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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Margaret Trauth
commented
> Why not use opacity 0% and knockout for this?
I might not have known about that when I wrote this! I do this to manipulate stuff regularly now but it's definitely got its limits - it works for on-off edges but not for *soft* edges.
And... Imagine this Appearance stack:
* solid yellow fill, hard light blend mode
* gradient fill with one of the many Photoshop effects that only output greyscale - halftone? reticulation? graphic pen? craquelture? - set to be the opacity mask for the first fill
* solid red fill...for a result like the attached image. Which could have everything adjusted without ever having to perform the awkward dance of entering and leaving the opacity mask. Pile up another fill with another opacity mask, with two or three PS effects on it, and there's all kinds of weird textures that start being available *really* cheaply and quickly. Save this stack as a Graphic Style, start drawing more interesting shapes/type with it, things can get pretty wild.
Actually maybe I should just make a new uservoice here for "let one fill/stroke act as an opacity mask for another fill/stroke of the same object, or an opacity mask for the entire object", my desires here have definitely evolved in the decade since I made this one.
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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?
