Add stroke around GROUP of words instead of individual characters?

[Steve Crook jr]

It looks to me like your best bet is going to be a couple of “Outline Stroke”s.

Here is what you do:

1) Firstly, let’s be safe – work on a copy of the original file. 🙂
2) Ok, now lets make a working copy of the text. Select all the text, copy (ctrl-c), paste in place (ctrl-shft-v), and hide the original (we will need it later).
3) Convert the text to outlines “Text > Create Outlines” (ctrl-shft-o).
4) Now, let’s start the magic. Ofset the paths of your text “Object > Path > Offset Path”; check the Preview box, enter a value into the Offset box and press tab – play with the value until you get the OUTTER outline. (Make sure you don’t de-select anything.)
5) Use Pathfinder “Window > Pathfinder”, and Merge. Then make a Compound Path “Object > Compound Path > Make” (ctrl-8). This gives you a base for your effect.
6) Clean up any stray paths/points via the layers panel, if you can.
7) Now select your new path, and Offset path again, this time with a negative value to make the path the same size as the inner part of the path.
8) Do steps #5&6 again.

Depending on what you want, you can color these two paths and use them as is. If you are trying to make the outline transparent, select the both and use Pathfinder and “Minus Front”.

Hope these instructions are clear enough.

Steve Crook, Jr.
http://www.stevecrookjr.me

I am a simple creative professional that can get my Adobe suite and a few other creative tools to do what I want. Barely. 🙂

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

You can do this more flexibly by using three copies of same text, no need to outline them. See attached. You can then edit the text (on all three copies) or the stroke settings if you need to change it.

9234_livestroke.ai.zip

Use round corners on the stroke and put the thickest stroke at the bottom of the layer stack, the original at the top.