How to do simple graduated fill on a rounded corner rectangle

[lafrederick49]

Is it possible to do a radial fill that looks like a beveled button? I can't seem to figure that out?? Any help??

[joeparis]

You could make a Blend by copying the rectangle, scaling the copy down a little, changing the colour, selecting both rectangles and Object>Blend>Make.

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c122/joeparis/button.jpg

Otherwise, there are hundreds of Button tutorials on the net using shapes and transparency masks, they're not difficult.

[lafrederick49]

Actually I was using the shape as an easy way to get to the blending.

FreeHand has a way to get here with a simple choice of what type of fill? AI does not have this??

I'm only asking so that I can become more proficient at AI, as Freehand is longer produced.

AI's version of the "button" (your version) is much prettier :) That is for sure. Love the reflection. Cool look.

Trying to ween my self off FreeHand and only using AI. Still after using FreeHand for 18 yrs, tough to change. Even though I know that AI is much more powerful. But still no multiple pages? What is up with that??

It is way easier for me to do stuff in FreeHand.

But...I'm trying.

[TORCH511]

You can fake multiple pages with illustrator with page tiling. I do this routinely and it works quite well. We use a frame that goes on all our jobs at work and we have templates for letter and tabloid sections. We scale and size accordingly. When we output to PDF it will make a multiple page PDF document. I just finished creating a template for Indesign for our large "packets" but for smaller jobs page tiling in Illustrator is fine.

Remember, Illustrator was never meant to be a layout application like Quark or Indesign. It was originally designed for illustration, though it gets used quite a bit for simple layouts (for good reason IMHO).

There are lots of ways to make a bevel effect in Illustrator. And while there is no "Plugin" or easy way to do it, most are not all that difficult and the end result is often far superior to what plugins generate for photoshop with the added benefit of being in vector.

One of the reasons I love Illustrator so much is that there isn't a bunch of plugins generating the same regurgitated poo that every home-taught "designer" spits out of Photoshop (no offense, we all have to start somewhere). I want my bevel to look Like I want it to, not how AlienSkin makes it look.

I try and stay away from using raster effects too. with a little effort you can make the same effects using pure vector techniques (opacity masks work wonders). It forces you to think about how light refects off of a bevel, and how it would look on every side of the button. Simple concepts from Art School 101 that take a back seat when you are addicted to plugins.

Good luck with your transition. I think in the end you will fall in love with Illustrator. IMHO the most powerful of all the Adobe products, now if they would just get rid of all the bugs.