Adobe Tutorial

In today’s quick tip tutorial, I’m going to show you how to use one of the great new features of Adobe Illustrator CS6, gradient on stroke, to create a 100% vector Drop Shadow and Inner Glow.

Introduction Design Vector Drop Shadow with Illustrator CS6 Tutorial

In today’s quick tip tutorial, I’m going to show you how to use one of the great new features of Adobe Illustrator CS6, gradient on stroke, to create a 100% vector Drop Shadow and Inner Glow.
So let’s get to it straight away.

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Taking Apart the Drop Shadow

Before we get into how to achieve this drop shadow, we need to understand what actually happens when we use a Drop Shadow effect in Adobe Illustrator at present and why it isn’t completely vector.
So you’ve drawn a random object, in this case I’ve used the Star Tool and you want a drop shadow on it. To get this go to Effect > Stylize > Drop Shadow and you’ll get the blow dialogue box to modify your drop shadow as you wish.
However if you were to apply this effect and then Object > Expand it and drill down into the group it produces, you’d notice that it contains a raster element. This is the object labeled "Image" which you can see below.
In fact if you hide the "Image" you’ll just be left with the original shape. So what actually happens?
What actually happens when you apply the effect is Adobe Illustrator duplicates the shape and then changes the fill color to say black in this case. It then rasterizes the object, blurs it and offsets it. Then the shape is combined with the original to produce Live Effect Drop Shadow. This means you can go back into the options of the Drop Shadow via the Appearance panel to modify anything from the drop shadow fill color, blur and so on. The same is true when you create an Inner Glow effect.

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100% Vector Drop Shadow – CS5 Style

If you’re a regular reader of VectorTuts+, you may have seen a similar tutorial title a couple of years back. In fact I did a video quick tip tutorial on how to create a 100% vector drop shadow in Adobe Illustrator CS5. This is done by making use of "Align Stroke Outside" in the Appearance panel.
You can apply a similar process to create an inner glow effect, just by using "Align Stroke Inside".

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100% Vector Drop Shadow – CS6 Style

So how can we achieve a Drop Shadow in CS6? Simple, by duplicating your shape and giving it say a black fill and then a black transparent linear gradient stroke set to "Apply gradient across stroke".
There are a couple things you need to keep in mind. You can’t "Align Stroke Outside" with a gradient. To get around this you’ll need to ensure your Drop Shadow color, in this case black, is the most central Gradient Slider and at 100% Opacity. Other than that, you’ll find you can increase the Drop Shadow "blur" by playing with the Stroke Weight and even the Gradient Sliders along the top.
Let’s just look at this a little more closer and Object > Expand our Gradient on Stroke. When you do this, you’ll notice the Gradient on Stroke is just a Gradient Mesh! So not a raster element as the Live Effect Drop Shadow uses. This makes it a vector Drop Shadow.
To prove furthermore it’s a Gradient Mesh and one you can actually edit, I’ve used the Direct Selection Tool (A) to select all the points in the corner of our mesh and changed the color to blue.

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100% Vector Inner Glow – CS6 Style

If only you could use "Align Stroke Inside" with Gradient on Stroke, because creating an Inner Glow would be a lot easier. However as you can see from the below, the option is greyed/nulled out. So to create an Inner Glow first duplicate your original shape. Then put your fill on as normal and then "Apply gradient across stroke" with the previously used transparent linear gradient. Give the stroke only a Blending Mode and Opacity.
Use the duplicate of the original shape to then create a Clipping Mask (Command + 7) and there you’ll have your Inner Glow.

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Conclusion

Why would you want to do this? Well if you’re a vector freak like me, the thought of having any raster elements in your work makes your skin crawl and you’d like to go that extra mile to ensure every part of your work is vector. Maybe I’ve just confessed to some bizarre vector OCD. Anyway other than that, it’s just a bit of an exercise for those who like to exercise their scalable brains. I hope you’ve enjoyed this tip!

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Icon Design in Illustrator cs6 are nifty little designs that add flavor to your web pages while helping to direct users to different areas of interest. While most websites dont require a ton of icons, they do usually require several and creating these seemingly simple designs can be much more complicated than you think.



-Planning the concept for a cohesive icon set

-Creating and refining icons in Adobe Illustrator
-Working with multiple artboards

-Advanced icon drawing techniques

-Working with perspectives

-Finalizing and polishing finished icons


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Why Use Icons  Design in Illustrator cs6

Icons Design in cs6 are used in the design of your web pages to add a visual element to your content. While paragraph after paragraph of text will eventually get boring and a reader will lose interest, by adding icons to break up and accent the text you can keep your readers attention longer.
They are also used in places like the header of a page, the table of contents, in product lists, and in the place of common bullet points. Used in these place, icons add charm to your text and highlight what you are selling or saying.

Icons Design can go a long way in making a website look and feel professional from the very first glance. They show your readers that you care about even the small details of your business. When designed correctly, they add to your website, not distract from it, and they should be made to go with the flow and feel of your site and other company graphics to add to brand recognition.

 

Part 1: Creating The Main Text

  Taking a canvas size of 1900 X 1200. Of course you could pick any size according to your preference, but make sure the resolution is decent enough.

