Patrick Ellasos recently posted a really solid solution to the problem using channels instead of pen tools or magic wands than can definitely eliminate those issues and elevate your mask game. Whether the culprit is the jagged outlines of the evil “magic wand” tool or the “helmet head” of a hack job with a clipping path, nothing will wreck an image faster than a bad mask around something like curly hair or complex fur. There are few things that will elicit a “fingernails/chalkboard” reaction from a designer quite like a messed up mask on a photo. The technique has definitely changed the way I look at illustrating for the better. The technique works especially well for curve-heavy things like custom lettering projects that have become so ubiquitous in the last few years. So when I recently I read a post on about how restricting your bezier curve handles into vertical and horizontal planes and tightening up how you place your nodes can make a huge difference in the outcome of your illustrations, it really rang true for me. Suffice it to say that bezier curves are how Illustrator makes smooth curves to create shapes that are infinitely scaleable. I’m not going to bore you with what bezier curves are Wikipedia has a long, detailed and math heavy explanation that I couldn’t even get through. So early in my career, getting the hang of Illustrator took a while and one of the biggest hurdles was mastering bezier curves. I did just enough sketching to get myself through school, but it is definitely not my gift. I was never the kid who sat around all day drawing in an endless pile of notebooks.
Curves in Illustratorįor most of my career, I’ve had a strange relationship with the term Art Director on my business card. A recently read a couple of tutorials that addressed two of the things that have, at different points in my design career, been the bane of my existence: mastering bezier curves in Illustrator and getting a good mask on an image with a complex edge in Photoshop.