How to work with Images & Blending Modes in Illustrator

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Course contents
SECTION: 4
Keyboard Shortcuts 14:06

Questions

Course info

104 lessons / 10 hours 33 quiz questions 31 projects Certificate of achievement

Overview

Hey there, I'm Dan Scott, an Adobe Certified Instructor with over 16 years of design experience under my belt, I'm part of the Adobe Expert program, and my online and in-person classes have been attended by more than a million people, just like you! Join me as we dive into the exciting world of Adobe Illustrator Advanced! In this course, you're not just leveling up in Illustrator, you're transforming into an Illustrator SuperHero!

In this course you will work on a bespoke brief designed to ignite your imagination, coupled with immersive course videos, you'll be crafting jaw-dropping graphics in no time. Throughout our journey together, you'll flex your creative muscles and construct projects that will elevate your portfolio to new heights. So, let's dive in and unleash your creativity!

You’ll learn:

  • - How to use artificial intelligence to boost your creativity in ideation. 
  • - The quick way to take hand-drawn sketches and vectorize and color them. 
  • - The building blocks needed to set you loose on a huge variety of beautiful effects and techniques.
  • - To make beautiful charts and graphs for your documents. 
  • - Color mastery to make quick color adjustments, Pantones, and blend it all together beautifully.
  • - How to master images inside of your illustrator workflow. 
  • - To harness all the secret gems that'll help you level up your typography skills. 
  • - All the tricks of the trade for drawing complex shapes easily. 
  • - To double your creativity with the Transform and Distort section. 
  • - To speed up your personal workflow to get the most out of your creative day.

Explore the full course outline for a comprehensive list of topics that will expand your Illustrator prowess beyond imagination.

If you're already comfortable navigating the basics but want to  unlock the true potential of Illustrator, then this Illustrator Advanced course is your ticket to becoming a master of Illustrator! So join me and the ranks of design superheroes and let's embark on this thrilling journey together.

Requirements:

- All you need is a copy of Adobe Illustrator, you can get a free trial from Adobe here to get started.
- A basic knowledge of Illustrator is required. I recommend watching my Illustrator Essentials course prior to embarking on this epic adventure.

Who this course is for:

- Creative adventurers who already have a basic understanding of Illustrator.
- Self-taught Illustrator enthusiasts yearning for structured guidance.
- Graduates of my Illustrator Essentials Course, hungry for more knowledge and skills.
- Visionaries who have developed their own unique Illustrator approach but crave exploration of the vast universe of tools, updates, and time-saving techniques.

What you'll learn:

- How to use Text to Vector Ai
- How to use Text to Pattern Ai
- How to use Generative Recolor
- When to use the Scissor Tool, Eraser Tool & Knife Tool
- Advanced Shape Builder Uses
- The differences between the Pathfinder Vs Shape Builder
- How to use the Join tool & Joining Path Ends
- Advanced Pen Tool Tricks
- Width Tool Advanced Techniques
- The Curvature Tool
- How to master corners with corner widget effects
- How to work with Compound Paths
- The difference between Expand & Expand Appearance
- How to create Graphic Styles
- How to make Symbols
- How to use the Smooth Tool
- Advanced use of Simplify Path
- What Live Shape Effects are for
- How to make Repeating Grids & Concentric Circles
- How to make Random Objects
- Advanced Keyboard Shortcuts in Illustrator
- How to add a Gradient on a Stroke
- How to add a Gradient in Text
- How to use the Freeform Gradient tool
- How to use Advanced Color Swatches
- How to use Global Color Swatches
- What is the difference between RGB vs CMYK color modes?
- How to proof colors
- How to use Pantone Spot Colors
- Recolor Artwork & Changing all colors at once
- How to use Blending Modes
- How to work with Images & Blending Modes
- How to make Black & White Images
- Learn Advanced Workflow Tricks
- All the Super Selection Mastery
- How to use the History Panel
- Advanced Fonts Tricks & Tips
- Use Retype to know what Font is being used
- How to put Text Inside a Letter or Shape
- How to use the Touch Type Tool
- How to add a Connected Stroke Around Multiple Shapes
- How to Offset a Stroke with Text
- How to make a Bar Chart in Illustrator
- How to make a Pie Chart in Illustrator
- Layer Power Moves
- Advanced Artboard & Pages Tricks
- How to Unlink vs Embedded Images
- How to Crop Images Rather than Mask
- How to Mask Inside Text & Multiple Shapes
- How to you use the Puppet Warp Tool
- How to use the Distort Envelope Shape & Type
- How to use the Envelope Mesh
- How to blend lines together
- How to make a Linocut Effect
- How to make 3D Gradient Lettering Blends
- How to spin text into a ring
- How to turn text into a 3D donut shape
- How to make a Duotone image effect
- How to make a Roughen Stamp Vector Effect
- How to make a Neon Sign Glow Effect
- How to use a Halftone Effect using Plugins
- Advanced Exporting Assets Tricks in Illustrator
- How to use the Dimension Tool

So what're you waiting for? Let's start the course now!
Daniel Scott

Daniel Scott

Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor

instructor

I discovered the world of design as an art student when I stumbled upon a lab full of green & blue iMac G3’s. My initial curiosity around using the computer to create ‘art’ developed into a full-blown passion, eventually leading me to become a digital designer and founder of Bring Your Own Laptop.

