Illustrator: Create a 3D bottle

Hi there. The following exercise is a bit of an old chestnut. So I apologise about that. Almost everybody who has ever used a 3D package has begun by drawing the obligatory bottle or glass. I think that maybe I'll be able to show you why.

Digressing slightly: if anyone from the USA is tuning into this, I'd like to personally thank the whole of America for beta-testing the iPhone. It's very thoughtful of you all. Hopefully, when it arrives in the UK in November time, the iPhone will actually work! :)

1. Lets begin: what I kind of like about this exercise is that if you're the sort of person who gets scared by using the Pen tool I can hopefully prove that you don't need to be an expert in Bezier curves to create perfectly acceptable artwork.

Start by drawing two rectangles: one for the neck of the bottle and one for the barrel of the bottle. Align these both to the centre of the artboard. This last step is not essential but it's good practise in my opinion.



2. Select the larger rectangle and copy it – you will need this copy soon. Now go to Effect> Stylize> Rounded corners and turn on preview. Use the up and down arrows to round off the barrel of the bottle as below.



3. Now to use the copy of the rectangle you created earlier: Hit Apple-F to paste the rectangle in front of the rounded edged rectangle. You're going to use this rectangle to create the rounded bottom of the bottle. Once again go to Effect> Stylize> Rounded Corners and use the up and down arrows to round the box so that it looks something like this:



4. Now reduce the rectangle in height like this:



5. Now we're going to merge the two rectangles. The first step in this is to select the two rectangles and go to Object> Expand Appearance. This removes the rounded edges effect and turns the rectangles into editable objects. Now bring out the Pathfinder palette and alt-click the Add To Shape Area icon. Alt-clicking saves you the trouble of expanding the object later on.



6. You can see that the merge has left us with one or two extraneous anchor points. Select the Pen tool and use it to remove these points. All you have to do is hover the Pen tool over an anchor point until you see a '-' sign. You can now click to remove the point.



7. Now to address the neck of the bottle: draw a rounded-edged rectangle for the lip of the bottle and align it to the centre of the artboard as below:



8. Now select the neck rectangle and the lip rectangle and once again use the Pathfinder palette to merge them.



9. Now select the neck and the barrel and merge them in the same way.



10. We're now going to 3D rotate the object. before we can do this we need to cut it in half. Lots of ways of doing this but the way I favour is to first draw a line down the centre of the bottle and align it to the middle of the artboard as below:



11. Now select all and hit the Divide button in the Pathfinder palette.



12. Now we need to remove the line in the centre. Select the Direct Selection tool, click on the vertical line and hit delete. Also remove the top of the bottle – we need to put some wine in this bottle. Then thicken up the stroke a little and in the Stoke Palette select rounded corners and rounded edges.

Now make sure that there is no fill on the object and go to Object> Path> Outline Stroke. This will create a filled object based on the width of the stroke. Very useful, I find.



13. Now go to Effect> 3D> Revolve. Did I say we were creating a bottle? Looks like a glass to me. Weird, huh?



14. Correct this strange anomaly by choosing Right Edge and change the settings in the dialogue box to meet your requirements.



15. Here I've Selected More Options and added a new light. I've also added some perspective. Hit OK and you have a bottle. Tomorrow we'll set about mapping a label on to the bottle.

See ya soon.

Illustrator: Five-Minute Flowers

I'm really knackered as I write this. So I’m afraid that this exercise will be short and sweet. I'm doing this at 11.30 a.m. because I live in hope that one day somebody might actually post a comment to let me know that I'm not alone in this world.

For the record this exercise takes advantage of Illustrator's Symbol tools to very quickly create a bunch of flowers.

1. Begin with a simple square. I've made sure that this one is aligned to the centre of the page. Don't ask why – it's the anorak in me coming to the surface again. Now go to Object> Path> Add Anchor Points. It's important that you do this or your flower will end up looking pretty crappy.



