How To Make Vertical Multiwidth Blends

This is a guest post by rockstarkate.

In this tutorial rockstarkate combines the use of COLOURlovers Palette Tools (COPASO, PHOTOCOPA, COLOR PICKER) and Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator to create multiwidth Palettes blends. It is also possible to do this with other graphic apps such as Gimp, Painter & Corel.

Using Photoshop

Short Version

1.) find the two palettes you want to use and arrange them in photoshop with one on the top and one on the bottom. put them both on the same layer with space in between.
2.) make a selection for the first blend. There are several ways you could do this. I use the Magic Wand tool on the two rectangles of color then the Polygonal Lasso tool to add the connection.
3.) select one color as your foreground color and the other as your background color.
4.) make a new layer and fill the selection with a gradient of your two colors.
5.) repeat, placing each blend on its own layer.
6.) I can't seem to make a perfect selection and there is space inbetween each blend. I select each layer and nudge it to the left until the space is gone.
7.) Voila! That was easy, wasn't it?

Long Version

1.) find the two palettes you want to use and arrange them in photoshop with one on the top and one on the bottom. put them both on the same layer with space in between.

2.) make a selection for the first blend. There are several ways you could do this. I use the Magic Wand tool on the two rectangles of color then the Polygonal Lasso tool to add the connection.

3.) select one color as your foreground color and the other as your background color

4.) make a new layer and fill the selection with a gradient of your two colors.

5.) repeat, placing each blend on its own layer.

6.) I can't seem to make a perfect selection and there is space inbetween each blend. I select each layer and nudge it to the left until the space is gone.

7.) Voila! That was easy, wasn't it?

Using Illustrator

Short Version

1. Find two palettes you'd like to blend and open them in two windows of your browser. I leave the two windows open so I can share my blend on each page when it is complete.
2. In Illustrator, start a new document. Make it the size you'd like your final image to be (I make mine 300 px wide)
3. Right click one palette image and choose "copy image"
4. In Illustrator, paste image (CTRL+V on a PC)
5. Repeat 3 and 4 with the second palette
6. Scale both palettes to fit in your artboard. Arrange them with one on top and one on the bottom and scale them vertically so they each take up 1/4 of the total height or less. You should have white space in between the two palettes- this is where your blend will go.
7. Use the Live Trace tool to convert each image to vectors.
8. Select both images and choose Object>Expand then Ungroup twice (CTRL+SHIFT+G)
9. Now you have 10 little rectangles of color. Select the left most colors of each palette. Select Object>Blend>Make (ALT+CTRL+B) The default settings will do quite nicely, but I will explain how to change them later.
10. Select the next colors to the right, top and bottom and make another blend.
11. Repeat with the remaining 3 colors in each palette.
12. You could stop here. I like to rearrange the order of the stack of colors to the most pleasing image to my eye. I select each blended color group, right click>arrange>"bring to front" or "send to back" and just try different orders until the image looks the way I want it to look.
13 Export your image and share!

Long Version

1.) Find two palettes you'd like to blend and open them in two windows of your browser. I leave the two windows open so I can share my blend on each page when it is complete.

2.) In Illustrator, start a new document. Make it the size you'd like your final image to be (I make mine 300 px wide)

3.) Right click one palette image and choose "copy image"

4.) In Illustrator, paste image (CTRL+V on a PC) (EDIT > PASTE)

5.) Repeat 3 and 4 with the second palette

6.) Scale both palettes to fit in your artboard. Arrange them with one on top and one on the bottom and scale them vertically so they each take up 1/4 of the total height or less. You should have white space in between the two palettes- this is where your blend will go.

You can experiment with different heights for a different gradient effect

7.) Use the Live Trace tool to convert each image to vectors.

Live Trace is a nifty tool that coverts raster images to vectors. This works very well on images such as palettes due to their simple shapes (rectangles) and finite number of colors (5 or less)

Here are the settings that will always work with palettes:

Repeat with second palette.

8.) Select both images and choose Object>Expand then Ungroup twice (CTRL+SHIFT+G)

then

9.) Now you have 10 little rectangles of color. Select the left most colors of each palette. Select Object>Blend>Make (ALT+CTRL+B)

result:

I like the default blend setting, but there are some interesting variations you could make by changing the Blend Options. Another thing to play with...

10.) Select the next colors to the right, top and bottom and make another blend.

11.) Repeat with the remaining 3 colors in each palette.

12.) You could stop here. I like to rearrange the order of the stack of colors to the most pleasing image to my eye. I select each blended color group, right click>arrange>"bring to front" or "send to back" and just try different orders until the image looks the way I want it to look.

13.) Export your image and share!

Multiblend Gallery

For more information check out the COLOURlovers' group Try to Blend In.