Datis Design Weblog

Illustrator, Photoshop by Farshad

In this tutorial I am going to tell you how can you make a mobile icon with Adobe Illustrator. At the end I will add some effects in Photoshop to finalize work. You can use these simple methods to create any icon you want. Hope this tutorial be helpful for you.

Beginning Work in Adobe Illustrator

First create a new document in Illustrator, then select Rounded Rectangle Tool from the Toolbar and select a color for Fill Color and select none for Stroke Color, then draw a rectangle with any size you want. Now choose Mesh Tool from Toolbar, select a brighter color than rectangle color and then click once on upper left corner of your rectangle. You should make something similar to this :

Again choose Rounded Rectangle Tool and select blue color for Fill Color and none for Stroke color, draw a smaller rectangle inside the previous rectangle. Choose Mesh Tool and select a brighter blue and click on upper left corner of the blue rectangle. Like this :

Now for creating keyboard I will use Rounded Rectangle Tool again and create some keyboard for my mobile like this picture :

Finalizing Icon in Photoshop

Create a new document with 250px width and 250px height in Photoshop. Please note :

I want to use Drag & Drop feature between Illustrator and Photoshop, if you are using CS2 versions or higher, you can benefit the very nice feature of Smart Objects.

While you have Illustrator and Photoshop open, drag every layer and drop it in your new created document in Photoshop. For example drag and drop gray rectangle, drag and drop blue rectangle, drag and drop keyboards and… After this you will have 3 Smart Object layers.

Now select your gray rectangle layer, right click on it and choose Blending Options, I will add Inner Shadow and Gradient Overlay to this layer, see these images :

I will add Inner Shadow to blue rectangle layer :

And Bevel and Emboss and Gradient Overlay for keyboard layer :

Its Done ! Here is the final image :

Hope this tutorial was useful for you, I will put files for you to download…

Download File 521Kb

Illustrator by Farshad

One of the coolest options in Adobe Illustrator is tracing. You can easily convert a raster image to vector ones. But how can you do it ?

I am using Illustrator CS3 in this tutorial.

First create a new document in Illustrator, then place your desired image using place command in file menu. After placing your image you will see Trace Option Bar in Illustrator options bar like this image :

Now you can easily convert your image to vector by pressing Live Trace button :

You can access to more options by clicking the Tracing Option Dialog :

Tracing Options :

• Preset defines the preset you want to trace an image.
• Mode determines the color mode.
• Threshold defines the value for creating black and white image, pixels that are brighter than this value will be white and pixels that are darker than this value will be black. This option is only available for black and white tracing.
• Palette defines the color in tracing image.
• Max Colors defines the maximum color that will be used in trace an image. This option is only available in color and grayscale mode.
• Output to Swatches will create a new swatch for every color in traced image.
• Blur will blur the trace image to specific amount.
• Resample will resample traced image to specific resolution.
• Fills creates filled regions in the tracing result.
• Strokes creates stroked paths in the tracing result.
• Max Stroke Weight determines the maximum width for converting to a stroke path.
• Min Stroke Length determines the minimum length to converting to a stroke path.
• Path Fitting controls the distance between the traced shape and the original pixel shape. Lower values create a tighter path fitting; higher values create a looser path fitting.
• Minimum Area defines the smallest part of an original image that should be traced.
• Corner Angle defines the sharpness of an angles in traced images.
• Raster specifies how to display the bitmap component of the tracing object.
• Vector specifies how to display the tracing result.

Illustrator, Multimedia Fundamental by Farshad

SVG stands for Scalable Vector Graphics. Illustrator can export the SVG files, also it ships with SVG viewer plug-in, which works with different browsers to play back SVG graphics and web pages.
Also there is SVGZ format which is compressed version of SVG.

SVG format features :

• Fully scalable for zooming and panning
• Pixel perfect positioning
• High resolution gradients, drop shadow, and other filter effects
• Enhanced color control and color accuracy
• Highest possible printing resolution
• Better typographic control including kerning, text on a path, and unlimited fonts
• Editable and searchable text
• Ability to search text elements within graphics
• Dynamic content, animation, and interactivity through scripting
• Compact download sizes
• Cascading style sheet support (CSS) enabling global web site changes
• Multiple levels of transparency
• Support for other devices such as palmtops, GPS, cell phones

Illustrator, Photoshop by Farshad

In this tutorial I’m going to create a custom RSS logo with Adobe Illustrator CS3 and Adobe Photoshop CS3.

First I start to create logo in Illustrator, so create a new web document in Illustrator and select Arc tool from your toolbox. left click on work area, an arc segment tool option will popup, fill in the fields like this picture :

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