- Illustrator uses the word 'blend' in two
very different ways.
First you have the object blends that we
encountered back in Chapter 23 of the advanced
course in which you create a series of
sequential intervals between two path outlines.
Second, you have the topic of this chapter,
Blend Modes, which allow you to combine the
colors of a selected object with those
of the objects below in a variety of different
and potentially interesting ways.
Now, unlike object blends,
which rely in part on the blend tool,
blend modes are expressed as a long list of items
inside a popup menu.
And so they have names.
For example, there's the multiply mode,
which creates the effect of printing one ink on
top of another so everything darkens.
There's the screen mode which works like
shining your path outlines from a bunch
of flashlights onto a single screen so
everything becomes brighter.
There's difference, which subtracts the colors in
one object from those behind it to create
on the fly inversion effects and many, many more.
In this chapter we'll also address opacity masks,
which let you paint in transparency,
typically within the confines of a group
or a layer.
Add a black object to an opacity mask,
and you create a hole.
Add a white object and you eliminate the hole.
A gradient results in a gradual fade and so on.
For those of you who may know Photoshop and
opacity mask in Illustrator works very much
like a layer mask.
Okay, so obviously,
we have a lot of ground to cover,
and so you might ask,
why take on two such disparate topics
in a single chapter.
Because blend modes and opacity masks
reside side by side in the opacity panel.
Meaning that they're ultimately varieties of
opacity's opposite, transparency.
In other words,
blend modes and opacity masks allow you to
see through one object to reveal
the objects below.
Dang, I should've led with that.
Well, I guess that's a rare example
of me being opaque.
Get it?
Because I wasn't sufficiently transparent
with my information.
Here, let me clear things up.