Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
FERSTER
Adding Highlights
Using Transparency to Create Highlights
Advanced Technique
Overview:
Create highlights in objects for the interior of the cell using the Blend tool; stack
them and lower opacity; create highlights with gradients for other objects and reduce opacity;
create a bright lens flare.
Adding transparency to blended or gradient-filled objects, or conversely, eliminating
transparency beneath a lens flare, gives you a great deal of versatility when
constructing believable highlights.
1 Using multiple techniques for blending colors in order to simulate natural highlighting.
When Gary Ferster wanted to illustrate a living cell, he chose various methods for
constructing blended highlights. For the mitochondrion (pinkish objects), he used
the Blend tool to create two initial shapes, one very light, and one the “local” color.
When blended smoothly, this method created soft highlights. He then stacked one
blended object over the other and reduced the opacity in each, in order to make them
appear to be part of the cell. For the small bubbles (lysosomes) and nucleus in the
cell, however, Ferster used simple radial gradients with a very light center gradating
to the local color of the object. By adjusting the gradient stops, he could make high-
lights bigger or smaller, with sharper or more feathered edges, and then adjust opaci-
ty to blend these objects into the cell.
1
After creating an object by blending a light object with a
darker, same-shaped object to represent a highlight,
transparency further blends the “lit” object (mitochondrion)
into its surroundings
