Adobe Illustrator CS4 - Manual (Page 179)

172 USING ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR CS4
Painting
Smoothness Controls the amount of smoothing that Illustrator applies when you use the tool. Smoothness can range
from 0% to 100%; the higher the percentage, the smoother the path.
Fill New Brush Strokes Applies a fill to the path. This option is most useful when drawing closed paths.
Keep Selected Determines whether Illustrator keeps the path selected after you draw it.
Edit Selected Paths Determines whether you can change an existing path with the Paintbrush tool.
Within: _ pixels Determines how close your mouse or stylus must be to an existing path to edit the path with the
Paintbrush tool. This option is only available when the Edit Selected Paths option is selected.
Remove brush strokes
1 Select a brushed path.
2 In the Brushes panel, choose Remove Brush Stroke from the panel menu or click the Remove Brush Stroke
button
.
Convert brush strokes to outlines
You can convert brush strokes into outlined paths to edit the individual components of a brushed path.
1 Select a brushed path.
2 Choose Object > Expand Appearance.
Illustrator places the components of the expanded path in a group. Within the group are a path and a subgroup
containing the brush stoke outlines.
Create or modify brushes
You can create new calligraphic, scatter, art, and pattern brushes based on your own settings. For scatter, art, and
pattern brushes, you must first create the artwork you want to use. Follow these guidelines when creating artwork for
brushes:
• The artwork cannot contain gradients, blends, other brush strokes, mesh objects, bitmap images, graphs, placed
files, or masks.
• For art and pattern brushes, the artwork cannot contain type. To achieve a brush-stroke effect with type, create an
outline of the type and then create a brush with the outline.
• For pattern brushes, create up to five pattern tiles (depending on the brush configuration), and add the tiles to the
Swatches panel.
See also
“ About patterns ” on page 191
“ Create corner tiles for brush patterns ” on page 195
Create a brush
1 For scatter and art brushes, select the artwork you want to use. For pattern brushes, you can select the artwork for
the side tile, but it isn’t necessary.
2 Click the New Brush button in the Brushes panel. Alternatively, drag the selected artwork to the Brushes panel.
3 Select the type of brush you want to create, and click OK.