Expand Stroke in Publisher 2?

[Felderburg]

Is there a way to expand the stroke (turn a line into a full shape) in Publisher 2?

I'm asking because I have some lines with arrowheads at a reduced opacity, and the arrowhead is apparently rendered separately from the actual line, so there's a portion of darker area where the to reduced opacities overlap. A workaround for that would also be nice, but I'm assuming expanding the stroke would solve that issue.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Felderburg said:

Is there a way to expand the stroke (turn a line into a full shape) in Publisher 2?

If you also have AD V2 installed, you can switch to the Designer persona of APub & in the Layer menu of that persona there is an Expand Stroke item.

[carl123]

1 hour ago, Felderburg said:

so there's a portion of darker area where the to reduced opacities overlap. A workaround for that would also be nice,

Hard to say without exactly knowing how you set things up, but....

Try changing the blend ranges of the topmost layer (underlying composition ranges). Use both nodes to remove the overlap

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Felderburg said:

I'm asking because I have some lines with arrowheads at a reduced opacity, and the arrowhead is apparently rendered separately from the actual line, so there's a portion of darker area where the to reduced opacities overlap.

Try this: leave the opacity at 100% for the arrow & change the opacity of that layer in the Layers panel instead.

semitransparent arrows.afpub

[Old Bruce]

14 hours ago, Felderburg said:

A workaround for that would also be nice, but I'm assuming expanding the stroke would solve that issue.

Expand stroke will probably give you the Stroke and Arrow Head as two separate curves, so you'll need to add them using either the Boolean Add or Layer > Geometry > Add.

[R C-R]

33 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Expand stroke will probably give you the Stroke and Arrow Head as two separate curves, so you'll need to add them using either the Boolean Add or Layer > Geometry > Add.

If you mean an arrow made with (for example) the Pen Tool & given a beginning or ending arrowhead shape on the Stroke popup, then no, expanding it (like in AD or the Designer persona of APub) will not create separate curves. You can also use the Arrow Tool for this but it is limited to straight arrow shapes without curves.

More arrow stuff.afpub should demonstrate what I mean.

[Felderburg]

Well, so that you see what I mean, a window snip of the arrow in question (the angle of the curve has been exaggerated for demonstration purposes; you can see that it seems to treat the arrow at the end of the curve as another separate entity, instead of actually part of the curve). I haven't installed designer 2 yet, so I can't try that solution. Unfortunately, keeping the arrow at 100% and reducing layer opacity resulted in the same effect. For these arrows specifically I think I can just make them a light gray color, but I'll try the designer persona once I get v2 installed.

 

[lepr]

On 8/16/2023 at 4:59 AM, R C-R said:

Try this: leave the opacity at 100% for the arrow & change the opacity of that layer in the Layers panel instead.

semitransparent arrows.afpub

 

Your top Curve has no fill and the bottom one has a light grey fill.

If you remove the fill from the bottom Curve, it is rendered the same as the top one with the head looking like a separate object.

 

 

Edited August 18, 2023 by lepr
simplified my message

[lepr]

On 8/16/2023 at 3:20 AM, Felderburg said:

some lines with arrowheads at a reduced opacity, and the arrowhead is apparently rendered separately from the actual line, so there's a portion of darker area where the to reduced opacities overlap. A workaround for that would also be nice, but I'm assuming expanding the stroke would solve that issue.

A workaround is to give the Curve a fully opaque stroke and zero opacity fill colour (not simply no fill), and adjust the object/layer opacity to get the desired effect.

[lepr]

On 8/16/2023 at 6:00 PM, Old Bruce said:

Expand stroke will probably give you the Stroke and Arrow Head as two separate curves

Yes, sometimes that does happen, but other times the result is the expected single object. There will be a pattern to the behaviour, but I haven't spent enough time trying to work it out.