Illustrator: Create a dart board

Hello there, for today's long overdue exercise I'm going to be creating a dartboard. Why? Why not?

1. Create a new document and select the Polar Grid tool (one of my favourite tools, actually). Now single-click on the artboard and make the width and height of the grid 355pt. You need to specify 6 Concentric Dividers (that's how many there are in a dartboard) and 20 Radial Dividers (why? Because a dartboard has 20 numbers). Click ok and go and make yourself a cup of tea. Align the Polar Grid object to the centre of the artboard, vertically and horizontally (you should know by now that I always do this).

2. Here's watcha get:



3. Now tear off the Group Selection tool and the Scale tool. Move them close to the potential dart board for easy access. Use the Group Selection tool to select the second concentric circle. Then double-click on the Scale tool and take the uniform value down to 90%.



4. Now use the Group Selection tool to select the fourth concentric circle and double-click on the Scale tool to scale it down to 84%.



5. Repeat this process again. Choose the sixth concentric circle and scale it down to 29%.



6. Finally, scale the seventh concentric circle down again by 29%.



7. Now you need to rotate the entire dart board. Click away to deselect then select the dart board with the Selection tool. Select the Rotate tool and double-click it. Set the rotate value to 45º.



8. Now we need to colour the dart board. To do this I'm going to turn the dart board into a Live Paint object. Go to the Object> Live Paint> Make. Now select the Live Paint Bucket tool and then choose a black coloured swatch. Begin dragging as below:



9. Continue dragging to paint...



10. Don't worry if you make mistakes (like I have)...



11. Get yourself a red swatch and carefully colour in the doubles and trebles...



12. Now use a white swatch, like this:



13. Finally, get yourself a green swatch to complete your dose of Live Painting. I like this feature, it saves so much time.



14. Now zoom into the bullseye. Draw yourself a circle and colour it red. Align this circle to the centre of the artboard.



15. Now for some numbers. Fit the page to the window (Apple-0) and then use the Type tool to create the number 20. I've use Myriad Pro 29 pt, but you can obviously use whatever takes your fancy. Make sure the type is centrally aligned, then move it into position and align to the centre horizontally.



16. Select the Rotate tool and hold down the alt key and click in the centre of the dart board. Key in 18º for the value and hit Copy. Finally hit Apple-D 18 times to repeat this transformation.



17. You end up with a very high scoring dart board.



18. If you're not happy with this you'll have to do a little donkey work. Use the Type tool to manually change the numbers.



19. Still more drudgery. You're going to have to use the Rotate tool to manually straighten all the numbers. Just select each number one by one and double-click on the Rotate tool; use the up and down arrows to straighten the numbers, What a drag...

...Well done! You're there! You did well!

Creative Suite: Selecting Type

You'll have to excuse me if the following tips are a little too simplistic for you, or you already know them. Not only do they apply to the entire Creative Suite, they also apply to any program out there.

The reason I'm publishing these tips is that I know for a fact that if you don't already know them they will make your life a whole lot easier. Proof of this comes from the reaction I usually get from a good 70% of people that I train in any software, be it InDesign, Illustrator, Quark or whatever. Many people are generally shocked that it’s so easy to select type. You may be too, but if you already know this you'll wonder why I'm wasting everybody’s time.

Selecting type

There are many ways of doing this, of course. The vast majority of people simply insert their cursor into the text and drag, taking care not to pick up any stray spaces at the beginning or end of the selection. Others do the clever thing: they hit Apple-left arrow to select a word, or Apple-down arrow to select a paragraph. All well and good, but here’s the best way of doing it:

Two clicks of the mouse to select a word

Three clicks of the mouse to select a line.

