Reverse art in Illustrator

Posted: Wed May 06, 2009 4:11 pm

Say I want to print this black rectangle on a white item. I don't want to put down white ink, I want to knockout the black in the shape of the text and star and the color of the product becomes the color of that portion of art. How can I do this in Illustrator CS1?

Level 3 Joined: 02 Jan 2004 Posts: 4303 Location: Home

Convert the text to outlines.

select all and make a compound path

Posted: Wed May 06, 2009 10:40 pm

Thanks Intruder but I'm still getting the same results. I'm missing something. Everything is a graphic at this point because I have created outlines with the fonts. The only result that I'm able to achieve is making the graphics invisible. I can't get them to knockout the image behind them to reveal the background.

Level 3 Joined: 02 Jan 2004 Posts: 4303 Location: Home

You do have the text above the rectangle, right?

Posted: Wed May 06, 2009 10:50 pm

yeah, and that is not the actual graphic that I'm working with. The real one would be way to big to post here.

For demonstration purposes only! Kids don't try this at home.

Member Joined: 21 Nov 2005 Posts: 763 Location: classified

Select your text outlines and your rectangle, and then choose 'Subtract' from the Pathfinder panel.

Posted: Thu May 07, 2009 1:17 pm

That didn't work either. All I'm getting is transparent graphics in the foreground without knocking out the graphic underneath.

Member Joined: 21 Nov 2005 Posts: 763 Location: classified

If this isn't what you're asking for, then I don't understand what you're asking for. Illustrator doesn't visualize transparency the way Photoshop does. If you printed the above image, it would print in black and green.

By the way, it's not necessary in CS3 to convert the text to outlines before running subtract.

Posted: Thu May 07, 2009 9:17 pm

That's exactly what I'm looking for but this is what I'm getting

Don't know why the first and last image act differently with this command but with the transparency and opacity tool the all go invisible.

Member Joined: 21 Nov 2005 Posts: 763 Location: classified

I think the problem is selection. Illustrator can do complex path operations, but only when you are extremely clear about which object is which. Subtract works best when there are just two objects - the item to subtract, and what to subtract it from. Best practice is to group all the items together into one group, making sure to catch all the paths and fills. Using the black arrow instead of the white arrow will assure that you get the entire group.

The clicking order for subtraction is:
1. object to be subtracted (your letter/star group)
2. object to subtract from (the black rectangle)

Posted: Thu May 07, 2009 10:08 pm

Still getting the same results. I'm starting to think that CS1 may not support this function.

Member Joined: 21 Nov 2005 Posts: 763 Location: classified

I know for a fact that this actually can be done in Illustrator 8, 9, 10, CS1, CS2, and CS3. I suggest starting over with a clean copy. If you don't have a clean copy, go through your layers and release all complex paths.

Just in case I've been unclear, I'm going to go through a from-scratch example. I suggest you do the same.

1. Create a horizontal rectangle, black fill, no stroke.
2. Create a vertical rectangle, green fill, no stroke.
3. Adjust layers so the green rectangle is behind the black rectangle.
3. Using the text tool, type some text. Text defaults to black, so do it on the artboard.
4. Move the text onto the black rectangle, and make it white.
5. Adjust layers so the white text is above the black rectangle.
6. Select the text layer.
7. From the Type menu, choose Create Outlines, or just hit shift-cmd-o
8. Hold down the shift key and click on the black rectangle.
9. Click the Subtract button in the Pathfinder.
10. Click the Expand button in the Pathfinder.
11. Deselect and save.

It should work without creating outlines in CS1, but I don't have a copy here to test with. Just for kicks, do this and skip steps 7 and 10, which should produce the same results.

Posted: Fri May 08, 2009 2:27 am

READ THIS PLEASE!

This is weider than weird. I did this at least 4 times going back and forth between lines and fonts and using the pathfinder pallet and the pathfinder in the pulldown menu. It didn't work. I went back to do before and after screen shots and it worked! This is without converting the fonts.

What does expand do? I didn't use it hear.

(here Razz

)

Posted: Fri May 08, 2009 2:51 am

the only other thing that was different in my other tries before this experiment is I had borders or paths around the fill.

Member Joined: 21 Nov 2005 Posts: 763 Location: classified

When you run the Pathfinder, it keeps the result of the operation as a separate complex path. The point of this is that you can see which strokes and fill sections got clipped. Expand simply gets rid of that extra complex path.

Subtract, before expand:

Subtract, after expand:

I tried to duplicate your issues by using extra strokes, and by using various arrow tools, but I could not.

Posted: Fri May 08, 2009 6:50 pm

I've tried several more times and it works better from the pallet than the pull down menu. I still can't get it to work on the graphic I was working on though. I didn't create that and the person who did used Corel. Luckily I was able to talk the printer into doing the knockouts for me.

Thanks worker for all you help on this. I've got a big learning curve ahead of me. I need to start doing a lot of things that I used to do in Photoshop in Illustrator now.

Posted: Tue May 12, 2009 12:16 am

There is one solution to this problem and three simple steps to it.

1. LEAVE THE TEXT AS WHITE.
2. SPECIFY EVERY COLOR THAT PRINTS.
3. SPECIFY THAT WHITE KNOCKS OUT ONLY.

No need to create compound paths. Also, white ink is usually called OPAQUE WHITE.

Compound paths only complicate the art in this instance.

Posted: Tue May 12, 2009 1:24 am

Thanks jaratr, but I'm not seeing how to do that. Print Presets? Color Presets? Maybe I need to load drivers more suited for prepress than I have?

Posted: Tue May 12, 2009 7:31 pm

Sorry. I should have been clearer.

Specify the above things in notes and/or while discussing the job with the print vendor.

The default for white (zeros on CMYK, RGB, GRAYSCALE) with any printer is no ink. Unless specified as a special white ink, white is generally considered knock-out. Meaning no ink is printed.

Check your overprint settings in Illustrator to make sure the element you are coloring white is NOT set to overprint.

Posted: Tue May 12, 2009 7:42 pm

Thanks jaratr, that does make it easy.

Member Joined: 21 Nov 2005 Posts: 763 Location: classified

sidewall wrote:

Thanks jaratr, that does make it easy.

Bah. Sending the whole thing off to a graphic designer is easy - skipping the project altogether even more so. Learning the Pathfinder is worth it, even if you don't need it for certain print jobs.

Posted: Wed May 13, 2009 12:31 am

There is more than one way to skin a cat. I think there is value in both ways to do this task. I believe that the quickest, simplest & cheapest is often best, as long as it doesn't cheat the end result. For the project that I was working on jaratr's solution would work just fine, HOWEVER Pathfinder is a valuable tool that I have not understood as well as I do now. I will use it. Thanks again to both of you.

Before anyone yells, I'm a pet lover and would never skin a cat, although I've lived with at least one that probably should have been.