objects [the vector paths that result from auto-tracing] into colors" you can do that by the steps described in Post 8. But if you want to group the paths that comprise the tire or the body or any other component of the truck, you will have to tediously select them, because nothing in the program knows which paths comprise which parts of the subject. When you draw something deliberately, intelligence is involved. You organize the paths of the drawing into meaningful parts of the subject as you go. This is why the proper use for auto-tracing (as it predominately exists today, with no shape-recognition intelligence) is almost always as a last resort for use in limited special situations. Its result is far and away most often sub-standard for anything properly called vector-based illustration. Auto-tracing negates the advantage of vector-based graphics (resolution independence) in the first place, because it just swaps a vector version of scale-dependent ugliness (jagged vector paths of meaningless shape) for the raster version of scale-dependent ugliness (visible square pixels). JET

JETalmage · ‎Oct 09, 2018

And since you did an autotrace, the stacking order doesn't even matter. None of your objects overlaps the other. They may. CS6's ImageTrace palette provides a Method option of either Abutting or Overlapping. JET

JETalmage · ‎Oct 09, 2018

Every object has its own layer. Every object is listed in the Layers palette. That doesn't mean each listing is a Layer. Back when a Layers palette was just that; a list of Layers, only Layers were listed. Somewhere along the way, someone had the bright-eyed idea that the Layers palette should list all objects that reside on each Layer. When that was implemented, it would have been more intuitive to rename the Layers palette the Objects palette or Object Stack. But this is Illustrator. I set the trace to 16 colors and it gave me 1,234 paths / layers. Needless to say that's a nightmare to try and manage. What exactly do you mean by "manage" them? If you want to be able to edit them by color, then you can: Select all. Swatches palette flyout menu: Add Selected Colors. (16 Global Swatches should be created.) You can then doubleClick any of the 16 added Swatches, edits its color, and all objects with that Swatch will update accordingly. Or, if you want to be able to select them by color you can: Deselect. Select one object. Select Menu: Same>Fill Color. You can then save the Group the selected objects, move them into a separate Layer, combine them into a Compound Path, store the selection (Select Menu: Save Selection), etc. JET

JETalmage · ‎Sep 11, 2018

xoser, In Illustrator, it's good practice to always keep the Appearance panel open and visible as you work. It tells what kind of object you have selected (Path, Compound Path, etc.) JET

JETalmage · ‎Sep 01, 2018

If i am supposed to make a watch logo for a company , then how should i start. I hope you understand what i am saying. Is the assignment for a course in using Illustrator or a course in effective design? Your posting the question as stated in a software-specific forum like this suggests you are falling victim to the very common misconception that just having and knowing how to use graphics software makes you a designer or illustrator. It doesn't. Graphics software is just an art medium. Predominate mediums change over time. Before the digital software, it was all about the mechanically powered airbrush (the "steampunk" of art media). Before the airbrush, it was all about manually-powered pen and ink, gauche, acrylics, etc. Eventually, something will replace graphics software as the defacto medium, and who knows what that will be. Principles of effective design are independent of whatever happens to be the current medium. That's especially true of effective logo design, which strives to boil the message down to its bare essence while still being unique. So if your question is about effective logo design as opposed to merely using a program like Illustrator to render a logo, my advice is: To start designing the logo, forget the medium: Collect as much information as you can about the entity you intend to signify as a logo. Pick up a note pad and pencil. Jot down words that are essential to the message of the entity. Only after you have exhausted ideas, start sketching. From the start, absolutely disallow gratuitous effects. If any part of the mark's "uniqueness" or "interest" is derived from mere canned effects, it is neither unique, nor interesting. Resorting to effects is the dead giveaway of amateurish design. Ask yourself: Will this design work if rendered in black. If it won't, then it won't work for a cast emblem. Or for engraving on a writing pen. Or for a kazillion other things a company expects to be able to do with its logo. Those are the reasons, both conceptual and practical, why it is best practice to design first only in terms of solid black. It keeps you from using effects (even color) as a crutch for weak design. It makes the actual design stand on its own. All the while, strive to: Simplify, simplify, simplify. The goal is elegance. Can you convey more, with less? Avoid cliché. Not just "like the plague." It is the plague. Avoid the obvious. (Hint: The most effective logo for a watch company is probably not just an icon of a watch.) Be utterly ruthless with yourself: Pretend you're not you. Pretend you are someone else who doesn't know you or care one whit about you. You are just someone looking at a graphic amid the bombardment of millions of graphics. Ask yourself these questions: Does it convey the essence of the message? Is it unique? Is it memorable? If any of the answers are "no," it's not even interesting and you're not even close. Trash that idea. It's junk. Only after you've got a few solidly strong sketches, start rendering them in software. All the while, ask yourself: Are there any unnecessary elements? (A logo is a signature, not a self-biography.) Is any element of the primary mark superfluous? (Anything not necessary to the visual message dilutes it.) Consider every line, every curve, every path node as potential for improvement, simplification, or removal. JET

JETalmage · ‎Sep 01, 2018

You can create dialogs (which can contain buttons, fields, and other controls), both as modal alerts and as non-modal palettes in ExtendScript. That doesn't perform the initial launch of the dialog, but as mentioned, an Action can do that. So you can, for example, create an Action to serve as the button to avoid the arduous task of File>Scripts>MyElaborateScriptedSolution to simply open your scripted palette. But that palette in turn can contain buttons, fields, and other controls to serve as a floating user interface for the options and interaction you want to provide while using the script. It's not for scripting beginners. You'll need to search out the current documentation for it. As I recall, the buzzword for it was "ScriptUI" or some such. JET

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