Adobe Illustrator CS3 - How to Apply Clipping Masks and Blends

Now, in addition to working with masks and text, we can also work with masks and layers. So, what I am going to do here is I will pull my Layers Palette over into my screen, so you can see this here, and I am going to lock down Layer 1 and go and create a brand new layer, of Layer 2 here obviously and I will go and place another graphic, it's Picture 3 this time, Place, there it is there. Now go and draw some kind of an object over top of the picture to act as my Clipping Mask here. I hit D on my keyboard so that I get the default filling stroke, there it is there. Again this could be text if you like or some kind of a shape that I have here and I am not going to select anything, in fact, I will de-select all of my objects here. This is all based on Layers, in fact, this is called the Layer Based Mask, and there is a couple of ways to do this here.

So what's going to happen is all of the object on my layer will be masked here. Just like before though, I have my cookie-cutter or my masking shape on top of everything else that I want to have masked. With the layer highlighted here, I can either click on my Clipping Mask button down at the bottom of the Layers palette or I can go to my Layers Palette Menu and choose Make Clipping Mask. And there is a layer based mask, works exactly in the same way except it's taking all of the objects on my layer into account.

So that's the basics for working with Clipping Mask, so you saw Clipping masks. You also saw working with blends. Let's go and use both of these now in a project file. So, I am going to go File > open here, head to your Project Files folder. Again, it's on you desktop, inside the Part 1 folder, inside Lesson 03 and look for Target Earth.ai here, and then open and what I have done here is I have created two little computer screens here. Imagine these are little periscopes or little viewing screens that perhaps an alien race is using to look at or take a peek at planet earth here.

So what we want to do, is we have our lovely view screen here, we have two of them here, so we are going to do this twice and what I want to do is I want to pop the graphic into the background here and have it masked away form the rest of the object here. So I have already inserted some text here, little task list here, some fun little things here and Sector Read-Out and so on.

Now, take a look at your Layers Palette, I want them docked over on the right, I will pull them back out here. So I have two layers happening here, I have Metal Frame, that's the Metal Frame that I have created here, turn them on and shut them off so you can see what I have there. Then also have another layer here that I called Screen Stuff, so anything that appears on the screen here appears on the Screen Stuff layer.

So the first thing that I want to do is adding some aligns on my screen. I am going to do this by using a blend. So make sure that you are on the Screen Stuff layer and I am going to set my Stroke to a red and my fill to None, so if we take a look at the bottom of my toolbox there, I'll just hit the X key to switch my fill to the front and then my forward slash key to set it to None, and I will grab my Line Tool here and at the very top of my little computer screen here I am going to click-and-drag using my Line Tool here, and I am holding down Shift, so that I get a perfectly straight line. Hit V on my keyboard, there is my line, and I will just use my arrow tools here just to sort of nudge it into place here, so I have one line at the top and what I am after is a whole series of lines, all the way down to my screen here, so I want it to look like a little computer monitor here.

So, I'll hold down the Option key here on the Mac or Alt on the PC, drag it down here, hold down Shift as well to lock it into position and I will drop it right there. There is my second line there, I will grab both of them, just by Shift+Clicking here I will create a blend. So I will go Object all the way down to Blend and then make not exactly what I had in mind, but I will go and tweak my blend, Object down to Blend and then Blend Options. I will switch to specified steps. Rather than 221, I will try 50, there we are, click on OK, looks pretty good. The only other thing I am going to do is use my Opacity Option on my Control bar just to fade it back a little bit, I will try 50%, looks fantastic.

Now, the next thing that I want to do is I want to drop my graphic onto my computer screen here. The easiest way to do this is I am going to go and create a new layer inside my Layers Palette and you will see how I'll create my Clipping Mask from there. So, I will go and create my new layer, I will double-click on it here and I will rename it Mask, drag it underneath Screen Stuff and then I will go and grab one of my graphics File and Place, I will use Picture 1, place it, there it is. You can see there is a slight red tint to my computer screen as well, that's one of my objects on the Screen Stuff layer there that has a little bit of opacity applied to it. So there is my graphic, but it's not perfect, it's not clipping to my computer screen here. So I have to create my Mask here.

So the first thing that I will do is, I will position my Graphic. Again, my cookie dough if you want to think of it like that and then the second thing that I will do is go and create the actual masking object. And in this example, I will just use a rectangle, and the idea here is to create an object that sits behind this Metallic Frame, something like this. So there is my object there, back to my Black Arrow Tool, select it there, my Clipping Object Highlights, don't forget that Clipping Object has to be on top of the graphic that you want to clip. I hold down Shift and I click on them both and remember your keyboard shortcut, it's Command+7 on the Mac or Ctrl+7 on the PC and the graphic is clipped or masked to that rectangle that I just drew. Single click away and that's how things are looking pretty darn good.

Everything that you saw just a minute ago applies, that could come back in here with my White Arrow Tool and I could click on my graphic in the background here and move it around just a little bit until I have a position exactly the way I want here, may be I decide I want to have something like that, wonderful, perfect! That's kind of a neat thing that you can do with your clipping masks here in Illustrator. We have one more, pretty much the same idea here so I have this object here, I have already gone to the effort of creating your lines here, but I did that in the exact same way just using the blending mode there and I will go and grab a graphic that we want to mask, I'll go down to Place here, Picture 2 and then Place, there it is there. Imagine this is what a robot or an invading alien monster sees as he is walking down Main Street, USA here, something like this, okay.

Now, I am going to do something a little bit different here, I am not going to drag a rectangle to mask this here, only because I have this little nose piece here which is going to cause me a little bit of problems here, but I do have an object right here, if you click anywhere between any of these grid lines here there is an object here, which is giving me that green tint and I am going to use that guy as my clipping object. So what I will do is I will copy them and then paste them in front, Command+F or Ctrl+F on the PC, hold down Shift and click on my Main Street graphic here and then use my keyboard shortcut Command+7 or Ctrl+7. Now, again we have a staking order issue here, we have had a few of these along the way, so I will just take my graphic here and send it all the way to the back. Command+Shift+[ on the Mac or Ctrl+Shift+[ on the PC, and there we are. So now we get to see what it's like to invade a home world, pretty cool stuff. Just like you saw a moment ago, I can use my White Arrow Tool here and of course change the positioning of my graphic here, may be I decide I like something like that, very lovely. And there are some of the cool things that you can do with blending modes and clipping masks in Illustrator.