Right now, the opacity mask is completely filled with black, and that tells Illustrator to make the corresponding layer completely invisible, which is why it disappeared. And you can go in-between: if you put some grey in your opacity mask, it makes the corresponding part of the real layer partially, but not fully, transparent. If a part of your opacity mask is white, the corresponding part of the real layer is given no transparency. If part of your opacity mask is black, that tells Illustrator to make the corresponding part of the real layer invisible. Here’s how it works: this is a special kind of layer, which exists parallel to your “real” Illustrator layer, and which tells Illustrator to make certain parts of the real layer transparent or not. All the things I’m describing exist in the last several Illustrator versions, but they may look a little different.ĭouble-click on the square on the right, or click “Make Mask.” Unless you’ve messed with some defaults, you’ll see the square on the right turn black, a box marked “Clip” will get checked, and all the artwork in the layer will disappear. If you have an older version, there won’t be a square on the right at all, just an empty space - this is fine. The one on the right is greyed out and usually marked with something like a symbol for “nothing going on here,” depending on your version of Illustrator. The one on the left shows a little preview of everything in the layer. Notice that there are a couple of little squares that appear in the panel (if you don’t see them, click on the icon in the upper-right of the panel and select “Show Options”). Like, for example, changing its transparency. This tells Illustrator you want to do something to affect how the whole layer looks. That means clicking the little circle next to the layer name. Now, find a layer of map features that needs to be knocked out, then select its appearance.
#MASKING IN ILLUSTRATOR PC#
Copy those to the clipboard with Cmd-C (or Ctrl-C, if you happen to be on a PC for some reason mentally replace “Cmd” with “Ctrl” for the rest of this tutorial and you’ll be fine). To start, we need to first select the map labels that are hard to read, the ones that need the features underneath to disappear. So, let’s set up an opacity mask, and I’ll explain as we go along what it is and how it works. Both words get at the same idea, just from opposite perspectives. Objects can have varying transparency (how see-through they are), which is sometimes instead called opacity (how not-see-through they are).
![masking in illustrator masking in illustrator](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/1syLAA2md8c/maxresdefault.jpg)
The terminology gets a bit confusing here, as Illustrator has two ways of describing the same thing. To do that, we need to use opacity masking, which is a way of telling Illustrator how transparent to make things.
![masking in illustrator masking in illustrator](http://www.saffronstroke.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/image28.png)
We’ll make just pieces of those map lines completely transparent, so that they are still there (in case we ever need them again), but cannot be seen. When they are completely transparent, they become invisible.īut, it also lets us make parts of objects transparent as well.
![masking in illustrator masking in illustrator](https://www.laralee.design/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/blog-20180922-illustrator-vignette-opacity-mask.png)
In Illustrator, we can make objects more or less transparent. So, when I can’t do a halo, I make use of a different method, which relies on… Opacity Masking It’s a great idea when the type sits on just one color, but it doesn’t work if a label has multiple background colors. If you move the label and want to put that linework back, you’re out of luck - it’s gone (though you could keep it backed up in a separate layer, or pull it from an older file, but these are time-consuming). The problem with the former is that it’s destructive. Two common solutions are deleting linework and adding halos. There are a few ways of going about this, each of which has some limitations (including the one I’m going to show you). The solution, on the right, is to selectively erase bits of the map in order to make the type more legible. You’ve got some type on the map, but it’s hard to read because all of the other stuff on the map is getting in the way. In the above image, the situation at left happens all the time. Continuing my trend of recording tips & tricks that I am commonly asked about, I thought I’d share my method for creating type knockouts in Adobe Illustrator (please note that I have no idea if that’s a proper use of the term, nor do I know what other people call them).