In this lesson you're going to learn about the Blend tool. It can be a pretty neat
tool to not just blend shapes but also to come up with color schemes. So go ahead
and open up a new document and for this example let's draw an ellipse out.
Click and hold onto the Rectangle tool, go down to Ellipse and just click and drag.
I'm going to hold SHIFT so it's a perfect circle. You can set it to some kind of color here by
double clicking on the Fill and choosing something. I want a shape that's the
same exact width and height so I'm going to actually take the Selection tool and
hold down ALT on the PC or OPTION on the MAC, and click and drag this over like so.
And I held SHIFT so it's perfectly aligned,
and I'm going to change the color of this one to kind of a complimentary color scheme.
I could use a color guide but I'm just going to, some kind of orange color here
And then I'm going to click and drag around both of these and there's two ways to create a blend.
One, you can go to Object, Blend, Make and then you can change the blend options there,
or you can just go to the Blend tool and click on one and click on the next.
the next and then it creates a line. So your's might look like a gradient so I'm going to
double click on the Blend tool. You'll notice I have Specified Steps. If you just
have Smooth Color and click OK, then it looks like a gradient.
So if you want the specified steps to maybe use those shapes in different
variations of a color, go ahead and double-click on the Blend tool and go to
Specified Steps and type in something.
I'll type in 7, click OK and if you use the white arrow and click and drag this, I got to
deselect first. Click and drag up and down. It does kind of stay connected from the
beginning shape and the ending shape over here. If you double click on the Blend tool,
there's not many more options there. We can't really customize it. To get more advanced
options, what we need to do. With this selected, go up to Object and then go to
Blend and then there's Blend Options. There's Expand, Reverse Spine, Reverse Front to Back.
So if you go to Reverse Spine, it just flips the colors. If you go to Object
Blend and then Reverse Front to Back, it just changes what was on top. So it was, this
one was on top, on the bottom and now it's backward. If you go to Object, Blend, Blend Options,
that's the same as just double clicking on the Blend tool in the Tools panel.
So if you go to Object, Blend and then see where says it says Release, that would just
get rid of the blend and then you just have two shapes. We don't want to do that.
Just go to Object, Blend, Expand. So this is pretty cool. What it does is, now when I
used the white Direct Selection tool, just click off anywhere to deselect. Now click and drag
this shape over here. It doesn't take the rest of these and make a line like it was.
We can move these around, use them in a logo or some kind of infographic and as
individual units. If you use the black arrow, the selection tool, if I click on any of
them, then it treats it as an object here, as a grouped object. If you don't
want that to happen, just go to Object, Ungroup because it's grouped by Default.
Now when I use the black arrow, the selection tool, I can move them around just like as if I
had the white arrow. So let's practice one more time but instead of being the same shape,
let's try two different shapes. So we'll go from Star, so I'm going to draw a star here
and we'll do a starburst, and I'm going to change a color here and we'll just see how this works
from one shape to a different shape and then let's draw a polygon, do something
like that. Alright, and then let's do different colors so we can see the difference.
So I'm going to click and drag around those. Now this time, instead of using the Blend tool,
where I click one and then the other, I'm going to go to Object, Blend, Make
and by default, it has certain settings,
so I'm going to go back and go Object, Blend.
We have to make it first before we can go to blend options.
Then go to Blend Options and then you get Specified Steps.
So if you wanted more steps, you could do that.
So let's say, 30, bunch and then there you go. So you can create some pretty cool patterns and
things like that. If you wanted to release this, remember what we do.
We go to Object, Blend, Release if we don't want the blend anymore. If we want to expand it,
we're going to Object, Blend, Expand. If you notice these are still editable, so if I
select one of these and just edit one of them,
it catches up, you know, it updates. The entire blend is updated with the
modifications of one of the shapes. So then with this, we can go to Object, Blend, Expand.
Let's see what it came up with. Some interesting, pretty cool shapes.
You can see it just slowly emerging from one shape to the other so that's the Blend tool.
I just want to stress that it's not just about taking shapes and blending them one
into the other. You can use it for pretty cool color schemes.