Scale

Randomize Mode

Randomill can randomize scale in Adobe Illustrator with configurable axis settings, step sizes, and anchor points. Scaling can even be independently applied to stroke widths or fill patterns.

Randomize scale from a minimum and maximum value

The basic way to randomly scale objects in Illustrator with Randomill is to dial in a min and max scale value, in terms of percentage. Randomill will iterate over each object in the selection, randomly pick a value between the minimum and maximum values specified, and apply it to that object.

Randomly change horizontal and vertical scale independently

Scale can be randomized uniformly or independently across X and Y axes. Unchecking the Uniform Scale checkbox in the advanced options allows you to change only one scale axis for each object, or use different randomization ranges for the horizontal and vertical scale of each object.

Use a step size value to further dial in your result

Setting up a Step Size value can make your scale result much more predictable. What this field does, is specify what increments of scale values you can pick. Here are some examples:

A min value of 100, max value of 200, and step size of 1 will make it so each object will be scaled by a value of anywhere from 100%-200% in increments of 1%. But if we set the step size to 25%, the possible values can now be anywhere from 100%-200% in increments of 25%. So the only possible values in that case would be 100%, 125%, 150%, 175%, and 200%.

Adjust the anchor point of each scaled object

Using the Anchor selection grid in the Advanced Options rollout, you can specify which anchor (or ‘reference point’) each object will be scaled from. To further increase the randomness of your design, you can check the Random Anchor checkbox to make it so each object will be scaled from a randomly chosen anchor.

Apply scaling to only some object properties, such as stroke widths or fill patterns

You can randomize the scale for just some properties of an object. Checking just some of the options in the Apply scaling to section can lead to some really interesting results.

For instance, with just the stroke patterns checked, you can randomly scale only the stroke patterns that are applied to each object, and leave the object size itself unchanged. Another useful example would be if you just wanted to randomly scale stroke widths by a certain degree.

Scale text objects seamlessly

Randomly scale text objects, or even individual paragraphs, sentences, words, or even characters. You can even specify if character scaling is done via point size, or via a special width/height character scaling property.

Shift Mode

Loop through objects and incrementally adjust their scale to create interesting and unique designs.

Shift the scale of an object a specific amount more than the object before it

This mode can be used to increase, or shift, the scale of an object by a specified amount more than the previous object that Randomill iterated over.

For example, let’s say you have four 100pt x 100pt squares and you shift the X and Y scale of these squares by +10%. The result would be:

• Square 1: Unchanged.
• Square 2: Scaled by 110%.
• Square 3: Scaled by 120%.
• Square 4: Scaled by 130%.

Restart the loop after a specified number of steps

If you only want to scale every other square in the selection by 10%, you can set this value to 1. This way, after 1 step, the loop will be restarted.

If you want to scale every square by 10%, and not gradually increase the scaling, set this value to 0. This would essentially be like using the native ‘Transform Each’ function already in Illustrator. The difference here is that Randomill allows you to just scale things like stroke patterns and stroke widths without affecting the base object size.

You can also optionally include the first object to be included in the scale operation as well. The default setting skips over the first object, and starts the scale operation with the second object in the selection.

Target Mode

Iterate over a set of objects and scale them such that the last object in the selection (in terms of layer order) will have be scaled by the target value.

Example: Let’s say you have a series of 6 squares next to each other. The top-most square in the layer stack is on the left and the bottom-most square is on the right. If you select all these squares and set the target scale to be 0% here is what the result would be:

Square 1: Unchanged.
Square 2: 80% of original scale.
Square 3: 60% of original scale.
Square 4: 40% of original scale.
Square 5: 20% of original scale.
Square 6: 0% of original scale.

You can see that as Randomill iterated through the squares, it scaled each square in equal increments until the last square was scaled by the target value.

Oscillate Mode

Scale a set of objects by wave-like oscillating values to over a specified number of steps. Loop over a selection and scale objects by a value that bounces between two values.

Example: say you have 10 squares lined up next to each other with the leftmost square being the top object in the layer stack. If you oscillate the scale of this set of squares from 40% to 160% over 3 steps, you would get this result:

Square 01: Scaled by 40%
Square 02: Scaled by 80%
Square 03: Scaled by 120%
Square 04: Scaled by 160%
Square 05: Scaled by 120%
Square 06: Scaled by 80%
Square 07: Scaled by 40%
Square 08: Scaled by 80%
Square 09: Scaled by 120%
Square 10: Scaled by 160%

The first square was scaled by the From value, and took 3 Steps to get to the To value. Another 3 steps were needed to get back to the From value.