Working with tools of mass distortion
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Painting with distortion: The Liquify tools
- Getting into shape: Envelope distortion
- Featured Match-Up: Envelopes vs. the Warp effect
- Adjusting envelope distortion settings
- Editing envelopes and their contents
- Releasing and expanding envelopes
Adjusting envelope distortion settings
By default, Illustrator tries to create Envelope distortions as quickly as possible. Artwork that takes longer to distort, like Live Effects, gradients, or patterns, are not distorted at all, and images or other complex artwork may not fit perfectly within the envelope shape. Don’t assume that Illustrator’s Envelope distortion is below par; rather, select your envelope and choose Object > Envelope Distort > Envelope Options. This opens the Envelope Options dialog where you can adjust the settings that Illustrator uses to create Envelope distortions (Figure 12).
Figure 12: The Envelope Options dialog gives you greater control over how Illustrator distorts artwork within envelopes.
- Rasters. If your envelope contains a raster image, you can choose to turn antialiasing on or off. With antialiasing turned on, Illustrator produces smoother and nicer looking art, at the expense of longer calculations and render times. When nonrectangular shapes are used as an envelope (as is usually the case), you can choose to have any raster art enclosed by a clipping mask or a transparency alpha channel.
- Fidelity. When Illustrator performs an Envelope distortion, it has to stretch or squeeze artwork to fit within another shape. During this process, Illustrator may make small adjustments to the art so that it doesn’t become overly complex. A higher fidelity setting forces Illustrator to preserve the integrity of the artwork as much as possible, which may produce more anchor points, but results in final distorted art that closely matches the original. A lower fidelity setting gives Illustrator more wiggle room to create files that print and save faster.
- Distort Appearance. If the artwork that you’re placing into an envelope contains Live Effects or multiple Fill or Stroke attributes, those appearances do not become distorted by the envelope shape by default. You must check the Distort Appearance option if you want the appearance to be affected by the Envelope distortion.\
- Distort Linear Gradients. If the artwork that you’re placing into an envelope contains linear gradients, the gradient itself does not become distorted by the envelope shape by default. You must check the Distort Linear Gradients option if you want the gradient fill to be affected by the Envelope distortion.
- Distort Pattern Fills. If the artwork that you’re placing into an envelope contains a pattern fill, that fill does not become distorted by the envelope shape by default. You must check the Distort Pattern Fills option if you want the pattern to be affected by the Envelope distortion.
