8 replies to this topic

[Nick Springer]

One map out of a series of maps illustrating interesting drives in Pennsylvania for a printed state visitor's guide.

Created using Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop.

 I_76_Passage.jpg   92.44K   325 downloads

[ELeFevre]

Very nice. How did you create the transparent/white areas on the edges? Is that a feather effect?

[Nick Springer]

In a nutshell, the effect was created in Adobe Illustrator using blends:

On a layer above all the map artwork, I cloned the yellow route and made the stroke width as big as the desired clear area. I cloned it again and made the stroke width as big as the edge of my blur. I then outlined both paths, and set both of them to have stroke of 1pt using the background color. The inner outline was then changed to 0% transparency. I selected both outlines and Blended the paths using 20 steps.

I guess I should post a detailed tutorial for this some day soon

[ELeFevre]

Yes, you should post a tutorial! I assumed the effect was created in Photoshop by feathering selections. I'm going to try it out and see if I can come up with something similar. Thanks.

[Nick Springer]

You could absolutely do it in Photoshop with a feathered selection, but I wanted to keep it all vector based in Illustrator.

[JimBlakeslee]

I am trying this technique. Did you post a tutorial? I can blend by color, but not by transparency. I set the inner line to 0% and the outer to 100%, but the whole blend is built at 100%.

I am using CS2.

[frax]

I think it looks very nice, but is it that useful? I think you should make the fading area smaller -- I get a little bit of out-of-focus feeling, like when I don't have my glasses on (but not as bad -- I am nearly blind with out them!)

[Nick Springer]

On a layer above all the map artwork, I cloned the yellow route and made the stroke width as big as the desired clear area.  I cloned it again and made the stroke width as big as the edge of my blur.  I then outlined both paths, and set both of them to have stroke of 1pt using the background color.  The inner outline was then changed to 0% transparency.  I selected both outlines and Blended the paths using 20 steps.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Jim,

Did you see this part of the post? If you post the AI file, or just the elements in question by themselves I can take a look. Save as CS1 - I don't have CS2 yet. It's hard to determine the issue otherwise.

[JimBlakeslee]

I did but it was acting funny. In CS2, it helps to outline the stoke instead of outlining the path. Not sure if that is the same or different in CS.