Crop multiple images at once

If clipping the images (instead of cropping) is a sufficient alternative, I can imagine to provide a one-click-solution.

Would clipping/masking be okay?

You can do this very easily in InDesign, but not Illustrator.

Set up multiple Graphic Frames of the same dimension.

Select all of the Frames.

Under the Object menu go to Fitting > Frame Fitting Option > choose Fill Frame Proportionately and Align from the Center point then click OK.

Go to File > Place, select all of your images and press Open.

Click each Frame to Place your images.

You may have to make some minor adjustments afterward.

It's not possible to crop multiple images with one command.

You probably did this already, but...

My suggestion to your case is:

1. place your images side by side.

2. Draw a rectangle on top of the first image. It will be the clipping masks later.

3. Alt-drag that rectangle on top of each image and place them ready to clip images underneath.

4. Return to first image and select both the image and clipping object.

5. right click and select Make Clipping Mask

6. Repeat to each image.

-––––

If you want to crop those images (delete pixels outside of the clipping area), then continue..

7. Select first clipped image and go to Object > Rasterize.

8. Repeat to each image

Second (or better, first) option is to do it in Photoshop and then place them to Illustrator.

Note to Adobe: There could be a feature to do this – Crop to clipping mask. Of course this would be problematic with any other forms than rectangles. But you could use alpha-channel to solve that problem.

You can't actually crop images in Illustrator unless you use a plugin like Rasterino from Astute Graphics. Without the plugin you are just masking the image, not cropping away the pixels.

What exactly are you trying to do? Maybe you can share a screen capture to explain.

Why would you not do this on photoshop?