Trying to recreate a colour blend within a text - stumped.

Attachment 105777

Attachment 105778

I am trying to replicate a fill within a text that has 3 colours, image one is the original.

Image 2 is the best I've got up to now, but I'm still a long way off understanding how to blend, control the colours to only 3 and make the band thickness's as can be seen.

What I am doing is:

1 - creating an oblong shape and duplicating (the blend tool seems only to work with 2 - I initially tried/had 5; red, orange, yellow, pale yellow, green)
2 - one shape is red, the other green
3 - select and blend, increase the steps, select rainbow, use position and attribute profiles to try and fine tune/position etc
4 - create a bitmap copy
5 - select text, select fill tool, select bitmap, select copy from 4 above

I have tried different heights/thickness's of the oblongs.
I have tried adding space between them, to see how that affects the end result.
I have tried manoeuvring the right angled arrows but this always has a negative effect

The blend in image 2 introduces orange which I don't want and the yellow middle is not high/thick enough. Only the green looks nearly right.

How can I easily control the colours required and their thickness's please?

Perhaps I am using the wrong tool or perhaps another program deals with this better?

Thanks you in advance for your help.

I might have come up with a workaround:

Attachment 105779

I've taken the original blend and kept the position and attribute profiles at zero, and then added a 3rd rectangle shape on top, positioned centrally, coloured yellow, added 25% transparency, played with the thickness, then created the bitmap copy and applied.

Why not use colour Gradients instead of Blends. Just took about 2 secs to do this but it's easier to do. You might be wanting to learn how to blend and a great place is at the Xone have a look here, the only thing it is on strokes; http://www.xaraxone.com/webxealot/workbook14/page_3.htm

Yes, grad fills are the way to do this and you can drag two yellow colours onto the graduation line to get the flat yellow section in the middle.

Phil

I've tried the gradient linear simple fade fill effect, thanks for bringing it to my attention. Yes this is good to have the ability to choose 4 colours, I've learnt something I didn't know here too :)

However, to get the centre thickness right, the top and bottom colours lose their impact, because the centre band becomes 'neon' like shining, even when I go into the Pantone CMYK Uncoated and select a fairly pale yellow. The brilliance applied to the centre band due the thickness required, just takes away the red and green. So for now, I have to play around with my workaround.

Thanks guys, I do appreciate your input =D>

A printed graphic will always look a tad grainier than a "fresh" vector graphic on-screen.

What you won't easily obtain the the slight grainy transition between the stops, but likely can with filters. Or post export editing in a bitmap editor to add grain.

In any case, multiple stops along the gradient path works fine.

Attachment 105783

Here I exported as a transparent PNG and added a bit of grain effect in an image editor.

Mike

Attachment 105784

Hi Mike, you've got a good effect there - is this using gradients as I can't get the flat colours you have. How did you do this please?

I have attached the XAR file. Made with XDP, don't know what you are using.

This version of the file has your image, the native XAR text as curves, and the same screen shot with the grain in it.

Mike

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Originally Posted by Albacore

Why not use colour Gradients instead of Blends. Just took about 2 secs to do this but it's easier to do. You might be wanting to learn how to blend and a great place is at the Xone have a look here, the only thing it is on strokes; http://www.xaraxone.com/webxealot/workbook14/page_3.htm

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Hi Albacore!

Thank you for pointing out the workbooks. I learn a lot from doing excercises. Sometimes the information in the youtube clips go too fast for me because there is such a lot to see. Could you point me to more workbooks? Is there a workbooksection that I can access?

Hélène

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Sometimes the information in the youtube clips go too fast for me because there is such a lot to see

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I agree Hajeem, they do sometimes :)

Found them :o