Effects Expanding

When an effect is applied to an object, the appearance of the object will reflect that effect. To edit the effect, you will need to go to the Appearance panel and select the shape, and then double-click on the effect to edit the appearance. To turn the effect into an editable object, it needs to be Expanded. The results of Expanding an effect will appear in the Appearance panel, and in some cases, in the Layers panel.

Select the object and choose Expand Appearance from the Object menu. The effects on the shape will be broken out into actual shapes or images that will look like the original object. Vector effects will be expanded into shapes, raster effects (such as bevel and emboss and drop shadow) will be expanded into pixel-based images. These shapes and images will appear in the Layers panel as individual layers, and the Appearance panel will no longer show the editable effects.