Illustrator :: Design Effect - Image Made Of Perfectly Arranged Circles
Oct 1, 2010
Ever wondered how to perfectly fill an outline with touching circles? I did -- after seeing the example image in Solving design effect - image made of perfectly arranged circles.
It took me a while to get the proper calculations, but -- Here It Is! A Javascript, written for Illustrator CS4 (it might work on other versions as well), that fills a selected outline with circles. Download zipped script from my site: [URL] ...., unpack if necessary, and put it in your Illustrator Scripts folder to make it available the next time you run Illy, or anywhere else (you have to browse for it each time).
Select any path -- but no live text; you have to convert it to outlines and select each character in turn. Then run the script.
It displays a simple dialog, where you can set a maximum and minimum circle size as a percentage of the selected object size. In addition, you can select either a plain basic color, or select any of your current Swatch Groups; in that case, each of the circles are filled with a random color from that group.
The script may take a while to run. Usually, only a couple of seconds for a simple rectangle, but it may run into minutes for objects with lots of curves and/or holes. I didn't have the guts to run it on a vectorized world map, to recreate Mario "Quasimondo" Klingemann's Foam World Map; but, in theory? Possible.
I design flags for people and have worked with Illustrator for just over a year. Most logo's I've worked are 2D and I've never had any issues that I could overcome ( I learn as I go along) however I have been given a logo which has the Extrude & Bevel effect on (which I haven't worked with before) (see first image). I have to make this logo much bigger but when i do it stretches and reshapes the logo. (see 2nd image).
The scale stroke & effect box, is checked. I am working in CS6. So how do I resize this logo proportionately?
I constantly run into the problem that I have many objects and when I want to drag the selected object to move it around, the object laying in front / or on top of it will be grabbed and moved instead. How do I shortcutwise avoid to pick an unwanted object when I'm about to drag an object ? Is there something like a key to hold, so that Illustrator understands that I want to move the already selected object only ? Since that is a 100 times per day task and I can't always lock and unlock all other layer I'm working on too ... well I could, but that would slow down working 100 times since it's not easy to identify / switch on of each layer in the layer list each time i pick another object ...
I have created city/landscape artwork using photoshop line and box tools. If you go to URL... then click on the link that says (click here to view Gotham City) you will see one of the images I am talking about. Can this image be made to look the same in vector.
I have some grapes where i have to draw circles upon. In these circles i have to enter some text. Note - here is an example, where you can see how the whole task is meant!?
See the example - and see the results...
How to add the circles with the opaque design - (note they look like they are drawn with pastell colors - aren't they )
greetingsAttached File(s) grapes_to_add_circles.jpg (36.57K) Number of downloads: 3 grapes_example.jpg (26.29K) Number of downloads: 4
I should be able to apply an effect to a line that has been made with the line tool. Why is this not working?I thought that maybe I might have disabled Effects somehow, but I can't think of anything.
How do I make an image, that is made up of objects, a single object so I can blend it.This is my image and I need to blend the whole thing into another object. How do I do that?
I have a quick question corel X5, I have a design made of several .4 inch circles, I wonder if there is a way to resize all the circles to .6 inch ( i am trying to avoid to resize manually each circle )
Is there an option that will let me fit an image that I imported to fit the canvas that I'm already working in? I want to make it a background to a feathered cutout that I will blend into it.
I have an exactly symmetrical geometric bitmap photoshop image (exactly symmetrical down to the pixel) which I need to convert into vector. When I import the image into illustrator and use the trace tool it does not trace both sides of the image exactly symmetrical..
Notice the trace line does not symmetrically match the bitmap.I have tried all the trace types such as 'high fidelity photo' yet it still does not trace exactly on both sides of the symmetrical image.
Is there any way to get the trace perfectly symmetrical?
Here I have several concentric squares in an uninterrupted stack.I moved the topmost (small orange) one vertically.I then went to the Alignment panel, selected all the squares and clicked on the one I moved.Then I clicked on Vertical Distribute Center.
The right hand picture shows what happened.One of the squares (that big orange one) near the bottom of the stack shot up so that its centre was above the centre of the topmost one in the stack.The centres are evenly distributed but why is the stacking order not controlling the order in which the squares are arranged?
Fortunately the positioning of that big orange square was easy to correct, but something tells me this is not the way things are supposed to happen.Seemingly this does not always happen. I have tried the method on several stacks. Some were o.k., others showed similar behaviour to the above.
