Library: Creative Design

Emphasize your surfaces with Illustrator's Texturizer effect

When designing primarily in two dimensions, you have to find creative ways to create realism in your illustrations. While using elements such as drop shadows and selective blurring can add the illusion of depth, don't ignore the importance of texture in your design work. By applying Illustrator's Texturizer effect, as shown in Figure A, you can create a more natural feel and look that a typical solid fill cannot.

Get ready for texture
To use the Texturizer effect you have to be in RGB mode. Other than that, you can do pretty much anything you want, such as add textures to 3-D objects or bitmap IMGs, combine them with other effects like drop shadows, or layer textures using transparency.
As is typical of Adobe supplications, there's more than one way to apply textures to your vector

objects. You can access the Texturizer effect, which we're concentrating on in this article, by selecting Effect > Texture > Texturizer. Your other option is to apply the Texturizer filter by selecting Filter > Texture > Texturizer. There are a few advantages to using an effect over a filter:
• An effect doesn't change the original vector object at all, allowing you to quickly edit the effect. Filters permanently change objects.
• You can target and adjust effects directly from the Appearance palette, making it even easier to edit.
• You can save effects as Graphic Styles.
Note:Filters aren't all bad. The advantage to using a filter is that you can separate the filter effect from the object. After applying a filter, you can immediately adjust the vector points and paths in the object, whereas you mus...