In this week’s free Deke’s Techniques episode…well, I can’t really even wrap my head around the fact that Deke has called this episode “quieting down” an effect. But here’s where we left off last week:

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And you can see the very toned-down version above. So, what kind of mellowing-with-age version of Deke are we dealing with here?

No worries, what we’re really seeing here is a proof of concept for the malleable nature of dynamic effects and object blends in Adobe Illustrator. After roughening, drop-shadowing, zig-zagging, tweaking, and blending the bright colors and busy shapes of this project for weeks—-thanks to the malleable power of Illustrator’s dynamic effects—-we can easily go back and, not only scale down those effects, but in some cases, eliminate them altogether.

Meanwhile, Deke and I are on a delayed honeymoon sans children this week, diving in Little Cayman. Deke’s been conscientiously buddying me through my Advanced Open Water certification for the first few days, but I’m almost done so tonight the camera rig is coming out of its case (the camera is his other dive girlfriend). Expect the fish photos to start flying fast and furious soon.

Deke’s Techniques, always learning, on land and sea and all the computers in between.