Possible to achieve desired effect? (see post for details)

[seannymurrs]

I am designing an image that is going to be printed onto a t-shirt for the track & field team that I coach. The design has multiple overlapping layers, and I'm looking for a way to achieve a specific effect where the layers overlap. Basically, I want the layer in the rearmost position to end slightly before it touches the layer on top. I know I'm not doing a great job explaining this, so I'm attaching some images that will hopefully show what I mean. For the moment, I've simulated the effect by having a black background on the image and giving the top layer a slight black outline. When we actually get the shirts printed, however, we don't really want the black outline printed. What we want is for the area shown in the closeup image attached to be the plain black t-shirt showing through (no ink printed there). Again, I'm sorry for not doing a better job explaining things. I'm brand new to this, and I don't know official terminology for anything. Thanks in advance to anyone who can assist.

 

Edited May 10, 2019 by seannymurrs
Circled specific area of screenshot in red.

[gdenby]

Hi, seannymurrs,

If I've understood what you want correctly, you want the background very dark grey to be right next to the black outline around the golden color shape. 

Try this. Select the golden shapes, which appear to me to have both a fill and stroke assigned to them, and make the stroke aligned to inside. The default is middle, so the stroke projects beyond the edge of the shap a little, and over lapps the shapes on the lower level.

 

Hope this helps.

[Alfred]

Are you trying to convert a black stroke around the shape (as shown on the left below) to a transparent gap (as shown on the right)? If so, you can do it by using the ‘Expand Stroke’ command to turn the stroke into a separate shape, and then using the ‘Subtract’, ‘Divide’ and ‘Delete’ commands to isolate and remove the unwanted parts of the background shape.

[seannymurrs]

On 5/10/2019 at 3:36 PM, Alfred said:

Are you trying to convert a black stroke around the shape (as shown on the left below) to a transparent gap (as shown on the right)? If so, you can do it by using the ‘Expand Stroke’ command to turn the stroke into a separate shape, and then using the ‘Subtract’, ‘Divide’ and ‘Delete’ commands to isolate and remove the unwanted parts of the background shape.

This worked perfectly! Thank you so much, I never would have figured that out on my own.