How to use the Appearance Panel

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Course contents
SECTION: 4
Keyboard Shortcuts 14:06

Questions

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Course info

104 lessons / 10 hours 33 quiz questions 31 projects Certificate of achievement

Overview

Hey there, I'm Dan Scott, an Adobe Certified Instructor with over 16 years of design experience under my belt, I'm part of the Adobe Expert program, and my online and in-person classes have been attended by more than a million people, just like you! Join me as we dive into the exciting world of Adobe Illustrator Advanced! In this course, you're not just leveling up in Illustrator, you're transforming into an Illustrator SuperHero!

In this course you will work on a bespoke brief designed to ignite your imagination, coupled with immersive course videos, you'll be crafting jaw-dropping graphics in no time. Throughout our journey together, you'll flex your creative muscles and construct projects that will elevate your portfolio to new heights. So, let's dive in and unleash your creativity!

You’ll learn:

  • - How to use artificial intelligence to boost your creativity in ideation. 
  • - The quick way to take hand-drawn sketches and vectorize and color them. 
  • - The building blocks needed to set you loose on a huge variety of beautiful effects and techniques.
  • - To make beautiful charts and graphs for your documents. 
  • - Color mastery to make quick color adjustments, Pantones, and blend it all together beautifully.
  • - How to master images inside of your illustrator workflow. 
  • - To harness all the secret gems that'll help you level up your typography skills. 
  • - All the tricks of the trade for drawing complex shapes easily. 
  • - To double your creativity with the Transform and Distort section. 
  • - To speed up your personal workflow to get the most out of your creative day.

Explore the full course outline for a comprehensive list of topics that will expand your Illustrator prowess beyond imagination.

If you're already comfortable navigating the basics but want to  unlock the true potential of Illustrator, then this Illustrator Advanced course is your ticket to becoming a master of Illustrator! So join me and the ranks of design superheroes and let's embark on this thrilling journey together.

Requirements:

- All you need is a copy of Adobe Illustrator, you can get a free trial from Adobe here to get started.
- A basic knowledge of Illustrator is required. I recommend watching my Illustrator Essentials course prior to embarking on this epic adventure.

Who this course is for:

- Creative adventurers who already have a basic understanding of Illustrator.
- Self-taught Illustrator enthusiasts yearning for structured guidance.
- Graduates of my Illustrator Essentials Course, hungry for more knowledge and skills.
- Visionaries who have developed their own unique Illustrator approach but crave exploration of the vast universe of tools, updates, and time-saving techniques.

What you'll learn:

- How to use Text to Vector Ai
- How to use Text to Pattern Ai
- How to use Generative Recolor
- When to use the Scissor Tool, Eraser Tool & Knife Tool
- Advanced Shape Builder Uses
- The differences between the Pathfinder Vs Shape Builder
- How to use the Join tool & Joining Path Ends
- Advanced Pen Tool Tricks
- Width Tool Advanced Techniques
- The Curvature Tool
- How to master corners with corner widget effects
- How to work with Compound Paths
- The difference between Expand & Expand Appearance
- How to create Graphic Styles
- How to make Symbols
- How to use the Smooth Tool
- Advanced use of Simplify Path
- What Live Shape Effects are for
- How to make Repeating Grids & Concentric Circles
- How to make Random Objects
- Advanced Keyboard Shortcuts in Illustrator
- How to add a Gradient on a Stroke
- How to add a Gradient in Text
- How to use the Freeform Gradient tool
- How to use Advanced Color Swatches
- How to use Global Color Swatches
- What is the difference between RGB vs CMYK color modes?
- How to proof colors
- How to use Pantone Spot Colors
- Recolor Artwork & Changing all colors at once
- How to use Blending Modes
- How to work with Images & Blending Modes
- How to make Black & White Images
- Learn Advanced Workflow Tricks
- All the Super Selection Mastery
- How to use the History Panel
- Advanced Fonts Tricks & Tips
- Use Retype to know what Font is being used
- How to put Text Inside a Letter or Shape
- How to use the Touch Type Tool
- How to add a Connected Stroke Around Multiple Shapes
- How to Offset a Stroke with Text
- How to make a Bar Chart in Illustrator
- How to make a Pie Chart in Illustrator
- Layer Power Moves
- Advanced Artboard & Pages Tricks
- How to Unlink vs Embedded Images
- How to Crop Images Rather than Mask
- How to Mask Inside Text & Multiple Shapes
- How to you use the Puppet Warp Tool
- How to use the Distort Envelope Shape & Type
- How to use the Envelope Mesh
- How to blend lines together
- How to make a Linocut Effect
- How to make 3D Gradient Lettering Blends
- How to spin text into a ring
- How to turn text into a 3D donut shape
- How to make a Duotone image effect
- How to make a Roughen Stamp Vector Effect
- How to make a Neon Sign Glow Effect
- How to use a Halftone Effect using Plugins
- Advanced Exporting Assets Tricks in Illustrator
- How to use the Dimension Tool

So what're you waiting for? Let's start the course now!
Daniel Scott

Daniel Scott

Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor

instructor

I discovered the world of design as an art student when I stumbled upon a lab full of green & blue iMac G3’s. My initial curiosity around using the computer to create ‘art’ developed into a full-blown passion, eventually leading me to become a digital designer and founder of Bring Your Own Laptop.

