Using the opacity mask in adobe illustrator to make reflections in your graphics.

With this tutorial you will learn how to use the opacity mask in Illustrator to create reflections in your graphics. While you can achieve the same effect in Photoshop, working in Illustrator can yield surprising great results and will also help you learn a new technique which you can use in a variety of ways.

So the first thing that I want to show you is the final product so you can get an idea of where we are going with this. You will see this popular technique almost everywhere you go to check a fairly new website, it provides with a great glossy effect that is attractive.

Also as you can see I am a big fan of Boba Fett and I am using the cartoonish version of him for demonstration purposes.

Steps

01- After opening Illustrator and loading the image of you choice, the first thing you will do is to select it by clicking on it.

02- Right click on the image which will pull a dialog box like this one and choose transform and then the reflect item on the menu.

03- Once you click on reflect another box will open which will allow you to choose several options. The ones you care for are the horizontal and copy. By doing those two you will now have an upside down version of your image exactly on top of you original.

04- The next step is to move that top most, upside down image a bit under like the graphic below to start the process of the reflection.
You can position it any place you want distance wise, but it needs to be perfectly aligned to your main or top image. To do that click on the picture at the top (the one upside down) then while holding the shift key drag it to keep it in line and then release it where you want it.

05- Next you need to create the mask or cover for that image at the bottom. The mask is a rectancle or any other shape that needs to be a bit larger than your image but not by much.

06- Then you need to fill the box (mask) with a gradient that goes from white to black. The mask works by letting the white areas become visible and the black areas to not show through.

After selecting the gradient tool place your starting point on the top most section of the square and while holding the shift key, pull down about a quarter to half way down to achieve the effect. However keep in mind that you can move it further down or up to change the way it looks. So play around to see what you get.

07- Then you need to select both images at the bottom not the one on top. Like the example below. After which you will go to your transparency pallete and select the tiny triangle on the right side of thepallete which lets you view more options for the tool.

08- At this point you are pretty much done. Perhaps one thing you can also play around with is the opacity of your mask final product.

If you want to leave it at 100 % it will look fine, or you can take it down to somewhere between 50 and 75 % for the opacity to show more of the background. For the example below I saved it as a png. Enjoy.