Color as in the new text warp tutorial

[Brice]

How would can I recreate the color shown in the new warped text tutorial? I know how the black shadow was done, but I need something to point me in the right direction for the colored foreground.

Thanks, Brice

[LSR84]

Ciao!

If you mean the fill color of the letters it's a simple gradient fill. You can open it's window under Window/Gradient or Ctrl+F9. Once it is opened you can simply add colors with drag&drop from the Color window.

Ciao!

[FreeTransform]

If you want the gradient to be applied across all of your text, rather than have it fill each individual letter, select the text, and with the Gradient tool (G), drag across the whole group of text.

[Brice]

Cheryl, I'm with you right up to selecting the text. I have the entire layer and it's objects selected, select the gradiant, and this is what I get:

http://thewolfords.com/PSE/Gradiant.jpg

I'd rather have the gradiant go across the layer as in the tut... What might I be doing wrong?

Brice

[Brice]

When I had the text selected and picked the gradiant tool and selected the type of gradiant (linear) I got the result in the previous post. I wanted to play around with it so I tried pulling a gradiant across the text from different angles and I came up with this:

http://thewolfords.com/PSE/gradiant2.jpg

Which is obviously what I wanted. I KNOW I did this the first time exactly the same way and it wouldn't work. I must have accidentally changed something in my workflow, but I don't know what I changed. I believe I was pulling gradiants the same way over both working sessions, but this time it worked... Any ideas?

Brice

[Corey Barker]

When a gradient is applied to multiple objects, even when they are grouped. It will set the gradient in each object. You can do two things here: after you apply the gradient, select the objects and get your gradient tool and draw the gradient across all objects. This will redraw the gradient acroos all the objects.

The other thing you can do is before you apply the gradient, select the objects and go under Objects>Compoud Path>Make. This will tell Illustrator to treat these multiple objects as one. When you apply the gradient it will go across all the objects.

Corey

[Brice]

OK I understand that. Thanks for the tips! That also explains why it worked two different ways. I dragged the gradiant a second time and it spread across the objects. I must have just not noticed it the second time I did the tutorial.

Again, I appreciate your help!

Brice

[FreeTransform]

I just discovered something strange: Type a word of text, and DO NOT convert it to outlines. Drag across it with the Gradient tool, THEN convert the text to outines. The gradient is applied automatically. Weird, eh?

[Brice]

Weird and a whole leck of a lot easier!

Thanks Cheryl.

[FreeTransform]

Just got today's Layers tip:

"Layers magazine Tip of the Day:

Adobe Illustrator CS2 Tip – Filling Editable Text with a Gradient.
When you apply a Gradient Fill to text, nothing seems to happen. It's still black text, yet in the Swatches palette, the Color palette, and the Tools palette, the Fill is showing as a Gradient. Is this a bug? No! 'You can't fill editable text with a Gradient in Illustrator. You have to outline the text (making it un-editable) before filling it with a Gradient." I've heard this statement of fact over and over again, even from experts." Guess what, IT'S NOT TRUE.

Type some bold, san serif text and make it big (72 points or more). Click on a Gradient Swatch and it won't apply, even though it shows the Fill as a Gradient in various palettes. Now the secret! Select the type with the Selection tool. And go to the Effect menu > Path > Outline Object, which applies the EFFECT of Outlined Text without actually outlining the text. Now Fill this 'live" text with a Gradient. It works! And, if you need to, you can still edit the text because it's not really Outlined."