: How to crate a shine with Illustrator I am new to Illustrator, I bought the image below and I want to put the shine on a diamond: When I delete the gray boxes it looks like this completely

@Holmes874

Obviously the deleted part had an important role through blending modes and transparency. You should let it stay, only edit it to non-disturbing form.

Using this image properly needs full understanding of all details in appearance and layer panels. Without seeing them it is impossible to suggest any precise cure.

When a person watches shiny objects, he rarely sees those rays and glows. A camera produces them easier due much lower ability to cope with high contrasts and the multiple reflections inside the camera lens.

Normal printed or onscreen graphics cannot have the same high contrasts as a shiny object has in a bright light. Thus we have copied the rays and glows which actually are imaging errors and rised them to replace the real shining. This has been usual so long that we any more do not think them as errors.

How to make them at home:
Illustrator has the Flare tool. Unfortunately it concentrates to ball and ring shaped lens reflections and doesn't give much control over rays and glows, which at least I see more important for creative purposes. If Illustrator's Flare tool cannot make what you want, try the following:


have a darkened background. Otherwise you cannot have contrast
draw some lines as thin rays, outline the lines. This makes them narrow rectangles and makes possible to fill them freely.
draw some triangles to represent wider rays
remove the strokes, have only a light fill


You can make rotated copies (Object > Transform > Rotate > Copy) and scale them to different sizes to achieve the needed richness and symmetry easily.

An example:




A few lines, outlined to make them fillable rectangles (Object > Path > Outline Stroke), only fill, no stroke, grouped to keep them together.
A triangle + 7 rotated copies, only fill, no stroke, grouped to keep them together
Shapes 1 and 2 copied and filled with radial gradient center=cyan, edge=fully transparent
Shape 2 copied and blurred (Effect > Blur > Gaussian Blur) and after it filled with radial gradient to make it fade a little faster outwards. Test also Effect > Stylize > Outer Glow as the repacement of blur + gradient. Warning: the settings are tricky for a beginner.
The blurred shape and the gradient filled shapes moved together, blurred is rised on top.


These are your basic blocks. You can repeat them with different sizes, color them, try blending modes transparency, etc... Your time is the limit.

In the beginning start to use the layers panel to find easily different objects for edits and the Appearance panel to see what is applied to the selected object. Clicking an effect or other property in the Appearance panel is the easiest way to edit it. The gradient panel and tool are essential to understand well.

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