Deconstructing the Effect MenuThe Effect menu is basically split into four main sections. At the very top are two settings: Apply Last Effect and Last Effect. The former allows you to duplicate the last effect you applied, including all of its settings; the latter opens the dialog for the last effect that you applied so that you can choose Featured Match-Up: Illustrator Effects vs. Photoshop Effects," later in this chapter). Is It Vector, or Is It Raster?You already know that a Live Effect is simply an appearance that is added to an object, meaning that the underlying vector object exists in your document in its original state. As you change the underlying object, the appearance updates to reflect that change. If you want to lock in an appearance, you need to choose Object > Expand Appearance to alter the actual vector paths, at which point the effect is no longer live, and can't be edited. Some effects, such as Drop Shadow, are raster-based. Even though this effect appears grouped under the Illustrator Effects section, when the appearance is expanded, the drop shadow becomes a raster image (Figure 7.2 ). The same applies when you print a file, because all effects are expanded when they are sent to the printer (your file remains in an unexpanded state however, allowing further editing). Figure 7.2. Many of the Stylize effects, including Drop Shadow, produce raster-based results, even though they are listed within the Illustrator Effects section of the Effect menu.Prepress and Printing , for more information on what happens when you print Illustrator files. |
Specifying Mapped Artwork," later in this chapter).
Rasterize.
Stylize > Drop Shadow.
Stylize > Feather.
Stylize > Inner Glow.
Stylize > Outer Glow.
Each of these is covered in detail, later in this chapter.
If it is true that some effects in Illustrator produce a rasterized result, who determines the resolution of those rasters? When you work in Photoshop, you can't even create a new file without first defining its resolution. But with Illustrator, which is vector-based, you don't think much about resolution. So the question is, what determines the resolution of these raster-based effects? To find the answer, choose Effect > Document Raster Effects Settings.
Saving and Exporting Files , for information.
The Document Raster Effects Settings dialog is where you can specify the resolution for raster-based effects. In fact, the dialog offers all the necessary settings for determining how raster-based effects eventually print (Figure 7.3 ).
Color Model. Depending on the document color mode setting to which your file is set, you'll either see CMYK, Grayscale, and Bitmap listed here, or RGB, Grayscale, and Bitmap. This is because a document cannot contain both CMYK and RGB elements. This setting can be extremely useful, because it allows you to change the color model of an object (even an image) as a Live Effect, which can always be edited. For example, you can turn a colored object into grayscale as an effect.
Resolution. Featured Match-Up: Illustrator Effects vs. Photoshop Effects," later in this chapter for details on whether you need to change this setting before or after you create your file.
Chapter 11 for more information on transparency flattening).
Anti-alias. Chapter 10,
Illustrator and the Web .
Create Clipping Mask. This setting creates a clipping mask around the area of a shape so that you can have it blend into a background (raster images are always rectangular and may block out objects that appear behind them). This setting won't work very well for objects that have Drop Shadow, Feather, or Glow effects applied, because clipping masks have hard edges. You don't need this setting if you specify the Transparent option for the background.
Add Space Around Object. This is a very important setting. When certain effects, like Feather or Gaussian Blur, are applied, the resulting raster image has a soft edge. In order to ensure that this soft edge fades into the background correctly, you must make the bounding box of the raster image larger than the actual object. If you don't, the fade stops abruptly and you see a visible line where it ends. By default, Illustrator adds 36 points (.5 inch) of space around an object, but if you have a large blur setting, you may need to increase this amount (Figure 7.5 ).
Preserve spot colors when possible. Chapter 11 for more information on overprinting.
Any Live Effects that you apply in your document will use the settings in the Document Raster Effects Settings dialog, and you can't have different settings for different effects. Well, you can, sort of. Not in any way that Adobe intended though. All Live Effects update when you make a change to the Document Raster Effects Settings, but once you expand a Live Effect, that object no longer updates when you change the settings. So if you need to use different settings for different objects, apply an effect to one object, then use the Object > Expand Appearance function to expand the effect, lock in the Document Raster Effects Setting for that effect, and then apply a different setting to another object. Of course, once you expand an effect, you have no way to go back and perform edits to it.