Simple Questions

[Ammar Midani]

Acting like a real bignner, i'm wondering about this questions and didn't seem to feel comfortable with, so i hope my questions will be an aid for many beginners like me.


1. Why there are various expand commands?

2. What's the function of the eyedropper inside the Inside the art brushes options?

3. Still can't locate my Illustrator preferences file, why is it such a mystery? I'm on Window XP, CS2

4. What's the basic difference between a compound path and grouped objects?

5. What actually the outline stroke command do?

Many Thanks.

[TORCH511]

1. I always wondered why Adobe chooses to seperate them but I think there is a logic behind it:

○ Expand will outline stroke and seperate the fill area (you can choose which you want, or both).
○ Expand Appearance will permanantly apply an effect to the path of an object
○ Flatten Transparency, while really meant to eleminate printing problems when using transparancy can also act as an expand command, creating outlines of dashed lines among other things.

They really are different tools and if all the tools were grouped into one, there would be too many options.

2. The eyedropper is for setting the key color when using the Hue Shift colorization option for an Art Brush

3. There is no preferences file. Some of the editable options have been moved to the preferences menu (Edit>Preferences) Other options that you would have changed in the preferences file are now changed by altering the startup files. There are two one for CMYK and one for RGB, both located in Adobe Illustrator's Plug-ins foler (Copy originals someplace safe before editing) - Open the file, change what you want to change and then save. I like the old way better myself.

4. They are similar, but still different. A group of objects is several different objects that get treated alike. A Compound Path one path that may contain one or more open and closed paths.
Try this - make a big circle, apply a hefty stroke and the apply Outline Stroke. Duplicate and move so the two circles are side by side and then release the compound path on one of them. Select both and switch the fill to a stroke. Now apply Path>Offset Path. You will see the difference between how the two are treated.

5. The outline stroke command change the stoke of an object to a compound path that is the equivilent of the stroke.

[Ammar Midani]

Ill try those suggestions.

You've been great help, thank you Torch511.