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Posts tagged tips and tricks
Vectips Hiatus
Jul 3rd
After four years of creating tutorials, tips, and hunting for vector art inspiration for Vectips, I’m taking a break and putting Vectips on a hiatus. I didn’t come to this decision easily and below I outline some of the reasons that I made this decision. I also talk about the future of Vectips and other possibilities. I really have enjoyed creating and maintaining Vectips. My career path is changing but I hope Vectips will still have a bright future! Why The Hiatus? Let me start out by saying Vectips has been a really wonderful experience. Without Vectips, I would have never been introduced to so many awesome people and amazing career building opportunities. When I first started Vectips, I wanted to give back to the community that has helped me so much. I really hope that I have helped people and have been an inspiration for some. Maintaining Vectips is a big job. It takes a lot of time each day to create tutorials, write tips and tricks, find vector art inspiration, chat with vector artist, moderate comments, respond to email, and in general maintain the brand. In addition to Vectips, I am the owner, designer and illustrator of my own design studio Rype Arts. I also run the online Illustrator resource …
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Vectips Hiatus
Vintage Vector Vectorian Pack Giveaway
May 23rd
The Vectorian Vintage Vector Pack is a mammoth pack including 930 vector ornaments, 465 vintage frame borders, and 92 antique illustrations. Vectorian is giving away 5 packs to 5 lucky Vectips readers! You really need to check out the site to see all the elements. About the Vectorian Pack With the Vectorian Pack , you can save time and create distinctive wrappings, refined wedding invitations and elegant stationary designs. The possibilities are endless with this oversized library of 930 vector ornaments, 465 vintage frame borders, and 92 antique illustrations all hand-picked from nineteenth century type foundry catalogs. Click here to view the embedded video. How to Enter There are a couple of ways to enter the giveaway. Enter both to increase your odds! See below for details. Facebook To enter the giveaway with Facebook, go to the Vectorian.net site and press the Facebook Like button. Then update your status with: “Hey Vectorian and Vectips, count me in for the giveaway! http://vecti.ps/LgdA85″ Twitter To enter the giveaway from Twitter, tweet the message “Hey @webalys @Vectips count me in for the Vectorian giveaway! http://vecti.ps/LgdA85″ Selecting the Winner The giveaway will end on Wednesday, May 30 at 1pm MST. We will randomly select 5 winners from all the entries. The winner will be announced later that same day. Samples Below are some sample images of the elements included in the pack, but there is a lot more! Ornaments Frames Borders Antique Illustrations
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Vintage Vector Vectorian Pack Giveaway
Fit Text Frame to Content Script
May 15th
Nathaniel Kelso created a couple of really handy scripts to fit text boxes to their content. This might seem like a really basic problem, but these problems are usually the most annoying. There is a script for a text box’s Depth and a script for the text box’s Width. If you work with a bunch of typography in Illustrator I’m sure they will come in handy. Thanks to John Wundes for pointing it out. Download the script here (you need to scroll down a little ).
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Fit Text Frame to Content Script
Save Width Profiles
Apr 10th
I love using Illustrator’s Width Profiles (CS5 and up) but I hate accidentally deleting the custom widths I’ve created. There’s no great way to save custom profiles like you do when saving other custom libraries like brushes, swatches, and graphic styles. The best way I’ve found to save them is by applying the custom profile to an object and saving a graphic style. From there you can save a custom graphic style library.
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Save Width Profiles
MultiExporter Script
Apr 3rd
Thanks to John Wundes , I learned Matthew Erickson created an awesome Artboard/Layers exporter script called MultiExporter . The script handles exporting of selected layers, artboards, or a combo of both into PNG, JPG, PDF, and EPS formats. This script is a little more extensive than other exporting scripts and worth checking out!
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MultiExporter Script
Fix Overlapping Custom Art Brush Strokes
Mar 22nd
I like scanning a bunch of different brush strokes to create custom Illustrator Art Brushes. When I create these brushes from the outlined scanned artwork I sometimes get this weird overlapping effect that’s really annoying. I’ve been hunting around for a solution and finally found one. To be honest, I’m not really sure I understand why it works, but it does, so I guess that’s fine. The Problem Take a look at the image below from a scanned custom Art Brush I made. See were the path overlaps and you seen the reversed effect? That’s what I don’t want to happen. The Fix The fix is pretty easily, but again, I’m not complete sure what Illustrator is doing or what these functions mean. Select the artwork you’re
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Fix Overlapping Custom Art Brush Strokes
Where is My Gradient Annotator?
Mar 1st
The Gradient Annotator is an essential part of Illustrator’s Gradient tool (G). That’s why it’s such a pain when it seemingly disappears! I get emails about this all the time so I think it justifies a quick post. If you don’t see your annotator when using the Gradient tool (G) then choose View > Show Gradient Annotator (Command-Option-G/Ctrl-Alt-G). I tend to sometimes turn it off and on by accident when I’m using the keyboard shortcuts for grouping and ungrouping objects.
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Where is My Gradient Annotator?
Organize Script
Feb 28th
John Wundes has created another awesome script called Organize . With Organize, you can quickly sort selected items by a given attribute. Items can be sorted on height, width, area, x-axis, y-axis, opacity, and order. The sort direction are small-to-large, large-to-small, and random. It’s a pretty handy script for organizing icon sets, logo comps, and a bunch more. What would you use it for? Go download it now!
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Organize Script
DrawScribe Plugin Preview
Feb 23rd
Astute Graphics is about to launch their new DrawScribe Illustrator plugin . You’ll probably know Astute from their other plugins Phantasm CS and VectorScribe . If you have used any of these plugins, you’ll probably be pretty excited for DrawScribe. It’s slated to be released early March and packed with a couple tools to really speed up your drawing and sketching in Illustrator! Disclaimer First off, a little disclaimer. Astute Graphics has been a long time advertiser with Vectips. I have used Phantasm CS since before they advertised with Vectips. Moreover, I was a beta tester for the new DrawScribe plugin. This is not a paid post from Astute, I’m just excited about this plugin! DrawScribe DrawScribe is an Illustrator CS3 to CS5.1 plugin for Mac OS 10.5+ and Windows XP/Vista/7. There are two main components to DrawScribe; InkScribe and Dynamic Sketch. InkScribe InkScribe is a replacement for Illustrator’s Pen tool. For expert users the tool offers more freedom and proficiency when drawing shapes. For less experienced Illustrator users it reduces the learning curve of complex tools. Dynamic Sketch You can think of Dynamic Sketch as a replacement for the Pencil tool. Even so, that doesn’t do the tool justice. Dynamic Sketch makes sketching and drawing in Illustrator more natal and fluid than it has ever been. This is especially true when coupled with a Wacom pen tablet. Preview Video Check out the preview video
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DrawScribe Plugin Preview
Did You Know: Default Corner Radius
Feb 14th
Did you know you can change Illustrator’s default corner radius for the Rounded Rectangle tool? Simply go to your General Preferences and in the Corner Radius field change the default value. This works great if you are working on a project that requires numerous rounded rectangles with the same corner radius. Don’t worry, you can easily override this value on a per-object basis in the Rounded Rectangle tool dialog box.
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Did You Know: Default Corner Radius