TECHNIQUE: Emboss Text Effect

One of my dear friends, Bert Monroy, has a wonderful podcast on Revision3 called Pixel Perfect. Some of you may remember that I've appeared as a guest on Bert's show in the past, where I've spoken about using Illustrator and symbols, 3D, animation, and the awesome Live Paint feature.

Recently, Bert did an episode on how to create a license plate in Photoshop. As always, the techniques that Bert teaches on his show are great. But I couldn't help myself in thinking that creating a license plate in Illustrator would not only be possible, it would end up looking better, and it would be scalable to boot.

The challenge though is quite apparent -- license plates feature text that is embossed into the metal -- and Illustrator, with all of the wonderful effects it offers, doesn't have an emboss effect. I know, kinda silly, right? Is that an oversight? Not exactly. An emboss effect a la Photoshop's Layer Style and now InDesign CS3's emboss effect, has been a pretty popular feature request over the years. There were some Illustrator plugins that created a simulated emboss effect that have come and gone over the years, but they were vector and never looked realistic enough.

In reality, Illustrator DOES have an emboss "effect" via the 3D effect. One could, in theory, apply a 3D Extrude, specify a Rounded bevel, and set the position of the rotation to Front. However, even with complex lighting settings, the emboss never looked good enough for me. Especially when you consider that depending on the typeface, you'll always get really odd self-intersecting errors, which don't help either.

So I spent a few minutes with Illustrator with this challenge, and came up with the following:



Not bad, eh? I think the emboss effect on the text looks realistic enough. In fact, if you zoom in close, you'll find that I've also applied a texture effect to the plate itself, in trying to simulate that metallic look. In the end, I was able to achieve the emboss effect using a single text object that is editable, meaning you can change the text to read whatever you like. I also created a Graphic Style of the effect, making it possible to apply that exact same appearance to anything else with a single click.



What was that? Oh, you want me to tell you how I did it? Ha -- you know me -- I wouldn't make mention of something here if I wasn't intent on sharing the knowledge. Well then, let's begin...

DISCLAIMER: I don't specify exact values for the techniques here, just the steps you need to take. The values will vary depending of size, font, and desired effect, so the point here is to encourage you to play and experiment.

1. The obvious point of this tutorial is the emboss effect, so I won't spend much time on the license plate itself. But it's pretty simple to create one anyway. A license plate is 12" wide by 6" tall. I used a CMYK document and set my Document Raster Effects Resolution to 150 (which would be enough for what we'll need in this technique). I rounded the corners (a license plate has a radius of .5"), drew out the holes for the screws and created a compound path so that the holes were punched out of the overall shape.

2. I filled the shape with a gradient and then applied a slight drop shadow for that realistic touch. To add the texture, I choose Effect > Effect Gallery and applied the Grain Texture effect. I then added the remainder of the graphics -- the background at the top and the New York State text. Finally, I added the text of the license plate itself. I hope you like my custom plate (no, it's not my real license plate -- I'm not the type to get "vanity" plates -- besides I'm sure they would look AWESOME on my "hey I'm a dad!" minivan). I should also point out that I chose Helvetica Rounded Bold Condensed for the typeface -- besides for the fact that license plates have a pretty "soft" emboss, I wanted to get that rounded look. You can experiment with different fonts on your own, but I would suggest that you avoid using a serif typeface.

3. As a reminder, the key here for me was to have everything included as a single appearance, which would allow us to keep the text editable and to apply it with a single click as a style to other objects, as needed. In the end, I accomplished the emboss effect using 3 fills, and built it in such a way that would work over any color background. So to begin, we need to wipe the type object clean. Select the type object with your Selection tool and set your fill and stroke to None.

4. In the Appearance panel, choose Add New Fill, and specify 50K for it. With the Fill still highlighted in the Appearance panel, use the Effect > Distort and Transform > Transform effect to offset the fill up and to the left. Then, duplicate that fill and change its Transform effect so that it is offset down and to the right. Your text should look something like this:



5. In the Appearance panel, select the fill that is offset to the bottom right and apply the Multiply blend mode. This will ensure that the color on this side of the text will always appear darker.Select the fill that is offset to the top left and apply the Screen blend mode. This will ensure that the color on this side of the text will always appear lighter.



6. In the Appearance panel, select one of the fills and choose Effect > Blur > Gaussian Blur. I chose 10 pixels but as I said earlier, you should experiment to see what works best. Don't worry -- as it's a live effect, you can always go back and tweak this to perfection later. Once you've applied the effect, select the other fill and apply the exact same Blur effect.




