The Adobe Illustrator CS Wow- P10

The Adobe Illustrator CS Wow- P16: Sharon Steuer is the originator of The Illustrator Wow! Books. Whennot working on Wow! books, Sharon is a painter, illustrator, columnistfor creativepro.com, and the author of Creative Thinking in Photoshop:A New Approach to Digital Art. She lives in Connecticut with her cats,Puma and Bear, and radio star husband, Jeff Jacoby. She is extremelygrateful to her co-authors, editors, testers, Wow! team members (pastand present), Adobe, and Peachpit for making this book possible....
Nội dung trích xuất từ tài liệu:
The Adobe Illustrator CS Wow- P10 Rolling Mesh Converting Gradients to Mesh and Editing © Overview: Draw shapes and fill with linear gradients; expand gradient-filled objects into gradient meshes; use vari- ous tools to edit mesh points and colors. For many images, gradients can be useful for showing the gradual change of light to shadow (if you need to learn more about creating and applying gradient fills, first see Unified Gradients earlier in this chapter). For these rolling hills, artist Sharon Steuer expanded linear gradients into gradient mesh objects so she could better control the curves and contours of the color transitions. The hills shown filled with radial gradients— although there is some sense of light, it isnt 1 Drawing shapes and then filling them with linear possible to make the radial gradient follow the contours of the hills gradients. Begin your illustration by creating closed objects with any of the drawing tools. After completing the objects, select each object with the Selection tool and Fill it with a linear gradient fill. For each linear gradi- ent, adjust the angle and length of the gradient transition with the Gradient tool until you can best approximate the desired lighting effect. Steuer created four hill-shaped objects with the Pen tool, filled them with the same linear gradient, then customized each with the Gradient tool. Note: Although in some objects radial gradients might look better before you convert them, linear gradients create gradient mesh objects that are much easier to edit! The hills shown filled with linear gradients, 2 Expanding linear gradients into gradient meshes. which are easier to edit than radial gradients when converted to gradient meshes To create a more natural lighting of the hills, Steuer244 Chapter 7 Blends, Gradients & Mesh converted the linear gradients into mesh objects so the color transitions could follow the contours of the hills. To accomplish this, select all the gradient-filled objects that you wish to convert and choose Object >Expand. In the Expand dialog box, make sure Fill is checked and specify Expand Gradient to Gradient Mesh. Then click OK. Illustrator converts each linear gradient into a rectangle rotated to the angle matching the linear gradients angle; each mesh rectangle is masked by the original object (see the Advanced Techniques chapter for help with masks).3 Editing meshes. You can use several tools to edit gra- After Expanding the gradients into gradient mesh objects dient mesh objects (use the Object > Lock/Unlock All toggle to isolate objects as you work). The Mesh tool com- bines the functionality of the Direct Selection tool with the ability to add mesh lines. With the Mesh tool, click exactly on a mesh anchor point to select or move that point or its direction handles. Or, click anywhere within a mesh, except on an anchor point, to add a new mesh point and gridline. You can also use the Add Anchor Point tool (click and hold to choose it from the Pen tool Using the Mesh tool to add a mesh line, then moving the mesh point with the Direct Selec- pop-up) to add a point without a gridline. To delete a tion tool selected anchor point, press the Delete key; if that point is a mesh point, the gridlines will be deleted as well. Select points within the mesh using either the Mesh tool or the Lasso tool, using the Direct Selection tool to Using the Add Anchor Point tool, using the Lasso to select a point, moving selected point move multi ...