Need advice: Assigning appearances to type

[Joe_leMonnier@adobeforums.com]

Illustrator 10.03 OSX.2.6

I am using the appearance palette to assign a lighly blurred stroke UNDER the fill on some pieces of type. The stroke is very close to the background color and serves to sharpen small type that would get lost (and unreadable ) against a busy background. This works beautifully in every way except one.

Here's whaere I need your help.

Can I assign an appearance like this to only some of the letters on a type string (either type on a line or one-word callout)? This, of course, is neccessary when the background changes under the type.

Any help here would be appreciated

[Doug_Katz@adobeforums.com]

One way (perhaps not the only way, certainly not an expeditious way, and
probably not a way you're looking for because it "kills" the live effects):

1. Apply your additional stroke, drag below your characters, and assign
it any one of the many background colors.

2. Object>Expand appearance. Ungroup the resulting group.

3. Select the "stroking object" (which is actually a LIVE duplicate type
object behind your characters) and convert it to outlines.

4. Select individual, now "dead and outlined glyphs" and color them as you
wish to match the changing background.

I'm not sure how one would do this and retain the appearance nature of
the strokes except by actually SETTING individual characters in the
first place... which I don't think is any more efficient than the above.

I could be wrong.

[Joe_leMonnier@adobeforums.com]

The problem as I see it with that is that , first the type would no longer be editable and second that I would then have all these extra parts to move around if I moved the type.

Thanks, but I'm hopinfg that there is a way to selectively apply appearances to type, but seriously, thanks for repling so quickly.

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

Copy the text paste in front select the letters you don't want to have the effect applied to with the Type Tool and give them a stroke and fill of none. Select the rest of the text give it the stroke and no fill then apply the blur and if you wish send it to the back. If you change the text you can always use the eye dropper tool to apply the blur and stroke to the new text.

I haven't tried it but you can probably change the the text by Edit>Find Replace
do your first search edit and replace then do your next search. I haven't tried this in this case but have done it with other effects.

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

I tried the replace and that works including applying the effects. And is a one step process change all.

[Gary_Newman@adobeforums.com]

If you change the text, you will of course have to change it to both copies.

As Wade points out, it's easy to assign different fill and strokes to individual characters in a line of type. What you can't do, though, is apply different effects (except transparency) to individual characters, since they work on objects, and on type as an object.

[Joe_leMonnier@adobeforums.com]

Wade, thank you but (and maybe I'm wrong) you would still have two pieces (or even more)

This would be fine, except I'm working on maps where there may be hundreds of callouts that I am continually tweaking the positions of. Having some of the callouts be made of multiple pieces is , I think, inviting trouble especially if the extra pieces are fairly subtle and are designed to dissapear against the background. You would think this wouldn't be much of a problem since a missplaced invisible object would would be invisible. Except they could obscure some part of another callout and be very difficult to spot.

I'm hoping there is a way to do this within the appearances pallette without using multiple pieces.

I plan to experiment with using the bounding box (shape) feature and appling the effect to that. Then I can scale the box and recolor it- all within the appearances pallete. The type would still be fully editable and since i am only using the stroke behind the type to blur out the background, the bounding box shape would be close enough to the 2 point stroke around the type. Its not called the bounding box, but you know what I mean.

thanks Wade

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

Let us know what you come up with. You do know you can use the layers palette to select the text objects and lock all others do you Find Replace and it might be the only way.

I would say this could be a very excellent feature request as the mechanism to achieve what you want seems to be there just not put together. Perhaps Teri will chime in when she gets back from Costa Rica next week.