- [Instructor] In this movie, we're going to put
an opacity mask into actual use
and once again, we're going to get the stripes
off the model's nose and we're going to create
these soft transitions over here on the left
and right hand sides of the face.
All right, I'll switch back to my document in progress,
which I've reverted to its save state
and so the first thing I'm going to do
is press the A key to switch to my white arrow tool
and that will allow me to gain access
to these shapes that are trapped inside the group.
So I want to select these two big circles right here,
as well as this shape and if you click inside
that shape, you're going to select everything
in a compound path, which is not what we want.
So if that happens to you,
shift-click again in order to deselect
the shapes and then you want to press and hold
the alt key or the option key on a Mac.
So I have both the shift and alt keys down,
again, that's shift and option on the Mac,
and then carefully click on the outline
of that shape, like so.
Now what I want you to do,
is press control-C or command-C on a Mac,
to copy those shapes.
Then press the V key to switch to the black arrow tool.
Press ctrl-shift-A or command-shift-A on a Mac,
to deselect those shapes and then press ctrl-F
or command-F on a Mac, in order to paste
the shapes in front.
What that's going to do, is ensure
that we don't paste the shapes back into the group,
which is not what we want.
Alright, now we want to make sure
that all the shapes are independent of each other.
So go up to the object menu, choose compound path,
and choose release, just to be sure.
Alright, now just go ahead and press control-X
or command-X on a Mac, in order to cut
those shapes to the clipboard.
I'm doing that because this time
we're going to take a different approach
to creating an opacity mask.
Instead of letting illustrator
put everything inside of a group,
we're going to assign the opacity mask to an entire layer
by targeting the layer, by clicking on its meatball
over here inside the layers panel.
Then you want to go up to the transparency panel.
You can click make mask if you want to,
but there's a shortcut which is to double click
on this right-hand thumbnail
and that's going to create an opacity mask
and take you right into it.
Then press ctrl-F or command-F on a Mac,
in order to paste those shapes.
Now I want you to see something that amuses me.
Notice over here inside this thumbnail,
we're seeing the original colors
but over in the document window, we're seeing gray.
In reality, opacity masks do not support colors.
They are shades of gray.
So what you're seeing in the document is more accurate.
Alright, now we want to use these shapes
to reveal the glasses and so we need to change
all the colors to white as well as get rid of any blending.
So I'm going to go up here to the transparency panel.
Notice that the blend mode popup menu is blank
and that's because the rectangle is set to normal
and the circles are set to multiply.
So I'm going to go ahead and select normal,
in order to override that multiply
and then we need to make the shapes white
by going up here to the fill swatch,
the very first swatch in the control panel,
and selecting white from that list of swatches.
Alright, now it's not going to do us very much good
to see things white on white like this.
So I'm going to bring back the actual illustration
by alt or option clicking on that right-hand thumbnail.
Now I need to scale this rectangle right here.
So that it better fits my desired contours for the glasses
and I'm going to do that using the bounding box.
So I'll press ctrl-shift-B or command-shift-B on a Mac,
to bring up that bounding box.
I'll click off the paths and then I'll just click
on a rectangle to select it independently
of everything else.
Now its bottom edge happens to be at exactly
the right location but its top edge needs to come upward.
So I'm going to go up to the view menu
and choose smart guides, in order to turn them on.
I generally leave them off because they end up
making everything flash on screen.
Then I'll drag this top handle upward
until it snaps into alignment with the top
of the circles and then I'll drag this edge
until it snaps into alignment with the center
of the circle and I'll drag the left-hand edge
so it snaps into alignment as well.
We end up with this effect here.
So far, we could have done everything using a clipping mask.
There is the one advantage,
that we're able to work with a bunch
of different path outlines where the mask is concerned
but where the real power comes in,
is when you start applying things like dynamic effects.
So I'm going to select both of the circles here.
I don't want to see that bounding box,
so I'll press control-shift-B or command-shift-B on a Mac
and then I'll go up to the effect menu,
choose blur and choose Gaussian blur
and I'll turn on the preview checkbox,
so I can just see how things are going to look.
I'm going to once again take that radius value
down to five pixels and click OK.
Alright, now I want to expose more of the glasses.
I want to actually grow them outward a little bit
and so I'll return to the effect menu,
choose distort and transform
and choose the transform command
or if you loaded D keys, you have that keyboard shortcut
of ctrl-E or command-E on the Mac.
