• Adobe Illustrator

  Changing Text into… Um… Whatzitcalled? Vectors??

  Posted by Captain Mench on January 12, 2006 at 12:21 am

  I never use illustrator… maybe I should more reading these posts here and getting excited again…

  BUT…

  I need to convert text I type into actual points and lines as if I created those letters myself.

  I used to have a technique from Photoshop where I could take an image/text in photoshop and change them to vector graphics. Had something to do with changing paths and such and when it got into Illustrator it ‘wasn’t’ there and had to create a stroke width for the vectors etc…

  Anyway — I say that only because:

  I’m trying to type in Illustrator. What I get now when I select the text is the entire text in one box.

  I want the edges of the letters to be full vectors (?) so I can select them and scale them… and MOST important… bring them into AE as an .ai to work in Z-werks Invig.

  Thanks for the simpleton help… or point me to what it is I’m actually trying to do and I’ll look it up in the manual.

  CaptM

  Captain Mench replied 20 years, 4 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Troy E. parker

  January 12, 2006 at 12:51 am

  Hey Capt…

  Very easy to do in Illustrator and the standard method of providing text to third parties and importing into other programs. The method you are looking for is the ‘Create Outlines’ operation. This process preserves the exact layout of the text and allow syou to sned text to others that may not have the same font or import into a program that may modify the text upon import, (or not recognize the imported text/ substitute fonts etc)

  To convert text to outlines (they are already a form of vector object when created as a ‘text’)

  Select text Object
  Go to ‘TYPE’ menu at top of page
  Go to ‘Create Outlines’ and select with mouse (mac or pc shortcut
  is shown to the right)
  Text will now be pure vector objects that are completely editable.

  **** CAUTION: This action will destroy any ‘TEXT’ based editing capability for the converted text. To preserve the ability to edit the text (copy edit, change the typesetting etc) simply make a copy of the layer with the soon to be converted object and lock layer to prevent undesiable modifications….

  Hope this helps!

  On a related subject, I support you delving into Illustrator as it is the often overlooked tool that can do many thing PS cannot and can really improve both the quality of our work and workflow (why am I beginning to dread using that word? Time for some new vernacular I guess!).

  For more info, checkout of the Adobe website (lots of good resources there), and maybe grap a copy of an Illustrator book ( The Quickstart series by Peachpit is pretty good).

  Regards,
  Troy

  ps: what is the root of ‘Capt’ moniker?
• 

  Captain Mench

  January 12, 2006 at 1:03 am

  Troy —

  THANKS much for your help. This is exactly what I want. I sit in awe of people doing illustrator demos at Macworld etc and think… Ok.. THIS year I’m going to spend much of my “learning” time to get into Illustrator. THIS YEAR!

  As for the Capt…

  Here’s me:

  https://homepage.mac.com/captmench/TodayShow/large-8.html

  In my REAL job.

  Thanks again for all your help.

  CaptM

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