Neverside

Artistic Effects

Hiyah Folks,

Just started with Illustrator and doing well so far by just playing around with the program, but am a bit stuck.

Can anyone put me in the right direction with regard to the Effects menu... for some reason most of the options are 'greyed' out which means I can't use them.

I guess I'm missing some fundamental fact but I just can't see a way of getting to these effects.

Any help would be GREATFULLY received.

Cheers

You must have an object/path selected in order to use them.

Thanks for your quick reply.
Unfortunately I've already tried that.
Whether I select an object (such as a BMP) or a path I find that the Effects; Artistic, Brush Strokes, Distort, Sketch, Stylize, Texture and Video are all greyed-out.
I know I must be doing something wrong but I just can't see it.
I've tried selecting the object directly and via the Layers palette but it doesn't make any difference.
Do the Effects need to be loaded in, or something, to get them working?
I've tried both Illustrator 9 and 10 and am having the same problem on both which suggests one thing to me.... Operator Error!
To expand upon the problem further, I have Placed a BMP image on the page and am trying to give it a Watercolour effect. The BMP is selected, but I can't access the Watercolour option.
Hmmm Confused!

Again, any help is greatly received:)

Oh those effects! They are Photoshop effects that for some stupid reason Adobe has used them in Illustrator as well.

Since they convert any object into raster images, I don't recommend using them at all.

Also, bmps are not supposed to be used inside Illustrator unless you are tracing them - Illustrator is for vector works, and bmps are raster images. It is just impossible for Illustrator to apply any effects to bmps, it can rasterize objects and apply Photoshop effects, but not bmps - they are too complex.

Since I don't have those effects installed, I'm not really sure what you need to do to activate them (maybe rasterize the paths before applying the effects - the option is on the Objects menu), but in any case, forget about them. If you want such artistic effects go after Photoshop, it is the proper program for that.

With time you'll learn that when working in Illustrator, the best thing to do is create your own effects through brushes, swatches, paths, blends, etc. Even the filters that were created for Illustrator don't do such a great job since they tend to create more points than needed - like stated in a previous post "KISS".

Ah... I see...Guess it boils down to me using the wrong program!
I've not got Photoshop (just Paint Shop Pro 6) and so have been using Illustrator for everything.
Guess I need to get Photoshop and then get to grips with using that.
Thankyou very much for your help... very much appreciated

I believe those can be used if you first choose to rasterize an object. As mentioned above they really aren't recommended since you're then going from vector to raster/bitmap so it really defeats the purpose behind Illustrator.