align stroke on a text

[Dekabreak]

Hello everyone. I have a bit of a problem here.

I can stroke a text normally just fine. However, now I need to stroke the text on the inside, however the Align Stroke options are greyed out and now I resort to using the pencil tool.

Any help?

[Harron_K_Appleman]

If you want to keep the text live (i.e., want to avoid converting the type to outlines), use Effect | Path | Offset Path and use a small negative value for the offset. Now add an appropriate stroke to your text. (If you use a stroke weight that is double the absolute value of your path offset, you should get back to your original type size.)

The only thing that won't work properly is changing the type size via the character palette/panel. Stroke weight will stay the same even if you have 'Scale Strokes & Effects' turned on. You can, however, resize your type with any of the scaling tools (scale tool, free transform tool, etc.) and maintain the stroke to fill relationship.

[Dekabreak]

I forgot to add, I already stroked the text, I just want to add another stroke on the inside of the text.

[Scott Falkner]

In the Appearance Panel, add another stroke. With that stroke selected, add an Offset Path effect.

[groove25]

Don't forget: Strokes and fills that have been added to a Type object in the Appearance panel can be restacked in any order.

Adding a fill and moving it to the top the stack will give the appearance of having stroked the outside of the text. Also, once you've added several strokes, the distinction between inside and outside becomes less visually apparent. So a stroke applied to the center of the path may appear almost as if it were applied to the inside...

If you really need to stroke the inside of the text, then your best bet might be to convert it to outlines: choose Type > Create Outlines, or Object > Expand.

(I find that the Offset Path effect tends to “smooth out” letterforms, which may or may not produce satisfying results.)

[groove25]

Oh my gosh... There is a way to stroke the inside (or outside) of live text, and it's amazingly simple:

1. Create a shape (e.g., a simple circle, or even a letter that's been converted to outlines).
2. Add strokes with the desired alignments (center, inside, outside).
3. Click to define a New Graphic Style (in the Graphic Styles panel).

Voila! You can now apply this style to any Type object with a simple click.

The downside? You may get better results when applying the style to outlines rather than live text. For example, I noticed small gaps between fill and stroke in the examples that I tried (which used an outside stroke). Don't know why this occurred, but perhaps it's why there's no alignment option when stroking live text. On the other hand, some of the gaps seemed potentially tweakable.

All in all, something to try—the "in through the back door" approach.

P.S. The small gaps between fill and stroke that I mentioned may be cleared up by adding just about any Path or Pathfinder effect (e.g. Offset Path, with 0 offset).

[Wade_Zimmerman1]

I notice the gaps as well and that might be because it is an unsupported effect.

But perhaps a good one to consider as an advancement of the stroke alignment.

[rjc70]

I'm glad you found this trick and posted it!

I was trying to come up with a solution to the inside shadow problem. Using a stroke outside the text to knock out a protuding offset fill or stroke works more precisely with a stroke aligned to the outside (rather than a middle-aligned stroke with some sort of offset & stroke you have to fiddle with).

Still doesn't work perfectly (e.g., objects can't be too close to each other), but it's a cool way to have an inside directional shadow on live text and works well on other objects.

Thanks!

[Swandive stream]

Yay thanks for that fix!

[ShaneH]

I wanted to do this for some loud/obnoxious colorful Wheel of Fortune cards to insert onto a game wheel. I followed the techniques discussed here, but ended up getting some really bizarre results, with strokes missing on certain parts of the live text. I didn't have time to convert everything to outlines, because I needed to do 20 different versions on the fly, using various completed pieces as templates. I gave up because I had a really tight deadline.

This used to be incredibly easy back in the 1990s, when Macromedia was still in business and we had FreeHand. I must say, the technique discussed here is really convoluted, and I know it's not the fault of anyone here. When Adobe acquired Macromedia, they should have rewritten Illustrator to be more like FreeHand.

[Monika Gause]

ShaneH schrieb:

This used to be incredibly easy back in the 1990s, when Macromedia was still in business and we had FreeHand. I must say, the technique discussed here is really convoluted, and I know it's not the fault of anyone here. When Adobe acquired Macromedia, they should have rewritten Illustrator to be more like FreeHand.

Show something ans someone might be able to help you.