Using the Hard Mix and Soft Mix effects

The Hard Mix and Soft Mix Pathfinder effects let you control the mix of overlapping fill colors. (See Step 2: Select overprint options for overlapping colors.)

Important: You can also control the mix of overlapping colors using the blending modes in the Transparency palette. Blending modes provide many options for controlling overlapping colors, and should always be used for artwork containing spot colors, patterns, gradients, text, or other complex artwork.

Pathfinder effects can only be used on groups, layers, or sublayers. For more information on using effects, see Using effects.

• The Hard Mix effect combines colors by choosing the highest value of each of the color components. For example, if Color 1 is 20% cyan, 66% magenta, 40% yellow, and 0% black; and Color 2 is 40% cyan, 20% magenta, 30% yellow, and 10% black; the resulting hard color is 40% cyan, 66% magenta, 40% yellow, and 10% black.
• The Soft Mix effect makes the underlying colors visible through the overlapping artwork, and then divides the image into its component faces. You specify the percentage of visibility you want in the overlapping colors.

Note: Applying either the Hard Mix or Soft Mix effect to objects removes their strokes and groups the objects.

In most cases, applying the Hard Mix or Soft Mix effect to objects painted using a mix of process and spot colors converts the color to CMYK. In the case of mixing a non-global process RGB color with a spot RGB color, all spot colors are converted to a non-global process RGB color.

If you overlap multiple objects, all overlapping objects are given the visibility level you select.

To mix colors by selecting each highest CMYK component value (Hard Mix):

1. Select a group in the artwork, or target a group or layer in the Layers palette. (For more information on targeting, see Changing the appearance of artwork using the Layers palette.)
2. Choose Effect > Pathfinder > Hard Mix.

To mix colors by specifying a mixing rate (Soft Mix):

1. Select a group in the artwork, or target a group or layer in the Layers palette. (For more information on targeting, see Changing the appearance of artwork using the Layers palette.)
2. Choose Effect > Pathfinder > Soft Mix.
3. Enter a value between 1% and 100% in the Mixing Rate text box to determine the percentage of visibility you want in the overlapping colors, and click OK.