Illustrator and photo borders

discoian

Junior Member
Hello,

So i've bought CS5 and am trying to learn Illustrator. I have lots of experience in Corel Draw and Paint but now it's time to use proper stuff.

I'm trying to design a roller banner for a part of my business and what I want to do is add some photo's to my design but then make them look nice. The sort of effect i'm looking for is a white border with a drop shadow to make it look like it's coming out of the design.

I can use stylize to get the drop shadow effect (almost, it's a bit hit and miss) but the white border is beyond me unless I draw a white box and place the photo on top of it. Is there a better way of doing it?

Like I said i'm so new to Illustrator i'm going very slowly with it!

Any help much appreciated.
 
I'd draw a white stroked box and place it in top of the photo then you can increase/decrease the line thickness, click on the photo, get the size from the transform pallet use the align tools to center the frame around the image. Use the drop shadow effect on the photo and then group each photo and border to make it easy to reposition. Or you could add a white border in Photoshop before you import them into illustrator.

I don't think you can add a stroke to a placed photo, I may be wrong though, it has happened once before in the mid 90's :up:
 
You can add a stroke directly to a placed image - select the image & go to the Appearance palette. At the bottom add a new stroke to it, then go to Effect > Path > Outline Object & the stroke should appear. Then you can round the corners or whatever you need.

If you do add a drop shadow after this though make sure the shadow isn't just applied to the stroke in the Appearance Palette (drag it down to below the contents layer).

Hope that all makes sense:)
 
Back
Top