Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One

Step 14 documents just one of many ways to use the path-of-the-blend

to adjust the appearance of a trail or other shape-morphing effect. Here

are a few other tricks to try out: Using the white arrow tool, drag ei-

ther endpoint in the path-of-the-blend to change the location of one

blended path or the other. If you need more control, use the pen tool

to add or subtract anchor points along the path-of-the-blend. With

the white arrow tool, you can also drag a control handle to adjust the

speed of the blend. Dragging a short control handle results in a fast

blend; dragging a long control handle results in a slow one. Stay tuned:

I explain how to use control handles for this very purpose in Lesson 8.

Making the Most of Clipping Masks

In the last exercise, I showed you how to create blends that don’t re-

quire masks. In this exercise, I demonstrate uses for masks that may

or may not involve blends. (And the blends that you will encounter

are anything but conventional.) Topics include restoring the fi ll and

stroke of a mask, creating compound masks, and nesting one mask

inside another. This is masking at its best.

1.

Open a fi le with paths to be masked. If you’re happy

with the fi le that you saved in Step 16 of the preceding

exercise, open it. If not, open my fi le, Shooting star.ai

found in the Lesson 07 folder.

Figure 7-24 .

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Making the Most of Clipping Masks

2.

Lock and unlock