Alright so when I started out I used Photoshop nearly exclusively, and then as things progressed I forced my way into Illustrator. One little reoccurring issue however was handling gradients, especially when it came to fading them to a transparent edge. This process is easy in Photoshop, but how do you tackle it in Illustrator? Sure you can add in a feather and group the object with a clipping mask to only reveal one soft edge, or copy it into Photoshop and delete away one edge with a soft brush, BUT you still won’t be getting effective results. Truthfully you’ll just be cheating yourself rather than solving a problem, and the program isn’t aimed at leaving you hanging. Behold, at long last, the almighty power of the Opacity Mask.
Sure it’s a simple duplicate it, slap on a gradient, apply a Opacity Mask job as demonstrated by CreativeTechs.com, but when you’re only faced with the issue on rare occasions, this little demo can save you time. It can lighten the load of groups with artwork that could otherwise get a wee bit messy.
One comment so far.
I’m very surprised that there are no comments here! This post attracted a few thousand pageviews and has been my most popular post, ever! transparecncy is really not so easy as it seems, it needs some skills to be done professionally…