Transparency effects open the door for designers to create eye catching effects. You can add transparency to drop shadows or apply blending modes to objects to enhance your illustrations.
Adding Transparency
You can add transparency in Illustrator by lowering the opacity of objects so that underlying artwork becomes visible. Go Window>Transparency to open up your Transparency Window. Stack a few objects and set it to a lower opacity of 50% for the underlying color to show through.
Blending Modes for Objects
If you are familiar with Photoshop, you may have heard of Blending Modes. Blending modes let you vary the ways that the colors of objects blend with the colors of underlying objects. Here I have an example of 3 popular blending modes to show you the effect. I shall not go through how each blending mode in detail as it is quite technical for beginners. If your are interested, you can read Adobe livedocs here.
Button Reflection Using Screen
Screen blending mode is one of my favourite as it allows me create reflection effortlessly. I will be showing you a popular technique on creating a button reflection using Screen. First draw a circle and apply a gradient of light to dark orange to it.
Draw another circle on top and apply a gradient from black to white.
Finally, select the black to white circle and change the blending mode to Screen. And you’re done!
Applying Graphic Styles
Illustrator has some built in graphic styles which you are quickly apply to your objects. It is like a saved set of attributes. Once you have created an object style, you can apply it across different objects.
To see the attributes of an graphic styles, go Window>Appearance. Here we can see that there are 3 fills with effects(fx icon) applied. We will learn more about using effects in the later lessons.
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July 29th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
i read all of your tutorial and can i ask that is that u use mouse to draw?
coz i draw so many time using mouse and all result are bad….
July 30th, 2008 at 12:52 am
Yup, all done using mouse. Complicated shapes can be built from basic shapes or using Pen Tool. There’s no need by drawing tablet.
August 5th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Once again, I miss something. In Button Reflection, when I choose Screen for the black-white gradient circle, it simply turns white. I can make it work with Soft Light, but not Screen. (I’m using CS3.)
August 7th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
I’m having the same problem as Heidi –the black portion of any gradient turns white instead of transparent. I’m guessing that maybe it’s a CS3 thing cause I’m using that as well…help please!
August 16th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
You should update the bottom of this article with the next days lesson. It says “Next Lesson: Coming Soon…”
August 25th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
same problem as Heidi and DM…. please respond
August 25th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Hi BogDinamita, no problem on my side. I’m also using Illustrator CS3. Make sure the gradient is from black to white. Black areas will turn transparent, while white areas will turn white after you change it to Screen mode. Hope it helps.
August 28th, 2008 at 7:38 am
rasta blood claat man good lesson, true dat
October 13th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
@BogDinamita I think is the mode (CMYH/RGB). Use RGB.
October 30th, 2008 at 12:42 am
nope. i have the same problem as above
November 25th, 2008 at 5:56 am
I am having a problem too. The circle turns white. What is up with that?
November 25th, 2008 at 8:33 am
Hi Ben, go File>Document Color Mode>RGB Color. It should do find now. I suppose CMYK doesn’t support transparency effects.