Four clicks of the mouse to select a paragraph

Five clicks of the mouse to select all words (including any over-set type)

Double-click on a word and then drag (keeping the mouse held down) to select a range of type that starts and ends anywhere within a paragraph

(Indesign Only) Position your cursor anywhere within the type and hit Shift-Apple-Home to select all the type from that point upwards. Hit Shift-Apple-End to select all the type from that point downwards

(QuarkXpress Only) Position your cursor anywhere within the type and hit Apple-alt-shift-up arrow to select all the type from that point upwards. Hit Apple-alt-shift-down arrow to select all the type from that point downwards

Apologies once again if all this is old news for you. And double apologies if I've offended any Adobe acolytes by mentioning QuarkXpress. But what the hell... Those guys need help :-)

Illustrator: Starry, Starry Night

Hi there.

Today’s exercise will show you how to create a star-field effect in under five minutes. There are, of course, many ways of doing this, the Symbol Sprayer tools being an obvious choice. In this instance, however, I'm going to use a Scatter Brush, which is sometimes very useful for things such as crowds scenes and – naturally – Star Fields.

As always, your comments are very welcome.

Incidentally, anybody out there feel like offering their own tutorial? It would be great if you could.

1. Create an A4 document in Illustrator and fill it with a Gradient (hitting full-stop or period will do this). Double click on Layer 1 in the Layers palette and name it 'Sky'.



2. In the Gradient palette click on the white handle to select it then alt-click a colour from the swatches palette. I've chosed blue here but you can obviously choose whatever colour you like. Now use the Gradient tool (hit G) to redefine the angle of the gradient. Drag downwards holding down the shift key as you do so.



3. Turn off the layer's visibility and then alt-click the new button in the Layers palette to create a new layer. Call this one 'Stars'. Now create a third layer – call this one 'Foreground'.



4. Select the foreground layer and then draw yourself a straight line that overlaps the artboard as shown below. Go to Effect> Distort And Transform> Zig-zag... and create yourself a curve. Below are the settings that I've used.



5. Now got to Effect> Distort and Transform> Twist and distort the zig-zagged line so that it begins to resemble an horizon.



6. This is important: Go to Object> Expand Appearance so that your horizon now becomes an editable bezier curve. Next use the Rectangle tool to draw a rectangle similar to the one below.



7. Bring out the Pathfinder Palette, select the line and the box and hit 'Divide'. This will create two separate objects. Ungroup them and delete the uppermost object. Now hit ',' to fill with a gradient. In the Gradient palette select the blue handle and and alt-click to fill with a new colour. I've chosen yellow but what the hell.



8. In the Control Panel at the top of the screen, make sure that the object's reference point is set to the centre. Then choose the Reflect tool (located beneath the Rotate tool) and double click on it and hit 'copy'. This will place a flipped copy of the object on top of the other one. Use the Direct Selection tool to play about with the shape and then send this object behind the other object (Apple-[).



9. This is what I've ended up with:



10. Select the Star Layer and use the Star Tool to create a simple star. Remember you can use the up and down arrows to add or remove points while you draw. Fill the star with a colour and then hit the new button in the Brush Palette. From the ensuing dialogue box select Scatter Brush.



11. In the Scatter Brush Options Leave the settings as they are for now but give the brush a name. Click OK.



12. Now select the Brush tool and draw yourself a squiggly line. Rather like this one below:



13. Now turn on the visibility for the Sky Layer so you can see what you’re doing. Then double click on the Star brush that you created in Step 11 and turn on Preview. Make all the settings Random. As you drag the sliders you will see a random star-field begin to form.



14. When you're happy with what you’ve created hit OK and also Apply The Brush To Existing Brush Strokes. Now, still on the Star layer, draw a box to fill the entire artboard. Select all and Choose Object> Clipping Mask> Create. This will get rid of any stray stars.



15. The great thing about Scatter Brushes is that you can make adjustments at any time. Simply double-click on the brush, make the changes and hey presto!

Photoshop: Straighten Gallery Shots

Hiya,

First of all another of my customary apologies but it's been a pretty hectic and emotionally charged week for me. Far too hectic and emotionally charged to think about Adobe tutorials. If you're interested, as well as being overrun with work, I also found myself on the telephone speaking to my mother and father for the first time since 1998. It's a long story and I won't bore you with any details, suffice to say it's been a most unusual week.

