Hey there. In this video we're gonna do this little image in the  background here where it's kind  of like a full stretchy background  and it's kind of washed out. It's kind of got a green tone. We'll look at how to do that in Illustrator. All right, first up, let's bring in our image. Now there's two ways of bringing it in.

Um, we can drag it from our library. Okay? If we've got it in there or we can go to file place. Now this will alter how we make it say black and white. Okay? So I'm bringing the image,  I'm dragging it nice and big.

Um, great. And if I do it this way, it becomes very easy  to convert to black and white. Um, and I'll show you what, I'll show you that now  and then we'll look at some of these other images  that are linked to say your library. And they become, they're not harder,  they're just an extra step. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna crop  it in where we need it. Actually, let's make it black and white first before we go  and crop it into the um, square in the background to do.

It's quite easy, have it selected  and go to edit, uh, edit colors and convert to gray scale. Now there's not a lot of control in Illustrator. How you convert to gray scale. It just goes you are gray scale and hope for the best. If you wanna be a little bit more controlling over  what goes, you know different colors go different grays. You can do this in Photoshop.

Now this is not a Photoshop course  so we're gonna leave that out. But if you are, if you do really need that control, jump  to Photoshop and do an adjustment layer called,  it's called a, uh, it's under layer adjustment layers  and it's called black and white. And you get a lot of control over how  to convert it into black and white. Save it, then bring it into Illustrator. Okay? So that's pretty easy though.

And illustrate, and I'm happy enough with the results. And if I wanna do the exact  same thing, I'll pop you up there. I wanna do the exact same thing to say this graphic in here,  because it's tied to my library,  it doesn't let me do as much. Watch this. If I double click it, double click it again,  I've got my image, okay? And if I go to the exact same thing, edit  and go to edit colors, you'll  notice it's kind of grayed out.

It's just one of the things  that happens if you're using stuff from your library. 'cause it's kind of connected. If you update your library  item, it updates here. So it doesn't want you messing with it  to mess with it, okay? Is you just go click embed. Okay?

So keep double clicking it  until you've got your image, okay? And then go to embed. And then you'll notice you can edit, edit colors  and convert to gray scale. Okay? So I'm gonna undo,  'cause I don't want to convert him to gray scale. I just wanna let you know if you've got that problem,  it might be your logo that you're trying to do it  for anything you've imported.

Okay? So we've got 'em Gray scale, I'm gonna put 'em kind  of roughly where I want him  and remember he has to be at the back. Okay? Um, and then I'm gonna select both of these two. Then I'm gonna use my shortcut command seven on a Mac  and Ctrl seven on a pc. Okay?

And it's kind of what I want. Um, but what I wanna do is give it that kind  of greeny dark look. And there's two stages to it. Um, you grab your rectangle tool. I am going to, yeah, grab, grab your rectangle tool. I'm gonna draw out a rectangle that covers  the whole document there.

Okay? And I'm gonna give it a fill of black  and I'm gonna give it a stroke of none,  which already is great. And we're gonna lower the opacity. You can lower the opacity a  few different ways in Illustrator. We're can use this one along the top here. I'm just gonna go down until we're kind of like happy  with the background, depends on what you want.

Okay? Now obviously this is over top of everything. So what I'm gonna do is gonna go right click  and I'm gonna go arrange, instead of going all the way  to the back, I can go all the way to the back. Okay? Now it's behind this image. So I'm gonna click on this image and say you're at the back.

There we go. Okay. So it's looking better, okay? I want to add that kind of green tinge to it. So you might leave it here and decide. Actually I'm gonna kind of crank up the opacity.

I'm gonna have this kind of like background washed  out black look. Okay? And that's fine. And next thing I wanna do though is,  oh, stop playing around with the colors Dan. Okay? Is I'm going  to create a new rectangle on top of all of this.

Okay? So I'm gonna deselect in the background first. So black arrow, click in the background,  then grab my rectangle tool, makes it easier. Draw a rectangle at the top. I'm gonna make this my green right now I need to get it  behind, okay. Kind of sandwiched.

I want it in front  of the black box in the image. But behind all the text, there's a couple of different ways. Different trainers will show you different ways. Um, what I wanted, what I find easiest to do is just kind  of move it off 'cause it's easier to snap back together, is  actually I'm gonna send this guy to the back. So you, the green box, you go to the back, okay? And then these guys, okay, I wanted to bring it  above these two.

So I'm going to grab you, okay? And I've just kind of untied them all so I can see them all. So I can click you hold shift, grab the black box,  right click both of them and send it back. Okay? So the green box is the back. Now these guys are behind that green box,  but in front of this text.

Okay? So that's how I do it. Okay? There's different ways, um, using the layers panel. Okay, you can, that's my way. Now what I wanna do is,  obviously this doesn't quite work, okay?

I am just covering everything. So we're gonna use something called a layer mode  and that allows us to, you could just lower the opacity  and that kind of works okay? But it doesn't give me the look that I want. I really want this kind of like strong black  with green filling in the edges. Okay? So that would work.

But what I'm gonna do is, yeah,  something called a layer mode. And you do it by clicking the word opacity at the top there. So black arrow, click, green box, click opacity,  and up here where it says normal,  that does exactly what you think it was. Um, and you can play around with these ones. You can see, hmm. It's just, it's a way of um,  that green box interacting with the stuff behind it.

Okay? Instead of just using opacity,  you can use these other modes, okay? They're all slightly different. And if you've got different image with different colors,  you are gonna find a different LA mode that's gonna work. I'm gonna use soft light mainly  'cause I played around with this already and I like it,  but soft light's a little strong. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna  just lower the opacity of it.

So I'm using LA mode and opacity  and it looks, I like it a lot better  than just lowering the past. You can see it's kind of like still got the vivid whites,  oh sorry, vivid blacks in the background,  but it's kind of tinted as well. So I can still, um, get that green in the uh,  fill in the holes with the green. Alright, my friends, that is how you wash out a background  and add a bit of a color to it as well at the same time. All right, onto the next video.