[Les Nemeth]

>>Does this make sense?
Sorry but it doesn’t for me. Maybe you could illustrate in PS (or even a pencil sketch) of what are you trying to do.

[Les Nemeth]

Unfortunately AI does not have this functionality (at least not in CS4). Dunno about CS5.

However, you can do this if you have a Wacom pen, because you can assign keyboard macros to the pen (or any of its buttons) or by creating a popup menu and assign a macro to a popup menu item. And also, you need a PC because Macs don’t have keyboard navigation equivalents (so you cannot move to a certain text field or other dialog box control by pressing certain keys).

With this said…

You can edit the artboard by simply pressing Alt+O. Then pressing ENTER will open the Artboard Options dialog. In the dialog you can navigate to the Width box by pressing Alt+W and typing a value, then pressing Alt+H to navigate to the Height box and typing the value. Then simply pressing ENTER will close the dialog and pressing ESC will get out of artboard mode. And there’s your new artboard resized.

You take all these keyboard commands/navigations and enter it into any of the Wacom’s buttons or popup menu items. Then simply recall it with the touch of a button.

[Les Nemeth]

[Les Nemeth]

[Les Nemeth]

>>You’ll probably have to draw white triangles and put them into position.
To speed that up, you can create a brush. There are a couple of brushes that came with AI which resemble a similar woodcut kinda look.

[Les Nemeth]

You can use PNG, just make sure it’s 24bit. The snapshot looked like it was only an 8bit PNG.

[Les Nemeth]

PathStyler Pro uses the same editable raster effects as AI. With “same” I mean, one raster effect looks just as good at 300dpi as another.

The only difference might be if you are using an effect that utilizes an image texture. In that case you need to make sure that you are using a high quality texture (like 300dpi) if you want to make it look god when printed.

[Les Nemeth]

https://www.shinycore.com/products/pathstyler/

[Les Nemeth]

You can do it two ways.

Way 1:
1. Convert the white areas to a compound path.
2. Select the black background and the white areas and use the Pathfinder palette to do a Subtract (Minus Front).

Way 2:
1. Select all the white areas and Cut.
2. Open the Transparency palette.
3. Select the black area.
4. Double click the empty square in the transparency palette.
5. Paste the white areas you cut, into the square representing the transparency.
6. Adjust the Clip and/or Invert Mask checkboxes as necessary.

[Les Nemeth]

It’s kinda hard to say without actually knowing how the shapes are organized and put together – let alone the whole illustration.

But, poking in the dark, I’d first expand the stroke(s). Chances are, after expansion they will be grouped, so you need to un-group them. And now at this point (depending on how it was put together), I’d use the tools on the Pathfinder palette. Either subtract them or use other appropriate operation (divide, etc).

Or, I’d use the expanded path – if possible – to ‘Object > Path > Divide Objects Below’ (it’s a menu command in one of the menus), then delete the un-needed pieces.

Something like that.