Hello Garth,
If you create the gradient in Illustrator and then set its transparency to multiply, will that achieve the transparency you want?
In InDesign CS3 there’s another feature called “gradient feather” in the special effects menu. By selecting it you can automatically feather the opacity of the object you’ve selected.
Thanks for your videos.
Thanks for the suggestion. That’s a great idea, however, it makes the whole gradient transparent, when I want part of it to be completely opaque. I’ll keep playing with it though!
Good vid. Opacity mask is just an engineers work around being sold as a feature. It’s wonky and doesn’t work as a smart object when pasted into Photoshop. It looks like total and complete crap.
Adobe likes to tout that their “Creative Suite” all plays together nicely but when it comes to Illustrator it’s the red headed step child of their suite. The fact you cannot blend from a solid color to transparent without the need for some non-intuitive clunky work around when other pro apps easily do this is testament to Illustrators non-intuitive nature.
The fact an Opacity Mask doesn’t even translate into other apps like Photoshop correctly only proves that Adobe engineers working on Illustrator need to get their act together and stop adding feature bloat with each new incarnation of the software and focus on improving existing functionality that is piss poor already.
They’ll never just adopt FreeHand features though because the marketing weasels behind Adobe’s decisions fear it would make their existing user base mad and they are probably right but no one will get pissed if they just make the tools easier to use and more intuitive in nature.
I totally agree that transparent gradients are just too much work. Flash does it a lot better.
2 things though:
1) Gradients can have complete transparency, but you’ll have to view the black in RGB-mode (or set all CMUK sliders to 100%). When it’s in CMYK, the black isn’t dark enough. It’s because the CMYK-view gives you a print-preview of the color, and black ink is always a bit transparent.
2) You don’t have to release the mask in order to edit the gradient. Just like Photoshop, Illustrator has a preview of the mask that you can click and edit. It’s in the Transparecy-palet, just open it completely and you’ll see it. You can even unlink the mask and move it around without moving your object.
Transparency with gradients has been a disappointment ever since transparency was first introduced in Illustrator back in 9 or 10. The lack of a transparent swatch (or the Flash alpha channel) is a major oversight. As you mentioned, Multiply mode doesn’t allow you to have a part of the gradient opaque. I can think of two workarounds I use for this, but that really isn’t the point.
So my question: How does FreeHand handle transparency?
Freehand? Alas… much worse than Illustrator. No gradient transparencies at all, and the object has to be converted to a “lens” to have any sort of transparency, which was inefficient as well. Flash rocks in that realm.
Rambrand has it right, you don’t need to release the mask to edit the gradient. If you check “Show Options” in the transparency panel, you’ll see you can select and target the mask directly. In general I would advise you to turn on Show Options in all panels that have the setting in Illustrator. You’re probably missing out on many useful things if you keep that setting off.
I do agree with you that Flash has the best way to handle this. Fireworks works similarly but adds a very interesting twist. In Fireworks’ gradient editing window, there are two gradient ramps. One for colors which works the same as in other apps and a second one on top of the first that’s dedicated to setting opacity. ThHe opacity and color swatches in both gradient ramps do not have to be aligned so you can lower opacity in a spot of the gradient where there is no color swatch in the gradient itself…
you don’t have to release the mask, if you click on the mask icon in the transparency panel, if your palettes setup is default you’ll see that your layer palette switches to the opacity mask layer palette. Although it doesn’t work as easily as the Flash alternative, it has the advantage to work as a full blown mask sublayer so you can add more than one shape, with different levels of transparencies, different gradients etc… Once you get used to it, it’s actually not a big deal… The Flash way is easier, but the gradient tool as a whole is way better than AI than Flash I think.
For 100% transparent, change your color mode (in color palette to something else than black percentage (default…), like RGB, HSV, etc… not talking about document color mode here, just the way you pick your colors.
I also recommend you learn what the extended options little checkboxes do in the transparency palette, they get pretty useful at times :)
I work with most of the Adobe products and I believe Adobe is a great company that creates great products. With a small exception! Illustrator. What a piece of unfriendly shit. Is not just the transparency that bothers me. The gradient tool drives me mad, the vector editing tool kills me, and generally speaking I find most of the tools counterintuitive, clumsy when compared with any other application Adobe has produced. It could be on pair with all the other products if instead bloating the new versions with stuff you hardly need, will spend some time fixing things like usability, gradient, vector editing, alt+rotate, alt+scale so you could duplicate while executing the other function. The list is long but I believe we won’t get anything fixed until some fossils there are gone. Or bring some management people across from Photoshop. That’s a product that deserves 10 stars
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Hello Garth,
If you create the gradient in Illustrator and then set its transparency to multiply, will that achieve the transparency you want?
