Being a Graphic Designer means constantly learning new skills and refreshing old ones. I have been taking the time recently to brush up on my Adobe Illustrator skills. For me, that has meant going back through my book that I originally learned from( Adobe Illustrator CS3: Classroom in a Book) and scouring the interwebs to refresh old tricks, like from these blogs for beginners, such as the Illustrator Beginner's Series from our friends at Illustration Info, and hunt for new tricks, like from this set of tutorials for the slightly intermediate, at klethegr8. Yesterday I renewed the knowledge of how and when to use the Object tool called Flatten Transparency. I would like to share my renewed knowledge of this tool with you.
The Flatten Transparency tool will convert any stroke from a line into an object with a fill and a stroke. Convertible objects also include dotted/dashed lines and brush strokes. The stroke could be drawn with many tools, including the pen, the pencil, and the paintbrush tools.
Make sure you are using the Selection Tool by either finding it at the top of the toolbox as a black arrow or by pressing V on your keyboard.
To use the Flatten Transparency tool, first select the stroke that is desired to be made into an object with a fill and stroke by clicking on it with the left mouse button using the Selection Tool. After the selection has been made, click on Object with the left mouse button from the main menu at the top of the screen and scroll down to and click on the Flatten Transparency option.
When the dialogue box appears, slide the vector bar all the way up to 100% and click on OK. Leave all of the other presets as is for now. The stroke has officially been turned into an object with a stroke and fill.
If you have stray lines within the object, like I did, open the Pathfinder tool panel and click the merge tool. To find the Pathfinder tool, click on Window in the top main menu with the left mouse button. Scroll down to and click on Pathfinder, also with the left mouse button. Once the Pathfinder Tool Panel is open, locate the merge tool at 3rd from the left on the bottom of the Pathfinder tool. Click on it. Any stray lines within the object you just made will disappear.
One way to make sure it is the merge tool, hover over the icon with the mouse and the alt tag will pop up that says Merge.
That is how you turn a stroke into an object with a fill and stroke. I am going to assume from here on in that you have gotten used to how to use the mouse for selecting purposes as well. I hope I have shared some knowledge with you today and thank you for visiting.
What are some of your favorite graphic design tutorials or tricks?
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