2. Now the fun bit. Add a fill and a stroke to the square and then Go to Effect> Distort And Transform> Pucker And Bloat. Turn on the preview, place your cursor in the field and use the up and down arrows to magically create a flower. Far better than drawing it. Anyone out there agree? No?



3. Select Object> Expand Appearance. Now drag the flower into the Symbol palette. Make the symbol a graphic in the options dialogue box that appears. Now delete the original flower. You don't need it any more.



4. More fun: tear off the Symbol tools for ease of use. Select the Symbol Sprayer tool and begin painting your flowers. Far cheaper than buying a bunch...



5. Now it's time to be a little creative. Give your flowers a more random appearance with liberal use of the Symbol tools. Here I've used the Shifter, the Scruncher, the Sizer and the Spinner tools.

Remember that you can double-click on any of the tools to adjust their settings. Also remember that you can reverse the tools' function by holding down the alt key.



6. Next apply the Screener and Stainer tools. For the latter tool you must first select a fill from the Swatches palette. Here I've used four or five different colours to further randomize the flowers' appearance.



7. Next create a new layer and move it beneath the existing layer. Draw a box that fills the entire artboard and add a gradient by clicking on the middle squre icon at the base of the Tools palette.



8. Move over to the Gradient palette and adjust the colours by clicking on a gradient handle and alt-clicking on the colour of your choice in the Swatches palette. Now use the Gradient tool to change the angle of the gradient as show below.



9. Complete the task by selecting the flowers and adding the obligatory drop shadow. I always think that drop shadows are the best way of hiding poor design.

InDesign: Turn A Clipping Path Into A Picture Frame

Here's a lesser-known feature of InDesign: the ability to take a clipping path and turn it into a picture frame.

1. A picture of my father-in-law. For those of you who tuned into my last blog, he's the one at who's house I stayed last rainy weekend. Nice place, actually. And proof that moving out of London can be a worthwhile thing to do. He's basically swapped a one-bedroom flat in Hampstead for a five-bedroom house in Sussex, complete with 1/2 acre of land and a swimming pool. Still, I digress...



2. The image is actually a Photoshop document with background removed. It's the way I like to work in InDesign. If I'm preparing a cut-out I will either remove the background in Photoshop or use a layer mask.

In this case I select Object> Clipping Path and choose Alpha Channel from the Type menu. Transparency is automatically selected. You might want to play with the Tolerance and/or Threshold but in this case I'm happy with what I've got.



3. At this point I'm able to use the Direct Selection tool to have a look at the clipping path. Just select it and click in the middle of the image.



4. Now for the interesting bit: simply right-click on the image and the following contextual menu will be revealed (if you don't have a three-button mouse or a Mighty Mouse, simply hold down the Control key and click on the image). It contains the command 'Convert Clipping Path To Frame'. This is interesting because this command is unavailable in any of the standard InDesign menus.



5. And here, with the stoke coloured and thickened up is your new frame.



6. Now you can remove the image and use the frame on its own if this takes your fancy.

Photoshop: Look Younger Without Surgery

First of all, apologies for not updating this blog for two or three days. I've taken a weekend break with the family and the parents-in-law in rainy old Sussex. Another apology for the shortness of this forthcoming tutorial. I have about twenty minutes before we all sit down to lunch.

This little exercise will be familiar to long-term users of Photoshop but it may perhaps prove to be something of an eye-opener for beginners.

Whenever I train Photoshop, the ability to lose wrinkles and imperfections, etc. is something that trainees always ask for. In Photoshop there is a dazzling array of tools to help you do this. These include the Clone Stamp tool, the Healing Brush tool, the Patch tool, the Red-eye tool and the Spot Healing Brush tool. All of these tools have a time and place but if it's a quick fix that you're after the following will probably help.

1. Duplicate the Background layer of your file. Drag the layer on to the New button to do this.



2. Now go to Filter> Blur> Gaussian Blur and blur the layer so that all the imperfections are gone.



3. Next in the Layers Palette click on the Add Layer Mask button (the grey one with the little circle in it) and make sure the mask is selected (it will have a black rectangle around it).



