About appearance attributes, styles, and effectsAppearance attributes are properties that affect the look of an object without altering its underlying structure. If you apply an appearance attribute to an object and later edit or remove that attribute, it does not change the underlying object or any other attributes applied to the object. Fills, strokes, transparency, and effects are all types of appearance attributes. A style is a named set of appearance attributes. The Styles palette lets you store and apply a set of appearance attributes to objects, groups, and layers. This gives you a fast and consistent way to change the look of artwork in documents. If the style is replaced (that is, if any appearance attributes that make up the style are changed and the new attributes are saved as that style), all objects with that style change to the new appearance. Effects are a type of appearance attribute and are listed under the Effect menu. Most effects have the same function and name as commands found elsewhere in the application. However, Effect menu commands do not change the underlying object, only its appearance. You can distort, rasterize, and modify any path using any number of effects, but the original size, anchor points, and shape of the path never changes--only the way it looks. The underlying object remains editable, and an effect's parameters can be changed at any time. |