- [Narrator] Over the course of this movie,
I'll show you how you can vary the translucency
of an object by adjusting it's opacity setting.
And I'll also introduce you to a few key strokes
that are available to those of you who loaded D keys,
because they are going to make your life way easier.
Over the course of this chapter were going to take
this place photograph from the dreamstime image library
about which you can learn more and get some great deals
at dreamstime.com/deke.php.
And we'll turn her into this kind of fashion treatment here,
and we'll wrap things up by tattooing her face.
Now zoom this far out,
this effect might look a little choppy.
But as soon as we zoom in,
things smooth out quite nicely.
Now you'll be glad to know that
I've drawn all the path outlines in advance,
so that we can focus all of our attention
on blend modes and opacity masks.
All right, so I'm going to start things off here
by deleting this dreamstime layer
which I can do just by selecting it
and clicking on the little trashcan icon
in the bottom right corner of the layers panel
and then I'll click the yes button in order to make it so.
Now I want you to notice what's going on here
we have a lot of layers
but just two of them are currently turned on.
So we've got the place photograph
and then in the background we have a big rectangle
filled with a radial gradient.
Now notice that I've masked the photograph,
we first discussed clipping masks
back in chapter 23 of the advanced course
but because clipping masks
are a transparency tool,
that is to say, they allow you to define what's opaque
and then what's transparent.
I figured we'd quickly review the process.
So I'm going to start things off just by clicking
inside this woman's face
and notice that she is surrounded by a path outline
and then I'll go up to the object menu
choose clipping mask and choose release,
in order to expose the original photograph
then I'll go ahead and press
control shift A
or command shift A on the Mac
to deselect my artwork.
Now I just want you to see that
this path outline here has no fill
and a black one point stroke.
All right I'll go ahead and put that back
by pressing control Z or command Z on the Mac.
Then I'll go ahead and select this place photograph
by clicking on it and I'll press control X
or command X on a Mac to cut it to the clip board.
Then, you want to select the path outline
and the easiest way to put the photograph inside of it
is in my case to switch to the two column toolbox
and then drop down to this draw inside icon
and click on it.
Next, you want to go to the edit menu
and choose paste and place,
in order to place the image into the path outline
and then finally you want to click on the draw normal icon,
once again located at the bottom of the toolbox
and then you can go ahead and switch back to
the single column toolbox if you like.
All right now you may recall,
if you watched the live action introduction,
that I said that blend modes and opacity masks
live together in the opacity panel.
The only problem with that is,
there really isn't such a panel
inside of Illustrator.
You can click on the word opacity,
up here in the control panel,
in order to bring up
what's actually known as the transparency panel
inside of Illustrator,
otherwise everything I've said is true.
We've got a list of blend modes right here
and then we've got opacity mask function
both of which we'll take a look at
in future movies.
But just so we have unfettered access to that panel,
I'm going to go up to the window menu
and I recommend you do this as well
and choose the transparency command,
if it has a check make in front of it
that means it's already up on screen.
As we can see,
over here to the right of the window.
All right now notice even when the panel is collapsed,
as it is right now, we can see this opacity value
right there.
If you can't see it for some reason
you can expand the panel
by clicking on this double arrow icon a few times.
All right so notice, if I click on a word opacity
then I'll highlight the value at 100%
it is 100% opaque.
At 50% we end up with a kind of 50/50 mix,
so we are seeing 50% of the selected image
and were revealing 50%
of that purple gradient in the background.
If you dial in some other value,
then you're going to get a different kind of mix.
So if I take this opacity value all the way down
to 20%, let's say,
were seeing 20% image and 100%
minus 20% or 80% background.
And so higher opacity values
are going to give you more opaque images
and lower opacity values are going to give you
more translucent images.
And you can enter something like 33%,
if you like,
but you do have to work in whole number increments.
All the way down to, incidentally, 0%
which will make the image entirely invisible.
Now you might think why in the world
would you do that,
after all you want to see the image
to some extent.
Well we'll see uses for 0% opacity
in future movies.
Now, here's where things get a little more interesting
in my opinion.
If you loaded D keys,
than you have some very easy shortcuts
which are entirely borrowed from Photoshop.
So if you tap the five key,
you're going to set the opacity value to 50%
so you don't even have to bother going over
to this value and changing it,
you just have to tap a key.
If you tap the eight key,
you're going to set the opacity to 80%
the nine key will take it to 90%
and if you want to restore an opacity value
of 100% you just tap the zero key.
All right, and the same works down the keyboard
if you tap the two key,
you're going to set opacity value to 20%
if you tap the one key,
you'll get 10%.
Now for those of you,
who are working with American keyboards,
if you cap the tilda key,
which is just to the left of the one key
you'll take the opacity value
down to 0%.
So, there's no need by the way to press any modifiers
you don't have to press control
or command or anything like that,
you just have to tap a number.
Now in my case I'm interested in keeping
the opacity at 100% for now
so I'll go ahead and tap the zero key
in order to make it so.
And that friends,
is how you modify the translucency of
a selected object,
whether it's a placed image
or anything else you can create inside of Illustrator
using the opacity value
that's often found up here in the control panel.
It's always found in the transparency panel,
here inside Illustrator.