Hi all, 

Hopefully what I am requesting is easy to do. I am trying to create a shape by taking the negative of a complicated background. I attached an example. I made a bunch of people icons out of simple shapes. I now want to expose the gradient background underneath the people to reveal a shape. Ideally, I would like to impose I would like a blurred transition fading out the people as the gradient background becomes more prominent. For simplicity I drew a circle, see example in the link below. 

Can some show me how to do this? 

example pic 

Thanks in advance

I'm not sure what's your goal here, but you can apply a radial gradient to that central ellipse. try using a transparent colour at the perimeter and an opaque colour at the centre,

@Paddy_Cad

Thanks for the quick reply. 

What you suggested wont work because under that ellipse are just people icons. What I want to do is similar to a shape option of subtract. Rather than a single shape it is a bunch of the people shapes. Underneath the people shapes is a background later I want to reveal. See the pick here example... a shape is etched into the material. I want an arbitrary shape to etch into the people shapes below it. With the people "cut" I should be able to see the background gradient underneath. That is what I am going for. 

Something like this?

@Tyler Durden

great movie btw!

exactly that!

How did you do it?

The people figures are grouped. The white shape is duplicated, the duplicated object is stroked and blurred with fill removed. 

The z-order of objects higher in the list is more in the foreground:

• Shape
• Group of people paths
• Blurred copy of shape
• Gradient rectangle

The inverted clip cuts the hole in the group object.

The cool part is that the group can be entered and its contents can be revised:

This is awesome thanks so much!!!

@Tyler Durden

Quick update!!!!

What do I need to do differently if I wanted to do two shapes. I am making a question mark, and I can only do the top or bottom piece of symbol. 

The two shapes can probably be made into one using Path>Combine.