Color & Appearance

Control source appearance, static result paint, Dynamic Color, and effects above or below Linestra.

Vexy Linestra sits inside Illustrator's Appearance system. There are three distinct styling stages:

  1. The appearance below Linestra helps create the source signal.
  2. Linestra generates and paints its paths.
  3. Appearance entries above Linestra affect the completed result.

Understanding those stages avoids confusion about which color you are changing.

Static Color

Select the first radio button, then click the color rectangle beside it. Illustrator's native color picker opens with the current document-aware color. Linestra stores the chosen native color in the Live Effect parameters.

  • Generated strokes use the selected static color.
  • Generated filled geometry uses the same static color.
  • Illustrator handles document color conversion, including RGB and CMYK workflows.

Choosing a color switches the effect to Static mode and updates the selected effect automatically.

Dynamic Color

Select the second radio button beside the flower-icon rectangle to sample RGB color from the source appearance. Static stored paint is ignored while Dynamic Color is on.

Dynamic Color can alter the construction:

  • Line modes split paths into sampled color sections.
  • Halftone and Stipple color individual marks.
  • Contour creates filled color regions.
  • Low-Poly creates filled sampled triangles.
  • ASCII colors individual outlined glyphs.

Grayscale source artwork produces grayscale Dynamic Color. Transparent pixels contribute less to density and may carry little usable color.

Source Appearance versus Result Appearance

Effects, fills, strokes, opacity, and transparency below the Linestra row are part of the input Illustrator passes to the post effect. They influence what Linestra analyzes.

Appearance entries above Linestra operate on the generated group. Use them for global opacity, blending, color adjustment, or another post-processing effect without changing the sampled source.

The Appearance panel order matters. If moving an entry changes the result unexpectedly, decide whether it belongs to the source stage or result stage.

Recoloring an Existing Effect

  1. Select the object containing the Linestra effect.
  2. Turn Dynamic Color off if necessary.
  3. Click the static color swatch and choose a color in Illustrator's picker.
  4. The selected effect updates automatically.

The new static style is stored with the effect and survives save/reopen and copy/paste.

Several Selected Objects

Applying to several objects stores the selected static color in each effect. Each object retains its own Linestra parameter dictionary afterward.

See Appearance Panel for effect ordering and removal.