Adjusting Stroke Joins around Text in CS4
Here’s an obscure (but cool) little feature that you might not have noticed in CS4 by yourself: You can now adjust the stroke joins and alignment on text! Even though you have always been able to stroke text, these features were curiously absent in earlier versions. For example, here’s some text with a stroke around it:
Here’s the same text after setting the stroke to align on the inside instead of the outside:
And finally (this is the one I really like), here’s the text (set back to Align to Outside), using the Round Join in the Stroke panel (instead of the normal Miter Join):
Unfortunately, you still cannot apply a stroke style, so no dashes, dots, or stripes. Also — contrary to at least one marketing sheet I’ve seen from Adobe — you cannot adjust the stroke cap (probably because there are no open paths in text). Perhaps CS5? Anyway, at least you can now do some nicer outlines without having to convert the text to paths.
Sweet feature I’ve been wanting for the longest time. You don’t happen to know if Illustrator CS4 has this ability also, because that would mean no more converting to outlines just to stroke text… It’d make the upgrade even more worth it, but the wait until I can order it even less bearable ;)
Now if only they could get the trapping part right. If you do this type of thing and place the text on a bitmap or a colored fill, some of the outline overprints some knocks out. It should all knock out or all overprint. Similar issue with stroking a frame. If you use a multiple stroke, with a gap color of white and fill the box with a PMS or even a process color the inside rule can’t trap. The reason is the gap white extends inside passed the fill color. Choking the white gap in a trap editor helps but it’s messy at best.
Great! I never used this function cause it ate at the typography. Sweet!
That is a fantastic feature.
Yet another reason not to go into Photoshop!
Before I switched from Quark to InDesign, I was in Photoshop most of the time. Now I pretty much never go into Photoshop. I love it!
I can imagine the round join stroke working well in conjunction with the standard stroke, for something like a logo.
Roland,
There is a back door technique that lets you apply an outside stroke to Illustrator text without converting it to outlines. First, set your text without any stroke. Then, with the text selected, go to the Appearance palette and navigate to the flyout menu and select “Add New Fill”. Fill the text with your desired color. Back in the Appearance palette, select the Stroke attribute and drag it below the Fill attribute. Set the stroke with your desired color and double your intended stroke width… voilá!
I used Illustrator for a year before I realized you could adjust the stroke order in this manner with non-outlined text. Most vector objects show “Stroke” & “Fill” in the Appearance palette without needing to go to the flyout.
Sorry for the Illustrator hijack.
@almaink: Are you talking about InDesign’s built-in trapping? Or the trapping in your RIP? Most people just use the RIP trapping, which is almost always best.
Dean, thanks so much for that tip. It’s been annoying me for ages, and the work-around is so simple!
@Dean and @Roland: You realise that you can apply more than one stroke to text in illustrator. You simply make a new stroke via the appearance panel, double the size of your previous stroke and move the new below the stroke already there.
There’s a lot you can do with the appearance panel and it always surprises me when I see people don’t have that panel open and use it regularly.
David, I was referring to the way RAMpage’s Trap It handles these files. Been having some odd issues with the latest versions of InDesign and Illustrator files. I have many workarounds but never needed them before CS3 came out. Every InDesign file is exported as a unflattened PDF and run through RAMpage PDF Trap Engine, that is, it’s pre-flighted, trapped and ripped and a PDF fpo is made for imposing to plates back in InDesign. CS3 broke my PDF fpo workflow as the fpo comments are being stripped from the FPO PDF’s, when I re-export the imposed plates to PDF from CS3 or CS4. I can use EPS fpo’s, but I’d rather keep everything as PDF. I’ve discussed this over on Print Planet with Dov Isaacs and even sent him some test files for the Adobe engineers to look at, but never heard anything back.
@almaink
I have a friend who uses RAMpage and I used to use it myself. Whereas I’m not familar with the trapping problems you’re having, I can ask my friend, but it probably won’t be until Monday, if you can wait that long?
I’m not a fan of RAMpage, I’m not knocking it or anything, but personally I believe there are better RIPs out there.
I’ll report back on Monday if I have anything to add.
Thanks, Eugene. Maybe he knows something the guys at RAMpage don’t.
@Dean & @Eugene, thanks for the tip, works a treat. I used to copy and paste on top, but this sucked if I had to edit the text.