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Chapter 12. Using Filters and Effects

In This Chapter

• Applying effects

• Getting to know the Appearance panel

• Discovering graphic styles

• Making artwork 3D

• Playing with additional fills and strokes

• Creating the illusion of space and distance with the Perspective Grid

Effects give you the opportunity to make jazzy changes to your Illustrator objects, such as add drop shadows and squiggling artwork. You can even use Photoshop filters directly in Illustrator. In this chapter, you find out how to apply, save, and edit effects; you also take a quick tour of the Appearance panel (your trusty sidekick when performing these tasks).

Working with Effects

If you're an Adobe Illustrator user from any version before CS4, you might be wondering where the Filter menu is. (If you're just starting to use Illustrator, you don't need to know about, or even care about, this major change.) All items that appeared on the Filter menu are now on the Effects menu.

Filters apply permanent changes to artwork, referred to as destructive changes, because after you save and close the file, you can't undo the results for the filter. On the other hand, effects are quite different: They're connected dynamically to objects. You can apply, change, and even remove effects at any time from the Appearance panel (choose Window

Understanding the Appearance panel

You can apply multiple effects to one object and even copy them to multiple ...