Illustrator Tutorial–Vector Gear

This walkthrough tutorial shows you how to make a vector gear using illustrator. After going through this tutorial you would be able to make shapes of your own and create resources using tools provided in illustrator. This gear I designed was tiny bit of a free lance project. Without further Ado, this is what we are going to achieve at the end.

Step-1:

Draw an ellipse using the ellipse tool. Hold down the keys Alt + Shift to make a perfectly round circle. Don worry about the colors as yet, we will set them at the end.

Step-2:

On top of this ellipse make a rectangle such as illustrated in the picture below. It should roughly be 4cm out from both sides.

Step-3:

Using the selection tool, select both the shapes and in the Align tool, select press Horizontal center align and vertical center align, highlighted in the picture.

Step-4:

Using the “Add anchor point” tool , present in under the pen tool, Add anchor points on the rectangle and where the rectangle intersects the circle. Illustrator shows a tooltip message “Intersection” where the two shapes intersect. Make 4 Anchor points, as a rectangle intersects the ellipse at 4 places.

Step-5:

Use direct selection tool and drag the corners of the rectangle to about 10 pixels inwards. Illustrator shows tooltip using which you can easy adjust the ‘dx’ to 10 pixels. Do this to all four sides.

Step-6:

Now select the top shape, which is a type of hexagon and in the right click menu in the transform sub menu, select rotate. Rotate the shape to 45 degrees. Press copy. Do this 2 more times.

Step-7:

Now select all shapes and using the pathfinder tool select the add al option. This results in one compound shape. On top of this make another ellipse and align both shapes using the align tool as used previously.

 

Step – 8:

Select both shapes and using the path finder tool select “Minus front” option. This will result in making a hole in the gear.

Step – 9:

Using the gradient tool click once on the shape, you should get a default black a and white color. Change it to Dark blue to light blue transition.

Step-10:

Now using pen tool make a shape on top of the gear to add glow. Select the gradient tool make a gradient from white to white and set opacity on one side to zero. Adjust it a little so the bright side is away from the gear.

Step-11:

Select both the shapes and using path finder right click and select make clipping mask and there you go.

Illustrator file for this can be found at:

http://bremstrahlung.deviantart.com/art/Gear-279916766

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[Fix] Photoshop White/Cream Color Problem

Problem:

After Installation of PS on PC’s. The white color doesnt appear to be perfectly white even after setting R G B (255,255,255) or #FFFFFF. The problem only appears in Photoshop and/or in picture viewer [Windows].

Source:

The color profile of your display adapter is not compatible with that of Photoshop.

Solution:

1- Change the color settings of your PC to one of the compatible types with PS i.e. Adobe [1998] or sRGB. You can find the color settings in control panel for Windows 7/XP.

2 – If the first solution doesnt work, change the Color settings in PS Menu Item,s View>>Proof Settings >> Monitor RGB. That should fix the cream color.

Happy Photoshopping.