how to skew in illustrator?

ok, if you've got some text you want to add a fake perspective to in photoshop (i.e. wider at the bottom and appearing to narrow towards a vanishing point up top) you can very easily just use the skew tool and tweak your text accordingly. however, i can't figure out an easy way to do this in illustrator. i can do it by creating outlines of my text then using the shear tool (or shear input on the transform palette) but its very inexact and doesn't really let me manipulate the text like i want to. any other ideas? thanks.

chris

Ya know Chris, I avoided answering this, because I'm still working with Illustrator 8.0.1. There may very well be alternate solutions in AI 9 or 10 that I don't know about. But, you hadn't gotten any other responses, so I figured either: 1) You already figured out what to do, or 2) That I was just the guy to help you out.

Now having said that, here's what I can tell you, relative to AI 8 (these techniques will work in AI 9 and 10, as well):

Text can be skewed in Illustrator, but you'll have to convert to outlines (Command-Shift-O [CTRL-Shift-O]) first. Illustrator will, of course, afford you MUCH more control over the manipulation of the paths and points.

What may work best for you here, and what I do to get precise placements is this: I'll make a duplicate low res document in Photoshop showing JUST the raster parts of the image I want to align the manipulated text to. Then, I'll open that duplicate low-res image in Illustrator as a placement template. I create the text, convert it to outlines, and manipulate as necessary.

When I have it just right, I select all the text outlines and copy, than paste as paths back into my Photoshop document. Then, if you must, you can further manipulate the outlined-text paths, using Photoshop's less-robust Path Editing tools, or with Free Transform, to more suit your needs. Of course when you dump the paths into Photoshop, you'll have to refill them (DO IT ON A NEW LAYER!), since they come in raw and empty. Go to your Paths Palette and rename the paths (Double-click on the text "Work path") as well, so you don't overwrite them.

Any other questions, just let me know.

D'OH!!! I reread, and may have missed your point entirely.

Are you clear with using the Free-Transform Tool(E) functions in Illustrator?

Select all of your text-outlined paths. Click on one anchors of the rectangular bounding-box which will appear around all of those paths. Hold it down, THEN apply various modifier (Command [CTRL], Option [ALT], Shift) key-hold combinations to move that bounding box into other parallelogram, rhombus and trapezoid shapes....the text-outlined paths will follow suit. Experiment with various combos of the Modifier keys, and move the bounding-box anchors to see what they do.

i'm actually using 8.0.1 at home too, tho this is on 9.0.1 at work. whatever the case, answer b is EXACTLY what i was looking for, i was using the free-transform tool but didn't know that ctrl AFTER clicking and holding would contstrain the skew, that's exactly what i needed. thanks a bunch, you rock

chris