Lessons

Lesson Info

Working with Images

we talked about working with Photoshopped images and bringing them into illustrator. Let me reset my workspace really quickly here. I love that because then it looks like I wasn't making a mess at all. So we may have taken some photos and Photoshopped and we want incorporate that I said earlier the very beginning you could have, say, a photo in your logo. Maybe we've got some logo elements. Maybe like those the bakery ones that were looking at earlier might have that. But maybe instead of the pictures of the, you know, waves of grain right, we might actually want a photo of, ah, tractor out. No tilling the field or something like that. We can totally do that. We can bring that into illustrator. To do that, we've placed a file inside of our inside of illustrators so we might place a Photoshopped file. We also replace other illustrator files, and I'm gonna talk about the pluses and minuses of that, but only needs the place command no matter what it is I'm placing inside. So in this case,...

I'm gonna go ahead and place a graphic. Let's just grab this draft guy and earlier replaced a template. We don't want to do that. We just want to place it and it places it automatically is a link. We're going to see why that comes in handy place, and I can either click and it will place it its size. But I'm gonna click and drag because I want to kind of constrain it to the size of my page. And we just have this nice graphic here, and I can see this Big Blue X through the graphic. And that just basically says that that is a placed image. I can't grab the direct selection tool and click on all the individual elements that make up this giraffe because this draft is made with pixels and this was made in photo shop, right? And if I zoom in on this, I can see all that great pixel ization that we saw earlier because I've just placed it. And when it places it here, it's only placing a low rez proxy anyway, because what's happening with that link? It says, Put this here and put this, you know, image on screen. So Erica can see with it, see it and work with it. But when I go to print it or make a PdF of it or whatever I'm going to do to it later. I need that original Photoshopped file or that JPEG file or whatever it is, and I need to grab that. And then I'm going to send the information to wherever, whether it's the Pdf print engine or it's going out to a printer or something like that. But it's it's linked. It's not actually in there. I didn't put a whole Photoshopped file inside My illustrator file Under the window menu will show you the links panel. We're not gonna work with links very much, but I just want to show you what happens when we put a link in there. It remembers, Hey, this item is here, and I need to have that item. I need to have that J peg item. So if I'm going to send this to somebody else to print or do something with your even work on, I need to not only send them the illustrator file, I need to send them this JPEG file as well needs to all be there. So when we put it all together, it can grab the high resolution version of it and put it together. But the reason we want the link there is because otherwise their file would get really huge. And also, by having the link, I can go and make changes to that photo shop file and it will update for me in Illustrator. I can also start that from scratch. From here, I can go ahead and click on that and I could say update the link. I'm sorry, Edit original, and I could do that. It's gonna launch. Hopefully Photoshopped Or maybe not, but it will launch it. And, um, I could make any changes that I want to to this particular item that's here. I'm not going to do that because I don't know about the presets or anything else. I haven't launched photo shop on this machine, but I can make any changes to it made me go and make you know, change it with a mask, whatever else I'm doing with it. And then I come back here and it updates for me or if I've gone, the photo shop made changes and I havent initiated that from illustrator. It will tell me that this is out of date and I need to re link it. So I could come here and say re link and so I could just re link it to that. I can also re link it to an entirely different photo if I want. I decided suddenly I wanted to have elements instead of that giraffe. I can re link it right like that, so I don't have to worry about replacing it anywhere. I just say, Oh, actually, I want to change it to this particular graphic that's here, right? So I'm gonna undo that. Bring back our friend the giraffe there so I can bring him in that way. The other thing I can do is I can place illustrator files as well. So I'm saying place and I'm gonna go out, find an illustrator file and let's go ahead and grab one of our butterflies here was gonna grab this guy and it wants to place it so I can click and drag an place. That and that's great. But I can't get to the individual elements of that particular item like I could before. Remember, I wanted to sit in change the color of his wings or his body or whatever I can't because what happened is it grabbed the whole file and placed it as one thing. Well, there's pluses and minuses to that. I can't change that individually. But if I were instead of placing it, if I went out to the illustrator file, did a select all Commander control A to select all and then copy that I come in here and I paste that? That's great. I can pace that. I can size it down whatever, and I can make changes to it. But if I make changes to it here, it's the only place I've made changes. Now it isn't, You know, nb I make all these changes to his color and I think Oh, he looks great. Oh, but there's all those other places I've used that file, I can't update it. So by linking this here, if I just do it is a place. If I want to make changes, I can say edit original. It opens this one. I could make whatever changes I want to this file and when I save it and come back here, it updates here as well as any other places. I have actually used that file so sometimes copy and paste is fine. And sometimes place is the better option. Just depends how you want a link that backwards to anything. So again I can't get into the any of the individual things of the individual elements. But that's probably a good thing in this case, you know, I want to make sure that I can't make any changes to because I've used it in five other pieces and they didn't put them all in the same document. But I'm using him on business