ok.. i am a newb at illustrations.  I have just made on in illustrator and am trying to save the EPS file for shutterstock.  They say the max file size they want is 5mb, but mine is 16mb.  How can i make it smaller

should i be flattening the vector somehow when i am done?

.... oh...

I used drop shadow and transparency ... i guess that could be the problem.

how about things like gaussian blur, and inner glow?  do they cause the same problem?

and when you are talking transparency you mean the opacity slider right?  we can't use that in AI8 files?

and how about blending modes???

It is all the difficulty with vectors: you can only use a fraction of  the features provided by Illustrator and you must carefully check your EPS for any "forbidden object" (bitmap, open paths etc.)

It is somehow frustrating indeed 

The way I learnt was to pull apart other peoples work, try and figure out how they achieved the look I was after.

The pathfinder tool has 10 different tools each allowing you to chop/intersect an element. It is hard to explain here how each one works here but the little icons are self explanatory....just overlap two shapes and press each icon in turn to see what they do.

Try searching for a turturial on creating buttons.

Might be helpful:
http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=41295&highlight=transparent
http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=45067&highlight=transparent

I sometimes do the traparencies like this: first I use them, then I save the colors of different positions (with the eyedropper). Then I remove the tranparecies and add a normal gradient and adjust the colors to the ones that I saved before. But mostly I can get the gradient with just a few tries.

Drop shadow can be easily done with a white to gray blend.

You put an elipse over the rounded rectangle, you duplicate rounded rectangle, intersect the rectangle and elipse and then you make the gradient on the elepse go from light blue to white. About the reflection: it is a fliped duplicate of the button, then the gradient is adjusted so it goes white fast and blends to the white background.

EDIT: Rype did a tutorial about it (great tutorial blog btw):
http://vectips.com/tutorials/shiny-buttons-without-blends-or-transparencies-in-illustrator/

Drop shadows:
http://vectips.com/tutorials/create-non-raster-drop-shadows/

Quote from: CofkoCof on October 03, 2008, 11:39

then the gradient is adjusted so it goes white fast and blends to the white background.

but is that a white to invisible gradient?.. i can't figure out how to do a color to an invisible gradient - or is it even possible?

You can do white to invisible gradient but it wont save nicely in the eps. Show us what you are trying to do and maybe we can figure it out.

The reflection is not a gradient to invisible: you cannot use transparency thus no "invisible" is allowed.

This is only a gradient from light blue to white which mimic an opacity layer.

...Also be careful with the 3d tool, you can use it but not with shading and remember to expand the element before saving it and clean it up....you end up with stray points and parts that you can't see because they are the back (or would be if you could see them).

Thanks. I spent half the day today playing with the 3D Effect and thought I had done some stuff worth submitting. I expanded them, saved them as EPS8 and everything seemed ok, not too big a file. Then I happened to read this thread and went back and reloaded my images. About a thousand open paths! I had forgotten to check for that. I read this post thinking to help someone and I got help.

ok, new puzzle for you.

How about this image
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-17436841.html

can that be done without transparency.  That top most 'white' reflection seems like it would be tough to do without transparency.. maybe it is possible with a half moon and oval shape put together with two gradients but it seems like it would be quite a challenge to get the colors to match up nicely

Well nicemonkey can asnwer you for sure, but I'll also give it a try:
- the biggest circle looks like a linear gradient from top to bottom (cyan to a bit darker blue)
- on top of it is a bit squished circle with the same gradient, just that it's radial this time (starting from center)
- the glossy moon on the top is linear gradient from top to bottom (white to light cyan)
- the glossy shape under the moon is a radial gradient (cyan to light cyan, center is at the bottom of the shape). The light cyan of this shape has to be similar to light cyan of the moon shape.

Experiment with the colors and dragging the gradients to acchieve the desired effect (trial and error, like nicemonkey said). You can also use the trick I described earlier. Make it with transperencies, then save the colors and use them on the non transperent shapes. This way it's easier to make those colors match.

ok i think i understand... back to testing things out.

thanks for all the help.

If you "flatten" the transparency it will rasterise (bitmap) the image and thus make it uneditable. Obviously you can then save the file as a jpeg but that kind of defeats the point of creating illustrations.