Follow these steps to change the background color of Point Type text without losing its editability.

Step 1. Type a text on the workspace with the Point Type tool.

• Go to Point type tool (T) on toolbar

• Click anywhere on the workspace
• Edit text content if you like.
• Change the text color. “Red” is ok.

Step 2. Open the appearance panel.

• elect the text using the Selection Tool (V). A blue bounding box will appear around it. If you don’t see the box, go to View > Show Bounding Box to make it visible.
• Open the Apperanace panel (1).  Alternatively, you can open it with Window> Apperanace panel. If you’re using a newer version of illustrator, consider changing the workspace. You can change the workspace by clicking the upper right icon.

Change workspace

Step 3. Add new fill color

• Click the box (2) at the bottom-left of the Appearance panel to add a new fill color. The new fill appears on top, hiding the original text color — so drag it below to fix the order.
• Drag the new fill color below the Characters line using the left mouse button.

Note: The Characters line provides a second option where you can change the text color. By double-clicking, you can enter the section where you can change the text color while in the appearance panel. After changing the text color, just double-click the Type line at the top to go back.

Step 4. Convert the Fill color to Rectangle

• Add Rectangle effect with Fx at the bottom of the Appearance panel as follows. This effect changes the background color to a rectangle to cover the text.

• You can change the values ​​related to the size of the rectangle in the dialog box.

• The Rectangle effect you created may not have occurred where it should be in the appearance panel. In this case, move the effect under the fill color you just created, as shown below.

Now your background color is ready. The text is editable.

have fun.

Akif Kutlu

The post How to add background color to text in illustrator appeared first on Illustrator Tutorials.

The document describes how to make a real-time reflection effect using adobe illustrator CC. Live mirror drawing is definitely fun if you know how to set up your Illustrator document.

“Live mirror drawing” means creating a symmetrical object by drawing only half of it. While you draw something on the artboard, the complementary piece is created automatically on the fly across the x-axis or y-axis.

The document also gives you information about how to expand mirrored objects in illustrator in order to copy and paste it into another file. If you know live mirrored drawing, you may have noticed that you sometimes cannot select and copy the entire drawing. You think that expand appearance command should work for copying. What? Does it not work? because of the expand appearance greyed out in illustrator?

Learning the difference between “expand” and “expand appearance” command will help you to understand why you can not copy whole drawings and what to do. So, to copy your mirrored object, you need to know how to expand your final symmetrical drawing.

Are you ready? Let’s get started.

Implementing the real-time reflection effect step by step.

Step 1. Create a Document

• Create a new document (File > New).  Define the artboard size you desire.
• Open your layers panel (Window>Layers). Initially, you have only one layer.
• Select the target icon next to the layer name. If selected small circle will appear around the target icon as shown below.

Step 2. Apply an effect

• Go to appearance pannel (Window>Appearance). and click the Fx icon bottom of the panel.
• From the list of the commands, select Distort&Transform then transform.

Transform effect dialog window will appear

• In the dialog box click the required checkbox for the X-axis. Type the number of copies as 1.
• Hit Ok.

Notice the target icon next to the layer name in the Layers panel is gray. This indicates the layer has an applied effect. Click the target icon to view the effect in the Appearance panel. Hold CTRL/CMD and left-click to deselect the target icon.

Step 3. Draw a fake guide for reflection, real guides for an easy draw

Since we applied an effect to the layer, anything you draw in this layer will be reflected either on the x-axis or y-axis depending on your setup.

In this method, the reflection is applied to whole objects based on the geometrical midpoint of the objects in the artboard. The geometrical midpoint changes whenever a new object is drawn. The trick is that if you draw a particular object which covers all the drawings, you keep the midpoint intact.

Therefore, you need to draw a big circle, a rectangle or even a line that covers the entire drawing. This shape will be your fake guide and provides a constant midpoint.

• Draw a big circle using the ellipse tool. Hold down the shift key while drawing to make a perfect circle.
• Make alignment to the artboard. horizontally and vertically centered.

Since this circle will limit the boundaries of the drawings, it does not need to be visible.

• Remove ve fill color and stroke color of the circle.
• lock this circle using the Layers panel as shown below

Now, the artboard is ready for mirror drawing but to make it more clear where the axis is, we need one more step to make.

