Auto-generate an opacity mask from the Appearance palette
I've been experimenting with ways to create soft edges and stylized natural textures in my work. I find myself wishing for this to be able to quickly and easily create, say, an erratically faded and mottled edge to a filled path by giving it an opacity mask made up of a jagged white-to-black fade pattern brush, plus some black spots from a scatter brush.
I would like to be able to add strokes and/or fills to a path via the Appearance palette, and have these paths show up in an auto-generated opacity mask for the path instead.
Possibly this might be done by having a 'create opacity mask' live effect, with the 'clip' and 'invert mask' options available, that I could then place additional strokes and fills within.
Alternatively there might be a way to say 'this fill/stroke goes in the opacity mask' - probably also a live effect.
Multiple strokes/fills set to go into the opacity mask should all end up in the same mask.
Margaret Trauth
shared this idea
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Or we can all have this:
https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/32477365--paper-or-transparent-swatch
It would allow any ragged edges, right? -
Why not use opacity 0% and knockout for this?