4. Now select the Brush tool and in the Control Panel lower the opacity, set the brush to airbrush mode and feather the edges of the brush. You're going to begin painting in the main areas of the picture (the eyes, the lips, etc.). Remember that the brush size can be controlled as you paint by using the square bracket keys. The hardness of the brush can be controlled by using Shift-Square Bracket.

As an example, check out the settings I have used below:



5. Use a fairly large brush and don't be too timid with your brushstrokes. Paint in black to reveal detail; if you make a mistake hit the 'X' key to switch foreground and background colours so that you can paint in white to remove your errors.

As you paint you will see the layer mask update in the Layers palette.



Here's the finished article and below is the original, complete with imperfections. At the foot of the page is the actual mask that I created while painting out the imperfections. The whole exercise took about four minutes.

Far better than paying through the nose for plastic surgery.

Illustrator: Recreate Queen's Jazz Album Cover

Back to Illustrator tonight and for this exercise I'm going to recreate the cover for Queen's 1978 album Jazz. In actual fact, this particular cover is not much of a favourite of mine. However, it's ideal for taking advantage of Illustrator's extreme ease of use when it comes to creating geometric patterns.

It also gives me the opportunity to put Illustrator's excellent blend function through its paces, as well as creating an Opacity Mask, some 3D revolve, a little Free Distort and the Polar Grid tool

Don't worry, it's a lot easier than it sounds.


So let's begin:

1. I'm going to start by drawing the concentric circles that form the major part of the design. There are actually countless ways of doing so but in this case Illustrator's Polar Grid tool is perfect for the job. Select the tool and click on the artboard to bring up the Polar Grid tool dialogue box. These are the settings that I've used. The skew value is particularly important as this governs the increasing gap between the concentric circles.



This is the sort of result that you're after:



2. Before you do anything else select all and bring up the Align palette (Window> Align). In the palette menu make sure that Align To Artboard is checked and then align your Polar Grid to the artboard both vertically and horizontally. When I'm creating artwork I always find this a useful thing to do. It will place the object exactly in the centre of the artboard.

Now go to the Layers palette and expand the contents of the layer by hitting the small triangle. In the concentric circle group hold down the shift key and select the first six concentric circles. Now hit delete to get rid of the nasty blighters.



3. Now for the inner circles. Create a new layer and then draw a constrained circle that is just a little smaller than the inner concentric circle and set its stroke width to around 6pt. Copy the circle, Paste In Front (Command-F) and then reduce the circle in size (hold down shift and alt to do so). Now select both circles and hit Command-Alt-B (this will blend the two circles. Double-click on the Blend tool and from the pop-up menu choose Specified Steps. Make the value 7. You now have a second set of concentric circles.





4. This set of concentric circles now needs a little perspective added to it. Go to Effect> 3D> Revolve and tweak the circles a little. Below are the settings that I have used.



Here's how both sets of concentric circles should look:



5. Now select all and apply a white stroke to everything and a fill on none. Create a second new layer (you now have three in all) and move this one beneath the other two. Now draw a square and fill it with black. Use the Align palette to align the square to the centre of the artboard.



6. Now we're getting places. But first we have to do something about the concentric circles on layer 1. At the moment they are just a little too bright. They need to fade as the circles get smaller. As always there are many ways to do this, but on this occasion we are going to use an opacity mask.

Copy the black square that you created earlier. Now select the concentric circles on Layer one. Go to the Transparency palette and select Show Options from the palette menu. From that same menu select Make Opacity Mask. In the Transparency palette you will now see two squares. Click on the one to the right and hit Command-F to paste the black square into the Opacity channel.



7. You will be forgiven if you are now feeling a little confused. The concentric circles seem to have disappeared. Not so. Go to the Gradient palette and after selecting Show Options from the palette menu, double-click the gradient to fill the black square you pasted in with a gradient. Make this a radial gradient and tweak the settings as I have done below. The concentric circles are now back and they are gently fading to the centre. Now exit the opacity channel by clicking on the left hand square in the Transparency palette.



