Illustrator® CS4 For Dummies®

Chapter 11. Effectively Keeping Up Appearances, with Style(s)

In This Chapter

• Way-cool special effects with the Effect menu

• Looking at the Appearance panel

• Adding additional fills and strokes

• Combining Effects settings to create different effects

• Creating a style

• Manipulating existing styles

Back in the twentieth century, Illustrator was a straightforward program that offered relatively few (and relatively obvious) choices. You knew when you looked at a pink rectangle that it was made with four corner points joined by four paths and was filled with a single, solid pink color. But those days of blissful innocence are past. Now that pink rectangle might really be a red rectangle that some fiend faded to 50% Opacity via the Transparency panel. And that rectangle might not be a rectangle at all, but a graphic of an old shoe that has been disguised as a rectangle using the Effect

The truth is, the ability of Illustrator to make objects look different without changing the original object is amazing. Illustrator lets you do incredibly powerful stuff that would be impossible otherwise, and more importantly, gives you incredible editability. Editability, you ask? That's one of the primary reasons to use Illustrator in the first place. The ability to go back at any time to change a small aspect of your ...