7. At this point, you can already see the embossed effect within the metal. Now all we need to do is add the inked letters themselves, which we'll do by adding yet another fill. In the Appearance panel, choose Add New Fill and make sure the fill is at the top of the object hierarchy. Apply a solid color. In my case, I chose a blue color.



8. There are two problems with the new blue fill we just added. First of all, the sharp edges "kill" the nice soft embossed look, making it look like the letters are sitting above the emboss instead of being part of it. Second, the text has no highlights or shading, making it look rather fake. We can solve both of these problems with one setting. In the Appearance panel, select the top-most blue fill and set its blend mode to Multiply. This will allow the inside of the blurred offset fills to act as shading for the blue fill.



At the end of the day, your Appearance panel should look like this:



Naturally, you can now simply drag the text object into the Graphic Styles panel to define a style. That way, you can apply this emboss effect to other text objects. As an added bonus, you can download my emboss graphic style right here. I'm sure you can tweak it to perfection for your own needs.

As long as you stay within Illustrator, or place native AI files or PDF files in InDesign, the license plate is infinitely scalable. Just make sure you have the Scale Strokes & Effects setting checked. I hope you have as much fun with this technique as I did putting it together -- and I want to give a special thanks to Bert Monroy who provided the inspiration for this technique. And now that I have the license plate, I'll have to find a Lamborghini to go with it... :)

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Rotating Effects (Drop Shadows, etc)

Illustrator (and just about all Adobe apps for that matter) has the ability to apply the most over-used design effect of all time -- Drop Shadows (look out Drop Shadows, reflections aren't far behind). Drop Shadows are applied as live effects, meaning that if you update your artwork or move it, the drop shadow updates and moves as well.

But have you ever applied a drop shadow to an object, and then ROTATED that object so that it's upside down? Have you then taken a closer look at the drop shadow and realized that the drop shadow DIDN'T rotate? Even worse, did you ever see that problem AFTER your job was printed? What I describe happens not only in Illustrator, but in InDesign as well.

Let's take a closer look at what is happening here. A drop shadow is an effect, and is therefore applied to the overall object. The shadow isn't "baked in" to the art, and so if the art changes, the drop shadow simply updates itself to match any edits applied to the object. If you flip your artwork upside down, Illustrator (and InDesign) rotates the art and then reapplies the drop shadow to the art. The result is a drop shadow that may be set to offset down and to the right, but when the art is flipped, the drop shadow is still applied with an offset down and to the right (as seen below).



For those people who regularly do imposition, or those in packaging, this presents a huge problem, and often, these problems aren't detected until it's too late. A workaround I've seen from folks is to use the Expand Appearance command (from the Object menu), but that means the effect is no longer "live" and hence, the art can't be easily updated.

Here's a solution -- create your artwork and add the Drop Shadow effect. Then, convert your artwork to a Symbol (if you use this artwork in multiple places, this is a good idea anyway). If you aren't familiar with how to create a Symbol in Illustrator, just select your art and press F8. When you rotate the Symbol, the drop shadow will now appear rotated correctly (in the example, I've been using, rotating the symbol will mean the drop shadow will be offset up and to the left).



If you ever need to modify the art or the shadow, simply double-click on the Symbol to edit it. Illustrator CS3 makes this almost too easy.

If you're in InDesign, you don't have symbols, so this solution won't work. However, there is a solution there as well, as long as you're using InDesign CS3. Create your artwork element in a new InDesign document, add the drop shadow, and then save your InDesign file. Then, PLACE your InDesign document INTO another InDesign file where you're doing your layout. You can now rotate the artwork at will, and if you need to edit the art, do an Edit Original on the placed ID file.

Oh, and BTW, how do you like them interlocking Olympic rings? If you think I used Pathfinder to create those, think again. It's all about Live Paint baby. Maybe in my next post, I'll talk about how I created those...

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ASK MORDY: Adding Keylines to Placed Images

This question comes in from Sara Ford:

I am having a problem with Illustrator that seems pretty basic, but I just can’t figure it out. I placed a picture into my document, and I just want to add a stroke around it. But when I do, the line doesn’t show up? What am I doing wrong?

In reality, I get this question a lot. The problem is that unlike InDesign, which has a concept of frames (and the frames have Fill and Stroke attributes), Illustrator is frameless (others may use the term spineless, but we won't go there now). The "problem" that exists is that a placed image in Illustrator isn't an object that can have Fills or Strokes. It's not a vector shape and therefore lacks those attributes.

Most people take the "easy" route and simply use the Rectangle tool to draw a shape around the image. But even that is too much work. Let's explore some ways to "solve" the "problem" at hand...

