To make your illustrations look clean and tidy, Tony suggests using either a clipping path or an opaque mask.
If you experience any learning difficulties while taking this course, then you can take an online Adobe Illustrator consultation via Skype.
In today's lesson on the blog, you’ll just be able to learn more about these two tools and learn how to put them into practice (at the request of many readers, a copy of the lesson’s translation is also published on this blog).
With the clipping masks and opacity masks, you can easily select and remove areas that should not be visible. Let's see how it works.
Clipping path
In this illustration, we have 3 layers. Background, rays and sun effect. You need to put the sun's rays in a square.
First, select the sun's rays and background, and group them together.
Select them using the Selection tool and press Ctrl + G to group them.
Draw a rectangle to define the area you want to show. Make sure it is on top of other objects.
Select the background and outline you drew. Right-click and select Object> Clipping Mask> Make (Object> Clipping Mask> Make).
After that, move the background to the background by pressing Ctrl + Shift + [
Editing the clipping mask
To make changes to the clipping mask, go to the Layers panel, select the “Clipping Path” sublayer. Now you can move and resize the mask. If you want to undo the mask, select Object> Clipping Mask> Undo (Object> Clipping Mask> Release).
Opacity Mask Opacity allows you to create transparency for your layer. The intensity of black determines the transparency of the layer. Black will be transparent, and white accordingly opaque.
Unlike drawing a square from the previous example, we draw a circle and fill it with a gradient.
Now select both shapes and select the Opacity Mask by clicking on the Options icon in the corner of the Transparency Palette.
After that, you will get a mask whose edges will be blurred. An opacity mask is a good way to blur the edges and make a transition to the background color for your illustrations.
A few nuances for those who plan to paint for micro stocks in the future:
You should not use the opacity mask at all. Remember that, according to the rules of microstock, all effects containing transparency are not allowed. It will not be possible to parse the opacity mask correctly (currently transparency is already enabled on micro stocks, for this, save your vector in EPS-10 format).
You can use the clipping mask if you want to leave buyers the ability to edit objects that go beyond the image area. But some microstock (for example, iStock photo) requires not just to hide the extra elements but completely cut them off. So if you are preparing a file for several stocks at once, consider this point!
Do you need related info on photo ediitng? Here is additional info on photo retouching
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