Sharing and teaching are a huge part of who I am. As a certified Adobe instructor, I've had the honor of winning multiple Adobe teaching awards at their annual MAX conference. I see Bring Your Own Laptop as the supportive community I wished for when I was first starting out and intimidated by design. Through teaching, I hope to bring others along for the ride and empower my students to bring their stories, labors of love, and art into the world.
True to my Kiwi roots, I've lived in many places, and currently, I reside in Ireland with my wife and kids.

Certificates

We’re awarding certificates for this course!

Check out the How to earn your certificate video for instructions on how to earn yours and click the available certificate levels below for more information.

Downloads & Exercise files

Transcript

Everyone. Uh, it's time to learn the appearance panel. Hey, we'll do a basic introduction. Here it is the big unlock for Adobe Illustrator. We're gonna use the appearance  panel a lot through this course. It allows us to add multiple fills and strokes to objects.

Okay, so this one here I can easily grab,  okay, steal the appearance. We can do some cool things where we drag the appearance onto  different objects, style things really quickly  and consistently without having to do the like add stroke,  outline, stroke and stroke outline stroke. You've done it. You can just actually add  multiple strokes all at once. Go the appearance panel, right? Let's jump in.

First up, open up the file cord appearance panel  from your exercise files. Okay? And this is the push pull sign that I made earlier. Uh, let's start with something simple. Let's grab the star tool. So hold down the rectangle tool, grab the star tool, uh,  draw a star, pick a feel color and a stroke.

And I want you to make the stroke nice and thick for me. Okay? I am bumping mine up to 10. You can hold shift and click it, okay? To get a nice thick stroke. Now let's look in the properties panel.

Let's go to stroke. Click on the word stroke  and we can set this to the outside, right? So we can, or the inside the center line. So it crosses over the middle or the outside here. Okay, all great. But let's say I need a second stroke.

I could outline it. Outline the path. You might've done that, right? Like outline stroke  or expand appearance and then add another stroke to that. And that kind of works if you've done it that way. Get ready for awesomeness.

Okay? Let's open up the window and go down to appearance. Okay? This is like, I dunno if you know how  to use the appearance panel half good. You are in top 10% of illustrator users. So much of illustrator and the advanced things rely on this.

So get ready for goodness. So with it selected with my black arrow, I've got it says,  look, I've got a path inside of it. I've got a stroke and a fill down the bottom here. Look, I can add a second stroke or a second fill. Let's go to add new stroke. You're like I didn't do anything.

Ooh, it's the same as the um, one we've already got. It's just duplicated. So I've got 20  pixels and it's the same color. Let's pick a different color. Uh, and let's pick a different size. So I'm gonna make mine even bigger.

Okay? And now this appearance panel actually works  like layers in Photoshop. So this stroke is on top of this stroke covering it. So what we can do is we can click any  of this blue area here. Okay? You can grab lots of different parts.

Okay? You get the hang of it. I just grabbed the like no man's  land of uh, this layer here. Can you see the line that appears? Little blue line? Okay, you can say I want it below this stroke and ready.

We've got two strokes. Cool, huh? It's gotta make sure one is bigger than the other,  then not the same size and make sure the different colors. Otherwise you won't be able to see them. It's go crazy's. Add a third stroke again, needs  to be bigger than the last one.

I'm holding shift. Make it a little bit bigger. Gonna pick another color. I'm gonna make sure it goes down, down, down. Okay. You can see I've got inside and outside here.

What I can do is I can select on this. There's not too many options in here. You can do basic stuff, but you can click on the word stroke  or click on it over here to go. Actually I want this one to be, I don't know. I want this one to have like a rounded joint  so it goes around the corners. Get what I mean.

It's not um, I dunno, it's  Not really what I want. But  know that you can do stuff to it  by clicking on the word stroke. Okay? You can open it out, you can see the opacity for it  and you can get into the weeds with it  by clicking on the word stroke  and get all of those goodness in there. Look at us multiple strokes. I'm gonna turn that thing off.

