REVIEW • SEPTEMBER 13, 2000
CValley FILTERiT 3
[Page 4 of 7]

The Fade Tool

The last of the major tools, the Fade tool is probably my favorite from this collection, albeit the touchiest. It's touchy in two ways: First, if you try to apply this effect to an object created with the calligraphic paint brush in Illustrator, you will get an error. Second, this particular tool is the only one I used that ran out of memory mid-operation. It didn't crash the program, but it did force me to save my work and quit.

Other than these, the effects this tool is capable of producing can be quite stunning. The small examples you see here doesn't really do justice to the effect. If you have the space to stretch it out, it can offer beautiful, curly object fades that cover a wide area of the page. Plus, the amount of curl, the angle of the curl (in this case, 360 degrees), the tint, the color, the steps and the size (beginning to end) can all be adjusted by the user.

To make this tool work, you just select your object and click on the canvas. The more you move your mouse, the more the object stretches out. Toggling the Shift key allows you to reset the shape of any spiral your using based on the position of the endpoint. This allows you to expand a curl or bring it in to twist upon itself. (The example in the "Fade" sidebar on the left used the shift key when the end point was positioned just below the original object.)

We haven't had much of a chance to get deep into each tool. But these plugins are so user-friendly, it won't take much effort at all even for novice Illustrator users to discover the power of FILTERiT 3. Besides, it's time to move on to the "Live" effects.

The Live Effects

As mentioned earlier, "Live" effects in FILTERiT 3 include 11 filters that can be applied to objects or text (not just outlines, but editable text) and updated on the fly anytime the filtered object or text is changed. For example, in a style that creates multiple clones of a line of text, any change made to the text will be applied to the clones instantly.

Unlike the tool filters, the Live effects are access through a submenu under the Window menu in Illustrator. Selecting one of the effects calls up a palette, which can then be customized before it's applied the the document.

The first one of these, Live Border, steps the stroke of any object from the fill color to the stroke color. You can select any number of steps for the process and determine the offset and angle, as well as whether the steps are created inside or outside the object or text.

Live Circle (pictured above on the right) creates a circle of object clones. You can set the offset, origin (datum), angle, iterations and height ratio. Any time the object is changed, the clones are changed as well.