Making Transparent Overlays Is Easy in Illustrator and Freehand; Just Copy and Desaturate.
Janet Ashford
CREATING CONTRAST between graphic elements sets items apart and increases the impact of your message, and this is especially important for type. Outlining text with a contrasting color or placing black text over a lightened area (called a screened background) increases readability.
Screening a background is easy to do in Adobe Photoshop, but now you can achieve the same effect by using the Desaturate command in PostScript illustration programs such as Adobe Illustrator 5.5 and Macromedia FreeHand 5.0. Using Illustrator 5.5, I employed this technique to create a panel that sets off the type for a wine label.
Janet Ashford is the coauthor, with Linnea Dayton, of Adobe Illustrator: A Visual Guide for the Mac (Graphic-sha/Addison-Wesley, 1995).
1. Preparing the image. The background image is an original
photograph of the Mendocino, California, coast (a). I scanned
the image into Photoshop; converted it to grayscale (Mode:
Grayscale); and posterized it (Image: Map: Posterize), with a
Levels setting of 4, so that it contained only four gray tones
(b).
2. Converting to PostScript. Opening the file in Adobe
Streamline, I autotraced the scan by using the Outline mode
(File: Convert) and saved the resulting file in Illustrator EPS
format. In Illustrator, I filled each region with a custom color
by selecting all the gray regions (Filter: Select: Same Fill
Color) and changing the color in the Paint Styles palette.
Streamline can convert color bitmapped images into color EPS
files by selecting the most prevalent colors in the image, but I
preferred to create a custom color palette.
3. Making the screen. To create the screened background, I first
copied the art (Edit: Copy) and pasted it in front of the
original (Edit: Paste In Front) so that the two were exactly
aligned. I then moved the copy to a new layer (Layers Palette:
New Layer). With the objects still selected, I applied the
Desaturate filter (Filter: Colors: Desaturate) several times to
lighten the image. To create the panel, I positioned an oval
over the lightened copy and masked the copy into the oval shape
(Objects: Masks: Make). The oval shape falls over the original
art, lightening the area and providing plenty of contrast.
4. Applying the type. After using the Desaturate filter, I
adjusted the white shapes in the oval area (Filter: Select: Same
Fill Color) by adding a pale-green fill (10% cyan and yellow) to
the shapes. I then added black type over the panel and a black
border with pale-green type at the top (see the finished piece).
