stroke – The Graphic Mac

Get cleaner strokes in Photoshop CS6

James — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:00:45 +0000

There are two ways to apply strokes to shape layers in Photoshop CS6 — via layer styles, which have been around since version 6 (that’s the ancient version 6.0, not CS6), or via the all-new vector shape options. They may appear similar at first glance, but there’s some significant differences.

Bjango has put together an excellent post on getting higher quality strokes in Photoshop CS6 that’s definitely worth a quick read!

Fixing the grid alignment bug in Adobe Illustrator

James — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 13:00:17 +0000

Have you come across this little gem of a bug when using Adobe Illustrator? You draw a box and apply a stroke to the inside of the frame, and the stroke appears to “float” off of the frame itself. As you can see in the image above, the actual frame object is the blue line, and my 1-pixel black stroke is way off. The bug has been around for a few years, and I’m not sure why Adobe hasn’t fixed it yet. Fortunately, the solution below fixes the problem.

When creating your document, click the Advanced tab at the bottom of the New Document dialog box. Untick the Align New Objects to Pixel Grid checkbox.

How to turn on or off InDesign stroke scaling

James — Thu, 19 May 2011 13:00:54 +0000

Adjusting your stroke weight scaling setting can save lots of frustration

When you’re scaling objects in Adobe InDesign that contain a stroke, you may have been frustrated by the fact that the stroke scales with it – or maybe you wish it did.

InDesign offers a somewhat hidden feature that allows you to customize the stroke when scaling. In the flyout menu of the Transform panel, simply check or uncheck Adjust Stroke Weight when Scaling to adjust the behavior accordingly.

Save screen space with Adobe InDesign’s convenient Control Panel

James — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 13:00:03 +0000

With more and more designers opting to use laptops for their work, screen real estate becomes more of an issue. One unfortunate side-effect of using Adobe Creative Suite applications like InDesign is the plethora of panels a designer keeps open on the screen in day-to-day work. But Adobe does make efforts to lighten the load of panels you have to keep open for convenience.

Rather than keeping the Color Swatches and Fill/Stroke Panels open all the time, you can keep them closed and use the shortcut icons in the Control Panel across the top of the screen. Hitting the “X” key switches between fill and stroke, a text entry box allows you to adjust stroke weight and style, and drop down icons offer access to your colors in the Color Swatches Panel. All of this fits in a relatively small area in the Control Panel, as seen in the screenshot at the right.

Remove stroke or fill from your Adobe InDesign object with one key

James — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 13:01:17 +0000

If you have an InDesign object such as a text box, or an image frame in your document and you wish to remove any stroke and fill it currently has, you can do it with a quick keystroke. Simply select the object in question and hit the Slash key ( / ). This will set either the fill or stroke to None, depending on which you have active at the time.… Read the rest

Adding gradient strokes to type in Adobe Illustrator

James — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:50:16 +0000

Vectips has a quick tutorial showing you how to create gradient strokes on your type in Adobe Illustrator. This super simple technique use the Appearance panel and effects to create editable gradient strokes in Illustrator. As a bonus, you can add transparency for a very cool effect as seen above.… Read the rest

InDesign CS4 stroked text feature update

James — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 13:33:17 +0000

In Adobe InDesign CS3, stroking text meant a stroke was added to the outside of the text, with only the miter join method your only option. This meant the stroke was squared off on corners with no way to adjust it while keeping text editable. With InDesign CS4, Adobe has added the ability to not only choose an outer or inner stroke, but also the option of using rounded or beveled miters as well as squared. Selecting text gives you the options in the Strokes panel. So what does the final result look like? See below. A 5pt outer aligned stroke is applied to the text, with a square miter join. This was your only option with InDesign CS3: A 5pt inner aligned stroke is applied to the text, with a square miter join: A 5pt outer aligned stroke is applied to the text with a rounded miter join: Notice the rounded corners around the text in the image above. You could accomplish this with InDesign CS3, but it requires you to convert the text to outlines. With CS4, you can keep your text editable. I thought I came across an unnoticed feature with CS4, but I see that InDesignSecrets also found this handy feature. It’s little features like this that make InDesign CS4 worth the upgrade.