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The Centennial Collection of Panels and Ornaments
The tips and techniques described on this page will translate equally to each of our other three CD collections.
For your convenience, we compiled the Tips and Techniques from our previous offerings into one single page:
Compiled Tips and Techniques
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TIP 5: LINED SHADES
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Take a close look at the lettering on a US dollar bill! You will notice that many of the gray tones are actually fine lines in the dark green color. With a few of the tools available to us in our DTP and design software, we can create the effects with much less effort and eye strain!
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In the first section, we'll show you the basics, followed by a few more advanced variations. |
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| Start with a line of text. Centennial Banker works great! |
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Add a shade. This example has a slight "relief" so the shades don't bump into the letters. |
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| To help with registration, we added a horizontal and vertical guideline just below the text. With "snap to guidelines" turned ON, we selected the grouped shade and rotated it 45 degrees over the center axis point. |
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With the rotated shade selected, we instructed our Omega software to create stripes in the shape of the original shades. This is a one step process in Omega, but you can get the same effects in most other DTP and design software with not much more effort. (explained later on this page) |
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| Once the lines were created, we simply rotated the grouped shades back. |
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The guidelines make the rotation a precise process. Note: The lined shades illustrated here are much more coarse than we would normally make. Finer lined shades work better, but will not hold the detail for low resolution Internet images.
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BEYOND THE BASICS
As mentioned earlier, we used Gerber Scientific's Omega design software for our lined shade examples. It works easily and flawlessly, but it only creates stripes in either the horizontal or vertical directions. With that limitation, we know we need to rotate the shade to make horizontal lines in it. As an alternative, we could have also made a group of step and repeated horizontal lines, then rotated them 45 degrees and then use the "find common" command. There will often be more than one way of ending up with basically identical results, so be creative with the software you own! |
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The earlier techniques showed how to rotate the shade to add the stipes. Horizontal lines work, too! |
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| Once you get the hang of the bacic steps, it is only a matter of adding outlines & more shades. |
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ALTERNATE WAYS OF MAKING STRIPES AND LINES:
If your software doesn't have the "stripes" or lines, the chances are still good your software can get the job done. Here's one way using Adobe Illustrator. |
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Create a single line at roughly the line height you plan on using. Step and repeat that line with a space roughly equal to the line height. You can vary that of course and for a less mechanical look, try creating your block of lines visually. |
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The main issue is to create a block large enough to cover the area of the object you plan on lining. |
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| Remember, it doesn't necessarily have to be a shade. Just about any object can be lined. For this simple example, we will only use two letters. Group the lines and then group the letters, shades, or objects. |
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Move the block of lines over the object and then select both groups. The next step is to find the command in your software that will keep the common areas of two overlapping groups. |
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In Adobe Illustrator, for example, the command is found in the Pathfinder tab. The circled icon on the left is the "Crop" tool. In Omega/Graphix Advantage, the similar command is the A and B option in the Special Effects tools. |
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| The results will look something like this. Once you try the commands and get a handle on how they work, you'll use them over and over. These are the same basic steps we use when creating the lined clouds. |
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Note:
Adobe Illustrator is a trade name of Adobe Systems, Inc.
Adobe Photoshop is a trade name of Adobe Systems, inc.
Graphics Advantage is a trade name of Gerber Scientific Products, Inc.
Omega is a trade name of Gerber Scientific Products.
Corel Draw is a trade name of Corel Corporation.
Macintosh is a trade name of Apple Corporation.
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