Can I apply appearances to only part of a type string

[Joe_leMonnier@adobeforums.com]

Illustrator 10.03 and 11 OSX.2.6

Is it possible to apply (complex) appearances to only part of a type string. I need to do this with only one copy of the string and not convert anything to outlines.

The problem stems from trying to place many (100s) callouts over a changing background (map) I can place a stroke of the background color (slightly blurred) behingd the type . This makes the callouts very readable and doesn't obscure or distract much at all. The only problem here is when the callout is over two colors of background. What to do. Using a copy of the type is unacceptable here as there are hundreds of labels.

Any ideas?

Some may notice that this is the second tiem I have posted this question.

[Gary_Newman@adobeforums.com]

Give ALL the type a slight dropshadow, or outer glow?

[Joe_leMonnier@adobeforums.com]

Gary, I want to apply a glow-like effect to only some part of a type string.

Picture this: I want to place a type string over a photograph. I could do it like a movie subtitle, with a white glow behind it. This is fine for one or two labels but if you've got 100 or so of them its going to look awful, don't you think. So, the next thing to do would be to match the glow with the prominent color under the label, right?

I would make the glow from a stroke with a moderate blur, lyng under the black fill of the characters. This works beautifully about 90% of the time. The troublesome 10% is where the prominent color of the immediate background changes under the label. Here it would be perfect if I could apply a different color effect to different parts of the type string.

See the problem? can anyone suggest a solution? Again, due to the number of labels, it would be unacceptable to make 2 pieces.

Am I wrong in that you cannot change appearances of parts of type strings? I am not talking here of just fill colors but "effects" using the appearance palette

Thanks again, in advance

[Teri Pettit]

Joe,

You are correct that you cannot apply non-basic appearances to substrings of text, only to complete text objects.

I take it that the situation you are dealing with is somewhat as if you had a background filled with a variety of patterns, and then black text in front of that. Against a pattern like "Area Rug" your text stroke would look best in a dark red color like "Moroccan Rust", while against the pink "Spiral" pattern your text stroke would look best in white. That is, the background is not completely random. Rather, each region has a readily identifiable dominant color, and you are wanting your stroke to be completely invisible against the dominant color in each region, as if there were no stroke at all, and only appear to knock out the minor elements behind it. (In a map, the dominant color might be the background color for the county, state or other political subdivision, while the minor colors were colors for rivers, roads, etc.) Unfortunately some of your text objects cross regions that change in their dominant color.

Is that a good description of your problem?

If you need to leave your text live and not duplicated, perhaps because you are going to continue to need to modify the text, here are some ways you might be able to apply the same Appearance to all your text and still have it look fairly good.

1. Use a white stroke with a Transparency Blend Mode on it that is more subtle than the Normal mode. Soft Light and Overlay look pretty good against a variety of backgrounds, especially with an Opacity of 60 to 80%.

2. Give your text a solid stroke of any color and put a Normal Blend mode Opacity of 0% or very low on that stroke (not on the whole text object.) Then group it with all the little things you want to knock out, and in the Transparency palette, make the group containing both the text objects and the objects you want the stroke to knock out be a Knockout Group.

If the objects you want the stroke to knock out are separable from the true background, great. If they are not, say because the background really is a photograph or a pattern fill or something indivisible like that, then you may be able to put a separate more solid background behind the "busy" background, and outside of the knockout group. For example, in the case of the Area Rug pattern, I could put a solid rust colored background behind it, the same shape as the object that was filled with the pattern.

The text stroke will then knock out the busy objects behind it in the same Knockout Group, allowing the background behind to show through.

One thing nice about both of these methods is that they transition smoothly even if a single character crosses a color boundary.

[Joe_leMonnier@adobeforums.com]

Teri, Thanks for the swift response, and thank you for the time you took on this.

Yes, that is a perfect description of the problem.

I am going to try the first of your ideas today and think this may be the one that I adopt. The second (grouping the type with the minor elements) is a little difficult (for me at least) and also suffers from there being just too many minor elements. There is usually a large tiff file somewhere behind in a deep background so this idea probably wouldn't work here anyway.

The third idea, with what I take to be a 'fake " background has some possiblilties, I think. It does add some extra weight to my files, whch are already pretty large.

Again, thank you so much for the help here

[Teri Pettit]

Joe,

Oh, I forgot to mention that I was using "group" loosely in the same way that the Transparency palette does, to mean any object container, including layers. So if your minor elements are already on layers, you would make them sublayers, so that your layers palette might be organized something like this:

Knockout Layer (this layer is a knockout group)
Text Layer
Roads
Rivers
Background Layer
Lakes
States

(I realize a real map file tends to have many more layers; this is for pedagogical purposes only.)

