Adobe Illustrator

Editing a graphic style is an exercise that involves both the Appearance palette and the Graphic Styles palette, so it makes sense to position them side by side. You don’t need to have an object selected in order to modify an existing graphic style, but if you do have an object selected, you’ll be able to preview the changes you’re making to the style.

In the Graphic Styles palette, click the style that you want to edit. The Appearance palette lists all of the attributes for the selected style. You can modify the style by either adding additional attributes, deleting existing ones, or by changing the paint order by dragging attributes in the Appearance palette. Once you’re happy with the modifications, choose Redefine Graphic Style from the Appearance palette menu to update the style. Once you’ve modified the attributes, you can update the style, which updates all other objects that have the style applied.

Any objects in your file that have that particular style applied then immediately update to reflect the modifications. Alternatively, you can Option-drag (Alt-drag) the target thumbnail on top of the existing style in the Graphic Styles palette. A heavy black outline appears around the style in the palette to indicate that the style will be updated. Dragging the thumbnail from the Appearance palette on top of an existing graphic style while holding the Option (Alt) key redefines the style.

A graphic style is a saved set of attributes. You know that the Appearance palette lists all attributes, so you already understand the first step in creating a graphic style—specifying the attributes you want defined in the style. Once you’ve specified stroke and fill settings and added Live Effects, click the New Graphic Style button in the Graphic Styles palette. Alternatively, you can drag the target thumbnail from the Appearance palette and drop it into the Graphic Styles palette. Double-click a style in the Graphic Styles palette to give it a name (which is always helpful). If you Option-click (Alt-click) the New Graphic Style button, you can define a new style and give it a unique name in a single step.

Once you’ve specified your attributes in the Appearance palette, you can use the Graphic Styles palette to create a new graphic style. Notice that when you apply a graphic style to an object in your file, the Appearance palette identifies the target and the style that is applied. This makes it easy to quickly see which style is applied to an object. When a graphic style is applied, the Appearance palette helps you easily identify the target and the applied style.

Note: Sometimes designers need to combine two inks to create a certain effect. For example, package designers often want to mix black ink with a spot color ink. Although you can’t create a swatch that contains two inks, you can create a graphic style that contains two fills. The lower fill is the spot color, the other fill is a percentage of black, set to Overprint. You can then apply the style to any object with a single click. To simulate a multi-ink color, combine two fills and use the Overprint command. The result is a single editable path that contains two colors.

You probably already have a sense of how powerful appearances and Live Effects are. However, if you have several objects in your file to which you need to apply the same appearance, it can be inefficient to do this manually using Live Effects. Additionally, if you ever need to update the appearance you applied, you would need to do so for each object individually. Graphic Styles can help.

A graphic style is a saved set of attributes, much like a swatch. When you apply a style to an object, that object takes on the attributes that are defined in the style. At any time, you can redefine the attributes of a particular style, and when you do, any objects in your file that already have that style applied are updated as well. The best part about Graphic Styles is how easy they are to use. And you’ll never guess which palette plays an integral part in creating graphic styles—that’s right, the Appearance palette.

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.

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.

Adobe Acrobat Reader
One of the important benefits of Live Effects is that you can edit them at any time. Double-clicking an effect that is listed in the Appearance palette opens the dialog for that effect, where you can view the current settings and change them at will. Many people make the mistake of going to the Effect menu to edit an effect. For example, if an object has a drop shadow applied to it, some might select the object and choose Effect > Stylize > Drop Shadow in order to change the settings of the effect. Doing so actually adds a second drop shadow effect to the selected object. Illustrator allows you to apply an effect to an object as many times as you’d like, and in Chapter 7 we will explore when that might be beneficial. The important thing to remember is that when you want to add a new effect to an object, you choose it from the Effect menu. To edit an effect that already exists, you double-click it in the Appearance palette.

If you try to edit an existing effect by choosing it from the Effect menu, Illustrator informs you that you must edit existing effects though the Appearance palette.

To duplicate an effect that you’ve applied, highlight it in the Appearance palette and click the Duplicate icon in the palette. You can also drag effects to the Duplicate icon. To delete an effect from an object, highlight it in the Appearance palette and click the trash icon in the palette. You can drag effects directly to the trash icon as well.