Perfecting the transparency of your digital icons is an essential part of graphic design. Learn the ins and outs of identifying and resolving transparency issues within your designs in a detailed, step-by-step process.
Key Insights
- Identifying transparency issues involves creating a layer over your icons with a distinctive color like blue, then moving this layer to the bottom to discern any opacity issues within your icons.
- Fixing transparency issues may require using tools like the shape builder to remove unwanted elements, or altering the fill of your icons to none to ensure they are fully transparent.
- After resolving the transparency issues, it is important to save your work and delete the identifying layer, leaving you with a set of fully transparent, visually appealing icons.
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In this video, we'll be reviewing our icons and double-checking that we've maintained all the transparency. Let's start by zooming out so that we can see all the icons we've created.
Next, I found that the easiest way to check for transparency issues is by using the rectangle tool to create one layer that covers all of the icons and fill this layer with any color. In this case, I'll use blue. As the next step, we're going to move this rectangle to the bottom, either by dragging it or by using "CTRL + Shift + [, " and we'll see that it's below.
Now we can tell where our transparency issues are. We can see them in our wrenches, on our computer monitor, and in our helmet. So let's get busy fixing these.
To do this, we'll hit "V" on the keyboard, and next we'll zoom in and shift our perspective over so that we can fix the wrenches. To do this, we can simply click on the group, and because it's only made up of shapes with a black outline and white fill, we'll click on the fill and select "None." We've now fixed our transparency in our wrenches.
Let's scroll down, and next, let's fix the white spaces on the computer monitor. To do this, we'll click on the group first, and then double-click. Because these are white, if we click and select them, holding "Shift" as we select them, if we change the fill of our transparency, we’ll see a black background beneath. Therefore, we need to use the shape builder tool and remove them from the shape.
With these items selected, we'll hold "Shift" and select the monitor as well. From here, we can use the shape builder tool to simply click on the background and remove these objects from our background. We'll then hit "V, " and holding "Shift, " we can click on the path of the monitor so that we only have these items selected.
We'll then hit the delete key to remove them, and go back to our monitor, find the path on the edge, and select black for our fill within the color panel. This object is now transparent. We'll double-click outside to exit isolation mode.
Finally, I'll hold "CTRL" while I scroll down with the mouse, and we'll fix our last transparency problem. From here, I'll double-click and click the helmet. I want to select only the outside of the helmet, so I'll double-click and select just the helmet. As we can see, we have a white fill.
I'll simply change this to "None, " and our object is now transparent. I can exit here and scroll out. Looking at all of our icons here, they're all fully transparent. We’re now done with our rectangle, so I'll click on it and delete it. Let’s now save our work by pressing "CTRL + S" on the keyboard to save.
In the next video, we’ll be customizing our helmet and glasses for our midterm project. See you there!