Whatever happened to minus front and color mix?

[Gary_van_der_Steur@adobeforums.com]

Forced to use AI 10.0.3, I miss:

Minus front... do I really have to jockey stuff around (front to back) or use divide to get this feature? Why would something so basic go away?

Color mix... do I really have to use that phoney effects menu to achieve this? Sometimes I want discrete shapes I can re-color at will. Using divide does not get me started with something I can adjust: If I use divide I must start colorizing from scratch.

Am I missing something? Thanks.

[Gary_Newman@adobeforums.com]

I think you're missing a lot if you think the Effects menu is "phoney." But, to get Minus Front, hold down the Optionkey and click on the second button in the Pathfinder palette (called Subtract from Shape Area). To get the color mix, target the layer/sublayer the objects are on, go to Effect - Pathfinder - Hard Mix or Soft Mix; apply your options, then go to Object - Expand Appearance. Yes, it's a couple of extra steps to get the discrete objects, but allowing those states in between to be "live" does have considerable value.

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

The effect will also allow you to give the object additional fills so you store them and then simply restack for visibility.strokes as well and you can offset them and give them different weights so what you had to do with many objects before you can do with one and do it much better at that and in less steps.And then you can always make a copy and expand and save the original on a non visible layer.

And as you might know there is always hat time when you want to get back to the original but…oh, gee, what did I do…maybe you know what I mean.