8. Now for some text. Create a fourth layer and make sure it is sitting on top of the other three. Choose the type tool and create the 'Queen' lettering at the top . I've chosen Myriad Italic for this and tweaked the vertical scaling and tracking as below.



9. Colour the text white and position it towards the top left of the illustration. Now alt-drag a copy of the text to the far right of the illustration. Select both bits of 'Queen' text and as before hit Command-Alt-B to create a blend. Double-click on the Blend tool and change the settings to Specified Steps with a value of 3.



Here's what you should have now:



10. Now for the Jazz logo. Select the Type tool and single-click somewhere away from the illustration. Type in the word and set it to Myriad Bold, colour the type red. Now to add some perspective to the type.

Back in the Selection tool, select the type object and got to Effects> Distort & Transform> Free Distort... Drag the anchor points to get something like this.



And that's just about that. Easy, huh?

Of course, aficionados of Queen will be quick to point out that there are some bicycles missing from the foot of the cover. Haven't got time for bikes now, some other time maybe...

InDesign: Create A Table Of Contents

It's about time I put InDesign through its paces. I've been neglecting Adobe's fantastic DTP package in favour of Illustrator.

For this exercise I'm going to show you how to create a table of contents in InDesign. In my experience this is a very useful thing to do. Not only do you automate the creation of a table of contents, but by creating PDF bookmarks you also make life a lot easier for yourself when you later come to format your document.

For this example I'm going to try something a little different. Rather than waste time getting you to create a book from scratch, I've taken the liberty of making the file that I use in this exercise available to everyone. If you wish to download the example file it can be found at:

http://europatraining.co.uk/Animal%20Farm.indd.zip

(Copy and paste this url into your browser window if the files does not automatically download.)


So let's begin...

1. For this exercise I'm going to be creating a table of contents (or TOC) for George Orwell's Animal Farm. As you can see from the screen-shot below, I've created a number of Paragraph Styles for the book. After we've created the TOC you can try out applying them to the text if you're so inclined.





2. In order to create a TOC in InDesign you must first ensure that certain Paragraph Styles have been applied to appropriate portions of text in the document. In other words, if you apply the Paragraph Style entitled 04 Chapter Header to every incidence of the word 'chapter' in the text, you can then tell InDesign to look for occurrences of that Paragraph Style and make a note of the page on which it appears.

You could do this manually, of course. You could trawl through the document and apply the Paragraph Style 04 Chapter Header to the beginning of every chapter of the book. I'm a lazy person by nature, however, and I'm going to let InDesign do this for me.

To do so, go to Edit> Find/Change... and ask InDesign to look for the word 'chapter' and replace it with the word 'chapter'. Confused? I don't blame you. As you know, this action will obviously make no difference to the document whatsoever. However, if you click the More Options button in the Find/Change... dialogue box, you can then access the Change Format Settings and select 04 Chapter Header from the Paragraph Styles pop-up menu.

So what we're actually doing is telling InDesign to look for the word 'chapter', replace this with the word 'chapter', and at the same time change the Paragraph Style to 04 Chapter Heading. I hope this is making sense to you.



3. So now every incidence of the word 'chapter' has been put into the Paragraph Style 04 Chapter Header. But what, I hear you say, if the word 'Chapter' happens to occur somewhere in the actual text? Don't worry about that just now. We'll get the opportunity later on to ensure that there are no glaring errors.

Of more immediate concern is the fact that our Find/Change... has ended up putting our chapter headings bang in the middle of the text in apparently random places as shown in the screen-shot below. What do we do about this?

My aim is to actually have all chapters beginning on a right-sided page. Once again, if I were not quite so lazy, I could scroll through the document and do this manually, using the 'enter' key instead of the 'return' key to force the chapter headings up to the next linked text box. However, once again I'll let InDesign do this for me.

