Additionally, the Stylize commands let you apply special effects such as drop shadows, glows, and more to type and graphic objects. Even after the Style is applied, you can continue to reshape, transform and retype the objects and the Styles will update with your edits. Be aware that commands under the Effects menu are duplicated in the Filters menu, the difference between the two is that only the commands in the Effects menu are editable. To eliminate confusion, though, it would be better to combine both menus into one. Illustrator 9 introduces the new Transparency palette to apply varying levels of transparency to any object, bitmap or type character.
Transparency also applies to layers, groups of objects, knockout shapes, stroke and fill.
You can create special effects, such as confining blending to a group of objects while leaving outside colors unaffected, create graduated transparencies on blends, use opacity masks on one layer to affect layers and objects below that layer, etc. Using the Transparency palette, the magenta circle makes use of the Overlay setting and an Opacity of 50 percent. Illustrator 9 introduces two new types of Masking, Opacity and Layer Clipping Masks. Opacity Masks allow masking of underlying artwork, using the change in luminosity of the overlying artwork to affect the objects beneath. Colors, patterns, and gradients in the mask are visible on the underlying artwork.