Tips for reducing glare of a fade to white gradient

urbansurgeon

Perhaps its a similar effect you find with those grids of black squares on a white background and the brain fills in grey corners at the corners ... [hide]http://www.chromewalker.com/cw_six/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/illusion.gif[/hide]

But, has anyone come across any technique to diminish its effect, if thats what it is, when applying a gradient to nothing in an image?

by way of an example - a quick mockup. To me there is a flareup as the gradient diminishes to the background colour that appears brighter than the background itself.



how to remove it, or is it not universal / not important?

hope you can help

chris

try a bit of blur as it fades out? perhaps reduce the opacity in general?

urbansurgeon

do you see it too though - or am i mental?

chris

i know what you mean, but that doesn't mean that you aren't mental

urbansurgeon

oh i didnt see that coming

urbansurgeon

OK next question then. How to apply a blur with drop off in AI?

i know how to do it with PS but can effect use alpha clipping masks in AI?

chris

i guess you were blinded by the glare illusion.

chris

i think i'd copy the shadow, blur it, and then alpha mask that. there may be a 'proper' way to do it, but for now...

urbansurgeon

who said it was a shadow?

chris

i did.

urbansurgeon

didnt spot the typo tho

chris

i did, but only when i was going to redo it in illustrator here (i then didn't bother as i've a huge number of site updates to complete today )

Meska

Blur adjusted in several places, but the illusion still exists. You may have to live with it.

urbansurgeon

yup - the more i blurred the muddier the band at which the blurring started became

i'll live with it

it only happens on a white background

Black Window

Have you tried to combine masks and layers to both perspectives of the gradient where the flare up is? (does that make sense?)
DOH (too early for me I apologise)

What I mean is instead of focusing on the dark gradient to light have you tried isolating the light towards the dark.
Maybe in isolating a few of the light areas into seperate layers a few "obvious" adjustments is all that's needed.
I would try and experiment myself and tell you what I found but shit I'm ill with flu so...

Meska

I did. No real difference. Optical illusion on screen. Wonder what it's like printed?

anon-e-mouse

have you tried it with a different background colour.

Meska

it sort of works, but only on colours that don't have that "middling" flat tone between that middle of that blend. Has to be either darker or lighter than it.

anon-e-mouse

.

Meska

urbansurgeon

baseisdead said...About the way the shadows are projected, are they in caps because you have descenders in surgery?

precisely

baseisdead said...you already have a U and and R in SUrgery that could directly be shadows from the U and the R in URban, I'm fairly sure you could do more with the other letters too, it may be harder to read being a more genuine shadow, but it also may be a better logo.

you maybe right - anytime something like this takes me over a couple of hours and i get quite bored, i have a petebyte woth of logo ideas and haven't implemented any of them

a bit similar to BW this was an occupational therapy while down with the flu. i noticed the effect - wondered about the solution and kept fiddling

mega thanks for the advis