Anyhow, Photoshop…

Ever visited an art gallery and tried to take a few shots of the paintings housed in it? The problem is that if you have a flash and stand right in from of the picture you end up with a photograph of a flash going off. The only solution to this is to take the picture at an angle and to let Photoshop strut its funky stuff.

As follows:

1. Select the Crop tool and draw a rough marquee around the image you wish to straighten.



2. In the Control panel at the top of the machine check 'Perspective'. You can now drag the four handles of your marquee to fit the image.



3. All you do now is hit return and hey presto! One magically straightened image. As simple as that.



PS. Sorry for the shortness of this little tip. I'm going to be making an effort to get back into the groove next week. As always comments most gratefully appreciated.

Illustrator: Metallic Type

Hi there.

Back to my favourite prog today. I'm going to be doing this while I watch Federer-Nadal in the Wimbledon final. If I appear a little distracted then, please forgive me (as I write Federer is two sets to one up but has fallen to pieces a little in the fourth set).

Illustrator. What a fantastic program. I was brought up using Freehand and for many years I thought it was the bee's knees. Then, round about version 9.0, Illustrator took over. For this exercise I'm going to be showing you how to create metallic looking text. I hope you enjoy it. Once again, any comments are greatly appreciated.

1. Create some type. In this case I simply click on the page and begin typing. I'm using the font Impact, which everyone should have. When you're ready switch to the selection tool and manually resize the type to your satisfaction. As ever, I've aligned my type to the centre of the artboard horizontally and vertically. I always do this, I just think it's good practice.



2. First of all, convert your text into outlines. Do this by selecting Type> Create Outlines. Now ungroup the converted type and apply a gradient to one of the letter forms. This is how I've done it:



3. Select the gradient tool and change the angle of the gradient so that it runs vertically. Here you can tweak the gradient to get it looking good.



4. Now the fun bit: if you're using a version of Illustrator earlier than CS3 you must create 10 swatches; from 100% black to 0% black. If you have CS3 you can use the default Grayscale Colour Group.

Apply a 10pt stoke and colour it 100% black. Next go to the palette menu of the Appearance palette and select Add New Stoke. Make this 9pt and 90% black. Make another 8 new stokes in this way, each time reducing the size by 1pt and the colour by 10%. As you work you will see a metallic looking stroke begin to take shape.



5. Eventually your stroke will look like this:



6. Now you have to apply the metallic stroke to every character. Of course, we wouldn't want to have to reinvent the wheel to do this, so go over to the Graphic style palette and with the first character selected, hit the New button. Select each letter individually and apply the stroke style that you have just created. Now manually adjust the kerning between the letters and group them.



7. The type may now be looking metallic enough for your taste. This next bit, therefore, is optional. Create an ellipse and align it centrally to the artboard. Fill the ellipse with a neutral looknig grey and head over to Effects> Artistic> Film Grain…. Apply the default settings and then select Effects> Brush Strokes> Angled Stokes… Again apply the default settings. I always find this a fairly straightforward way of creating a brushed metal effect.



8. Send the ellipse to the back and copy it for later use. Now apply a drop shadow to the type (Effects> Stylize> Drop Shadow…) These are the settings I've used:



9. Now paste the copied ellipse in front (Apple-F) and in the Transparency palette set its blending mode to Multiply. Adjust the opacity to suit. You should now have a brused metal effect on top of the type.



10. This bit is also optional. Here I've selected the Flare tool and applied a flare with the following settings:




Some might say that the Flare tool is simply too tacky to ever use and most of the time I'd agree. But what the hell…

Photoshop: Recolouring Images

Don't get the idea that I'm obsessed with flowers but here's another flower exercise for your pleasure. Ever need to quickly recolour an image or part of an image?

I can remember years ago doing really stupid things like trying to make a selection in an image before attempting to adjust colours. Naturally, you don't have to do this. Here watcha do:

1. Open your image and head over to Image> Adjustments> Replace Colour. Select the Eyedropper tool and begin clicking in the parts of the image that you'd like to change.



