From the course: Illustrator: Seeing Through Transparency

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Learning the two rules of flattening

Learning the two rules of flattening - Illustrator Tutorial

From the course: Illustrator: Seeing Through Transparency

Learning the two rules of flattening

So we understand this concept of transparency flattening. But let's take a closer look and find out exactly what this process actually is. How does this file actually go through this process of transparency flattening? Not only we will get a better understanding of exactly what transparency flattening is, we'll learn to avoid potential problems later on in our workflow. Now I am looking at a document here called blueyellow2.ai. I have two shapes here. The yellow shape has the Multiply blend mode applied to it. So wherever that shape overlaps the blue, I now see green. We already established that PostScript does not know how to print transparency. So when I print this to PostScript device, it's not going to know how to make that area green where the two objects overlap. So Illustrator now has to go through this flattening process, so that the PostScript printer can know what to print. Now, flattening itself actually happens in two stages, or I actually like to call them the two rules…

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