amandae21

Oh, I didn't know. I've never ventured far outside the tutorial or general discussion forums. Thanks!

If you have the plugin yellowman suggested (Pyrochild pack :Outline Object) then do exactly this: On the Heron layer (and make sure that the Heron is the only thing on the layer, nothing else): 1) Don't select anything. Selecting is what will make the outline go along the inside of your heron (and thus, lose the legs). Go to Effects > Object > Outline Object (using the one that looks like a white circle with a black outline, not the one under Effects > Stylize > Outline) 2) Move the sliders for Radius and Strength around until the line is thick enough. If you set both sliders to 10, that's as thick as it will allow you to go in one shot. If you need it even thicker, set both to 10 and click 'Okay,' then go back to Effects > Object > Outline Object and do it again, playing with the sliders until the line is thick enough. 3) Once your white line is as thick as you want it, use the AA's Assistant plugin (which I think is also in the pyrochild pack, so you should have it) and soften up the edge of your white outline. 4) Now go to Effects > Object > Outline Object again and this time do the black line. The attached finished product follows these directions.

Tried AA's Assistant (which is also my best friend lol) and the line is so thin that the adjustments either don't make a difference or wipe it out almost entirely. I tried beveled text and I'm not too thrilled with it. It's hard to bevel script text and it come out right. And with Santa being so 2-D it'd look a little funny if I had the text too 3-D. I used the pyrochild Trail plugin to create version 3 (attached). I think I like it better.

For the last one, I see Render > Clouds and Render > Julia Fractal

I'm working on this graphic for my website (Peachy Saving - a frugal living/couponing blog). This is my second time revising it. It's possible that I'm being my own worst critic here, but I want to see what you guys think before I post it anywhere. Santa is a stock graphic. The top text was made glittery by adding noise, outlined (boltbait pack plug-in I think?), and then I added just a tiny bit of glow because it looked too flat. But I feel like it's not clear enough. I tried adding a darker outline around the whole thing and it didn't look right. I want the text to be kind of bling-y without being over the top. I'm not 100% satisfied with the line quality around Santa's bag, but I'm fine leaving well enough alone on that. Please let me know what you think. Even if you don't have any suggestions, I'd still like to know whether you think it's unclear or not. Thanks!!

Thanks a LOT for this awesome tool! Now, I'd never ever gripe about something I got for free. I just want to throw out a couple of ideas (and cross my fingers that they - one day - come to frution :-) )... It would be nice if the "Category" default weren't 'All Categories', but rather 'Select Category' with 'All Categories' at the top and then all _subfolders (or even better- default to 'Last 10 used' or '10 Most Frequently Used'... but that's wishful thinking :-) ). Wouldn't this speed up the loading process? The thumbnails on the side make it hard to see what brush you're selecting. I've never used photoshop or any other similar software, so I have nothing to compare to. I don't see a logical way to make the thumbnails more visible. However, it would be nice if, once selected, the brush appeared opaque over the canvas as you moved it around, similar to how it appears if you select a piece of an image and were moving it around the canvas (in pdn, not cbm). That way, you could see exactly how big it is and place it exactly where you want it the first time, rather than having to change the size, click somewhere to see how big it is, change the size again, and click 5 different places until you get it just right. This is my first time using brushes, so if there's a better way than this trial-and-error process I've been doing, I'd love to know. A previous poster mentioned rotating the brushes. Ditto. Question- The number you type in for size-- what exactly does the number reference? The number of times the brush size will be multiplied? Thanks again!