Illustrator question about strokes

[shakespeare]

I'm embarassed I can't figure out how to do this, because I design for a living, and I know I've done this before.

I want to add a stroke to some text that I've created in Illustrator (on a map, for those of you who remember my other thread). I want the stroke to make the text legible against any background, so I want to stroke outside the text, and not cut away from the blackness of the text. That is, I want the picture on the right, not the one on the left. How do I do this? I thought there was a "stroke outside" option, but I can't find it. Anyone?

 

[Mr. Anderson]

I've always just used two versions of the same text - its a bit of a hack, but it makes the font cleaner by not overlapping into the letters. Just put the regular black text on top and a 2 point stroke (or what ever you like) in white underneath. For skinny fonts this works really well.

If there's a better way - I look forward to seeing it posted here.

D

 

[shakespeare]

Yeah, that's what I did to make the picture you see there, but that's more work than I want to do for all the cities in New England.

I know I've seen a "stroke outside/center/inside" option on an application before, but I can't find it in Illustrator. Does anyone know what I'm remembering?

 

[Mr. Anderson]

Was that on Illustrator or something else? I've never seen that and I just checked to make sure.

Maybe you had a plugin?

One way to make it go fast is to put all the text on a layer, create the regular text for all cities, group it when you're done, copy and paste it to another, lower layer and stroke that.

Edits would be a pain - that's why you'd need to make sure it was correct first.

D

 

[shakespeare]

Originally posted by Mr. Anderson
Was that on Illustrator or something else? I've never seen that and I just checked to make sure.

Maybe you had a plugin?

One way to make it go fast is to put all the text on a layer, create the regular text for all cities, group it when you're done, copy and paste it to another, lower layer and stroke that.

Edits would be a pain - that's why you'd need to make sure it was correct first.

D

That's a very efficient idea. That's what I'm going to do. Thank you for that.

I can't remember where the "stroke inside" setting was. I used to use FreeHand, so I'm thinking that maybe it was a Macromedia thing. Do any FreeHand users out there have this setting?

 

[scan300]

The way to do this in illustrator (my version is 10, not sure of other versions):

1 create some text
2 select the text box with the pointer (not the text)
3 In the appearance panel add a fat stroke and add another fill.
4 By dragging the fill and stroke up or down in the list you can bring the fill or stroke to the front of the other.

This will leave you with editable text on an single layer.

You can do the same in Freehand, but not with editable text.

 

[zarathustra]

The previous poster had basically the idea down, but if you want to be a super-duper-illustrator power user, you can create a style that can be applied to all your text, and if you change one thing about it, the rest can be updated automatically.

so here goes.

1. Create text, correct typeface, size and color.

2. Add new color.

3. Go to effects, Path, Offset path.

4. Apply offset path with correct settings (offset amount, miter, round, etc).

5. In appearance palette, drag this Offset Path effect inside the second color you created, so it looks like the enclosed image.

6. Now drag this text inside your Styles Palette. Rename it so you know what it is.

7. Draw your map and put the city names on their own layer, makes selecting easier.

8. Now when you select all of your text, and hit the style you created, all text will take up the same style.

9. If you want to modify anything about your style, just do it to any text that has the formatting applied. Then go to Appearance palette and under the flye-out menu (the little triangle that points to the right) select "Redefine Style "xxxx"". Voilá.

 

[shakespeare]

Wow, thanks so much, you guys. I knew FreeHand inside and out, but I'm still learning the ropes of Illustrator, and you opened up new worlds to me just now. Thanks for the help; the map looks great and was easy to make.

 

[MacRumorSkeptic]

Photoshop is the application that has the stroke inside/center/outside options. Hopefully Adobe will add it as a feature to Illustrator 11.