Possible to move path to edge of stroke?

[akaxtian]

Sorry for the rather cryptic title of this post, but I wasn't sure how to summarize my question. There is still much about Illustrator that I'm not familiar with, so there might be a easy fix to my problem. Hopefully, one of you has a suggestion for me.

Basically, I have a rectangular "wall" that is filled with many random closed paths that serve to emulate graffiti. The idea is for it to be very suggestive and non-specific, since the wall itself is not the focus. The paths are filled with mostly grey and grey gradients, along with a dark grey stroke.

On the wall, I am placing an all-text, colored logo this has been converted to outlines. The text has several copies of itself below the main logo, each with a increasingly larger stroke of differing color to suggest the appearance of outlined graffiti writing. Make sense so far?

I would like the outermost stroke of the text to "fit in" with the wall as if it were just another path/shape. I do not want the text to look as if it were just placed on the wall. It needs to look like it is also graffiti, but it will stand out by the use of color, since the wall is only shades of grey.

I am able to select all the graffiti shape paths, along with the lowermost text, and Merge them. That gives me the combined look that I'm after, but the merge is referencing the paths of the actual letters and not the stroke that is set at about 24 pixels. See where my problem lies? Is there a way to expand the path so that it lies at the edge of the stroke instead of at the edge of the letter? Once I get that larger outline of the letters on the wall, I can work on coloring the letterforms.

I hope that made sense. I look forward to your comments/suggestions.

Thanks,
Chris

[Paul C]

I'm not entirely folowing you but this might help: You can outline a stroke by expanding or using Object-Path-Outline Stroke. But I don't quite understand why you can't just select the graffiti and scale it…
peace

[Srik]

Hi Chris,

This might help as well. I'm trying to follow your problem...I understand that you need to have a path at the edge of the storke, I suggest you can select that path which has the stroke of say 6 points, go to Object menu-path-offset path and apply 6 points offset, this will create a new path which will coincide with the edge of the stroke which you had given for the parent path.

Assuming that you have this problem in Illustrator I have given this suggestion, why I'm confused is, you have written the stroke weight in pixels (Photoshop??).

[Paul C]

Illustrator can be set to pixels in the Stroke Palette in Preferences. Also a quick way to change most of your measurements on a Mac is to hold down the Control Key and click on the ruler. You will get a contextual menu that will change from inches to millimeters, etc…
If you outline the stroke, it will become a separate layer from the path. They are grouped, however. Now that it's separate, you can ungroup and use the Align palette.
peace

[akaxtian]

Srik: I am using Illustrator in this case, not Photoshop. The measurement for stroke weight can be set to pixels, points, inches, etc. I suppose I should have just said "stroke weight" in my initial post. Regardless, the actual measurement is honestly irrelevant to my question. Sorry for the confusion. I will try your suggestion of the offset and see if that works for me.

PaulC: I tried to outline the stroke before, but I seem to recall it not working in the way I had hoped. I try that again as well.

I had another thought that might work too... rasterizing the largest stroke weight text outline and then tracing it to create that large path. Then, I should be able to merge that with the other paths and have my outline.

I'll reply with more a bit later today. I'll try to include a few sample images. Thanks!