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Participant
July 5, 2019
Question

how do i use the knife tool to cut a photo image?

  • July 5, 2019
  • 3 replies
  • 6231 views

My knife tool works when I cut shapes i created; but I used the clipping mask on a photo and now i want to trim it with the knife but the strokes do not appear.

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    3 replies

    Ares Hovhannesyan
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    July 6, 2019

    How to use and edit clipping masks in Illustrator

    Edit paths within a clipping set

    To edit portions of a path that fall outside of the clipping mask, you must first select the specific path within in the clipping mask boundary, and then edit the path.

    • Do one of the following:

      • Target the path in the Layers panel.
      • Position the Direct Selection tool over a portion of the path that appears within the mask. When the path’s outline appears, click it.

      Note:To select a clipped path by clicking it, you must click the portion of it that appears inside the mask.

    • Edit the path.

    Kurt Gold
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    July 5, 2019

    Which version of Illustrator are you using?

    In recent versions of Illustrator there is a dedicated crop function for raster images. You should see it in the Control panel as soon as you are selecting a raster image.

    Participant
    July 6, 2019

    Im using 2019. Im not that familiar with the raster image concept but I did read one thing about that. My image is a creative commons photo from the internet and I cropped it with the clipping mask, now I just need to trim it some more. Could you walk me through what to do with the command your talking about? Im not sure I see this function or know how to use it.

    Monika Gause
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    July 6, 2019

    Do you need to cut rectangular? If not, then the crop function won't help you.

    If you need more detailed help, please show a screenshot of what you have and tell us in detail what you want to do.

    Jacob Bugge
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    July 5, 2019

    Anna,

    Cutting tools are for vector artwork. Why not just crop by the Clipping Mask?

    Participant
    July 6, 2019

    It seems like I can make a cleaner line with the knife no? Is there not a way to do a drag cut on a photo image?

    Jacob Bugge
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    July 6, 2019

    Anna,

    To use the Clipping Mask to crop by, you can Object/Edit>Flatten Transparency, just keep the defaults including 100% Vector.

    This will crop the image to the Clipping Path (or rather to its Bounding Box with the outer parts of the image visible).