In the Paragraph Styles palette double-click on the style 04 Chapter Header. In the resultant dialogue box select Keep Options, then choose On Next Odd Page from the Start Paragraph pop-up menu. Problem solved. All Chapter headings now start on a right-sided page. InDesign will even insert extra pages to automatically facilitate this. What an excellent program InDesign really is. I'm a fan.





4. Almost there. We've applied the appropriate Paragraph Style to every incidence of the word 'chapter' and we've got all our chapters beginning on a right-sided page. Now we go to Layout> Table Of Contents...

It's worth your while now trying a little cause and effect. The fields in the TOC dialogue box are fairly self-explanatory, I think. As a starting point you might like to use the settings that I've selected below. Remember, all we're basically doing it telling InDesign to look for the Paragraph Style 04 Chapter Header and make a note of the page numbers on which this occurs.

Please make sure that Create PDF Bookmarks is checked. This is going to come in handy very soon...



5. Click OK when you're happy with your settings and a loaded text icon will appear at your cursor position. Navigate over to Page 1 and click inside the text box on that page. Hey presto! A table of contents.

But it gets better...



Go to Window> Interactive> Bookmarks and you'll find a ready-made set of PDF bookmarks that link to every chapter heading in the document. Double-click on any of these and you get taken to that position in the document. You can now apply the appropriate Paragraph Styles to finish the book.

In the good old days when I worked in publishing, I've seen lazy subs take a whole day trying to finish formatting a document. Thanks to your PDF bookmarks you can do this in a couple of seconds. The Bookmarks palette is also the place to check for any errors in the document. If the word 'chapter' does happen to appear in the book's narrative you can now apply the correct Paragraph Style and go back to Layout> Table Of Contents... to update your TOC.





Hope you enjoyed that. Please post feedback. I get a little lonely sometimes.

Illustrator: Olympic Rings

With all the furore over the logo for the 2012 Olympics I thought it might be nice to run a quick tutorial on how to create the famous original Olympics logo with its interlocking rings. This interlocking effect can sometimes be a bit of a challenge but with a little lateral thinking you will see how easy it is.

1. Begin with a simple circle. In this case it's best to work with rounded off figures so that things do not become too complicated when you align the circles later on. For this reason, simply select the Ellipse tool and click on the art-board. Key in 150 px in the resultant dialogue box. Now copy the circle and paste in front (command-F). Finally, click on a corner handle of the selected circle and resize it slightly, holding down alt-shift to keep the resizing proportional and from the centre.

Now Select All (command-A) and bring up the Pathfinder palette. Hold down the alt-key and hit the second icon along (Subtract from shape area). You've now created a circle with a hole in it.



2. Al-drag a copy of the circle to the left. Hold down the shift key as you do this to constrain the movement. Now hit Command-D to repeat the transformation and you have three equidistant circles.



3. Select the two right-most circles and alt-drag a cop beneath. Group these two circles and then select the upper three circles and group those too. You now have two groups of circles. Select all and bring up the Align palette. Align them horizontally and then select 'Show Options' from the palette menu. Type in a value of -75px as shown and then click on the top three circle group. Now hit 'Vertical Distribute Space' in the Align palette and the five circles will now be aligned precisely.



4. To create the interlocking effect select all and bring up the Pathfinder palette. Now hit one of my favourite commands 'Divide' and the five circles will be separated into segments that you can individually colour. Hit D before you begin colouring to take the objects' fill and stroke back to default black and white.

In the swatches palette choose yourself a blue colour and begin dragging the swatch over the segments of the circles that you wish to colour. Follow the example below for the correct colours to use.



5. It's slightly tricky but you should be able to complete this in under a minute.





6. Now for a bit of 3D: Select all and group the objects. Remove the stroke and go to Effects> 3D> Extrude & Bevel... You can see the settings I have used here. However, there's no reason why you can't use your own.



