KiwiC,

All live effects apply only to how the previewed art is generated. None of them cause changes to the selectable art or generate additional selectable art.

To get access to the modified art, you need to do an Expand Appearance. If you do an Expand Appearance on your path that you have applied a live Outline Stroke command to, you will see that the expanded appearance contains a filled shape instead of a stroked shape.

Why would someone want to outline a stroke as a live effect when a preview of an outlined stroke should look the same as a preview of that same stroke before outlining? (Discounting deficiencies in Outline Stroke such as its inability to handle dashes.)

The answer is that all by itself, it is not much use. But when combined with other effects, it is.

For example, make an object with a very thick stroke, like 30 pts wide. Duplicate that object. To one of the copies, apply an Outline Stroke effect. Now to both of them, apply a Zig-Zag effect. Move the Zig-Zag effect down to below the Outline Stroke effect. (By default, Zig-Zag is applied above the paint layers.) On the stroke that has the Outline effect, the zigzags will be applied to each edge of the stroke separately. On the one where it doesn't, the zigzags will be applied to the centerline path.


Here are some interesting effects you can achieve by compounding this notion:



The Outline Stroke effect can also be useful in conjunction with the Pathfinder effects. Kurt Gold has posted some cool examples of those.

Here are a couple of links:

vice86, "Can strokes be gradated?" #, 30 Oct 2005 7:30 am

Scott Falkner, "Effect to release compound" #, 17 Aug 2005 11:23 am

(Unfortunately Scott seems to have removed his images that he linked to, but Kurt's are still working.)

See also the file "Outline Effects demo.ai" in this folder:

ftp://tpettit.best.vwh.net/AI_10_Style_demos.zip

As far as preserving a copy of your unoutlined stroke, the easiest way is probably just to copy-paste in front, and then outline the top copy.

KiwiC,

Usually just stacking two strokes with the bottom one being thicker looks very similar to stroking a stroke.

One of the threads that I linked to shows how the Outline Stroke effect can be used to fill a stroke with a gradient, live.

Another situation where the Outline Stroke Effect can be used as part of a kind of Live Paint for those who haven't yet decided to upgrade to AI CS 2 is available here in post 3:

Although this example primarily describes the technique on the basis of Brush Strokes, applying the Outline Stroke Effect to common strokes would also work. Don't forget to read James' comprehensive instructions of how to get the basic idea because I missed to write that important part and was only providing a sample file that could cause confusions as it just includes a sketch, but no step by step descriptions.

Kurt Gold, "fill brush stokes ?" #3, 23 Sep 2005 7:51 am

Another thing that is worth to be mentioned is that Envelopes Distorts do recognize the Outline Stroke Effect when applied to stroked objects, that is, one can distort them as if they were filled objects. Useful sometimes.

hello, this is a test msg

Heather? Are you using CS3? ALWAYS tell us the version number of the programs you are using. We cannot help you if we don't know what you have.

If you are using CS3 you have discovered a bug that was introduced in that version and never fixed in an update, and never will be. The only fix is to give Adobe some money and upgrade to ¢$4, which will of course introduce new bugs that may or may not be corrected with ¢$5.

>this is CS3, I apologize

Wow, CS3 apologizing...