June, 2001      Diablo Blue      Page 11

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images with colours and textures etc. Outline shows only the contours. This is a major help in finding edges of shapes in order to select an object when the design has become complicated. To switch modes: view>outline, or view>preview. Hint: If I wasn't so lazy, I'd be using the "layers" palette to separate these shapes, that would place each object on a piece of clear film, one on top of the other. But here I've put everything on the same layer and I need to make sure the picture is always on top. Select the picture, go to object>arrange>bring to front. Now you can create the colour of mat you want, select mat, go to no stroke and select fill, this gets rid of the black line. Open swatch palette, and click a colour of your choice. Open the colour palette and adjust the mix.
Repeat the process for the "double mat" look, leave a light grey or coloured stroke if you want. For a simple frame, make a darker rectangle, slightly larger than the mat and put it behind, or use stroke on the largest rectangle, but in a different colour. For oval mats, use the oval tool instead of the rectangle.

Create another rectangle, long and thin and explore the gradients palette. You can drag colours off the swatch palette and release them on the gradient bar. Slide them around and watch the shape of the moulding (make sure the moulding is selected). Then make a rectangle, stroke only, and click object>transform>rotate and enter 45 degrees. Place this in position as shown.

Go to window>show pathfinder, select moulding, shift-select rectangle (so both are selected)and click minus front in the pathfinder palette. Place the moulding on the mat and repeat the cutting at the other end. (note: stretching or scaling at this stage will alter the angle of

the cut). Make a copy and rotate 180 degrees, place on opposite side. Make a copy, rotate 90 degrees, put in position and cut off excess. Copy that piece, rotate 180 and place. This results in very convincing seams at the corners.

Try this: make any stroke shape (oval, rectangle etc.) select it, click and alt-drag. In this and some other programs it will make a copy. When you have a group of shapes you like, drag a marquee to select them all and then click>ctrl>alt>drag another copy. The smallest pattern multiplies to a long string rather quickly, and should be grouped (object>group) to keep them together. This can be placed on top of a moulding and colour can be added, lighter or darker to give it a more ornate appearance.

This is a photograph I took at Long Beach, British Columbia and anyone who as been there with a camera, likely has a box full of pictures like this. If you work with photos on your computer, you're familiar with using a program like Photoshop to crop and adjust photos. However, you may be less familiar with methods of presenting your finished product. The mat and frame were built from "scratch" in Adobe Illustrator. I'm sure there are ways to acquire

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