• Create another layer and name it “Guides”
• Switch to this layer clicking on the layers panel
• Press CTLR/CMD + R keys to show rulers if not visible
• Drag a guide from the left ruler and drop it to the artboard.
• make alignment horizontally centered.
• You can lock this layer if you like
• Switch back to the previous layer which we are going to draw objects

Step 4. Begin drawing

• Make stroke color black and 3 pt weight.
• If not, turn on “Snap to point” under the View menu and turn off other snaps. this will help you to make a lot more accurate drawing.
• Go to the pen tool. Begin drawing something similar to the below figure. The below figure contains only two smooth anchor points

The actual path is on the left-hand side. The right object is only an automatically reflected effect of the left one. Therefore you can not select both objects at the same time.

Step 5. Expand appearance to be able to copy whole objects

Sometimes having the mirrored drawing is not enough for the designers. They want to join the anchor points on both sides. This might be done if the mirrored effect is converted into the real path.

The solution is obvious: using Expand appearance command under the object menu.

Please note that expand and expand appearance command works for different purposes. expand appearance is active only if any effect applied on a path. Regular stroke and colors are not counted as an effect. Therefore the command is grayed out if there is no effect on a path. The same rule is applied for regular shapes and lines. Even the objects created using the shape builder tool and blend tool is not counted as an effect.

in our case, we have a path with 3 pt black stroke and no fill. therefore expand appearance command doesn’t work for us. But we can manipulate and make tricks to use expand appearance command.

Method 1: Using the brush tool as a catalyzer

Brushes are the paths that certain effects applied to it. so the expand appearance command can be used for the brushes.

• pick up the brush tool and make a dot on the artboard. The layer will also automatically create a reflected image for this dot.
• select that brush object on the artboard and goto Object>expand appearance
• ungroup the expanded object and remove the catalyzer (dot created using brush tool) and mirrored one. (sometimes ungrouping command needs to be run multiple times)

Now you have individual paths. you can join anchor points if desired.

Method 2: adding a new stroke using appearance pannel

Adding a new fill or stroke on a path is counted as an effect. Therefore the expand appearance will work for it. let’s do it.

• Select the path you draw.
• Go to appearance pannel (Window>Appearance).
• Click Add new stroke icon (1). a new stroke will be added to the top of the line in the appearance panel.
• Remove the color of the stroke (2) if any.

• keep selecting the path. Goto Object>expand appearance
• ungroup the expanded object

That is it !.

if you have multiple and complex line drawings, adding a new stroke to any one of those lines will be enough for triggering the expand appearance command.

Thanks for reading this article. I hope you found what you were looking for.

Ok. For future work how about adding extra effects? if you completed mirror for the X-axis try adding mirror effect for the Y-axis

Cool isn’t it. let’s take one more step. Try adding multiple copies of the object by giving a rotational angle. This is a mandala.

have fun,

Prof. Dr. Akif Kutlu

The post Live mirror drawing in illustrator | Real-time symmetrical effect | expand appearance grayed out in illustrator appeared first on Illustrator Tutorials.

How to select colors from the swatches panel for shape builder

Swatches panel is the default option to pick a color for shape builder tool. You can select any color from the swatches panel and use it directly with the shape builder tool.

1. Hit CTRL + A keys to select your objects ( Shape builder tool produce results only for the selected objects)
2. Click shape builder tool in the toolbox
3. Pick any color/texture from the swatches panel and drag your Mouse in your drawings and create your shape with the color you select.

If you don’t know how to use the shape builder tool please watch these videos:

•  braid brush 
• Shape builder

How to select colors from the artwork for shape builder

In order to use the shape builder tool with artwork color:

1. double-click shape builder icon in the toolbox.
2. Select the color picking method from the “pick color” option. As you may notice, there are only two options: color swatches and artworks.
3. Select pick color from “artworks” and hit ok.

In this method, the color is determined by where you start the drag. The below gif animation shows the usage of this method. In such drawings, it is a very easy way of combining objects with colors.

Shape builder tool usage animated Gif

I hope this helps

The post How to select colors while using shape builder tool in illustrator appeared first on Illustrator Tutorials.