cards, letterhead, postcards. I want to make sure it looks the same. So I'm gonna place it. And then when I need to update, update the original and all the other places will update as well. So but placing Photoshopped files, I could do a couple different things to it. One of things I might want to do is put a mask. I don't like all that sky. I wanted to crop him a little bit closer, so I think, Oh, I can just shorten up this frame If I shorten up that frame. I just squashed my giraffe. Poor little draft. He's shorter than he used to be, but I want to just crop it in. I want to crop it really close to the giraffe. So what I need to do is create a mask to do that with Right? So right here I have this button that says Mask, So that's pretty easy. I just click mask. It looks totally different. Except you notice the Big X went away until I roll over it. You're not seeing the X right away. Well, what it did is it took. Like I said earlier, I had the photo and the mat analogy, right? It's kind of what I did here. Now I have the photo and I have the mask or the mat on top of it. I can change the size of that mask if I want to do is grab the corner and crop it down. But as I can see, I can still see that the images back there the big X that's back there, I can see that's the size of the image. I haven't changed the image. I've just changed what's showing what's showing through on that mask that so I can go ahead and crop that down, and it's a little tricky if I want to move the image inside the mask and he didn't know if I'm grabbing the mask or the image itself so I can come back here and select that item and try and grab it. But you can see it's kind of hard. I can see it here, but it seems they do this. I'm moving everything together. So here's how to move that much easier. Go back to our friend of the layers panel. Click on that. And one of things I didn't show you on the layers panel is I've got this layer one, which shows everything here. But I have this little drill down triangle gonna click on that. And inside there I have what's called a clipping group because it made a mask, it created a group. It took the image and the frame and it separated him out and then group them together. But I can work with them individually again by drilling down in there and in there I have, I have, actually let's see if I turn things on and off, I can get rid of the mask or get rid of the image itself. But the great thing is, I can select one of these and click this little little button That's off to the side here, and that's kind of the A proxy. Now you notice the image has been selected. Now I can move it with my arrow key. I can also easily grab it here and move this around. One thing I don't have as a nice preview, so I can't see what's happening when I'm moving it. Someday they will bring this to illustrator because otherwise you're moving it and then hoping it looks good. That's why somebody's even though it takes me longer. I will use my arrow keys so I can actually see what's happening while I'm doing it. So I'm just moving that now. We could switch to this instead, and now I'm moving the frame, the images sitting where it needs to be. But now I'm moving the frame instead. And again I congrats by the handles, but I find that I usually end up accidentally grabbing one or the other. But the Layers panel is huge for that because you can drill down into these groups and maybe I want to move the whole thing together that I would click the entire group and then when I move that everything moves together, something sensing, move the photos, the frame or everything together. But using the layers panel is the quickest way to do it. Otherwise might drive yourself a little insane, trying to grab just one or the other. I find that that's very difficult to do. Does that make sense? All right, closed those up. And let's add a couple of effects. Actually, no, I'm sorry. There's one more thing I wanna show you with masks. Let's actually select all I'm gonna delete him. I'm gonna place another item in here. Let's go ahead and let's grab our friends. The elephant here was paste them in here a replace them in here. And I want to create a different kind of mask with a different shape. I don't want to use just the square shape that's there. I want to use, let's say, an ellipse. So let's use our lips. And I know this is about the center of the elephants. I can use the option key on the shift key to get a nice circle, and I'm just gonna push it to there so you can kind of see it's kinda hard to see. I know, but I'm going to have this circle selected. I'm going to shift, select the images. Well, then choose mask and it's gonna be a pair under object if it goes away from a pier, which it did miss a object clipping mask make. When I do that, now it's using that shape. It's gonna work the same way when I move the frame or removed the image. But then I see is now I actually used a shape to create that. Everything is I can do things like add special effects, which is what I was going to talk about next. Anyway, So we take this and I'm gonna add a couple effects. I'm just going to show you a few effects. There are tons of effects and a lot of it's just like playing with it and see what happens when you create the effect. But effect that you probably use a lot is the drop shadow. It's under the effect menu under style eyes drop shadow. And when I do that, I'm sure on the previous I can actually see it. So I've got the nice drop shadow happening behind this mask. But of course because I haven't masked off. It's creating the drop shadow behind the mask itself. Obviously, we don't want it creating behind the square the rectangle that was there. So go ahead and choose that. And I have just a nice little little shaped like that. All right? So I can also select that I could hold down the shift key and I can size it down. And it's gonna size everything together because again, when I select it, who grabs that whole clipping group, the photo and the mask itself and the effects as well. Right. So that's one effect that I could do. I've got some other effects that I could do with other image. Let me grab another image and we throw him off to the side. I will place that on there and let's grab these trees that are here and a couple other facts that we can look at our appear under. Let's go under, affects gallery, integrate these air photo shop effects. So if you've been using photo shop, they're gonna be pretty specific. And I like to show you the gallery because basically, you