7. FInally, add a drop shadow using Effects> Stylize> Drop Shadow.

Photoshop: Rescue Your Holiday Snaps

Even though I'm a huge fan of Adobe Illustrator that doesn't mean that I'm not equally fond of its big pixel-based brother Photoshop. Photoshop, as everyone knows, is a huge package. When it comes to imagery there really is nothing that you cannot do with what still remains Adobe's flagship program. But where, for my money, it really excels is when it comes to editing images.

In this example I'm starting off with the type of photo that a lot of us have produced in a drunken stupor during our holidays. This was taken on a weekend break in Barcelona. I was using a handheld camera and was forced to make a decision: do I expose for the foreground or do I expose for the skies? In this case I chose to expose for the beautiful night sky, knowing that when I was back in front of my Mac, Photoshop would do the rest.

Here's the original. In pre-digital days I might have been tempted to throw this in the bin.



1. I'm going to begin by using the Magic Wand tool to select the foreground. As selections go this is a relatively simple one to make. Move the default tolerance in the Control Panel up a notch or two and then hold down the Shift key and keep clicking until you get as much as the foreground selected as you can.

At this point it's always wise to enter Quick Mask mode (hit the 'Q' key to do this) and choose yourself a medium sized Brush and, painting in white, begin painting out the bits of the selection that you missed. Vary the brush and its opacity as you do so. When I do this I will from time to time hit the 'Q' key to exit Quick Mask mode and see how my selection is coming along.



2. Now it's time to refine the selection. Hold down Command-spacebar and drag a marquee around a portion of the horizon to zoom into it. Now take the brush down in size (hitting the square brackets allow you to do this) and feather its edges a little (hitting shift-square brackets will allow you to do this) turn on Airbrush mode in the Control Panel and begin painting in the subtler parts of the horizon that your selection has so far missed. When You're happy hit 'Q' to exit Quick Mask mode.



3. Now that your selection is complete it's time to start using it. In the Layers palette create a Levels Adjustment layer (click on the little black and white circle) and a mask for your selection will automatically be created. Drag the grey point slider to the left to reveal the missing detail in the foreground.





4. Now that the foreground is more balanced it's time to address the oversaturation of colours that is often a by-product of what we've just done. In the Layers palette create a Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer and click ok without making any changes. Hold down the alt key and drag the mask from the Levels Adjustment layer over the mask in the Hue/Saturation layer. This will copy the mask from the former layer to the latter. Now double-click on the Hue/Saturation icon and choose reds from the pop-up menu. Take down the saturation and adjust the hue slightly.



5. Now it's time to add a little colour to the skies. Create another Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer and again click OK without changing any settings. Once again alt-drag the Levels Adjustments mask to the new layer then select Image> Adjustments> Invert (or Command-I) and once again double click on the Hue/Saturation icon to change the layers settings. This time choose Blues and/or Cyans from the pop-up menu and increase the Saturation a little.







6. If you feel like it you might even like to change the colour of the sky itself.

Illustrator: Diamonds Are Forever

You may have noticed that Illustrator happens to be my favourite program. Sure, Photoshop has the power and the ability to produce quick-fix effects using Filters, etc. But Illustrator, to my mind, is the purists' program. Surprisingly, in my opinion, it's not a pre-requisite that you should be able to draw before using Illustrator. Nor, for that matter, should you be an expert in Bezier curves. Of course, these things help but even if you're a beginner you can get a lot out of Illustrator.

Above all, I believe Illustrator to be a problem solving program. It's all about thinking out of the box to achieve a particular end result. Take the following, for example.

A few years ago a student of mine asked me how to create a three-dimensional diamond shape in Illustrator. Naturally, to achieve this there's always the drawing option. But I immediately got to thinking about Illustrator's Rotate feature. This is a ported over version of the old favourite Adobe Dimensions. Problem with this, however, is not matter what shape or profile you begin with you're always basically lathing an object. Try as I might I could not produce the effect I wanted. Then I thought: what not create a custom bevel and extrude the shape?

Here's how I did it:

1. Use the polygon tool to create a six-sided shape. You may not know that while drawing with the polygon tool you can us the up and down arrow keys to intuitively add or remove polygon sides. In this example I've given the shape a green fill – this can always be changed later on. Remember to remove the stroke or you will end up with a black object when you bevel.




