- If there's a downside to dynamic effects,
which there isn't, I love them,
it's that they can impede your ability to
interpret an existing document.
For example, every once in a while
I'll open something that I made, say a year ago,
and then I'll click on what appears to be a path
but it's not really there.
Ah, I see we have a ghost object in our midst.
Oh sure I could reach back into the
deep recesses of my mind and try to remember
what I did, but why waste a perfectly good brain
remembering things, especially when,
thanks to the graphic styles panel,
I don't have to.
Just as the swatches panel allows you
to collect colors, gradients and patterns,
the graphic styles panel allows you to collect
combinations of fills, strokes and dynamic effects.
That is to say, anything that you can see
in the appearance panel.
This is great news for three reasons.
First, it means that you can capture
a collection of appearance attributes
and later re-apply them to another object or layer.
Second, you can link an object to a style
so that updating the style updates the object in kind.
And third, you can combine multiple styles.
Forget how you did that one thing that one time?
Good for you.
Seriously, I don't even remember what remembering is,
and yet I somehow managed to record the following movies.