To Expand or Not to Expand? That is the question.
Attention Adobe Illustrator users! Particularly, those of you who are new to using a vector art program.
Knowing when it's appropriate to expand vectors or even what expanding actually does is hugely helpful for mitigating frustration. Trust me, I know from experience.😅 Recently, I received the following question on this from a student...
Question: How do you know once everything is expanded? Does the expand button get greyed out?
My Answer: I don’t believe it does. I believe this is because you can always choose to expand objects with strokes applied, and every vector can have a stroke applied to it, so it stays available if you have any object on your workspace. I’m fairly certain that the only time Expand is grayed out is when you have nothing at all on your workspace.
It helps me to think of effects as anything that you apply to the two standard, default vector types, i.e. strokes and fills. Everything else in Illustrator (brushes, effects, the Live Paint Bucket tool) is something that you can apply to or affect said default vector types with. So in other words, when you apply anything from the Appearance panel or the Effect menu, you are affecting the stroke and/or fill of the vector.
There are a few areas where this doesn’t perfectly apply, and it becomes a little more confusing:
You can expand strokes into filled shapes. And in fact, you need to do this if you want to trim them with the Pathfinder menu commands. Strokes aren’t super memory-intensive like effects are, but I personally prefer working with filled shapes, so as soon as I’m happy with whatever manipulation or effect I’ve applied to a stroke, I expand appearance (if necessary) and expand it fully.
The Blob Brush tool is separate from the Brushes in the Brushes panel and creates filled vector shapes, so you do not need to expand anything made with the Blob Brush.
When you apply an offset path (from the Object menu!), it’s not an effect (but it IS when done from the Effect menu...confused yet? 😅). Via Object, with Offset Path, you create a second, slightly larger filled shape underneath the original, so you do not need to expand it. Just stick to making offset paths via Object and you’ll be golden.🌟
A quick way to check if something needs to be expanded is to go into Outline Mode (View > Outline Mode or Cmd/Ctrl+Y) and look for any discrepancies in your shapes. If something looks off, click it and Expand Appearance!
All that said, if you expand something that doesn’t need to be expanded, it’s not going to hurt it. Nothing will happen, so it’s no biggie!
I made an Expanding Quick Reference Guide PDF that you can download >>HERE<< or by clicking the image above.
One last thing! A good rule of thumb is that if there is any vector path that doesn’t match the actual vector shapes (for example, a circle through shapes in a radial repeat), then it needs to be fully expanded (often twice: Expand Appearance > Expand). 🤓🌟