can shop for everything you need inside the gallery and again. I'm not gonna go over all of whom I'm sure you're familiar with a lot of or play with them. So I'm just gonna click, and I love that there's a whole chooser over here. I can pull around and see what looks good, and I want to say Okay. And so now I've got this effect applied to this particular image. It's kind of hard to see, but there it is. But when we go back to our friends, the appearance panel, you'll notice I have the opacity, and I also have this spatter effect that I just did. I can turn that effect on and off with the appearance panel. Turn that off and it's so I haven't done anything to the image itself. It's not destructive because it's on top of that particular item, so I could put three different effects on there, turn them on and off and see which one I like still having to go back in and change it and then be like, what were the settings I used for this batter? The great thing is, it's all there. I can just click on the underlying here, and it brings me right back into this. If I just decided. I just wanted to change the radius a little bit to something bigger will say OK, I don't have to reapply that I just come in here in the appearance panel and changed that particular option on their some make sense. Cool to have questions from the Internet. Let's take a look. Here are counter images. Sorry I threw that. Actually, they are. There are always questions hanging out, so let's see. They kind of go back Teoh a little bit, but Emma Grace creating the temple mask process. Is it possible to give a quick demo demo of that again on the witch mess when you were creating the temple mask process? Temple Mata, middle temples lash masked? I don't know what that means. It means either. As far as how I did it. If I to create a mask on, that's just the rectangular shape. It's just a matter of saying mask. So she might have meant the object clipping mask make, and that makes a mask out of the graph or the frame that it's sitting in right. But if I want to do a shape, I would draw shape on top so I could even do, like, say, a star shape. I would draw my strip on top, so I've selected that shape. I know it's hard to see, but it's selected here and then also shift. Select the image. So I got both of them selected. The shape needs to be on top, so you need drawn on top of your image and then go down to clipping mask and make that clipping masters there. All right, cool. So hopefully that that makes sense. She'll let us know, Am I Let us. And then a question from Jim in Virginia on the relevant elephants. Can you make a vignette? Yes. And that's actually something I was gonna show in just a second. Perfect. I've been actually take the drop shadow off because it's gonna look weird otherwise. So I just take that off, But again, I didn't have to get rid of it. I just turned it off in the appearance panel, which is great, but I want to add another effect, and I could do that right from the appearance panel. I've got the effects button right down here. It's the same panels. If I went up here to the effects menu here. But one of the things that I can do is I can do a feathered edge, so it's under stylized feather. So they come in here and I turned on the preview, and let's just make this a little bit bigger. Let's make it for I'm doing an inches is not very helpful to me, so I can do that. So I've got that nice feathered edge probably need to play with a little bit. Make a little more soft. But the great thing is, it's a live effect. So if I change the size of this or I change the shape of my mask, but I don't want to do all that. I want to change just the size of my mask. I've lost my layers panel here. Let's open that back up and go into this clipping group, which is here, and just the clipping path itself is all. I wanted to click that little proxy button here and then just change the shape, even just change it to something oval. It's alive effect again so I can move that around and said it where I want. And that vignette stays exactly as it is. So again, it's a live effect. I haven't cut into it at all. It's like a mask and a photo shop, and I can make any changes. I need to it afterwards. And again, if I decide I don't like the feather I can turn off for. Maybe I want to see what the drop shadow looks like with the feather. Well, it puts a hard edge on to a different different, and it's not a hard edge, but it's It affected the feather, so you can see when you've got more than one effect, how they affect each other. Sometimes dragging him a different order also can have a different effect on it didn't in this case, but I can turn things on and off is well, I decided, like the drop shadow or the feather work with it that way. All right, semi sense. Cool. That's actually gonna show here. But the elephant actually looks better with the feather, so you go cool. So that's placing the images in there and masculine. There's a lot of stuff like said, there's trace images. That was a question we had earlier on. Can you trace it? Yeah, you can tell it. I can put an image in there and do trace, and it creates vectors of the images. It is definitely processor intensive, and you get mixed results depending on the photos. But I've done some amazing things that way as well. That's what I do when I sketch something and I scan it that I run image trace on. It becomes brushstrokes sometimes, but again, you're letting the machine choose where the brush strokes are. So sometimes what it sees a brushstroke is not what you know was a brushstroke. So all right, just a quick one from letter lady who had said, I'm a calligrapher and I need to smooth lettering for monograms. Is that similarly, Would you like if you were doing some calligraphy where we're actually trying to make like a logo of Yeah, is that probably actually draw on top of it using brushes and then make custom brushes and then use things like the line with and make custom brushstrokes that you can take a line and tell it it needs to go from skinny to fat to skinny, and then you can apply that to everything just by applying a custom brushstroke. So I would have her looking custom brushes. Great. Definitely that. That would be cool for that. Yeah, I ask. My mom is a calligrapher. Actually made my logo nice K's, but backwards. Yeah, but it was I obviously had somebody else do The illustrator. I know what I would do exactly. I would tell her to play custom Brussels. That would be a lot of fun, I think. You sure?