Vectordiary

Day 22: Creating Special Effects

By Tony Soh Posted on August 4th, 2008

Using filters and live effects we can creates lots of special effects instantly. You can smooth out sharp corners, create warp text, add drop shadows and make textures with the live effects. There are many filters in Illustrator and you can have lots of creativity in experimenting all the filters.

Live Effects or Filters

To create special effects, we can use either use Live Effects of Filters. Most of the time I will be using live effects as I can continue making changes using the Appearance Palette. The choice is up to you.

Live Effects: When you apply live effects to objects you can still continue to modify the effects and objects. You will need to expand the object break it into paths again.

Filters: When you apply filters, you can’t make changes to the effect anymore. It is already expanded.

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About The Author: admin

Hi. I'm the founder of Vector Diary. Illustrator is my passion and I have written numerous tutorials on illustrator helping people learn illustrator. My most popular tutorial on learning illustrator in 30 days has been a hit. It makes learning illustrator so easy and has benefited more than 20,000 people worldwide. Also, I've revealed some of my secret techniques in the premium tutorials. So don't forget to check it out!

Read all articles writen by this author

• Day 9: Creating Compound Paths
• Color Theory
• Learn Illustrator CS3 in 30 Days
• Day 24: Distort using Warp Effects
• 13 Amazing Gradient Mesh Tutorials

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+Add Comment7 Comments

1. 
   Lolka August 6th, 2008

   Nice tutorials I can’t wait for the more advanced ones.

2. 
   jess December 19th, 2008

   really good tutorials, helped me a lot in learning illustrator!

3. 
   maria January 5th, 2009

   it is the best tutorial forever! each lesson is great! Thank you for helping us to improve our knowledge!

4. 
   pajo March 14th, 2009

   please,publish more tutorials,but we can not regisried !

5. 
   NuttyProfessor June 27th, 2009

   I’ve been a mechanical engineer for over 25 years…I wished that the taught engineering this simple!

6. 
   Claude Lahiton December 30th, 2009

   I can’t read it, i am logged on. Can you fix it

7. 
   Tony Soh December 30th, 2009

   Try press Ctrl+F5 to refresh it if you are logged on.