First, it's important to understand that a placed image is not a vector object, and hence, can't have a fill or stroke attribute. So we'll need to create another vector object to contain our stroke attribute. But I don't want to create that object on my own. I want Illustrator to create it for me. There are basically two ways to accomplish this: have Illustrator automatically create a mask for the image; or use an effect to convert the bounds of the object into a vector object. Both have pros and cons and work better depending on the task at hand. Ready to discuss? Let's go!

USING A MASK

This technique requires the use of Illustrator CS3 and will work only when your keyline will be rectangular in shape.

1. Choose File > Place and choose an image to place into your Illustrator document. You can either Link or Embed the image. Once you've chosen the image, click the Place button.

2. The image is selected (or if your image already exists in your document, select it), so if you look in your Control panel at the top of the screen, you'll see a button labeled "MASK". Click on it. This creates a mask at the exact bounds of the image.

3. Press the "D" key for Default. This will give the mask a black 1 pt stroke attribute. Feel free to adjust the stroke per your design needs (who uses a 1 pt stroke anyway?).

NOTE: An additional benefit to this method of using a mask is that you now have the elements in place to simulate a "frame and image" paradigm like InDesign. Once you've created your mask, you can decide to "crop" your image by double clicking anywhere on the photo. This will put you into Isolation Mode. Now click on the frame edge and resize at will. When you're done, double click outside the image to exit isolation mode and continue working. This method works wonderfully when you're using the Selection tool (black arrow) and have the Bounding Box option turned on (in the View menu).

USING AN EFFECT

At first, it may seem that applying a keyline with the use of an Effect is a tedious process. But we all know that once we've applied an effect, we can store it as a Graphic Style, at which point applying our keyline will become a single click. Go ahead, ask me why Adobe doesn't ship Illustrator with such an effect as a default setting in the NDPs (New Document Profiles). Go ahead, ask me why Adobe doesn't allow us to assign keyboard shortcuts to styles like InDesign does. I don't have answers to either of those questions (sorry). But let's get on with the styles, shall we? There are two separate effects that we can use, and each provides a different benefit.

1. Choose File > Place and choose an image to place into your Illustrator document. You can either Link or Embed the image. Once you've chosen the image, click the Place button.

2. The image is selected (or if your image already exists in your document, select it). Open your Appearance panel and from the Appearance panel flyout menu, choose Add New Stroke. We can't see the stroke yet, because all we have is an image. But we'll change that in short order.

3. With the Stroke highlighted in the Appearance panel, choose Effect > Convert to Shape > Rectangle. Check the Preview button, Select the Relative option, and set both the Extra Width and Extra Height to zero (0). (Careful not to press Tab after you enter the second value or it will switch back to Absolute.) Click OK to apply the effect. If you'd like, style the stroke attribute to match your design preference (again, who uses a 1 pt stroke?).

4. To make this easier to apply in the future, with the object still selected, open the Graphic Styles panel and click the New Graphic Style button at the bottom of the panel. Give the style an appropriate name. It would be a good idea to add this style to your NDPs so that it will be readily available in all new files that you create.

This technique obviously only works if your keyline is rectangular in shape. But what if your image had transparent areas in it? What if you silhouetted the photo in Photoshop (keeping the background transparent), and placed the PSD into Illustrator? Is there a way to apply a stroke to the boundary of the ART instead of to the boundary of the entire image? The technique I'm about to show you will do just that, and will also do the job for rectangles as well.

1. Choose File > Place and choose an image to place into your Illustrator document. You can either Link or Embed the image. Once you've chosen the image, click the Place button.

2. The image is selected (or if your image already exists in your document, select it). Open your Appearance panel and from the Appearance panel flyout menu, choose Add New Stroke. We can't see the stroke yet, because all we have is an image. But we'll change that in short order.

3. With the Stroke highlighted in the Appearance panel, choose Effect > Path > Outline Object. If you'd like, style the stroke attribute to match your design preference (again, who uses a 1 pt stroke?).

4. To make this easier to apply in the future, with the object still selected, open the Graphic Styles panel and click the New Graphic Style button at the bottom of the panel. Give the style an appropriate name. It would be a good idea to add this style to your NDPs so that it will be readily available in all new files that you create.

It just so happens that if you're applying this last effect to an image with no transparency, only the outside portion of the stroke will become visible. Meaning that if you're stroke weight was set to 1 pt, only .5 pt of the stroke will be visible. To get the full 1 pt stroke, select the Stroke attribute in the Appearance panel and choose Effect > Path > Offset path and choose an offset amount that's half the weight of the stroke. In our example, you would use a .5 pt offset value.

For even more fun, you can combine BOTH of these effects (simply by adding two strokes to your image), hence giving your transparent images a stroke around the bounds of the artwork as well as a keyline around the bounds of the entire image.

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