Fading edges of an image in Illustrator CC 2019 has square edges

[Meklee]

Hello hoping someone can set me straight. I have an image that I have masked with a white filled circle and a gaussian blur. The top/bottom/left and right edges result in being square. The image is considerably larger than the masking shape in case that's in question.

The masking was accomplished once the gaussian blur was applied to the circle by selecting both the image and the circle and applying the make mask option under the transparency panel.

What am I doing wrong? Thank you

[Monika Gause]

You might want to show something so we don't have to guess.

[Doug A Roberts]

Can you show a screenshot with the masked image selected and the transparency panel visible please?

[Chad Chelius]

Your technique seems to work but one thing I noticed is that if you try to scale the image, what you're really doing is scaling the mask and the image together and I saw the straight edges that you mention. If you unlink the mask and the image in the Transparency panel, then you can scale only the image within the mask resulting in a smooth edge. See my example below.

[Meklee]

Everything is to size. Cirlcle is 40" in diameter with a gaussian blur of 100 pixels. Image 75' wide by 50" tall. Seems the square edges occur on the circlee bounding box,

[Chad Chelius]

Click on the Mask icon in the Transparency panel and then show us the Appearance panel. Did you try unlinking the mask and the image in the Transparency panel and then making the image bigger?

[Monika Gause]

Go to Effects > Doument raster effects setting.

Increase the "Add" value

[Ares Hovhannesyan]

You need to use Opacity Mask instead of Clipping Mask.

How to edit artwork using transparency and blending modes in Illustrator

[Meklee]

I'll read through that Ares when I have some time. Thank you!

For Chad, unlinking did not help. Hope this is the capture you requested. Thank you as well!

[Chad Chelius]

Any chance you can share a link to the file?

[tromboniator · Accepted solution]

Go to the Effect menu and click on Document Raster Effects Settings. With a large blur setting the default setting raster effects setting will give you the straight edge you are noticing. Set it to some larger (possibly much larger) value and the sharp edge should eventually disappear.

Peter

[Meklee]

tromboniator, thank you and increase to 3" around object fixed my problem.

[tromboniator]

You're welcome. And thanks to Monika as well: she posted the correct answer before I did, but it didn't show yet.

Peter

[Doug A Roberts]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Ares+Hovhannesyan  wrote

You need to use Opacity Mask instead of Clipping Mask.

How to edit artwork using transparency and blending modes in Illustrator

They are using an opacity mask already.