2. Select Effect> 3D> Extrude And Bevel and turn on the preview. Choose one of the default bevels and try increasing the bevel and extrude depth. Get a feel for what happens when you do this. It's good fun but you'll find in the end that whatever you try you will not be able to create a diamond shape.



3. Your only option is a custom bevel. Select File> Open... and navigate over to your applications folder. Find the Illustrator CS2 or CS3 folder and inside you will find a folder called Plug-ins. Inside there is a file named Bevels.ai. Open it and you will see a list of all of Illustrator's default bevels. (If you're on a PC you must go to the Programs folder and find the Illustrator Plug-ins folder nested inside the main Adobe folder.)



4. Use the Pen tool to create a bevel shape that resembles the one depicted below. Make sure that both ends of the bevel line up. You can do this by selecting the points with the direct selection tool and making sure that the 'Y' value in the control panel at the top of the screen is identical. Now select the Symbols palette and hit the new button. All bevels must be saved as symbols for this to work. Now save and quit Illustrator.



5. Restart Illustrator and re-open the file you created earlier containing the extruded polygon. Locate the Appearance palette and double click on the 3D Extrude & Bevel layer to edit it. Turn on the Preview and in the Bevels list you will find the bevel that you just created. Now you're cooking!

Play with the setting until you get something similar to what I've created below.





6. You will notice that I've taken the blends steps right down to only five steps. In this type of object you're not really looking for a smooth finish. To complete the job add another light and adjust its position and intensity to your satisfaction.

It's easy, I admit, but an ideal example of how lateral thinking can really achieve good results in Adobe Illustrator. It a real diamond of a program ...Sorry about that.

Photoshop: Vanishing Point Part 1

Vanishing Point was one of the most interesting additions to Photoshop CS2 and with CS3 it has become even more powerful. It is an incredibly powerful feature that is also very easy to use. In this exercise we are going to map a decal on to the side of a building. It should take you no more than two minutes to do.

1. Choose an image to map your logo or words on to. Make sure that you rasterize the logo document. Now copy its contents.



2. Filter> Vanishing Point and use the Plane tool to create a basic grid. The image I have chosen is ideal for this purpose as you can clearly see all edges of the the shape. Hit the X key to temporarily zoom into the image. You are aiming for the grid to be blue in colour. If the grid is yellow this means that there could be problems ahead. If it is red then it's a no no.



3. Now paste in your logo/decal and move it until it snaps to the plane. Reposition the logo to your satisfaction. In Vanishing Point its always worthwhile turning on heal to see if it helps your cause. There are two choices: Luminance or on. In this example I have used the former.



4. Now it's time to experiment with Layer Blending modes. These can be found in the drop-down menu in the layers palette. This is the effect if I choose the Darken Mode.



5. Here is the same image with the Multiply mode selected.


6. In the end I have opted for the Colour Dodge mode and taken the Opacity down a little.



So ends the first in a series of Vanishing Point tutorials. In the next I'll be showing you how to create more complicated grids and map objects around corners.

Illustrator: Flag Day

Another Illustrator tutorial for you. This one makes use of Illustrator's envelopes as well as blending modes. I've chosen a Japanese flag for this exercise. This is simply because I'm getting so many Japanese visitors to this blog. It'll work with any flag obviously.

1. Begin by drawing a Japanese flag: a red circle inside a rectangle. If you're an anorak like I am you can use the align palette to make sure that both objects are precisely aligned. Now group them.



2. Next use the Line tool and draw yourself a straight line above the flag that is slightly wider than the flag. Go to Effects> Distort & Transform> Zigzag and apply a smooth wave to the line. The more ridges you apply the windier the day is going to be for you.



3. Now go to Effects> Distort & Transform> Twist and choose an angle that makes your zig-zagged line look a little more random. Now alt-drag a copy of the line underneath the flag. Because the top and bottom of a flag are never the same go to the Appearance palette and double-click on Twist and adjust the angle slightly.



