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Using Appearance Attributes, Styles, and Effects in Freehand 11

About appearance attributes, styles, and effects
Appearance attributes are properties that affect the look of an object without altering its underlying structure. If you apply an appearance attribute to an object and later edit or remove that attribute, it does not change the underlying object or any other attributes applied to the object. Fills, strokes, transparency y, and effects are all types of appearance attributes. A style is a named set of appearance attributes. The Styles palette lets you store and apply a set of appearance attributes to objects, groups, and layers. This gives you a fast and consistent way to change the look of artwork in documents. If the style is replaced (that is, if any appearance attributes that make up the style are changed and the new attributes are saved as that style), all objects with that style change to the new appearance.
Effects are a type of appearance attribute and are listed under the Effect menu. Most effects have the same function and name as commands found elsewhere in the application. However, Effect menu commands do not change the underlying object, only it appearance. You can distort, rasterize, and modify any path using any number of effects, but the original size, anchor points, and shape of the path never changes—only the way it looks. The underlying object remains editable, and an effect’s parameters can be changed at any time.

Working with appearance attributes
The Appearance palette is your gateway to working with appearance attributes, including styles and effects. Because you can apply appearance attributes to layers, groups, and objects, the hierarchy of attributes in your artwork can become very complex. For example, if you apply one effect to a layer and another effect to an object in the layer, it may be difficult to determine which effect is causing the artwork to change. The Appearance palette shows you exactly the fills, strokes, styles, and effects that have been applied to an object, group, or layer.
Using the Appearance palette
The Appearance palette shows you the hierarchy of appearance attributes in your artwork. When you make a selection on the art-board or target an item in the Layers palette, the Appearance palette displays the attributes associated with the artwork. Fills and strokes are listed in stacking order (front to back); effects are listed in the order in which they are applied to the artwork.
Layers, groups, type, meshes, linked files, bitmap images, blends, envelopes, Ares, symbols, symbol sets, and graphs all function as containers in the Appearance palette. When you apply appearance attributes to a container, all artwork in the container takes on these additional attributes.
A. Path with stroke, fill, and effect
B. Layer with transparency
C. Group with effect
D. Stroke with effect
Displaying the Appearance palette Choose Window > Appearance.
Displaying attributes in the Appearance palette Make a selection on the art-board, or target an item in the Layers palette. The attributes of the selected item appear in the Appearance palette. If the item is a container (such as a layer or group), double-click the word Contents in the Appearance palette to display the attributes of artwork in the container. Click the name of the container to redisplay its attributes.
Expanding and collapsing fills and strokes click the triangle to the left of the fill or stroke in the Appearance palette. Click again to collapse the fill or stroke.
Reordering appearance attributes Drag an appearance attribute up or down in the palette to change the order that strokes, fills, and effects are applied. (If necessary, expand fills and strokes.) When the outline of the appearance attribute you are dragging appears in the desired position, release the mouse button. The stacking order of strokes and fills directly affects an object’s appearance. For example, if the fill attribute is below the Contents entry, any fill attributes applied to objects will be applied in front of the fill.
If you apply a style to an object, but the style’s fill color doesn’t appear in the artwork, drag the Fill attribute above the Contents entry in the Appearance palette.
Using the Appearance palette menu Click the triangle in the upper right corner of the palette to access commands for working with appearance attributes.
Showing and hiding thumbnails.
Choose show thumbnail or hide thumbnail from the appearance palette menu.
Modifying and removing appearance attributes
The Appearance palette makes it easy to modify appearance attributes. You can edit effects; copy attributes to items, duplicate attributes, and remove attributes.
Note: Changing the attributes of an item that has a style applied to it breaks the link between the item and the style.
To display the dialog box for an effect:
Double-click an effect name in the Appearance palette.
To copy attributes to an object:
1 if a thumbnail isn’t showing in the Appearance palette, choose Show Thumbnail from the palette menu.
2 Drag the thumbnail onto an object on the art board. The object does not have to be selected first.
To duplicate an appearance attribute:
Select an attribute in the Appearance palette, and do one of the following:
• Click the Duplicate Selected Item button in the palette, or choose Duplicate Item from
The palette menu.
• Drag the appearance attribute onto the Duplicate Selected Item button in the palette.
• If the attribute is a fill or stroke, choose Add New Fill or Add New Stroke from the
Appearance palette menu.
To remove appearance attributes:
Do one of the following:
• Select an attribute, and choose Remove Item from the palette menu.
• Select an attribute, and click the Trash button in the palette.
• Drag an attribute to the Trash button.
• To remove all appearance attributes, including any fill or stroke, choose Clear
Appearance from the palette menu or click the Clear Appearance button in the palette.
• To remove all appearance attributes except a single fill and stroke, choose Reduce to
Basic Appearance from the palette menu or click the Reduce to Basic Appearance button in the palette.
Applying appearance attributes to new artwork
You can specify whether you want new objects to inherit appearance attributes or have only basic attributes.
To specify how appearance attributes are applied to new objects:
Do one of the following:
• To apply only a single fill and stroke to new objects, click the New Art Has Basic
Appearance button in the Appearance palette, or select New Art Has Basic Appearance from the palette menu.
• To apply all of the current appearance attributes to new objects, click the New Art
Maintains Appearance button in the Appearance palette, or deselect New Art Has Basic Appearance from the palette menu.
Applying fills and strokes to containers
Adding fills and strokes to a container (such as a group or layer) applies the fills and strokes to all artwork in the container.
To apply a fill or stroke to a container:
1 Target a container in the Layers palette.
2 Do one of the following:
• Choose Add New Fill or Add New Stroke from the Appearance palette menu.
• Click on a brush in the Brush palette to add a brushed stroke to the container.
• Click on a style in the Styles palette which has a fill or stroke.
See Also ...... Using Styles in Freehand 11

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