Recently, I got the following question from an InDesign artist who was just getting into Illustrator: “In InDesign, after I apply a stroke to a path, I can choose from all types of stroke style presets right in the Stroke palette. I find nothing like that in Illustrator’s Stroke palette. Am I missing something?”
Nope! It’s not included in Illustrator’s Strokes palette. But creating your own custom strokes is easy.
A quick example:
1- Draw a path with the Line Segment tool or the Pen tool.
2- With the path selected, go to the Appearance palette, and click on the Stroke in the palette listings. Click the “New” (page) icon at the bottom of the palette to create a second stroke for this path.
3- Click on the bottom Stroke listing and make in twice as thick in the Stroke palette.
4- Click on the top Stroke listing and make it white.
5- Drag the “path” name from the top of the Appearance palette to the Graphic Styles palette. As a graphic style you can quickly apply it to any path again and again, kind of like a preset.
Another solution – Brushes! But that’s another Tip.
Tip provided by Jeff Witchel, Certified Adobe Training Provider.
Author: jeff witchel
Jeff Witchel graduated from Pratt Institute in 1973 with a B.F.A. (Cum Laude) in Advertising Design and Visual Communications. He has been an award-winning advertising art director, writer, designer, illustrator, and TV producer ever since.
Before starting his own advertising agency in New Jersey, Jeff built his career at top New York ad agencies such as Young & Rubicam, Grey Advertising, and Wells, Rich, Greene. Over the years, he has created award-winning work for many clients including AT&T, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Jell-O Pudding, The Plaza Hotel, and Pfizer. His many prestigious awards include N.Y. Art Directors Club Gold Award, One Show Gold Award, N.J. Art Directors Club Award, multiple Andy Awards, Graphis Annual, numerous readership awards, plus an Emmy Award nomination.
Jeff is a self-taught computer artist with over 19 years of experience. His initial introduction to the computer was with PageMaker, but he switched to Quark 1.0 when it was first introduced in 1987. Having arrived on the desktop publishing scene so early, Jeff became the “go to” guy for answers when others started getting into computer graphics.
As an Adobe Certified Expert, he’s provided online support for Adobe and is now an Adobe Certified Training Provider for both Adobe Illustrator CS2 and Adobe InDesign CS2. Jeff is one of just a handful of Adobe Certified Instructors in the New York metropolitan area. He also is a Quark Certified Expert in QuarkXPress 6 as well as a master of Adobe Photoshop and related applications. He counts among his training clients ad agencies, design studios, magazines, illustrators, and photographers in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.