Now I'll turn on the preview checkbox here as well.
I'll click in the horizontal scale value
and press shift up arrow a couple of times,
in order to increase the width of each one of the ellipses
and then I'll tab down to the vertical value
and do the same, take it up to 120% as well and click OK.
Alright, now that's going to work out pretty well
for the stripes, except for the fact that they end too soon.
So I'm going to take care of that problem right now.
I'll click on the left hand thumbnail
to switch back to the illustration.
I'm going to lock the image so I don't run
the risk of messing it up.
Then I'll press the A key to switch back
to my white arrow tool and I'll go ahead
and marquee these edges right here,
just the right hand edges of those rectangles
and I'll press the enter key or the return key on a Mac,
to bring up the move dialog box
and I'll change the horizontal value
to let's say, a hundred points
and I'll leave the vertical value set to zero
and I'll turn on the preview checkbox
and you can see, that moves those edges
way out there, which is great.
Then I'll click OK.
Now I'll marque these left-hand edges and do the same thing.
I'll press the enter key or the return key on the Mac,
to bring up the move dialog box.
The only difference is I want to change
the horizontal value to negative 100,
to move those edges to the left.
I'll click OK.
That gives me plenty of room.
All right, now press ctrl-shift-A
or command-shift-A on a Mac, so we can see what we're doing.
What we will be doing is taking care of the nose right here.
Notice that the stripes are bleeding into the nose.
That is not what I want.
So I will once again target the layer,
the glasses layer, which as you can see,
now has an underline to show me
that I've applied an opacity mask.
Now just go ahead and click on that right hand thumbnail,
up here in the transparency panel, to make that path active.
Now I don't want these circles to be selected
so I'll press ctrl-shift-A or command-shift-A on the Mac,
in order to deselect them
and then I'll click on this bottom right segment
in the left hand circle and I'll shift-click
on the bottom-left segment in the right-hand circle,
in order to select both of these segments, like so.
Then I'll press control-C or command-C on the Mac,
in order to copy the shapes.
You may have seen that little alert message
that said, shapes expanded.
I did not actually expand those shapes, just so as you know.
All right, now I'll press ctrl-shift-A
or command-shift-A on the Mac,
to deselect those shapes and I'll press ctrl-F
or command-F on the Mac, in order to paste them in front.
Alright, now we want to join these guys together
by pressing ctrl-J or command-J on the Mac,
two times in a row and we'll end up
with this effect right here.
Now I want to mask this stuff away.
Right now the shape is filled with white,
which means I'm revealing these stripes.
Instead, I want to fill the shape with black,
in order to create a conceal.
I don't want that Gaussian blur.
So I'll switch to my appearance panel,
which is still available when you're working
on an opacity mask and I'll go ahead
and click and shift-click on these two dynamic effects.
Then I'll drop down to the trash icon
and I'll click on it to get rid of them.
That gives us a nice sharp border.
Alright, now notice over here on the bridge of the nose,
that I'm getting rid of too much of this area.
I don't want to cut into that stripe
but I can take care of that very easily
by pressing the V key to switch back
to my black arrow tool, up here at the top of the tool box
and then I'll select the top rectangle, like so,
and I'll right-click anywhere inside the document window.
Choose a range and choose bring to front
or you have that keyboard shortcut
of ctrl-shift-right bracket
or command-shift-right bracket on the Mac
and that will result in this effect right here.
So the beauty of this is that we can work
with multiple shapes at a time,
that have multiple fills and strokes.
So in our case, we've got three white shapes
and one black one and of course
you can assign dynamic effects.
Alright, I'm done for now.
So I'll go ahead and switch back to the document
by clicking on the left-hand thumbnail,
here inside the transparency panel
and finally I decided I wanted a little more
interaction between the glasses and the face.
So I'll go ahead and switch back to the layers panel,
which once again, contains all of the layers
inside the document.
Notice that the glasses layer is twirled open
and so I'm just going to go ahead and target the group,
which contains the rose-colored shapes
and then I'll return to the transparency panel,
click normal and choose multiply,
in order to create this final effect here,
and then I'll just press ctrl-shift-A
or command-shift-A on the Mac, to deselect the artwork.
That's an example of at least one
possible real-world deployment
of an opacity mask, here inside illustrator.