Why is there no airbrush in illustrator?

[james_j_...@adobeforums.com]

I am an industrial designer and alot of people are using photoshop like corel painter and alias sketchbook. With the ability to do vectors.

Now isn't illustrator for this? Why is there a dumb mesh tool and not an airbrush tool that could be used to highlight over filled shapes?

Why don't they combine the two programs!?

[Bert Philippus]

Now isn't illustrator for this?

NO.

Why is there a dumb mesh tool and not an airbrush tool that could be used
to highlight over filled shapes?

Dumb question.

Why don't they combine the two programs!?

Because rasters aren't vectors. You can't sprinkle vectors. Competent people can make amazing things happen with dumb mesh tools.

[Kdod]

<james_j_...@adobeforums.com> wrote in message
news:3bc3e...@webcrossing.la2eafNXanI...

Some people do fantastic work with gradient mesh....it is a world of its own

[James_...@adobeforums.com]

Give a vector path a thick stroke and a blur Effect, and store it as a Graphic Style:

<http://www.illustrationetc.com/aibuds/AIrbrush.pdf>

JET

[james_j_...@adobeforums.com]

Good to know. I'm not a graphic designer. Have you ever seen and industrial design rendering in photoshop?

Sprinkle? News buddy the new cs3 you will be able to erase vectors like pixels which will probably be the way to airbrush highlights and no matter what the mesh tool is dumb.
By the way photoshop uses vectors too and you can convert to raster in illustrator so there should be an airbrush!

People draw with photoshop other than re sizing pics.

[Bert Philippus]

News buddy the new cs3 you will be able to erase vectors like pixels which

will probably be the way to airbrush highlights [...]

News Buddy I have CS3 and you clearly don't understand the advertising, it's not like erasing pixels, it's like erasing pixels only with vectors, dig?

[...] and no matter what the mesh tool is dumb.

Can somebody (Jacob?) please put up that lettuce leaf link or the Sky City Police or something for Tommo here?

[james_j_...@adobeforums.com]

Care to explain the advertising? dig?
I've seen the video on the erase thing.
With the transparency down.

[Tim...@adobeforums.com]

Tommo? Where?!?! Drop your mouse and run!

[Bert Philippus]

I've seen the video on the erase thing. With the transparency down.

Put up a link where your mouth is.

IMO, you are trying to tell someone who's actually there, that you saw the movie and they are wrong.

[james_j_...@adobeforums.com]

thanks James Talmage for that link. interesting stuff.
what is your problem bert?
where is ernie?

[jca...@adobeforums.com]

Time to go home, james j.

JET gave you the answer you were looking for now just go away.

[coningham]

Student, right? You should first learn *how* to do renderings (best way to learn is by hand) and then try to choose a program.

You can use Illustrator.
You can use Photoshop.
You can use 3D Studio Max.
You can use Microsoft Paint.

You MUST know how to do it.

[Teri Pettit]

The CS3 eraser tool has no opacity setting and cannot be used to decrease the transparency of areas. What it does is roughly equivalent to using a calligraphic brush, expanding the brush appearance, unioning the brush pieces to eliminate overlap weirdness, then taking the resulting shape, and using it to Subtract Front from every other path object that intersects the brush stroke. It has no effect on raster images, text, gradient meshes or symbols.

I doubt that Illustrator will ever get any tools that select or modify specified pixels of a raster image. It has raster effects that apply to entire images, and I expect that is all it will ever have.

If Illustrator ever gets an airbrush-like tool, it is more likely to be something that allows modifying gradient meshes in a way that is more intuitive for users. But that is a hard mathematical problem, so it's kind of out in the experimental range.

Gradient meshes can do amazing things, and aren't really all that hard to do, but they take a lot of patience to work with.

This thread has some links to gradient mesh drawings of glasses and bottles:

<http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx/.3bc2f04e/0>

My web site has some links to galleries for a couple artists who specialize in gradient meshes. Go to the links column, and see the Paul Bush and Wayne Forrest galleries (mostly girlie pictures and cars):
<http://tpettit.best.vwh.net/adobe/index.html>

(It also has a link to a paper doll that I made myself using gradient meshes.)

I believe the lettuce picture is somewhere on IllustratorWorld. You can use the keyword search function, or just browse through the Realistic gallery.

<http://www.illustratorworld.com/>

[Stephe...@adobeforums.com]

James J. Paterson:

What Bert is saying is that the vector eraser doesn't work at all like one in a bitmap program. For example, you can't use it to delete portions on one side of JET's feathered path airbrush, only sections of the path.

Also, in skilled hands the Gradient Mesh Tool can produce artwork that is difficult to tell from a photograph, so calling it dumb is, well, dumb.

steve

EDIT- what Teri said

[Bobby_H...@adobeforums.com]

Adobe Illustrator does not need an Airbrush tool. It is first and foremost a vector object modeling application, not Adobe Photoshop Jr.

Anybody needing an airbrush tool for airbrushy effects just needs to fire up Photoshop and get the effect applied to the image there.

[james_j_...@adobeforums.com]

Sorry time and patience equals money. I'm a graduate and sorry those are nice links but what is that used for? Other than digital painting?
Which is also done in corel painter and probably easier, no? Opinions ?

While you people say they will never have a airbrush I still think they should. You can convert your work to raster and brush over this or simple have an airbrush tool like photoshop that points over vector images on another layer. Keeping solids but merely giving you a more controllable quick means to "sprinkle" in a highlight or shadow, hotspots etc.

I apoligize for anything rude but that Bert guy could have some respect!

[Bert Philippus]

I apoligize for anything rude but that Bert guy could have some respect!

You don't get it. But you think you do. You're one of the scary ones.

[james_j_...@adobeforums.com]

Scary ones?
You're f@%ked pal!

[Bert Philippus]

I rest my case.

[James_...@adobeforums.com]

Canvas has a raster Airbrush tool.

JET

[Bobby_H...@adobeforums.com]

Canvas combines a bunch of raster and vector functions into the same program. But in being a jack of all trades application it is king of none.

Illustrator is for vectors. Photoshop is for rasters. The best applications are the ones that focus and specialize on their purposes. Illustrator does not need to be another flipping version of Photoshop.

I have a feeling if it weren't for all the raster oriented redundancy and bloat in Illustrator already I might not be having the anger inspiring type problems in Illustrator now. Can't save anything with any editable text.