4.7 Using the Transparency Tool

Welcome back to Affinity Designer Quick Start. In this lesson, we're going to learn how to use the transparency tool. Now the transparency tool is a lot like the fill tool, only instead of filling in color, you're taking color away. So right under the fill tool is the transparency tool, this little thing that looks like a wine glass. So the way that you can use it is select a shape. And then we're gonna add some transparency in a linear gradient to this shape so that it shows through some of this background shape here. So just like with the fill tool, you just draw out the transparency that you want. And then you can see that we've got a nice transparent edge here. And the way that this works is it's just like laying out a gradient. If you have a look up here, you'll see that you actually do have a gradient that you're working with. But rather then adding in different colors, all you're setting in this gradient is your alpha channels. So I can grab the very end point here, and I can change the amount of opacity that I'm adding in with the transparency tool. So you see that changing at the right end of the transparency gradient there. And also, just like with a gradient, I can change the shape of the transparency that I'm applying. So by default, you get this linear transparency. But, you can also use Elliptical, Radial or Conical transparency. So for example, with elliptical transparency, we can have a really nice rounded edge. So you can see you have that soft rounded edge around the outside there. So you can use this to create. A perfectly rounded-off fuzzy edge. You can also with the linear gradient, you don't have to just have transparency fading out on one edge, just like you do with a regular gradient. You can add in extra stops. So I can select this first stop. Add in an extra stop. I can set this middle stop to be 100% opacity. And then I can drag the first stop down to zero. And now we have faded our edges on both the left side and the right side. And also just like with the gradient tool, you can adjust the exact line of your transparency and, you can change the distribution of the opacity levels. And you'll notice that transparency affects both the stroke and the fill. So this is a really, really powerful way to fade shapes into one another without relying solely on things like transparent gradient stops or masking. In the next section of the course we're going to start looking at affinity design is different personas. The first of those being pixel persona, and we're going to start out by having a look at pixel based brushes. I'll see you there.