white parts to transparancy

[lukasd94158633]

so i used white blocks to "cut away" several parts of an icon i'm creating.
I was wondering if it's possible to save the icon, whereas the white parts will be transparant, but still cut out the parts needed to cut out for the icon

so as you can see, it's a simple icon design, but the white parts should be transparant!

[Ares Hovhannesyan]

Are you going to print or save this icon as bitmap. If you will choose PNG they will be transparent.

[lukasd94158633]

that didn't do it

[Doug A Roberts]

Select just the white parts. Make a compound path (Ctrl + 8). Select the white parts and the black, then in Pathfinder panel click on Minus Front.

[lukasd94158633]

I'm using mac, i tried cmd+8 but didn't do anything

[tromboniator]

Actually, it should work just fine to select all the parts and click on Minus Front, as long as the white paths are in front of the black one.

[Doug A Roberts]

Ach yeah, of course.

[Ton Frederiks · Accepted solution]

Select all.

Select the Shape Builder Tool: Shift M

Hold down the Alt key and drag over the white parts.

[Jacob Bugge]

Lukas,

Another (reversible) way is the old Opacity Mask (with Clip unticked and Invert Mask ticked), after Grouping the white paths and selecting them along with the relevant black part(s).

[Doug A Roberts]

One more:

Select just the white parts. Reduce their opacity to zero. Group them with the back parts, and tick Knockout Group in the transparency panel.

[Cactus Cowboy]

I'd heard about this method but never quit understood it. This simple explanation solidified it crystal clear to me thank you Doug. It's like finding little gold nuggets along the path of life.

[Doug A Roberts]

You mean knockout groups?

[Cactus Cowboy]

Yes, the knockout groups portion of transparency. Your explanation helped me finally get it. I'm using Win CS6 so I'm far behind the current version but I don't think Adobe has messed much with the Transparency tools even in the newest version although I could be wrong.

With the method you gave it leaves the conversion completely "live" and using the appearance panel I can go back and change the size of objs on the fly as in the screenshot below

                                  

[Jacob Bugge]

Cactus Cowboy,

You may call the Knockout Group the intricate transparency/opacity masking; as implied by you the usual (lack of) explanation/instruction is of little help, in contrast to the exquisite instruction from Doug.

I usually just point to the Opacity Mask when both ways may be used and limit the Knockout Group suggestion to more special cases, but I may change that.

[Cactus Cowboy]

Another joyful side effect I found is that exporting the finished proj to .svg all obj's are recognized as paths...excellent! No linked bitmap residue to mess with so kudos to Adobe and the W3C for working closely on that one. Here another screenshot with sandwiched knockout.

                                

[Cactus Cowboy]

I'm afraid I let my enthusiasm override my post before I checked the file in the browser. The effect isn't (I repeat, isn't ) recognized in .svg format. I'm sad that more interest has been shown in this promising file format supposedly the replacement for the long beleaguered .eps format. I blame us the artists for not voicing enough enthusiasm. 

[Monika Gause]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Cactus+Cowboy  schrieb

I'm afraid I let my enthusiasm override my post before I checked the file in the browser. The effect isn't (I repeat, isn't ) recognized in .svg format. I'm sad that more interest has been shown in this promising file format supposedly the replacement for the long beleaguered .eps format. I blame us the artists for not voicing enough enthusiasm. 

SVG is a completely different beast than EPS.

[Cactus Cowboy]

Indeed it is my friend. indeed it is.

[Monika Gause]

The W3C working group is working on specifications for knockout groups in SVG: SVG Compositing Specification

[Ton Frederiks]

And another variation:

Select the black and the white objects.

Hold down the Alt key and click on the Minus Front icon in the Pathfinder panel to make a Compound Shape.

[Cactus Cowboy]

Not to argue with Ton's reply as it works great but I think Doug's answer using the transparency's knockout option is the better choice as it leave it as a live effect that can readily be available in the appearance pallet where as using live paint you'd have to leave it in live paint to change anything and commits the effect once you expand it. Just my opinion. No disrespect to choice or Ton intended.

[Ton Frederiks]

There were lots of good solutions, knockout groups, opacity masks and compound shapes all are good, non destructive solutions.

The shape builder isn't.

[Doug A Roberts]

This is one of those questions I like because there are so many viable answers.

[Jacob Bugge]

There were more of them when the hills were higher (when we were young).

[Ton Frederiks]

When I was young I used this way: