Stylism Panel

The menu item to show and hide the Stylism panel can be found in the main menu under Window > Astute Graphics > Stylism.

Stylism Panel

1. Flyout menu

See Stylism Panel: Flyout Menu.

2. Panel banner

The Stylism panel banner has a help button on the right which opens the help documentation in the Astute Manager. If this does not automatically appear, please ensure your Astute Manager is running first. Along with the rest of the panel, the panel banner can be clicked to activate the Stylism tool. This is a quick method of locating the tool within the default Advanced toolbar or a custom toolbar.

3. Effects Resolution Setting

This area allows you to see and quickly change the Document Effects Raster Resolution setting, the resolution at which raster objects produced through live effects (such as Drop Shadow, Feather, Gaussian Blur, etc.) are created. Natively, this is found under the dialog opened through the menu item Effect > Document Raster Effects Settings.... Typically, the resolution is set to a fairly low  value (for example, 72 ppi) while working on the document, for speed. Then, when the document is ready to go to print, it is changed to higher resolution (typically 300 ppi or more), for quality.

The new resolution can be entered into the input box, or one of the buttons on the right can be clicked. To customize the resolutions produced by either button, hold down Option/Alt when clicking it.

4. Effects Buttons

The effects buttons are used to quickly add and remove the eight supported native live effects from the targeted art simply by clicking on them (clicking once adds the effect; clicking again removes it).

Stylism Panel Effects Buttons Basics

Buttons which are selected (dark) indicate that its effect is present. The buttons in the first row represent (from left to right): Drop Shadow, Feather, Inner Glow, and Outer Glow; those in the second row represent Transform, Free Distort, Offset Path, and Gaussian Blur.

Stylism Panel Effects Buttons

Effects are added in their default positions (below all strokes and fills, except for the Offset Path effect, which is added above all strokes and fills) and always start with a default set of parameters. Initially, these are the same parameters that would be set when adding the effect natively through the Effect menu. For example, a Drop Shadow is initially given X and Y offsets of 7 pt, a blur of 5 pt, and an opacity of 75%.

However, you can change the parameters that are initially applied when the effect is added using one of the Stylism effects buttons (or flyout menu). To do this, select a single object that has the effect and change its parameters to the desired settings. Then, hold down Option/Alt and click the corresponding effects button. From then on, using the button will add the effect with your custom parameters. (The buttons can have their Illustrator-specified default parameters restored by using the panel flyout menu item Reset All Standard Effects).

Normally, if an effect is already present, then clicking the corresponding effects button again will remove it. To instead add a second copy of the effect, hold down Shift when clicking the button.

Holding down Command/Ctrl when clicking a selected effects button is a shortcut for making it the current effect.

5. User-Defined Favorite Buttons

The user-defined favorite (“UDF”) buttons allow you to save the look of one or more Stylism-controlled effects and later apply it to selected objects. Like a native Graphic Style when using its merge mode, the effects in the UDF buttons do not replace the object’s current appearance but instead add to it. User-
defined favorites are available across documents and Illustrator sessions.

To define a UDF button, there must be only one object selected, and it must contain at least one effect from the eight native effects that Stylism controls. Then, hold down Option/Alt and click the button. The thumbnail image in the button will update, showing the effect(s) as applied to a small square with a white fill and black stroke. Now, clicking the button will add those effect(s) to any selected art without affecting any existing effects. The Stylism tool will be automatically made active (if it is not already).

Stylism Panel User Defined Button Usage

If the selected art already contains the same live effect in the same position as one defined in the UDF button, it will not be replaced. If the UDF button had an effect applied in a stroke or fill and the receiving object has no strokes or fills, the effect will instead be added in its normal position.

6. Effect Selection Menu

This menu is used to switch the current effect (the effect for which the Stylism tool is displaying an annotated UI) when the selected art contains more than one effect, including multiple copies of a single effect. Each effect that is present is listed by name in the menu. Following the name is a code for its position in the appearance stack (as viewed in the Appearance panel):

a. Pre: Effect is above any strokes or fills.

b. S: Effect is in a stroke.

c. F: Effect is in a fill.

d. Post: Effect is below any strokes or fills.

For effects contained in strokes and fills, a small swatch of the color of the stroke or fill is also displayed, to make it easier to select the correct effect.

7. Contour Graph

This graph is available when the Contour Control area is showing, the Stylism tool is selected, and the Astute Graphics’ Phantasm plugin is installed. For use with effects which create an image with an alpha mask (Drop Shadow, Feather, Outer Glow, and Gaussian Blur), it allows you to put a curve on the alpha channel (implemented by automatically adding a matching Phantasm Curves live effect at the bottom of the effect stack). This is most commonly used with the Drop Shadow effect, to achieve a look that can’t be made through changes to the Drop Shadow parameters alone.

Stylism Contour Control Example

The horizontal axis represents the input alpha value, while the vertical axis represents the output value. With the default diagonal line, the two are the same. Nodes on the curve may be moved simply by clicking and dragging them. A new node may be added by clicking at a spot along the curve which does not already have a node. Nodes (except the ones at the beginning and the end of the curve) may be deleted by dragging them off the graph area.

8. Contour Graph Curve Preset Buttons

These four buttons allow you to load and store contour graph curves. Each displays a thumbnail of the curve it contains. To load a graph, simply click on a button. To store the current curve to a button, hold down Option/Alt and click on a button. Curve presets are preserved across Illustrator sessions.

9. Contour Graph Mode Buttons

The contour graph can be created using one of two modes. The left-hand “Curves” button allows editing it as a smooth curve passing through two or more nodes. The right-hand “Pencil” button allows drawing freehand, with the ability to change each value arbitrarily. If a graph is started in pencil mode and later changed to curves mode, the best possible curve will be fitted through the points.