I've been using Adobe Photoshop for years, but with the direction that my art was going, I realized that I needed to learn Illustrator as well. I thought to myself, "Hmm, I'm pretty good at Photoshop, I could probably just play around with Illustrator for a minute and figure it out."
False!
I feel like I am learning a foreign language!
A really hard foreign language.
I've been working on it for months - taking classes at Lynda.com, watching YouTube videos, searching endlessly through forums and websites, reading tutorials....
It's been taking every last drop of brain power.
But I'm sticking with it!! And here's why.
So, I wanted to make a circle pattern to use as backgrounds in my art pieces. Sounds simple enough, right?
I whipped one up quickly in Photoshop, not really taking too much care in lining everything up perfectly - just eye-balling it.
At first glance, I was quite proud of myself. "Hmmm, that was pretty easy," I thought.
Then, I had the idea that I could easily (so I thought), turn my little creation into a pack of digital papers that I could sell in my Etsy Shop.
Well, as I took a closer look, this is the horrible truth that I discovered:
Arg! I just couldn't get all the circles to line up precisely to the guides! I was experimenting with several different methods, but finally came to the conclusion that it's pretty much impossible to get a pattern to line up perfectly in Photoshop. After trying my best, I still couldn't get it to be exact:
Yuck! Look at how far off everything is! This is a zoomed in shot of the bottom left-hand corner. The top right-hand corner was pretty much lined up, but I found that if it's only "pretty much" lined up in the beginning, then by the end, it's WAY OFF!
And some of the circles were overlapping just a little tiny bit, too (and that was really buggin'):
I had to have my circles perfect!
"Grrr, ok, ok, I'll re-create the entire thing in Illustrator!" I yelled at myself (I know, I'm weird - I do that sometimes).
Well, several tutorials later, I am happy to announce, that I did it! Perfection! (Oh, I also decided that I liked the circles a little bit fatter).
Ahhh, yes, finally the frustration paid off!
I made good use of the Transform Palette, and the Blend option, and yay! There you have it - perfectly aligned circles!
And now that I know how to do it, I can re-create the effect over and over in endless ways! Horray!
So, the first thing I wanted to do was create a simple paper pack, featuring my perfect little hollow circles. I decided to use one of my favorite color palettes of all time - my special creation that I call "Retro Rainbow."
Oh, by the way, it took me another hour to figure out how to easily change the colors of the circles. But, I now know how to effectively use the "Global Color" setting. Cool.
I was hoping to get a few paper packs listed in my shop tonight, but I ran out of time (again).
But, here's a little sneak peak:
I'm totally going to have this and a few other paper packs I've been working on for sale in my Etsy shop next week!
And I'm happy to say that all the circles are perfectly placed - no random over-lapping, no funky stuff, just perfection!
And that's the way I like it. : )
No comments:
Post a Comment