Sharing and teaching are a huge part of who I am. As a certified Adobe instructor, I've had the honor of winning multiple Adobe teaching awards at their annual MAX conference. I see Bring Your Own Laptop as the supportive community I wished for when I was first starting out and intimidated by design. Through teaching, I hope to bring others along for the ride and empower my students to bring their stories, labors of love, and art into the world.
True to my Kiwi roots, I've lived in many places, and currently, I reside in Ireland with my wife and kids.

Certificates

We’re awarding certificates for this course!

Check out the How to earn your certificate video for instructions on how to earn yours and click the available certificate levels below for more information.

Downloads & Exercise files

Transcript

Everyone uh, this video we are going to trap, first  of all an image inside of a giant letter. Okay? We've done that before. Clipping mask  and then we're gonna look at blending modes and watch this. Okay? We can do the same thing we did  with text, but with images.

In this case, we're gonna kind  of like line up two different letters  and offset it a little bit to make it look cool. Um, but yeah, basically the same principle as before,  but we're gonna deal with images. Alright, let's jump in. Okay? If you wanna follow along exactly. Uh, open up blending modes.

O2. You don't need to basically just need a colored box. Uh, this doesn't really work very well  as you've got a completely black background  or a completely white background. It's better with color. Um, blending modes just work that way. The interaction is what is useful.

So, um, what we're gonna do is let's type in a giant letter. Uh, having the tiki for my type tool. I'm gonna click once and I'm gonna type in G select it  and I'm gonna pick the font that I'm using. I really like Museo. Okay? Um, it's uh, if I could spell it Muo.

Okay. It is a nice big font. You can find it on Adobe fonts, uh,  fonts adobe.com and download it. Okay? Just pick any font. Um, I'm gonna use the rounded version.

I really like it. Big, thick, rounded right there. All right, finally found it. Um, and size-wise. You can go through here and update it. I list like grabbing the black arrow, holding shift key,  grabbing this and just dragging it bigger.

It's just like the cheap way to get the size,  especially if you need to go up something massive. Alright, giant G. Um, now let's bring in an image. So we're gonna place an image. The shortcut is command shift, P on a Mac, uh,  control shift P on pc  and in your exercise files there  is one called blending modes. O three, it's jp.

Um, I'm gonna drag it so it kind  of covers my letter. Okay, you can resize it afterwards. Um, now the way the clipping mask works to get it inside  of it, okay, we need to make sure that the G'S on top. So what we're gonna do is I'm going to send it  to the back command shift. Uh, first square bracket, kinda sends it to the back  or control shift first square bracket. Um, I've got a locked background.

Um, that's why mine, I've got a background. It's locked just to make things easier,  that's why mine didn't go behind here. But we need the G on top of the image. Select both of them. Okay? And then we hit command seven  or Ctrl seven on a PC and it's inside.

Hooray. Now blending modes, I'm gonna select it  and just like we did before, go  to opacity and I'm gonna go to normal. I'm gonna go to darken. Okay? I think on PCs you can hover above these  and it will actually like give you  the, you don't have to click on them. Um, yeah, I have to.

Okay, so I'm gonna work my way through  and I practice this already  and I like, I like overlay and it's kind of cool. I like the way it interacts. Like your image and your background color will  determine what this looks like. So if you got a different image  and a different background color, those won't look the same. It'll be kind of the same using overlay  but not the exact same. So the thing I want you to remember when you are using  and experimenting with these is you often combine them.

Okay? So let's say that I like this, I'm gonna copy  and paste it, I'm gonna move it out. The other weird thing is watch this when I move it out,  what is happening, okay? Blending mode. In this case, the overlay needs the  image to interact with this color. When it doesn't have the color  behind it, it just looks like that.

And you'll notice it looks different over here. If I move this in front of everything, which is,  it's in front of that text now, but  because it's white, it doesn't really do anything. It's like above it. But anyway, um, so yeah, uh, it has  to be over the top of some color  and I'm gonna say you are gonna stay overlay  and you are going to be multiply. Um, again, this is just 'cause I practiced before  and don't be afraid again to mess around  with the opacity of that. Okay?

So I'm gonna say you're down  and I'm gonna get this kind of like  overlaid combo thing going. So I can see through the multiply okay to the overlay  and it kind of interacts nicely. I like this kind of like little offset  thing you saw at the beginning there. Some sort of like, again, kind of retro 3D thing. Misprint misregistration, okay? When you're doing kind of physically print,  when they don't quite line up, I dunno, it's kind of cool.

There you go. Um, interesting note is  that if I double click on this, okay,  well let's separate them out. I can go and adjust this. I can double click it, um, to get  inside and edit the text. 'cause the text is still editable. You just gotta make sure the image still  lines up, which mine does.

So you might end up having to move the letter  or the image to kind of move it around. So remember I'm inside in isolation mode. Double click the background to get back out. Okay? Double click into the object to get the text and the image. Okay?

You might wanna line the bike up nicely with the D  or G and undo, I want mine back to being a G. There you go. That is how to do blending modes with images  and trapping them inside of a letter. Alright, that's it. I'll see you in the next video.
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