Scale down a blur effect

[nefaste]

I have made an illustration (a speed gauge) with a slight shadow on the outside. The shadow is made from a black object with a blur effect.

The problem is I cannot figure how to scale the shadow's blurriness when I resize the object. The "Preference->Resize strokes and effects" option doesn't seem to work for the blur.

I made a symbol from my speed gauge, and this fixes the problem (everything is resized properly when I resize a symbol instance). But it creates another problem : for some reason the shadow causes the symbol's bounding box to be much bigger, and prevents me from aligning the symbol properly with the grid...

Anyone knows how to fix this bounding box issue ? Or another way to solve my problem ? Hope I explained myself correctly ...

 

[itchybug]

Stephane:

The bounding box issue can partially be rectified. The reason you get that bounding box, is that the raster effects in Illustrator add on extra space around the object so that the whole effect will be visible. If you go to Effect > Raster Effects Settings, you can make the extra space smaller, but watch out, when you get too small the edges of the blur will get cut off.

You will have to change the width of the blur manually when scaling the object the usual way. The feather effect is similar but does scale, so you may consider using that effect instead.

HTH

Bert

http://www.itchybug.com

 

[itchybug]

It's under Effect>Stylize>Feather, by the way...

http://www.itchybug.com

 

[nefaste]

Bert :

Thanks ! Both methods work well.

I settled for the "Effect > Raster Effects Settings" tweaking because I prefer the gaussian blur effect. Now I realise Illustrator adds a fixed amount of space around pixel effects, regardless of what is stricly needed...

Just a question : is it possible to manualy crop a particular pixel effect to a bounding box ? It would be more elegant because local to the object and not affect the entire document. (Don't bother if there's no simple answer, my problem is solved anyway.)

Thanks again.