Fill the background layer BLACK.

With the Text Tool type whatever you want the text to be. I chose “Leave, but don’t leave me”, from a Pink Floyd song. “But don’t leave me” is coming later. Right now we’ll work on “Leave”. The font I have used is Futura Heavy.

1. Right-click on the text layer, go to Blending Options to create Layer styles.
2. On the Layer style box, go to Gradient Overlay, tick it.
3. On the Gradient Overlay, we open the Gradient editor and make the New Custom Gradient as above. I have chosen shades of black, white and grey so that we can easily modify the colors later.

Then apply Stroke, and in the fill type, set it to Gradient, and choose the simple Black to White Gradient preset.

Next, make a new layer above the text layer, name it Gradient 1 (or anything you please). Fill it with a gradient. I used real bright colors, in honor of the 80’s.

The ‘Gradient 1′ layer is set to Soft Light mode, with an opacity of 72% (you can experiment with the modes, and opacity).

The above image shows you are current progress. We are beginning to have the 80’s looks to it.

Part 2: The Background

Next we are going to add a nice texture to the image. I have used a paper texture. You can find it here.
Select all (Ctrl/Cmd+A), copy the texture (Ctrl/Cmd+C) and paste it (Ctrl/Cmd+V) on your work. The Blend Mode is ‘Vivid Light’, and you can see we already have a great effect going.

Now it’s time to create a new brush to get a cloud effect; open up the Brush Engine, and use the following settings:

It’s a very useful brush, and can be used to make clouds in other work as well.
Now make a new layer “Clouds”, and paint with the brush you just created. Add a bit of Inner Shadow, to add more depth to the clouds.

Now change the order of layers, bring the ‘Clouds’ layer just above the Background. Also, the opacity of the ‘Clouds’ layer is Changed to 56%.

Now Ctrl/Cmd+Click the ‘Leave’ (Text) Layer, which selects the region of the text, and then go to the ‘Gradient 1′ layer and add a layer mask. This masks of the gradient from the rest of the image and leaves it on the Text.

Then we create a New Layer, Name it ‘Clouds 1′, Above the ‘Clouds’ layer. Make sure your foreground and background colors are Black & White, Go to Filter -> Render -> Clouds.

Keep the overlay mode as Vivid Light. Then in the Blending mode, add a Gradient Overlay, and use the following 2 colors for the gradient: #00fff0 and #e303bb.

Next we will add some stars to the background.
We now make a new layer above the ‘Cloud 1′ layer and fill it with Black. Then we go to Filter -> Noise -> Add Noise. Use Gaussian, Monochromatic, 10 % amount. There are various ways of making a star filled sky, this is the one I chose.

Next, choose Image -> Adjustment -> Levels and use the following values for Inputs: 65, 1.00, 99.

I have renamed the layer to Stars, and the blending mode is set as Screen.
Next we’ll add bigger glowing stars. Make the following brush using the brush engine:

Paint with varying brush sizes. Use the bracket keys ([ and ])to change the size quickly. Then add a Layer mask, and paint with black, using the same brush. This gets rid of some extra stars.

Now with a brush of 0% hardness and size of around 300, paint along the edges and get rid of some more stars, also add some Gaussian Blur if required.

Part 3: The 80’s Twinkle

It’s very simple to create the twinkle used in so many 80’s posters.


• Take a soft brush, and just click once with it on a new layer, to create a soft circle.
• Duplicate the layer, and go to Filter -> Blur -> Motion Blur, Angle 0 degree, Distance around 46 pixels.
• Keep duplicating and adding motion blur 3 more times.
• Then merge all these layers (5 of them). Go to Free Transform, and stretch it, it widen the glowing object.
• Finally, duplicate the merged layer, Rotate by 90 degrees.

We have the twinkle now. We merge both layers, and name the new layer ‘Twinkle’.
Now we can use the ‘Twinkle’ layer where needed.

Duplicate the ‘Twinkle’ layer over the Text layer (rotated, transformed etc.) and place them on the text. This makes it shiny and 80’s!

Part 4: The shapes

Create a new layer for the shapes.
Using the polygon lasso tool, and create a selection in the shape shown above. Select the Gradient tool, and use a Gradient of color White (foreground color) and transparent. We fill the selection with this gradient.

Next, Duplicate the shape and shift it a bit. (Press Alt/Option and drag the shape). Merge the layers, and duplicate them. Then we flip them horizontally and create and new shape.

Orient the shapes in different directions and places, as shown below:


Then apply a Gradient Overlay, using Blending options on the few layers, with Hard Light as the Gradient Overlay Blend mode.

So, this is how it looks so far (below). We are almost done now. You can leave it right here, or make a few more adjustments.

I add the new Text layer, “But Don’t Leave Me”, and apply a stroke via the Blending options.

If you think the colors are too bright, you can add a Hue/Saturation mask on the top of the layer stack, and lower the saturation to somewhere around -15.

The final image:

Hope you had a lot of fun going through this tutorial. A big thanks to the guys at GoMedia, for making this possible. Cheers!