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Andrew's Vector Plug-ins 18 'Contour'     US $15 DOWNLOAD Contour plug-in for Illustrator® CS4 CS3 CS2 CS1 10 Use contour plugin to create inset and offset designs. Use for blurry designs; use for sketchy designs; for 3D; for zooms... Includes tiling features for pattern designs; transformation features including shifts, rotation and scaling; pattern settings for tiling Includes scale paths or points inset option Use paths + images + symbols + converted text Many randomization options included Bonus: Contour symbols 18.4.1 November 21st 2008 update   Windows Vista + Windows XP + MAC OS X 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 Adobe ® Illustrator® CS4 CS3 + CS2 + CS1 + 10   PC demo (the demo is currently not for CS4) OS X demo (the demo is currently not for CS4) Manual Gallery

Additional examples of resources in use

Many different contour designs can be created. The example below applies the inset (points contour feature) using the current color of the path and the end result color of black.

Instead of using the fill graduating to black, the plug-in can also use many other color blend combinations such as alternate inverted color (in the case of red, blue) and alternate swatch etc

Rotation can be applied to the original path (as below)

Or different contour point inset settings can be applied (in the case below, a randomization of point position is applied) creating a more random and abstract design

The contour design can have opacity applied (random) and much more to create many different designs.

Additional notes

1) Contour plugin works in all versions of Illustrator® from 10 upwards.

2) Contour plugin works with a single selected path or multiple selected paths. The contour plugin also works with Illustrator placed images, Illustrator symbols and other path types. Some of the features are only applicable to a particular Illustrator path type, such as fill only works with paths and not images. All the scaling features (minus points) work with images as well

3) Easy to install. The contour plugin needs to be placed in the Illustrator plug-ins path, the plugin is then accessible on re-starting Illustrator.

4) Contour plugin appears in the filter menu and is activated when used with selected items in Illustrator. The plugin set is split over multiple panels for different areas of plugin functionality. The dialogs are split into contour section, rotation, points, styles, etc

5) Contour plugin has many different scaling options including alternate scaling, rapid scaling, limited scaling, random scaling. The scaling can be controlled in the vertical and horizontal direction of the path, and linked if required, the path's stroke can also be re-scaled based on the scaling itself creating a more naturalistic contour. The scaling can be applied above as well as below the original path to create zoom designs.

6) Contour plugin can rotate illustrator paths in a variety of ways, rotating about the path's center, about a particular path or about a defined center. Use to create unusual dramatic turning / rotated path designs

7) Contour plugins can shift Illustrator paths, right or left, up and down and in any direction and using a variety of distance setting options.

8) Contour plugin scales a path by default but points can be shifted towards the path's center (or away) instead, the inset feature comes with many options and variant settings as well as interpolation to create 100s and 100s of different inset contour designs, the scaling can also be combined.

9) Contour plugin comes with many style features and different fills and strokes and widths can be applied to the generated Illustrator paths, creating alternating black and alternating white or swatch colors or randomized colors or approaching target colors as well as inverted and fading features.

10) Contour plugin also has pattern features where the path is 'tiled' about the defined center, such as the path but it could be the document center. The pattern can be further enhanced by rotation and shifting of the Illustrator paths, to create truly beautiful contour pattern designs

11) Contour plugin comes with many options / checkboxes to modify the contour behavior, such as creating or not creating contour paths or only modifying the anchor points or the direction points

12) Contour plugin comes with many inbuilt presets so you can easily get started with the plugin

13) Contour plug-in comes with many wonderful randomization features, simply select the TUMBLE button and the settings will be randomized in 1000s of ways, use to create unique designs in seconds

14) Plugin set comes with additional example symbols as well as full documentation

Tutorials

Tutorial 1 ]Alternating colored contour designs

1) Select a circle (gray)

2) Go to filter menu and select plugin

3) Set all settings back to default via the presets RESET command

4) Contour panel - set scale lines to ON, this scales the line based on the scaling of the generated paths

5) Contour panel - set the scaling option to 'scale option 12', the plugin comes with a variety of different scaling, some limiting the scaling, accelerating the scaling. Scale option creates closer generated paths for the first sets of generated paths

6) Style panel - select the fill color option 'alternate white', this option sets the first path to original color (gray), first generated path (white) next path (original gray) next path (white) and so on. Other options exist

7) Shift panel - set horizontal shift to 7, the generated paths will each be moved an additional 7 pt