: How to make a shape that blurs the image behind it in illustrator? Im still familiarizing with illustrator here and I have an image on the canvas. I need to make an image (drawn using paths/pen

@LarsenBagley460

You can try using an opacity mask.


duplicate your image (keep original on bottom of stack)
apply a blur effect to your duplicate image
draw a shape, using white fill and no stroke
select both the shape and the duplicate image (by clicking the selection bubbles on the right side of the layers panel)

in Transparency panel, click Make Mask

to move the mask, click the mask thumbnail (in transparency panel) to make it active and then, in the active art click the center point of the shape and drag it to a new position

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@Megan533

Is this something that is absolutely critical to do in illustrator?

You could duplicate your entire design, place it in a clipping mask on top of the original design and apply a gaussian blur to the layers in that clipping mask accordingly.

This type of task however is ideal for photoshop to handle rather than illustrator.

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