The image above has been stylised in Photoshop and Illustrator. To trace a photo in Adobe Illustrator, go File > Place and select the photo you want to trace. I find it useful to then lock this picture layer in the Layers palette and click on the New Layer icon to make sure your trace [...]
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This took me a while to figure out! The object is to get the gradient mesh to radiate out of the centre of a circle and that’s not as straightforward as you might expect. Anyway, this is a good one. To start with something easy – draw a circle. Select the circle tool and drag [...]
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This starts, as most tutorials start, with something very easy: draw a circle. So, select your circle tool and drag diagonally to preferred size, not forgetting to hold down the shift key. Fill the circle white, with no stroke. Next, select the Gradient Mesh Tool (U) and click four points diagonally across the circle. Make [...]
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This is a nice little trick using Illustrator’s Blend option. To create perfect sine-waves – or something very close – first of all, draw a line. Then go Filter > Distort > Zig Zag… and choose the number and height of waves you want (remembering to click the smooth radio button, otherwise you’ll get a [...]
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If your client hands you a .PPT from MS PowerPoint or and .DOC Word and says: “The presentation/print deadline is tomorrow, make this look nice”, what are you going to do? The answer is to use other programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Quark, Premiere or Keynote and get creative! Here are a few tips [...]
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Quite often I’m looking for a simple iconic device to represent a country without having to just reproduce the flag alone. So, as you can see above, why not put the flag inside the country’s shape. Also, it’s free! It’s relatively easy to find a country’s flag and shape on the internet and tracing the [...]
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These little buttons take a few seconds to make in Illustrator and give a nice polished, “web 2.0″ feel to a website or interactive environment. Firstly, when creating this shiny effect in Illustrator remember to make the document RGB. Go File > Document Color Mode > RGB. It won’t work otherwise. Many thanks to Simon [...]
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An earlier tutorial on how to make a shiny button in Illustrator using the Opacity Mask feature can be improved upon greatly by adding a sexy brushed steel surrounding ring to your amber jelly button! As previously explained, the shiny “web 2.0″ button look can be made by placing a circle with a linear black-to-white [...]
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Remember Adobe Streamline? Adobe stopped upgrading its vector conversion application some time ago. But with the advent of CS2, Illustrator’s old Trace Tool became the new super Live Trace and opened up a new world of possibilities! As soon as you place or paste a photo into Illustrator a button on the Control Palette offers [...]
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This is one way of reproducing a striking image without having to pay for it! The logical way of doing an image made of dots would be like this: Make sure that your image’s width and height are divisible by 10 pixels (the above is 450 by 300 pixels). Nice round numbers make the following [...]
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