I've created a logo, and I'd like to use it in some PDF documents. I've tried several different methods for converting it into an image, but the image quality really degrades when I do. Maybe I'm expecting too much - since the vector image is essentially perfect - but it seems like there should be a way to come up with a decent looking image. Is there a "best practice" for this process?
I'm currently using the pen tool to trace out a Nike trainer to improve my basic skills and understanding of the tool.
The problem I'm having is that I want each section of the shoe to be its own shape so that I can edit the colours individually. However when drawing each section in some places I have to draw over the outlines of already created shapes and trying to match/overlap the paths as close as possible is a nightmare. I want to have a stroke enabled on all shapes to better define them but I get areas where the overlaping sections look uneven giving the shapes very unsmooth curves where overlapping occurs.
So I am just wondering if there is a way to enable the pen tool to snap to certain sections of existing paths so I have a perfect overlap when required?
I do quite a bit of Photoshop work but it is simple. I am trying to re-create the look of this image but struggling on it. I did some that were close but the look was off.
The black layer is added in, any tips on how it is done and what tools are used to go around the relief so well?
When I stretch an object to the right using the right hand side handles, the left side of the object also moves slightly to the right. How can I stop this from happening and keep have the left side stay perfectly in place. Is there anything in the settings I can change?
I made this shape perfectly on the pixel grid with 'Snap to Grid', 'Align to Pixel Grid', and 'Show Grid' on. Every anchor is perfectly placed (i.e. not in the middle of a pixel) but for some reason my X and Y cordinates say it's off by half a pixel. When I change the .5 to .0, it unaligns my object. Why is it doing this? There is an example below of what it's doing.
I have a designer that created this beautiful (but complicated) design in illustrator and now we're trying to get it exported to html. The thing is, most of the images that are in tds we want to be background images so that we can put stuff on top of it. So we need the exported html to generate the image size correctly. For example, I don't want
The problem is that illustrator for whatever reason is generating the images slightly too small (I guess to make the image size smaller?), then is stretching them using width and height attributes. As I'm sure you guys are aware of, the background attribute has no way of specifying a width and height.
Reducing the Roundness of a calligraphic brush to 0% seems to create 'flat' ends to a stroke, but, on closer inspection, the ends are not perfectly flat/straight.
The line seems to start and end with a slight 'S' curve; it's less visible when the stroke has a different bearing, but I need it to be gone - is this possible? I'm trying to create a calligraphic brush with perfectly flat ends.
My keywords are arranged in hierarchies, i.e colors>blue.
The problem is that they get saved that way in the metadata and in the KW panel. Is there any way to change that? It makes it a real pain to try to cut and paste or when uploading to a site that reads the metadata.
I have a jpg image that I use multiple times in an illustrator file, and I wanted to be more efficient by making it into a symbol. So I embedded the image, made it a symbol, then updated my Illustrator file, replacing the instances of that image with the symbol-version of the image. I then tried to add a drop shadow effect to one of those symbols. Although the effect was listed on the appearance menu, it didn't actually show up visibly on the screen. However, if I added a non-shadow effect to the symbol (e.g. blur .1 pixel) then added a drop shadow, the shadow would then appear. Oddly, I have other images that I have made into symbols where this problem does not occur. Perhaps it's some weird image format issue?
I've included a jpg export below, showing the problem. I've also put the original .ai file up on my Google docs folder here: [URL] ........
I'm using Illustrator CS6 trial version (16.0.3 64 bit). on a Win 8-64 laptop.
I have traced an image and expanded it. I'm now trying to add the scribble effect to it but it does not work. I assume it's because it's not an object but I'm new to illustrator so I'm not sure.
The image is here: [URL] ....
I basically want to add texture to the black eagle only.
I'm trying to make a logo. Circular logo with an inner ring maybe 4 px wide and 15 px inside the rim of the outer circle.
Basically I want a blue circle with a yellow inside ring. What's the best way of doing this? The only thing i can think of is: creating a blue circle marquee, and then another (trying to estimate a new circle size and change the color) that is yellow, and then making another smaller blue circle inside the new one. That's just ugly.
I tried the edit/stroke but that just gave me a stroke around the outer circle; it didn't put a ring inside the circle 15 px down.
Also I tried to contract the original circle by selecting it, then Modify/contract. That's got me a selected ring, inside the circle. Now how in the world do I make that little ring yellow? It just remains selected and I can't seem to find a way to color it.
