Turbomilk

Not so long ago Yegor Gilyov published his article “Exporting design comp from AI to PSD the right way” in which he told us about three steps required to avoid problems when converting AI-files to PSD. The required output is a picture that 100% matches its vector source.

I would like to deepen into the subject and show you a few useful tricks of using the Illustrator for exporting, which would save the time (which is always a limited resource), nerves (that unfortunately are not recoverable) and turn this process into a mere pleasure. So let’s start:

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Nowadays you can often times meet interface designers who gave up using the good old Adobe Photoshop in favor of vector instruments. In other words, in favor of Adobe Illustrator. The advantages are obvious: while working with the vector source one can better control the process than while working with a bitmap (even if it is split into layers). In a vector editor a drawn circle will remain a drawn circle and in Photoshop it will be just a multitude of painted pixels. Finally, in a vector editor it is much easier to create versions for screens with different pixel density (dpi) — Hello, Retina Display!

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Over the past few years, the 3D graphics technologies have been developing at sky rocket speed. The calculation algorithms of photorealistic images, increase in the number of processor cores and the RAM volume (as well as the new GPU rendering technology) have made it possible to obtain high quality pictures while working from home. 3D has become a powerful tool of graphic design. There are a number of unarguable reasons for using the 3D approach with speed of operation being the most substantial.

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In the coming fall the next (third in a row) festival of web developers, Internet evangelists, designers and other supporters of the industry will be held in Samara. You are welcome to learn more about the event, its history, organizers and participants here and this article talks about the mascot we developed for the upcoming event.

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What is a recolorable icon? It is a picture which is capable of changing its color, hence is the world recolorable. There are several ways of getting there. I will tell you about a simple technique that we used while developing Iconza. In essence it’s a web application that provides for changing colors of icons followed by generating the required files.

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All new stuff is extremely lucrative: it lures a feeling of novelty and freshness. I sincerely believe that a newer version is always better than the previous one. But there is one software package that undermines my life views. I am talking about Adobe Illustrator. It gained so many useless functions that operational mistakes have become too easy to see. It all lasted for six passed years. Here is an appropriate time for a short sermon.

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So get your magnifying glasses handy — we continue! After long and feisty arguments (do not worry — no blasters involved) we have 3 approved icons sized 64×64. Further starts the work that requires attention and patience but its end result will be seen by the Alien Invaders much more often (as it happens in the process of evolution they did not enlarge the screens but worked on improving their eyesight). Now we will grab your attention with the proper method of drawing small icons.

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I have once expressed my regrets about the quality of Adobe Illustrator as a software package. The speed at which this beauty eats up the system resources is mind boggling! Drawing the first icon you are pleased to learn how fast it happens. But gradually with each new layer (object, raster or vector effect…) Illustrator slows downs and shifts into the idling mode. Since in the very beginning you do not mention it, later you hope that the reboot will “fix the problem”. However things just get worse.

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Last time we finished off with sending sketches to the Invaders corrected and refined according to their comments. The invaders had a lot of discussions and tentacle waving. While they were killing the time all of their Gigantic Assault Squids contracted the Space Pox and died. Oops! There goes the bio-weaponry. The good old methods proved to be more reliable. So the decision was made to invade planets using flying saucers with powerful blasters like in good old times.

While the invaders still have their saucers up and flying, we decided to draw the Earth invasion icon first.

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You still can produce a normal cone gradient in our beloved Illustrator. This process was uncovered in konischer-verlauf.zip file with a description in German, and, I believe, many of you have already downloaded and thoroughly studied it. In general my note repeats all of what’s contained in this file, however, in English and with a few extra comments to clear up on things.

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It is a must for every designer to know what Google Image Search is for. It has a secure place in my top ten of the most frequently visited web sites, alongside with LiveJournal and our Basecamp. All the time you have to be looking for metaphors for your icons. Or to be looking how the next secateur looks like. Sometimes you feel the need to give your eyes a feast of looking at a masterpiece of the world art!

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Last week I promised to tell you how to make the right cone gradient in Adobe Illustrator. I must keep my word, and I have nothing but to reveal this secret on the example of the same compact disc.

First we’ll have a little brainstorm. I’ll give you a couple of clues and you try to make that cone gradient by yourselves. If you are lucky you can save your time and skip reading this article. Do here we go with the clues:

1. Linear gradient
2. …
3. Effects → Warp → …

Can you make out anything? Or not too much?

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Once upon a time there was a conversation about the various opportunities, advantages and disadvantages of vector-based drawing programs, and it was then that Yegor said, a hint of sadness to his voice, “I wish we had some cone gradient at hand, like we do in Corel Draw”. To which I had a delicate question, “Ah, why would you need the cone gradient?” I’ve been feeling uneasy about this question for many years. Who would ever need such a trite thing as the cone gradient? Yegor said, dreamily, “It’s so good when it comes to drawing compact discs!”

Our professional specifics sometimes requires that we draw a wide range of everyday life objects, CDs included. It is true that creating a CD icon is a painstaking process over and over again. How good it would be, had we an opportunity to take two circles, cut one of them from the center of another and apply the cone gradient to the object. Tempting, is it not?

Everyone knows, though, that Adobe Illustrator does not allow you create those cone gradients. How should we draw this CD in Adobe Illustrator then? All right, my beloved reader, I hope you are ready! If need be for preparation, I would recommend reading my article “Pure Vector”. Don’t forget to turn on the Scale Strokes & Effects option, it’s the last time I remind you about it.

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Many of you are likely to be using such bitmap effects as Blur and Feather to get nice highlights and shadows. It would be good, but if you were to rasterize such a picture in high resolution you would either have to pre-set the high resolution of the bitmap effects or to enlarge the picture itself in the Adobe Illustrator. Below are some simple tricks to allow you get rid of all that fuss and create modern nice scalable icons (and not only the icons) without using bitmap effects.

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Many a stumbling block is there on the way of a patient icon designer. Some you jump, some you push away but still once you stumble. The question “how to make a tiny nice picture — an icon — from a big nice picture?” is in the first lines on the top problem list. In other words, how do you make a raster icon out of a vector-based picture without the loss of clarity and sharpness of the image?

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