Transparency Troubles

[brodym27853669]

Hi, Im pretty new to adobe illustrator and i just need to know how to make my thought come through but i'm having a lot of trouble. At school i am working on a tshirt design for homecoming but i cant seem to get it to work the way i want it to. The colors i can only work with is just white. Thus i am trying to incorporate the transparency of text and using the white outline feature to create the words. I also have an image that i want to surround the text yet i cant get it to not appear in the parts i want it to be. Since the text is transparent and the image is supposed to be white it shows up on the text, how can i change it so that the picture only surrounds the text and not appear on it?

regards, brody

windows 10

[Sjaani]

One approach would be to create two copies of the text, Use Object > Expand one one copy then use Window > Pathfinder > Minus Front.

This will remove the image from the area the text will be place.

With your second version of the text, make sure it is in exactly the same position and apply the transparency effect.

[Monika Gause]

Please show a screenshot.

[brodym27853669]

I'm hope this clears it up

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

So the inside of the text should be background color?

If that is the case:

The following assumes that you don't want to edit parts of this anymore and want to get it plotted for a t-shirt or the like.

1. Put the text in front of everything

2. If the outline around the text is still a stroke: fill the text with red or some other contrast color.

2a: if the outline is already expanded (not a stroke anymore): use the shapebuilder tool and click inside all the letters to fill them with red.

2b: if the text is still editable text: Outline it: Text > Outline text

3. if the outline is still a stroke: Object > Path > Outline

4. Select all and open the pathfinder panel

5. Click on the "Merge" button

6. Ungroup and delete all the red elements

If you still want to edit this

Apply a new fill to the text object

Set it to any color you like and an opacity of 0%

Group everything

Set the group to knockout group.

[Sjaani]

Am I right to be thinking you want it to look like this image?

With your own text of course.

The text is knocking out the spaceship so you can still read the text clearly but also see the spaceship clearly as well.

If this is what you're after.

You can achieve this through the pathfinder technique as described above.

[Jacob Bugge]

Brody,

As I (mis)understand it, you wish to have the text punching through a (white) background object.

If so, you may make the text black in front of the (white) background object without the outline (to avoid adding to the thickness), and you can use live (non outlined) Type or have the letter shapes grouped (or turned into a compound path), then select everything and in the Transparency palette (flyout) click (Make) Opacity Mask, with both Clip and Invert Mask unticked; this will make those parts of the Type/text invisible/transparent, and it is reversible: you may release the mask, then move the white path about and/or change it, and then apply the mask to get a different apparent cutout.

Opacity Masks are all about appearance.

[Ares Hovhannesyan]

May be I am wrong, but it seems that you want to create sumthing like this. Right?