April 2, 2000

Exporting a Custom Area Using Lens Fills

Have you ever had a large illustration that you just wanted to export a little part of? Well if you have, this tip is definitely for you. Not only is it easy to accomplish, but you don't even have to modify your art. It all happens with the help of FreeHand's Lens fills.

Version: 8 and above

 
 


Above is a part of an original illustration by Robert San Juan (the original illustration is called Unicorns and is installed by the FreeHand 9 installer).

I love the patterns and shapes, but I only want to export a certain part for a quick web graphic.

 

The first step is to add a new Layer, and call it something like "Lens". Lock any other layers you may have in the illustration and make this new layer active (little pen next to it).

 

On this new layer, draw the shape you wish to be the custom export area. This can be anything... a square, ellipse or even a really complex shape like above.

The white stroke is for clarity only. If you don't want the export area to have an outline, just remove it after you've placed it over the illustration.

 

While this shape is selected, give it a Lens fill in the Fill inspector like shown above.

Give it the Magnify option with a 1 X magnification. Then choose Objects Only (so it doesn't capture the page) and the most important step, turn on the Snapshot option.

With this setup, you've essentially Copied and Pasted Inside the entire illustration into that custom shape. All without even touching the original illustration or changing any layer information you may have.

 

Test this by turning off the other layers. See how everything is still showing up in that Lens fill?

If you decide later you want to move this custom selection area, just turn off the Snapshot option, move the shape, then turn it back on. Very easy.

Also make sure that if anything in the illustration changes, you'll have to toggle the Snapshot option to update what's inside that shape.

 

Make sure the Lens filled object is still selected, then move on to the Export dialog (Mac shown above). When you export, no matter what format you are saving to, just turn on the option Selected objects only like shown above.

This ensures that you are just exporting that Lens filled object, and not the whole illustration.

Below are samples of how the above example exported in different formats.

 

EPS format (uneditable)

    GIF format
    • Anti-aliasing = 2
    • Resolution = 72 dpi.
    Other bitmap options include TIFF, PICT, BMP or JPG.

Flash format (SWF)

Notice the background pattern is missing. This is because the FreeHand SWF export doesn't like Tile fills. You can get around that by just exporting the art as a FreeHand 7 file and open it in Flash 5.

 

The great thing about this method of creating custom export selection areas, is that you can save the illustration with the Lens layer and fill. You just need to turn it off or on when needed, so there's no need to keep multiple files laying around. Also, with this kind of Lens fill, the exports will be relatively small.

One other thing to consider. If you export the custom area as an EPS file, the EPS is not editable... so that's another reason to keep that layer and lens fill around.