Transcript:
(GUITAR MUSIC) – [Instructor] Hello and welcome to this Design Cuts video tutorial Today were looking at transparency masks in Illustrator. I have a document already set up here and we’ll just have a look and see what it contains. We’re going to use it to have a look at masks. There’s a rectangle at the back that’s filled with a pattern. Then we have a large red oval on top. And I have three shapes here that we’re going to use to look at masks. So I’m gonna target this black shape. First of all, I’ll select it and I’ll choose Edit Copy. It’s copied to the clipboard, And I’ll turn its visibility off cause. I don’t want to be able to see it any longer. Now we’ll target the red oval To create a transparency mask. We’ll choose Window and then Transparency. This gives us the Transparency dialogue. I prefer to use the Transparency dialogue. Cause It has less of a habit of disappearing on me. You can also get to the same options through the Appearance panel by clicking on the bottom opacity here. But as I said, this one has a tendency to close up when you least expect it, so this one’s a little bit more of use, But they have the exact same result. They’re the exact same tool just in two different places. We’ll, click here on. Make Mask Now. In earlier versions of Illustrator, you might need to use the flyout menu to find that option. What’s happened is that our entire shape has disappeared. I’m going to disable clipping. And when I do that, our shape comes back. I want to paste the shape that I have on the clipboard in as a mask, so I need to first Click here to select the mask. And when I do that, you’ll see that the Layer’s panel changes. It’s telling me that I’m working on the mask and not the shape itself. So with the mask selected, I’ll chose Edit Paste in Place. We now have a black circle operating as our mask and what it’s doing is punching a hole in this red shape through which we can see the pattern below. Now it can get a little bit confusing. Which of these options you need to select? Clip is going to make a cut out of the object. And so if you don’t want to make a cut out of it, then don’t use Clip. But there are only four combinations here. You can have Clip On or Off and Invert Mask On or Off, So it’s easy to just click on these options and just see what they do and stop when you get to whatever it is that you want to be the end result of applying a mask to your object. So here we’ve seen that a solid black mask set to Clip Off and Invert Mask Off just punches a hole in the middle of our object. Now that we’ve seen that, let’s release our mask. We need to do that to be able to go back to working in our document. I’ll just get rid of the black circle that we got when we released the mask. Now, let’s go and see how things look when we use a circle that has a gradient in it. Here, it’s dark around the edges and light in the middle. I’ll copy that to the Clipboar’d; Edit. Copy Turn. It’s visibility off. Go back to my red shape, make a mask, target the mask so that I’m working on the mask and we’ll turn clipping off And I’m going to choose Edit Past in Place. This time we’re seeing through the mask area. You can see here is where the mask was black. The shape was black. And in the centre, it was graduating towards white and so we’re seeing the red shape here. If we invert this mask, we get a slightly different result. In this case, the white area has been converted to black with the inversion and so we’re seeing through to the pattern underneath. You’ll also see different results if you have clipping, turned on or off. So I’m going to release this mask again. Let’s get rid of that extra shape and let’s have a look this time at a shape that has a feathered edge. So this is a black circle with a feathered edge Again. Edit Copy. I’ll turn its visibility off and let’s make a mask of that. I’m gonna turn clipping off. I’ll target the mask so that I can paste my shape in there. Edit Paste in Place. This time that feathered edge is creating a sort of feathered mask. So we’re seeing through to the pattern underneath, but we have pixels around the edge that are not fully opaque and so we’re getting this sort of feathered effect. Now, when you have a mask in place and when you’re happy with the result when you’ve got the selection of options here that gives you the result you came looking for. You will need to go back to working with the document. The way you do that is to click here on this thumbnail. And when I do watch how the Layer’s palette changes. We go back to the document as it looked previously. And you need to do that because otherwise you’re just going to continue to work on the mask. The Layer’s palettes not going to be accessible to you and whatever you’re doing is going to affect the mask and not the entire document. Now that we’ve see how transparency masks work, let’s have a look at a practical example. I have some text here. It’s Live Text, so it’s selectable and editable. I’m going to select the text and I’m going to apply a mask to it. So I’ll click here. Make Mask And turn Clip Off because I want to be able to see the text itself. Now I’ll choose the Brush tool, and I have a brush that I’ve created here. I’ll target the mask itself cause. I want to make sure that the painting is done on the mask and not on the actual document. I’ll paint with black and I’ll just paint over the shape. Now the brush needs a little bit of editing here, so Ill. Just select the brush stroke that I painted on double Click on the Brush and just increase the size of it. Because I want it to do a better job of destroying the text. I’ll click Okay and click. Apply to Strokes. So now my brush is painting a little bit thicker. So I’ll just paint this texture over the type And what that’s doing is poking holes in the type so that I can see the background below. That happens when I paint with black. If I were to paint with grey, then it’s going to be a little bit different. Let me just select a grey colour and show you the difference. Painting with grey is going to give me just partial transparency. So I’m going to see a mix of the black and whatever colour it is used in the background below. When I’ve finished creating my distressed Look, I’ll go back to editing the document by clicking on this thumbnail here. Notice that the Layer’s panel changes back and were good to go with the rest of the document There’s. Just one gotcha here. And that is the brush that you’re using. Now I used an Illustrator brush, but I fixed it so that it would work properly before I did that. So let me just show you what I did. Gonna lock everything down. I’ll go to the Brushes panel and I’ll open up the brush from the Illustrator Artistic Chalk Charcoal. Pencil brushes that I used. This is the one I used. I’ll just drag it into the Brushes panel. Now this brush is a sort of grey colour. So if you paint on it, even if you paint with black, you’re not going to be able to get rid of the content. You’re not going to be able to poke a hole through this text because it’s not painting black. It’s painting grey. So this is what I did. I took the brush and I dragged it out of the Brushes panel. I then started to Ungroup it, so I selected Object Ungroup And I continued to do that until I had a group and this no fill. No stroke rectangle. So I’m gonna lock down the no. Fill, no stroke rectangle and hide it cause. I don’t want to be selecting it. I just want to select the brush content itself. And this is the colour that the brush is filled with. It looks like it’s black, but it’s not I’ll double. Click on it and this is what I did was. I set it to 100% in all of C M Y and K values. And you can see just in here that this is a much richer black. And when you set it to that, it then starts working like a proper brush and it will eat away at your text. So what I did then was, I got back my no fill, no stroke rectangle selected, both pieces, the content that I had recreated or recolored and the no fill, no stroke rectangle and made an Art brush out of that. Set the Colorization method to Tint. So that you can recolor it if you want and click. Okay, And because this is now a black brush and not a grey brush when you paint with black, you’ll actually eat away at the content. So you just need to be aware that if you’re planning to use brushes that came with Illustrator or brushes that you get from somewhere else, you may need to make sure that they are, in actual fact painting with pure black and not grey. If you want to eat away and create this really really textured effect in your document. I hope you’ve enjoyed learning these Illustrator transparency, masking techniques. Let us know what you think in the comments below And give us a thumbs up if you liked this tutorial. Until next time, I’m Helen Bradley for Design Cuts.