Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
STEUER
Sharon Steuer
Sharon Steuer chose her photo of three rainbow chard leaves on a white
background as source material for raster Illustrator brushes. In
Photoshop Steuer used a combination of tools to isolate each chard leaf
from the others and from the white background (
Photoshop Layers
Panel
). She saved each leaf in its own file in PNG format. In a new
Illustrator file she chose File> Place, disabled the Link option (so the
placed files would be embedded), then she selected all three chard
leaf PNG files in the dialog (holding Shift), and clicked OK. Moving her
loaded cursor into her artboard she clicked to place each of her
images, one after the other. Dragging the first leaf into the Brushes
panel, she chose Art Brush and clicked OK, but received a warning
dialog that the artwork's resolution was too high. She cancelled, resized
the three chard leaves, and then duplicated them. Selecting one of the
duplicates, she chose Object> Rasterize, then enabled the Medium
(150 ppi) and Transparency settings and clicked OK. Dragging this
downsized image into the Brushes panel, she chose Art Brush and
clicked OK. This time Art Brush Options opened, where she enabled
Stretch to Fit Stroke Length and the up-pointing direction arrow before
clicking OK. She then applied Rasterize to the other two duplicates and
made brushes for each of them as well. With the three chard brushes
prepared, Steuer switched to the Artboard tool and created a new
artboard. She then drew a pair of colorful rectangles as a background.
Locking this layer, she created another layer above for artwork. With the
Paintbrush tool, she painted with this set of brushes, creating a simple
chard forest. (See her other “chard forest” gallery in the Creatively
Combining Apps chapter, and go to sharonsteuer.com/lynda for links to
a 7-day free trial to view movies of this process.)