2. There's really nothing to this. Click on the colour to the right of the Hue/Sauration/Brightness sliders and select yourself a new colour. Here's where you can play about with the fuzziness slider to control how much of the image is affected by your selection. Now you can either select the Eyedropper icon with the '+' next to it or simply hold down Shift to keep adding to your selection. If you make a mistake and want to remove from your selection simply hold down the alt key.

Going...



Going...



...Gone. Now feel free to recolour your flower to whatever colour you like. Blue anyone?



Orange anyone?



Short and sweet, I admit. But occasionally useful. A bit like myself.

Photoshop: Using Photomerge

Hi there

Apologies again for the delay in posting. Two reasons for this, to be honest: one is that I'm really, really busy at the moment. The other is that I've been getting so little feedback for this blog (despite thousands of page loads) that I was beginning to get a little despondent.

This has changed recently, however, and I'd like to thank all the people that have sent messages of encouragement (and love!). It really helps, and makes you think that you're not typing into thin air.

Just about to sit down and watch a very exciting episode of 24. Only recently got into it and I have to admit that it's better than I expected. Riveting stuff. Before I do so I'd like to go through the steps required to make a photographic panorama. It's a little hobby of mine (in fact, here you can find several examples of my panoramas if you're at all interested: http://web.mac.com/truth42/iWeb/Truth42%20Site/Panoramas.html)

1. The first step I obviously can't show. It's me standing in the middle of a forest with my feet rooted to the spot, holding a camera and swivelling like some kind of demented lunatic. It's not a pretty sight, I can tell you, but fairly essential if you want to produce a 360º panorama. Seriously though, keep a steady hand and try to include a landmark or object that was in the previous shot as you swivel. This helps when you come to line up the images later on.

2. The first thing to do once you're sitting back at your computer is to open Photoshop (CS2 in this case) and select File> Automate> Photomerge.. You will then be prompted to locate the images that you wish to Photomerge. Find them.



3. Photomerge will then do its stuff. In reality it's really a giant glorifed Action. As you watch you will see Photomerge create new layers, cut and paste images from one layer to another and generally try to make an automated panorama. It never quite manages it, however. And 99 times out of 100 you'll have to do it yourself. Hence the following warning:




4. Now it's time to start dragging. This helps if you were a child with an unhealthy predilection for jigsaws. Even better if you're a weird adult with an unhealthy predilection for jigsaws. Photoshop in its wisdom does, however, try to help us a little. You'll notice that images will snap neatly together when you find two pieces that fit.



5. All done. You'll notice that idiot here has included a few superfluous shots. I always tend to do this when I'm shooting panoramas. They are 'just in case' shots. Before you click OK make sure that the Advanced Blending option is checked. Most important this.



6. After you click OK Photoshop will begin to bump and grind its way through what is a fairly arduous task. The end result is pretty impressive but a little work is still required.



7. The next thing to do is to use Photoshop's Crop tool to cut away the bits of the image that are no good. I'm assuming that you know how to use the Crop tool.



8. Now I need to do a little balancing of tones. The image is way too dark so I create a Levels Adjustment layer (select the little two-tone circle at the base of the Layers palette). These are the settings I'm using to lighten the image:



9. This is almost good but there is a problem to the right of the images. One of the shots I took is way too dark even for this Adjustment layer. To combat this I temporarily turn off this layer and create a second Levels Adjustment layer. For this layer I solely concentrate on the dark area. These are the setting I use:



10. Now it's time to merge the two adjustment layers. Make sure both are turned on and choose yourself a medium size brush and feather it slightly (the square brackets will allow you to intuitively change brush size; shift-square brackets will allow you to feather the brush). Make sure that black is your foreground colour (hit D to do this); set the opacity down a little and begin painting the background back in. The aim is to equalize the tones in the image as much as possible.



It's not a perfect solution but as solutions go it's not too bad. You may wish to tweak the tones by using a combination of the Dodge and Burn tools. Happy Photomerging!