4. Now this is important: we need to join the two lines together to form an outline around the flag. In order to do so you must select Object>Expand Appearance and then Object>Ungroup. You can now use the pen tool to do this. Aim for one edge of a line and you will see a '/' icon. Click on this and then click on the other line to join the two segments together. Now repeat this process and you will have a fully closed path.



5. Now it gets easier. Select all objects and choose Object> Envelope Distort> Make With Top Object. The flag is now beginning to take shape.



6. Now copy the object and choose Edit> Paste In Front. This will make a copy of the flag and place it sitting on top of the original. Choose Object>Envelope Distort> Release and you will end up with a nice neutral gray version of the flag, Delete the underlying Japanese flag group that lies beneath the released envelope object. Now select the Gradient Mesh tool and make a series of cuts at the tops of the flag. When you have finished you will have something that resembles the screenshot below.



7. A little patience is now required. With the Direct Selection tool choose every other anchor point at the top and bottom of the flag. If you do this correctly you can then apply a black swatch to your selection and you should end up with something that looks like this:



8. Now go to the Transparency palette and set the blending mode to Multiply. Fiddle around with the opacity until you have what you want.



9. Now the fun bit: select all objects and group. Choose Effects> Warp> Twist and play with the settings until you get the flag shape that you require. Make it as windy as you like!



10. By the way: I know from my web stats that a lot of people are visiting this blog. I'd really appreciate it if you could post the odd comment or two, if only to know that there are other people in this world who enjoy using the Adobe Creative Suite. Thanks in advance.

InDesign: Deselecting the selection tool

Most people are aware that when using InDesign all you have to do is hit the 'v' key when you are in (almost) any other tool and you will find yourself back in the Selection tool.

This is great, and something that should become instinctive if you have been using InDesign for any amount of time. A major problem occurs, however, if you happen to be inside a text box when you hit the 'v' key. If you do this, you end up typing a 'v' into the text.

In years gone by I would get over this problem by hitting Command-Shift-A (Control-Shift-A on the PC) and this would deselect the text box, allowing me to then hit the 'v' key in safety. Nowadays, however I have a better solution:

Navigate to InDesign's Edit menu and select Keyboard Shortcuts. Under Product Area select Tools and find the Selection Tool in the list below. Under 'Context' choose 'Text' then insert your cursor into the New Shortcut field and hit 'Escape'. Hit Assign and then click 'OK'.



Simple, I know. But from now on whenever you happen to be inside a text box and need a quick exit just hit the Escape key and you're back in the Selection tool.

It's a big time-saver.

InDesign: Creating Island Spreads

One of the questions that constantly arises, particularly from migrating QuarkXpress users, is how does one create an island spread in InDesign?

An island spread is three or more pages joined together, rather like the fold-outs that you sometimes see in magazines. In Quark this is very easy to do: you simply drag a page into position on the page layout palette and an additional page is created.

If you try to do this in InDesign, however, it just doesn't work. You drag a page into position in the Pages palette and it will invariably end up appearing at the end of the document. This can be annoying to say the least.

By default Indesign does not allow islands spread to be created in the Quark way. It does this to prevent a common problem that occurs in QuarkXpress: that of the ordering of pages becoming messed up. I've lost count of the number of times that I've seen inexperienced designers or subs totally destroy a document in Quark by turning right-sided pages into left-sided pages, and visa versa.

If you need to create an island spread in InDesign the solution, however, is simple. Simply go to the palette menu of the Pages palette and deselect Allow Pages To Shuffle. Now you can drag in as many pages as you like and place them next to an existing page.



But what if you want to do this and still prevent inexperienced users from messing up your documents? Simply select a spread and choose Keep Spread Together. A simple tip, I know (you out there listening 'Creative Guy'?) but a fairly essential one at that.

Illustrator: Create a 3D Dice

Illustrator CS2 included the welcome addition of a 3D effects module, older timers like me will remember this from the