To create the darker part of the bevel, we need to modify the right-most color square in your gradient. 2) Repeat step one and replace the black swatch. Let go of the swatch - the gray should change to the color of the original shape below your stroke object. 1) From the Swatch palette, grab the color of the original shape and drag it on top of the gray square in the Gradient palette. Make sure the stroke object is still selected. Now we're going to replace the gray and black swatches. 6) Click the right diamond and make sure the % is at 50 (it should be as the default). 5) Click the left diamond and change the % to 87. 4) Click the black square and change the % to 52. 3) Click the gray square and change the % to 45. 2) Click the white square and make sure the % is set to 0 (it should be as the default). 1) Add another color square in the gradient - from left to right, it should be a white square, gray square and a black square. This one isn't THAT complicated, it just has a few steps. This will put the black half in the bottom-right of the stroke object. Set a normal black/white gradient to the stroke object and set the gradient degree to -65. This will leave you with the outer stroke object, aka, the beginning of your bevel. Yeah, do what the title says - delete the two inner-most shapes. By setting the stroke to the center of the object, we were able to come away with three shapes here (I played around with this and I can't explain why this is, but this is how we want it anyway). Ungroup the shapes and you should now have three shapes: 1) the original inner shape that you outlined the stroke on, 2) the outer outlined stroke, and, 3) the inner outlined stroke. Make sure this new group is selected and then go to your Pathfinder palette and hit the divide button. When you outline a shape, it groups the original shape and the new outline shape together. Once you have the stroke weight at the correct size, it's time to outline the stroke - this makes the stroke into a solid object. If you don't, then your bevel will start further in from the edge. But the important thing here is to match the weight of the stroke to the edge of the original shape. Add a center stroke to new shape and increase stroke weightДЄdding the stroke to the center will help in a later step (that would be step 5, if you just HAVE to know), so table that for now. Instead of going outside the shape, I went inside.ДЈ. You can see the settings in the screenshot. This will give you the same shape at a different size - it helps maintain the aspect ratio of everything (including curves). Fill the shape with a solid color and remove the border. For this exercise, I chose a rounded edge rectangle. Oh yeah, clicking on the thumbnails will allow you to see bigger images.ДЄny ol' shape will do. If you have other tips or ideas, please post them in the comments below for all design nerds to enjoy. I'm sure it's not perfect, but it's where I landed and I was pleased with the outcome. This is my first foray into posting a tutorial. Some of my co-workers thought I was crazy, but it worked and now I have 1.5mb files rather than 40mb. So, I took some time and figured out a way to do it in Illustrator.

While working on a project for one of my clients, I encountered the need to make a beveled object, but I didn't want to create several 300+ dpi objects in Photoshop. August 06 Make a Nice, Smooth Bevel in Illustrator (a how-to)

Bevel text in illustrator