How to make an effects created white background transparent?

[Dani_Dixon@adobeforums.com]

Hello everyone, this is my first post here:

When you create a filled ellipse (in Illustrator CS) and apply the effect ocean ripple (from the menu > Effect > Distort > Ocean Ripple) it creates this great scuffed up edge, but if you place another (non white) object underneath it you see that the holes cut in the object by the ocean ripple effect are not transparent but they are white.

Is there any way to make this white background color created by the effect transparent?

Another thing I tried was to create a group of two objects (say an ellipse on top of a larger rectangle, both different non white colors). Then apply the effect to the group object. You get a great effect but is there no way to make the back rectangle transparent while preserving the ragged edge of the foreground ellipses?

Thanks in advance everyone...

Dani

[B. Philippus]

Dani:

My choice would be to use an opacity mask.

Bert

[Dani_Dixon@adobeforums.com]

Bert,

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm pretty sure that I've tried that. How exactly are you suggesting this be done (using an opacity mask)?

Thanks again,
Dani

[john_wundes@adobeforums.com]

Dani,

An opacity mask is a little tricky so take it slow.

on top of the object to mask, draw your masking object, then cut it to the clipboard.

Now select your object to be masked, and click the "transparancy" palatte until it expands to show the opacity mask options.

You will see a gray rectangle with a thumbnail of your image (to be masked) on the left. Double click the right side of the gray rectangle in the transparancy palatte, and you should get see a new black box appear.
Use Cntrl-F to paste your mask object in place and it will mask your object.
Remember to click back onto the left (object to be masked) box when you are finished playing with the mask to escape "mask editing" mode.

The neat thing about the opacity mask, is you can use grayscale objects to do multilayer alpha blends too... Have fun, and keep posting. :)
-J

[Dani_Dixon@adobeforums.com]

Thanks John for the step by step on opacity masks. I experimented with this feature but it does not solve my problem. I tried using a copy of the same object with the effect applied to it, but the rendered effect is different on the two different objects so the mask does not line up correctly.

When you create an object and then apply any of a number of effects such as Sprayed Strokes, Ocean Ripple, Glass, or Spatter it creates white color around the edge of the object. How do you make this white space transparent?

Dani

[john_wundes@adobeforums.com]

When Illustrator runs the "ripple" effect, It's really creating a raster object, so internally Illustrator is cheating and making a dynamic raster art object who's boundaries are going to be white there is no way to automatically remove the white that I know of.

What version of AI are you using? My "ripple" effect is the same on my duplicated object in 10 and CS on Windows.

The opacity mask trick works. The hard part is getting the correct mask. Here is a quick way to automatically make an opacity mask for your object... Copy your object in place, then use the "stamp" filter, and adjust until the right amount is black, then use the procedure I mentioned in my last post, and you should have an accurate mask. If Illustrator keeps changing the effect on new objects, you could just use the pencil tool, and manually create a rough mask.

If this doesn't work (I tried it and it works for me) then please post specifics of your system, your version, and what steps you used to create you object, and what your object contains. If possible upload the file somewhere, and I can take it apart and see what's going on...