Transforming and Distorting Objects > Working with blends

 

Working with blends

You can create a blend from two or more paths that have the same fill and stroke type. Blending creates a series of intermediate objects between the original paths. Beginning with the bottom object in the stacking order, each intermediate object's shape, stroke, and fill becomes closer to that of the object at the top of the stacking order.

Freehand creates a blend as a group of objects. Ungrouping a blend discards its blend properties.

You can modify a blend using the Object inspector or by modifying a subselection of the blend group. FreeHand automatically regenerates the blend.

You can create a blend between selected points on the original objects, creating different results than an object-to-object blend. The selected points determine the shape of the intermediate blend objects. Path direction can also affect blending.

Blends between spot colors result in intermediate steps using only tints of those spot colors and will print on two separation plates. When printing a spot-to-process blend, the spot color is set to overprint the process color. Steps in spot-to-spot and spot-to-process blends are set to process colors if the blend is ungrouped. This also occurs if incompatible colors or fills are chosen, or if the blends are exported to earlier versions of FreeHand or to applications such as Illustrator, which may not support spot colors in blends. For more information on colors, see Applying color in FreeHand.

Blends work with basic and gradient fills only. Blends do not work on bitmap images.

To create a blend from two or more objects:

1

Check that the objects you want to blend are in the correct stacking order.

2

Select the objects.

3

Do one of the following:

Choose Window > Toolbars > Xtra Operations and click the Blend button on the Xtra Operations toolbar.

Choose Modify > Combine > Blend.

Choose Xtras > Create > Blend.

To blend objects from point to point:

1

Select objects and subselect points within each object.

2

Choose Modify > Combine > Blend.