15 replies to this topic

[Hans van der Maarel]

I just found out about this in CS5, but apparently it was also possible in CS4...

In the Appearance panel you can add a stroke to text objects and then drag it underneath the characters. This avoids the issue that half of the stroke is positioned inside the letter forms. I've done this for the selected text object:

 Screen_shot_2010_05_28_at_10.31.34.png   247.73K   112 downloads

Did you know about this? I feel rather silly for only finding out now when apparently it's been possible for years. I always copied the text, pasted it behind the original and gave that rear copy an outline. The downside of this was that you'd end up with double the number of text objects and editing a text afterwards was tricky.

[frax]

Yup - that has been there for quite a while I think... You can also do this on the group level, or for easier management you can set up a style with this.

The appearance panel is really powerful + useful!

[Charles Syrett]

Wow. I've been doing this in FreeHand for 15 years.

Charles Syrett
Map Graphics
http://www.mapgraphics.com

[l.jegou]

That's very useful to detach texts from the background. But beware, as Frax said there is several stackable aspects : object, group, group of group, etc. So it could quickly become complicated

[Lori Martin]

Sadly this can't be done in CS3. I will keep it in mind when I upgrade. Thanks for sharing Hans!

[ELeFevre]

Sadly this can't be done in CS3. I will keep it in mind when I upgrade. Thanks for sharing Hans!

Are you sure? I'm fairly confident I do this all the time in CS3. In the appearance palette drop-down menu select Add New Stroke and then drag the stroke beneath the fill. Am I missing something?

[rudy]

Sadly this can't be done in CS3. I will keep it in mind when I upgrade. Thanks for sharing Hans!

Are you sure? I'm fairly confident I do this all the time in CS3. In the appearance palette drop-down menu select Add New Stroke and then drag the stroke beneath the fill. Am I missing something?

Yes you can do this in CS3. I never thought of doing it this way before. Something I'll have to implement into my workflow.

[KimWright]

What I find really neat is that you can modify the opacity of the stroke while not affecting the opacity of the type. This allows the halo to be partially transparent. However I find that when dragging this appearance onto new type objects the appearance doesn't always look the same.

[mlbostwick]

I still have CS3. In that version, you can only apply a new stroke using the Appearance Palette when you have the text selected with the Selection Tool. When you have the characters selected with the Text Tool, you can't apply a New Stroke (it's grayed out in the flyout). Occasionally, I'll want to apply two different colours to my text halo, if the word is long and runs across different background polygons. I'm pretty sure you can't do this, because you'd need to select individual characters, not the whole object - unless I'm missing something, of course, which I very well could be!

In newer versions of Illustrator, CS4 or CS5, are you able to use the Appearance Palette to add a new stroke when characters are selected with the Text Tool?

[Kathi]

What I find really neat is that you can modify the opacity of the stroke while not affecting the opacity of the type. This allows the halo to be partially transparent. However I find that when dragging this appearance onto new type objects the appearance doesn't always look the same.

Can you do this with non-text objects, too? I sometimes want to do just the reverse, i.e. have a transparent polygon but let its border stand out. So far I've duplicated the object, but that makes editing tricky. I've only learned about this appearance thing just now. Thanks a lot for sharing!

Cheers,
Kathi

[frax]

@mlbostwick - you have to select the whole text box to apply these appearance tricks. To do it on individual letters, you would have to split up the text, so it is not so easy to work with.

@kathi - yes you can. You can set the opacity on just the fill using the appearance palette, without disturbing the stroke.

[Kathi]

That's really cool! Thanks a lot!

Cheers,
Kathi

[Lori Martin]

Sadly this can't be done in CS3. I will keep it in mind when I upgrade. Thanks for sharing Hans!

Are you sure? I'm fairly confident I do this all the time in CS3. In the appearance palette drop-down menu select Add New Stroke and then drag the stroke beneath the fill. Am I missing something?

Thank you! I wasn't doing "Add New Stroke". This is fabulous!!!!!!

[Rob]

I do this in CS 2 all the time.

[François Goulet]

Thanks Hans!

Nice trick!