Another cool thing about the appearance panel is if I grab  the ellipse tool and I've drawn something  that has nothing on it, okay? So no, it's just a plain one. How do I get that to that? I can use the eyedropper tool kind of. I can say I've got that selected. Grab the eyedropper tool and I can say grab that  and grab bit of it.

You're like, I don't just grab it all. You can force it to watch this. If you double click the eyedropper tool. Remember lots of tools can be double clicked. I can say grab the whole appearance. It was only grabbing part of it on the whole thing.

So it all ticked. And I want to apply everything. So grab everything from the appearance  and dump everything from the appearance. Let's click okay. Now when we do it, look, it grabs it all. There's another trick.

I don't know why I'm giving you more than one. This is the advanced course. I'm trying to impress you. I'm gonna turn that one off. So normal old circle. How do we get it over here?

Watch this. If I grab my black arrow, grab this one. This little thing here,  this little swatch is actually  everything that's in the appearance panel. Watch if I grab it and just drag it onto it. Kabam go on two ways of doing the exact same thing, Dan. Excellent.

Next up, if we can have more than one stroke on  an object, we can have more than one fill. Remember earlier on we made this kind of push pull thing  and I showed you a little hack to kind  of just have two shapes, okay? One at the bottom that had our patent fill that we made  and one on the top that had a fill of black  and the opacity turned down on it. Okay? So what we're gonna do now is get rid of you. Okay?

It's fine having two separate shapes, okay? But you are gonna bump into projects  where somebody else has made it  and it's more advanced to do it all in one go. Tidies everything up. Plus we can turn it  into a style later on. So with the selected, I've already got a fill in it. Okay?

So it's got the fill of my patent fill. What I'm gonna do is say I want another fill. See this one here? Add you fill, okay, it's duplicated. I've got two patent fills, which is not fun. Hey, I'm gonna say I want the top one to be black  and not completely black.

If you can't see it, click this little chevron  and then you should be able to click on the word  opacity and lower it down. I think it was 42%. Okay? Now why is this different? This thing is one unit now, okay, I can copy  and paste the appearance onto other things. I can set it as a style and share it with my team  and it's just all together.

So the appearance panel is handy. Multiple strokes, multiple fills. You just gotta remember the layer. Order is important. Survive this, fill underneath everything, okay? It is down the back also, if I undo that,  if I have the stroke, okay, depends on where the stroke is.

So if I add a nice big, bright stroke so you can see it,  I'm gonna hold shift and click the up arrow a few times. Okay? You go to decide do you want the stroke to be affected  by the fill or do you want the stroke above it? Okay, not affected by this fill. It's top down like Photoshop. I'm looking at the top, see the stroke first, then the fill,  which covers a bit of the background.

So layer order is important. Um, one of the weird things about the appearance panel,  everything I showed you is the,  for some reason type doesn't work the same way. Um, I've got this other document here. I'm gonna copy this out. So you can type any old text. I found a cool font.

Um, what is it called? That flickery. Okay? One thing with fonts is,  I don't know, it's a weird thing. Okay? But watch this.

If I go stroke and I want to increase it,  can you see it just kind of creeps into it  and you're like, I know how to fix that. Click on stroke and instead of going align stroke  to the center line, I'm gonna say align it to the outside. Outside, outside or the inside. I think I got those backwards, but neither  of them work with fonts. I dunno why. You can outline the text and that will work.

Okay? And we can start messing around with it. But I want the text to stay editable. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get rid of this stroke  and I say you have no stroke, okay? And what I can do is I can kind of make the thing  that I want, okay? And use our trick before and say I want you text, okay?

To steal the appearance of this,  I'm gonna use the eyedropper tool, okay? And just double click the eyedropper tool  and make sure that all of it on the ticks  up here are all on. So I'm gonna grab everything from this and apply it to this. Cool. It kind of works. So you can see the strokes applied to the outside.

It's doing some weird stuff where you're like,  why can I see the inside overlapping bits? Remember it's layer order. So at the moment the stroke's on  top, I can see it's black  and everything else gets a bit muddled. If you want the center of it, which was orange. Phil? Phil.

Phil. Phil, okay. I want it to be above the stroke,  below the stroke, okay? It depends on what you're looking for. Your parents panel can be really handy. Anybody done the outline text  and you're like, um, add stroke, expand appearance,  add another stroke, expand appearance.

Some of you will be shaking your heads knowing  that you've done that before. I've done it before. Welcome to the world  of the appearance panel, advanced stuff. It's kind of simple once you understand it,  but it really does unlock a lot for Illustrator  and a lot for this course. So that is the kind of like quick  version of the appearance panel. We'll dive into it as we get through this course.

Alright, that is it. That is the appearance panel  and illustrator, I will see you in the next video.
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