Apply Effects on No Fill, No Stroke

[Illist]

Hi all,

I would like to have just the effects only applied to a shape/path i.e. no fill and no stroke. We can do that in photoshop but I've not figured out how to do it in Illustrator

e.g. a Rectangle shape that only has drop shadow/inner glow.  How can we achieve it?

[Mylenium]

For the most part you can't. AI simply works differently and doesn't know these blending tricks. Feel free to experiment with the transparency and appearance options.

Mylenium

[Doug A Roberts]

depends what you want... you can sort-of do something similar by having two fills, the top one with 0% opacity, apply knockout group, then give a drop shadow to the lower fill:

[Illist]

Hey Doug,

That's some creative workaround there, a 'Why didn't I think of that' eureka moment!

I've used Knockout on groups of objects but never as a stacked Fill this way. Thanks for the creative tip.

[whamalamaboom]

Thanks so much for posting this!

[sPretzel]

Great idea too! Thanks Doug.

[jeanne.kyle@pimco.com]

Fantastic! This worked perfectly for me to create an outer glow around a transparent graphic - thank you thank you!

[mikey_likes_it]

I would like to offer one more step to get this to work. At least one more step that gets me the final result. You need to select "Isolate Blending" on the bottom fill in addition to the "Knockout Group."

[Janduza · Accepted solution]

I found a work around. (I'm on a Mac with CC 2018)

1. Create any path shape. (rectangle, ellipse, free form)

2. Fill the shape with a gradient fill and no stroke

3. Set both gradient colors to opacity: 0%, but keep the fill opacity at 100%

3. Group the single object

4. Apply the effect to the Group (not the shape).

You can put as many shapes as you want in the group, they will all get the effect. It worked for me using inner glow, outer glow, and drop shadow.

[b_hoch]

This was perfect. Thanks!

[sPretzel]

Excellent suggestion Janduza. Thanks. I wonder why this feature, as described by the original poster, is not part of Illustrator's standard functionality. At present, whether a fill or stroke is made invisible OR is visible with a fill or stroke set to "None" produces the same result. I would expect the effect applied to a visible fill or a visible stroke set to "None" to produce the same result as the workaround, as a standard functionality (it is not the case, unfortunately).

[ZeidG]

You're a genius! Simple solution that never came to my mind.. Thanks

[Chris White at Raynors]

Wow. Genuinely clever. Many thanks. I think Adobe owe you for this one.

[mikey_likes_it]

This doesn't work as you describe. Can you provide a working file? I have followed your steps for a drop show and it fails. 

[mediwing68524287 · Accepted solution]

For some reason the mentioned technique no longer works for me. BUT I found another work around.

1-Use either elipse or pen tool to draw shape (rectangle tool doesnt work)

2-make a linear or radial gradient on the shape.

3-change both the fill colours to 0% opacity

4- add dropshadow