Adobe Illustrator for Windows - Outer Glow... in either Illustrator or Photoshop

Author

Outer Glow... in either Illustrator or Photoshop

Patrick_Pietrantonio@adobeforums.com

2006-12-06, 8:16 pm

I have text that I'm trying to apply an outer glow to. The trick is I would like the text to be transparent with the outer glow remaining around it. Ultimately I would like everything to have a low opacity or even "multiply" so graphics could be seen unde
r it.

The Problem I'm having is that whenever I edit the text to make it transparent the outer glow is linked with it and becomes transparent too. I also tried to use a small pen stroke on the perimeter of the text and then apply the effect. The outer glow want
s to use either side of the line , thus filling the inside of the text too. Clipping mask doesn't work too. I can't separate the the two by layers either. I've tried grabbing the feature in the layers palette and dragging it to a new layer and was unsucce
ssful. I get the drift on how to do it with the paintbrush in Photoshop but since I've working in Illustrator for the duration of the project, I would like to continue to, unless its easier to do this feature in Photoshop and place it in Illustrator.

Any assistance with this dilemma would be appreciative. I've tried all kinds of combos and processes but none have been successful. I also have scanned examples of what I'm trying to do and can send them thru e-mail.

Teri Pettit

2006-12-06, 8:16 pm

Patrick,

What you should do is, instead of setting the transparency on the whole text object, select the characters in text editing mode, and apply your transparency to the characters. This is assuming that the fill color is coming from the character level. If the
fill color is applied at the text object level, then you would highlight the Fill row in the Appearance palette and apply the transparency to just that Fill row.

You should also experment with what happens when you apply your Glow effect to just a stroke vs just a fill vs the whole text object. (I'm not sure exactly what appearance you are going for, so I couldn't recommend one method over another without seeing s
ome kind of simulation of what look you are trying to achieve.)

Since Effects cannot be applied at the character level (although Transparency can), to apply a Glow to just a fill or just a stroke, the fill or stroke will have to be set at the Type Object level using the Add New Fill or Add New Stroke commands on the A
ppearance palette.