In InDesign CS3 there’s another feature called “gradient feather” in the special effects menu. By selecting it you can automatically feather the opacity of the object you’ve selected.
Thanks for your videos.
Hi Kristen,
Thanks for the suggestion. That’s a great idea, however, it makes the whole gradient transparent, when I want part of it to be completely opaque. I’ll keep playing with it though!
Good vid. Opacity mask is just an engineers work around being sold as a feature. It’s wonky and doesn’t work as a smart object when pasted into Photoshop. It looks like total and complete crap.
Adobe likes to tout that their “Creative Suite” all plays together nicely but when it comes to Illustrator it’s the red headed step child of their suite. The fact you cannot blend from a solid color to transparent without the need for some non-intuitive clunky work around when other pro apps easily do this is testament to Illustrators non-intuitive nature.
The fact an Opacity Mask doesn’t even translate into other apps like Photoshop correctly only proves that Adobe engineers working on Illustrator need to get their act together and stop adding feature bloat with each new incarnation of the software and focus on improving existing functionality that is piss poor already.
They’ll never just adopt FreeHand features though because the marketing weasels behind Adobe’s decisions fear it would make their existing user base mad and they are probably right but no one will get pissed if they just make the tools easier to use and more intuitive in nature.
I totally agree that transparent gradients are just too much work. Flash does it a lot better.
2 things though:
1) Gradients can have complete transparency, but you’ll have to view the black in RGB-mode (or set all CMUK sliders to 100%). When it’s in CMYK, the black isn’t dark enough. It’s because the CMYK-view gives you a print-preview of the color, and black ink is always a bit transparent.
2) You don’t have to release the mask in order to edit the gradient. Just like Photoshop, Illustrator has a preview of the mask that you can click and edit. It’s in the Transparecy-palet, just open it completely and you’ll see it. You can even unlink the mask and move it around without moving your object.
I hope this helps.
Transparency with gradients has been a disappointment ever since transparency was first introduced in Illustrator back in 9 or 10. The lack of a transparent swatch (or the Flash alpha channel) is a major oversight. As you mentioned, Multiply mode doesn’t allow you to have a part of the gradient opaque. I can think of two workarounds I use for this, but that really isn’t the point.
So my question: How does FreeHand handle transparency?
@george
Freehand? Alas… much worse than Illustrator. No gradient transparencies at all, and the object has to be converted to a “lens” to have any sort of transparency, which was inefficient as well. Flash rocks in that realm.
Yeah Flash Transparency is how it should be. Illustrator is close, but not there yet, particularly with gradients as you point out here.
Garth,
Rambrand has it right, you don’t need to release the mask to edit the gradient. If you check “Show Options” in the transparency panel, you’ll see you can select and target the mask directly. In general I would advise you to turn on Show Options in all panels that have the setting in Illustrator. You’re probably missing out on many useful things if you keep that setting off.
I do agree with you that Flash has the best way to handle this. Fireworks works similarly but adds a very interesting twist. In Fireworks’ gradient editing window, there are two gradient ramps. One for colors which works the same as in other apps and a second one on top of the first that’s dedicated to setting opacity. ThHe opacity and color swatches in both gradient ramps do not have to be aligned so you can lower opacity in a spot of the gradient where there is no color swatch in the gradient itself…
no one has mentioned inkscape here. it has some pretty cool gradient tools. you might want to give it a try.
http://www.inkscape.org/
you don’t have to release the mask, if you click on the mask icon in the transparency panel, if your palettes setup is default you’ll see that your layer palette switches to the opacity mask layer palette. Although it doesn’t work as easily as the Flash alternative, it has the advantage to work as a full blown mask sublayer so you can add more than one shape, with different levels of transparencies, different gradients etc… Once you get used to it, it’s actually not a big deal… The Flash way is easier, but the gradient tool as a whole is way better than AI than Flash I think.
For 100% transparent, change your color mode (in color palette to something else than black percentage (default…), like RGB, HSV, etc… not talking about document color mode here, just the way you pick your colors.
I also recommend you learn what the extended options little checkboxes do in the transparency palette, they get pretty useful at times :)
Nice posts!
I work with most of the Adobe products and I believe Adobe is a great company that creates great products. With a small exception! Illustrator. What a piece of unfriendly shit. Is not just the transparency that bothers me. The gradient tool drives me mad, the vector editing tool kills me, and generally speaking I find most of the tools counterintuitive, clumsy when compared with any other application Adobe has produced. It could be on pair with all the other products if instead bloating the new versions with stuff you hardly need, will spend some time fixing things like usability, gradient, vector editing, alt+rotate, alt+scale so you could duplicate while executing the other function. The list is long but I believe we won’t get anything fixed until some fossils there are gone. Or bring some management people across from Photoshop. That’s a product that deserves 10 stars