Incidentally, I do not quite follow your statement that using two separate duplicated text layers and coloring only the bottom copy "is unacceptable here as there are hundreds of labels." It seems to me that even if there were thousands of them, it is no harder to color the bottom copy than it would be to apply different colors to the top copy. Possibly even easier, since you wouldn't have to go through the Appearance palette. The main reason to avoid two copies of the text would be if you expect your text to need to be continuously updated, since it is harder to edit two copies in parallel. Was that the real reason, and you just didn't happen to mention it?

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

Teri if you use the find and replace I found that updating the the two text object is a simple procedure but Joe didn't like my solution even though he could lock all other layers an avoid the search for the locked layers.

I thought it was good solution but he clearly didn't like it!

[Joe_leMonnier@adobeforums.com]

Wade, I want to avoid using multiple parts with type. imagine if one got moved out of register or even far across the page. How could you find it? remember its designed to be invisible against the background. Only problem is that it will most likely obscure something else. These callouts are constantly being repositioned so the chance of orphanig the mask are great if you don't recognise the two part pieces. Use the group selection tool you say? its an idea. One more problem with 2 part pieces: These are type strings, many of which are drawn on a curved line. It is easy to group and reposition them but not to change the curve with bezier points., Is there a way to change both curves at once? i don't know of it.

All this aside, I do use the 2 piece method quite alot but am hoping for a more elegant solution- one that also keeps these files simple .

Thanks Wade for the input.

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

Joe I was not referring to you I was informing Teri that we have already been down this path about the two type objects and that even locking the text was not apparently reasonable.

I just wanted Teri to be aware she was beating a seemingly dead horse.

I gave you a good work around but it is not what you want so be it. Think Teri should be aware that the answer to your question is no or make a feature request.

As far as changing both at the same time you select the one on top and hit delete, then you select the one below change the shape of the path and copy and paste in front the with it selected fill it with color now all the text is visible while still selected
delete the effect.

now you are back where you started except you have a new shape to both curves.
Yes I am aware that it is a work around.

This is the best I think can be done though a couple of actions could possibly be made and given keyboard shortcuts or scripts?

[Teri Pettit]

Wade,

I was not suggesting that Joe should use the duplicate copy method, I was only saying that having hundreds or thousands of objects is not by itself a reason not to. But needing to continuously edit more than a very small number of those objects, to my mind, is a good reason. So I was just verifying that that was his real hitherto unmentioned reason, which seems to be the case.

If keeping multiple copies in sync during edits weren't in general a hassle, Adobe needn't have bothered implementing the feature of appearances with multiple stacked fills and strokes. After all, they don't let you do anything that you can't do by manually making multiple copies, with approximately the same number of steps for the initial setup. They just make it much easier and reliable to modify afterwards.

Making duplicate copies of many objects, like outlining a lot of text, is only practical if the illustration is in final form and you don't expect to need to modify the originals afterwards, at least not much.

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

Yes Teri I understand. This happens to be Joe's second post and in the first one we did cover this very point it was my suggestion that he wait until you return and chimed in incase you had another way and also thought if a real world situation as he has showed a real viable need to somehow support if it is possible than perhaps this was an excellent feature request.

If this could be done to Joe needs then I think it would be a great enhancement.

But since he brought it up I was waiting for him to make the feature request.

I was going to visit the feature request thread and make such a posting unless he decides to do it.

[Joe_leMonnier@adobeforums.com]

Feature request? dare I? How nice of someone to do it for me. I didn't know.

As soon as I can figure what it is and how to phrase it clearly as Teri did, I will post it there. Thanks for the heads up

Joe

And yes , I did repost the topic as you suggested, waiting for Teri.

In case you might be wondering about these things, the projects I was refering to ( and this is as good a chance as I will get to shamelessly promote my humble work) can be found at [url]www.mapartist.com[/url]

thank you again

[Teri Pettit]

Joe,

If your feature request is for non-basic appearances on text substrings, I should probably let you know that implementing it for reordered fills and strokes or multiple fills and strokes is not too hard, but it would be a very complex task to allow effects on text subselections. Compared to all the other more vital feature requests, in my opinion the latter is not worth the engineering resources it would require.

I just checked the Feature Request forum, and it hasn't been posted yet. If you or Wade really intend to post the request, please indicate whether it is for control over fill/stroke stacking and multiple fills/strokes only, or whether you are asking for completely general handling of all kinds of Graphic Styles on text substrings, including Effects.

[Joe_leMonnier@adobeforums.com]

For me, I only need the simple stacking of strokes and fills to apply to parts of a text string.

As I understand it , I could then apply a light blur to the container, right? If not, i can make due very well without the blur here.

Thanks

Joe

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

Parts of a text string means is a text sub-selection and so our answer would be no!

But thanks for clarifying this.