Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
1 Preparing a bitmap image to use as a brush in Illustrator. In Photoshop, Lisa
Jackmore selected the medallion in her photo, clicked the Layer Mask icon (to isolate
it) and then with the mask selection active she chose Image> Crop to trim the file to
the size of the medallion. To bring the image into Illustrator as an embedded image,
she then saved it as PNG to keep the file size as small as possible. You can use either
PSD or PNG to bring in a masked object with opacity. Jackmore opened the image
directly in Illustrator. Alternatively if you choose Edit> Place, you can disable the
Link option, or if it's already a linked image in your document you can click Embed
from the Con-trol panel. Jackmore then resized the image to the correct size for the
frame she in-tended to make (holding Shift when she dragged the corner of the
bounding box).
1
The original image (left) and the masked image in Photoshop
(right)
2 Creating the Pattern Brush.
Jackmore dragged the image to the Brushes panel, select-
ed Pattern Brush, and clicked OK. For the first version of her brush, in the Pattern
Brush Options, she named the brush, kept the scale Fixed (100%), Spacing 0%. She
selected the Outer Corner Tile and chose Auto-Centered, then clicked on the Inner
Corner Tile and chose Auto-Centered as well. Jackmore chose Approximate Path and
Spacing at 0%. She made a rectangle with the Rectangle tool and selected the Medal-
lion Pattern Brush in the Brushes panel. Because Jackmore chose the Approximate
Path option and Spacing at 0%, her medallion Pattern Brush evenly distributed
around the path without gaps between the medallions, and without distortion. How-
ever, depending on the size, it adjusts the path size to accommodate the pattern tile.
The smaller the pattern, the less your pattern will be modified as it's applied. You can
reduce the scale of your pattern by just adjusting the stroke weight in the Control
panel.
