Opacity mask in Adobe Illustrator enable the users to make a portion of an element or visual either transparent or partially transparent. If you have learned Adobe Illustrator from any tutorial or join Adobe Illustrator Course from our institute then you have observed this option many times.
Opacity mask is located under the transparency palettes fly-out menu in Illustrator. Illustrator opacity mask is great to generate transparency on shapes. The principal of opacity masking is the same as clipping masking, in opacity masking object fade into transparency. We use two colors in masking one is white and another one is black. Here white works as opaque color and black as the transparent color. The idea is simple. You will have a mask that is black to white and the areas that are black will be masked out. Next, you just have to apply the opacity mask to your object.
Process of Opacity Masking in Adobe Illustrator
Step 1. Take two objects in an artboard and place one after another. Open Transparency box from Windows menu option or the shortcut for the same is Shift+Ctrl+F10.
Step 2. Now creates a masking object by clicking on “Make Mask “option. Make sure that Clip option should be unchecked.
Step 3. Select the image coming on the top and click on the white box as highlighted in the below picture.
Step 4. Now change the fill color option from solid to gradient.
Step 5. Make a square on the top image and see how beautiful the images will be merged with opacity effect.
Opacity masks give us the ability to control the visibility of the objects in Illustrator in various creative ways. One can use any types of technique for creating a mask in Illustrator. Many types of Gradients, Mesh, Solid fills, Patterns etc can be used for a variety of effects. I would recommend you to play with all these techniques to achieve outstanding opacity masking effects in Adobe Illustrator.
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