How to scale font size in spiral

[drcarl]

Hi,

I learned a lot about spirals today and am still puzzled over how to get a long string of numbers (Pi) to scale smoothly down in size in a spiral...or maybe to "fit a path" in Adobe Illustrator.

Ai is new to me. Photoshop is not.

Any help?

TIA

drcarl

[wizard509]

I'd love to answer your question but I know nothing about ai. Maybe one of the photoshop,ai gurus will come along and answer it for you.

[drcarl]

Maybe one of the photoshop,ai gurus will come along and answer it for you.

I'd be thrilled if SOMEone, Photoshop or Illustrator, would come along with the clues....er, answers

[Gare]

I think your answer is going to wind up in the domain of bitmaps graphics...a filter probably...rather than vector art, drcarl. If anyone can figure out an algorithm to scale text down exponentially, they take the cake, you know? This question came up on Creative Cow about 5 years ago, and the best answer was (In Illustrator, and the same with Xara), "Fit the text to path, and then when the path starts getting too small, reduce the size of the text."

It's a manual approach. Requires the patience of a saint.

My Best,

Gary

[mwenz]

Most anything is possible in Illy...just not always a "perfect" solution.

Paste your Pi text in Illustrator.
Size your text to be the size your start size will be.
Below the text, create a rectangle pretty much the full length of the Pi text. Also make it about the same height of the text.
Using the white pointer (direct select) and pick the top right node on one end of the rectangle and drag it down not quite to the middle.
Do the same with the bottom right node, but drag it up to almost the middle.

Now select both the text and the rectangle.
Click on the Objects menu.
Most of the way down the Objects menu, choose Envelope Distort, Make with Top Object.

Now, with the text still selected, choose to make a new Art Brush.
I named mine Art Brush Scaled Text.
Now apply the art brush to your spiral.

[wizard509]

It's easy enough to taper the text but to get to a spiral curve is not.

[Gare]

@Mike—you are amazing, Sir.

@Larry—Dmitri Maultin created a spiral generator to use with Xara years ago and here's the link to Gary Priester's Shareware archives click to download the spiral generator from the original Xara Xone.

-Og

[mwenz]

Why thank you sir Gary.

And I did use the spiral generator. Great little utility. Can't drag and drop into Illy though. Can't place the file either. It does open though. So I opened it, copied and pasted into my working document.

Mike

[wizard509]

Gary I tried that, failing to get the envelope to follow the curve, I tried making a brush but that didn't work for me either.

[wizard509]

I'd love to know how to do it using Xara.