Graffix plugins for Adobe Illustrator CS3, CS4, and CS5 are no longer supported, but can be activated for free!
Just download the CS3-CS5 plugins you want, install them, then when prompted to register any of them, enter the following.
Name: Creative Suite User
Code: 5F-2474
Until you’re ready to move on to CS6 and the Creative Cloud, this ought to make work in the older versions a bit easier.
When fine-tuning the position of a pattern, I’ve often wondered if it would be faster and easier to just zoom in, click on a point I want aligned with something else, and drag it to the new position. Nudge Panel now includes a tool to let you do just that. And d’ya know what? It really is faster and easier than clicking the nudge buttons on the panel (although you may want to make the final ever-so-small adjustments with the panel). Snapping the tool to a path or point for alignment makes precise adjustments even more quickly.
Download the free update for Nudge Panel 16 and try it out!
All Graffix plugins have something in common, whether it’s a module of code to add an About Box, handle preferences, or other functions. All of these shared libraries have had improvements made to them, making the plugins more stable, more reliable, and with better memory management. Every plugin available for CS6, CC, CC 2014, CC 2015, CC 2015.3, and CC 2017 (all 132 variations) now has an update available They’re recommended for all users.
And once you’ve downloaded those updates, you may notice that the read-me doc has been updated, as well, with clearer instructions on where to place the plugin. There’s also a link to the support area of this web site, which has been updated with an FAQ section and will see more frequent and meaningful help topics.
Many thanks to all users who have shared their questions, comments, and observations, which led to these improvements.
All the best,
How often have you placed a pattern into a path, but needed to align the pattern with other art, but without moving the path? With a little guesswork and patience, it can be done, but there ought to be a simpler, more straightforward way. And there is!
When I draw a floor plan and place a pattern of a grid drawn at a given architectural scale behind it, I want the upper-left corner to align with the grid. How useful would a grid be, really, if it were simply plopped randomly behind the art? To use the plugin, I select the path with the pattern fill and click on one of the eight directional triangles to move the pattern left, right, up, down, or diagonally by one point. If I press the Command/Control key, the movement is divided in half, or the Option/Alt key will divide the moment by four. On a Mac, pressing the Control key while clicking will divide the distance by eight, and holding combinations of these keys will combine the effects so that I can make adjustments of 1/64 of a point. Pressing the shift key, too, will make each key work as a multiplier to move the pattern farther with each click.
Have you ever drawn a dashed line diverging from another? With the Dashes adjustments, you can precisely slide the dashes on a path forward or back along a path to align them as needed.
With the CC release, you can also select art objects and move them in small increments. I find this helpful for things like fine-tuning the placement of city names on maps or other situations where snapping isn’t helpful.
After working with pattern adjustments I found that patterns from existing art may have been scaled, rotated, or sheared, and to regain control of the pattern, there’s an Untransform button. Besides restoring a pattern to its original proportions, it also works on images (making them easy to export with the highest quality possible) and on other placed images such as EPS.
Please feel free to download it and try it out. In demo mode, you can take your time because the trial period doesn’t expire, but is instead based on a thousand test clicks. I’m sure you’ll find it a useful addition to your Illustrator workflow. As always I welcome your comments, questions, or suggestions.
Sometimes we scan and trace a large image in Adobe Illustrator, so large that has to be imported in pieces. You probably start out as I do, sizing, rotating, and shearing the first piece of the series so it fits.
When importing the second scan, you want it to match the first piece as accurately as possible, but what if the first piece needed stretching and twisting to fit? How can anybody perform exactly the same series of operations? I’d found myself “transformed” into a corner once too often and found a way around that dilemma, then built it into the options in the flyout menu of the Nudge Palette plugin for easy access. It’s all based on a property found in every art object in an Adobe Illustrator file called a transformation matrix. A series of six numeric values (named Tx, Ty, A, B, C, and D) define the location, scale, rotation and shearing of an object, and we can make it work for us. Here’s how: Select the first raster object and copy its transformation matrix. Next, import the new image and paste that matrix into it. Bam, it snaps onto the first image.
The images are stacked, though, and need to be stitched together. If there’s a bit of overlap in the images, an easy way to quickly align the two images is by pressing “5” to set the new, still-selected image’s opacity to 50%. Now overlap the images so they match, and press “0” to set its opacity back to 100%.
Repeat this process with every piece you have that make up the whole scanned image, and you’ll have a composite that fits (assuming all of the pieces were scanned at the same orientation).
You can also use this technique to replace a carefully-positioned image with another, with the same transformations as the original. This technique has saved me a lot of time, especially with images that required significant manipulation to fit.
I hope it works for you, too!