Adobe Illustrator – Applying a Live Effect
Applying a Live Effect is easy. To apply a soft drop shadow, select an object and choose Effect > Stylize > Drop Shadow. The Drop Shadow dialog appears, where you can specify the exact settings for your drop shadow including blend mode, opacity, offset (the distance between the object and its shadow), and the blur amount, which is the softness of the shadow. Additionally, you can choose a color or darkness value for your drop shadow.
The Drop Shadow live effect gives you the ability to control all of the specifics to create a soft drop shadow.
Note that the dialog has a Preview option, which, when checked, allows you to see your shadow update as you make changes to the settings. This is a useful feature and you’ll find that nearly all Live Effects have a Preview option (yet another difference between filters and effects). Once you’re happy with the appearance of your drop shadow, click OK to apply it.
Note
To choose a spot color for your drop shadow, you must first define the desired color as a swatch using the methods described in the previous chapter. Click the color swatch in the Drop Shadow dialog and then click the Color Swatches button, where you’ll find your custom color in the list of swatches.
Now, let’s take a look at the Appearance palette. Note that the path is listed as the target and then examine the attributes in the object itself. Reading from the bottom up (the order in which the attributes are drawn), you have default transparency, the drop shadow effect that you’ve just applied, the fill, and then finally, the stroke of the object. The drop shadow appears beneath the fill and the stroke of the object because it wouldn’t be much of a drop shadow if it were painted above the fill and stroke, would it?
Live Effects, once they are applied, appear listed in the Appearance palette.
The truth is, you can use the Appearance palette to control exactly how and where your drop shadow—and any live effect—is painted. Using the method we discussed earlier to apply opacity settings to fills and strokes independently, you can click the Fill or Stroke attribute in the Appearance palette and then add the drop shadow. In this way, you can add a live effect to just the fill or just the stroke of an object. If your object contains multiple fills or strokes, you can apply Live Effects to each of them individually. Once you’ve already applied a live effect, you can drag it within the Appearance palette to change its place in the painting order and to have it applied to a specific Fill or Stroke attribute.
Live Effects can be applied to fills or strokes of objects individually. Here, the drop shadow is applied just to the stroke of an object.