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Answered

How to "paste inside" like in Freehand

Forum|Forum|16 years ago
October 30, 2009
6 replies
33414 views

In Freehand you cut paste inside (cut a larger object and paste it inside of a smaller object). How do you do this in Illustator?

Thanks!

Correct answer Monika Gause

Maybe you're looking for "Draw inside" Using drawing modes

T

The A-hole Artist

Participant

This is one of the things I loved about Freehand and AI complicated it. In Freehand any closed vector shape would be able to have another image pasted inside of it. You placed your item over the shape, at the size and proportions you needed and selected the shape you wanted it to go inside of and selected paste inside from the menu. Voila! the image was inside of the shape (trimmed to the edges of the shape). Later I believe Aldus upgraded the feature so you could move/scale the pasted item while staying in the shape. Every time I would mention this feature to my Illustrator colleagues they couldn't grasp the concept. I think because AI made it more steps. I've seen some answers but I'm new to the forum community.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

@The A-hole Artist schrieb:

This is one of the things I loved about Freehand and AI complicated it. In Freehand any closed vector shape would be able to have another image pasted inside of it.

It's a clipping mask.

If you position your artwork and then Edit > Cut the image that you want to paste inside and then

Select the image you want to use as a mask and press Shift + D twice

then you are in Draw Inside mode

Then just Edit > Paste in place

All these commands have shortcuts.

In order to moc´ve the things around, either use the isolation mode or press the Edit Content button in the control panel.

There aren't a lot of differences in what you can do. It's only different how you do it.

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

The Macromedia purchase was 20 years ago. I can't believe people are still complaining about it. I think it's time to move on...

~~BTW, I did not read the entire thread, but I'm not sure if anyone mentioned Illustrator's draw inside feature.~~ Never mind.

(I was a FreeHand user way back too and liked it better for a couple of reasons. AI did not have a live preview until around verson 4; doing type on the top and bottom of a circle in FH was as simple as typing a return in the text.)

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

Ashley-Marie Eden

Participating Frequently

This is exactly why I've avoided AI for all these years (since Adobe selfishly destroyed Freehand). Illustrator sucks at the most simple operations, and yes, I'm a technical Illustrator so what choice do I have? Corel? Well as it turns out I'd prefer Corel Draw to Illustrator a million times over. I find Illustrator clunky and almost useless in a commercial environment. But now I'm forced to use it and my productivity is slowed to a crawl. Useless, hopeless and extremely frustrating.

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

As mentioned a couple of times in this thread, there is the Draw Inside option, which also will let you paste inside:

https://creativecloud.adobe.com/cc/learn/illustrator/web/draw-content-behind-and-inside?locale=en

S

second_timothy

Participant

Anyone figure this out yet? Anyone have a plugin that might do this? Illustrator is WAY slower than Freehand for this task. When you are doing this all day it really makes a difference.

I created a video to compare the two. If anyone can help us make Illustrator be as fast .. wow ... we would love them forever more.

Check out the video here comparing Freehand 9.0 and Illustrator CC 2015/16

Freehand vs Illustrator - YouTube

Monika Gause

Correct answer

Community Expert

Maybe you're looking for "Draw inside" Using drawing modes

S

second_timothy

Participant

That might work. Now do you know if I can select a mask by clicking the fill? Is there a preference to control that?

P

Peta_2050

Participant

If you are using CS5 it has draw inside tool. You can use the same tool for copy and paste inside (automatic clipping mask).

Hope that answers your questions. (For CS5 users)

Enjoy

JETalmage

Inspiring

So-called Paste Inside in FreeHand and Clipping Mask in Illustrator are really the same constructs: Clipping paths. Their interface is just different (with FreeHand's being far better.)

You don't say what version Illustrator you are using. Up until CS4, Illustrator's clipping paths stupidly displayed all the outlines of their contents when selected, and their dimensions (and therefore alignment, etc.) were based on those of the whole contents, not on the bounds of the clipping paths (extraordinarily cumbersome).

When you apply a clipping path in Illustrator, it removes the fills and strokes of the path used as the clipping path, whereas FreeHand leaves them alone. So in Illustrator, you have to tediously "direct select" (white pointer) the clipping path in order to re-apply desired fills / strokes.

Illustrator's sloppy interface allows you to go through all the motions apply multiple strokes and/or fills to a direct-selected clipping path--and then fails to display them unless you release the clipping path. (It does similar things in many other areas.)

When selected, Illustrator's interface stupidly calls a Clipping Mask a Group in the Appearance Palette (as it does with other constructs). The UnGroup command, however, is unavailable. Yet the constructs created by the Flare Tool is given its own object name, even though it comes a whole lot closer to being an ordinary Group than does a clipping path.

Hideous interface. Slopiness, inconsistency, inefficiency abounds. That's why it's so indecipherable to newcomers.

JET

J

JBinReno

Known Participant

I saw your "old" post while trying to find a way in CS5 Illustrator to accomplish the "paste inside" feature that I loved in Freehand. I see people responding about masks and clipping masks. I'm lost. It seems as if you haven't been an Illustrator user from the beginning, you're left in the dust. I sure miss Freehand. I'm finding that my Freehand MX will no longer work with the latest versions of Apple's operating system. So now I'm forced to try to learn Illustrator. It's really caused my creative genes to screech to a crawl! I cannot agree enough with your sentiments in your post. I really hope Adobe lets someone who is capable and cares to take the reigns of Freehand and resurrect the best drawing program ever!

JETalmage

Inspiring

It seems as if you haven't been an Illustrator user from the beginning, you're left in the dust.

Many who have been Illustrator users from the beginning have been left in the dust ever since--and just don't know it. ;-)

I really hope Adobe lets someone who is capable and cares to take the reigns of Freehand and resurrect the best drawing program ever!

Gag me.

Mainstream 2D vector drawing was set back a decade when FreeHand's competitive development was discontinued. But I'm not interested in returning to 10 years ago, even though in many important ways doing so would still leapfrog Illustrator's current functionality.

In other words, I'm not interested in a ressurrection of FreeHand per se. FreeHand had its problems, too, albeit far less than Illustrator. For example: Tell me how to, in FreeHand, call for a straight single-segment path in terms of length and angle. Tell me how to specify a movement in terms of direction and distance. That's pretty basic stuff, wouldn't you say?

The fact is, mainstream 2D vector drawing is stagnant and has been for many years. There is no mainstream 2D vector drawing progam I would call no-nonsense, full-featured, industrial-strength. There should be--and should have been long before now--but there isn't. The whole category is cheezy grade-school crap. This is largely due to Illustrator's market dominance. But the blame for "market dominance" falls to the addicted-to-mediocrity market, not to the vendor. If users don't demand better, they won't get it.

As for the clipping path thing: The largest problem (display of masked portion) has at long last been corrected. It took decades for this to occur. The stupid and backward behavior of stripping the clipping path of its appearance still needs to be reversed. But there are many similarly inefficient, inelegant, cumbersome and tedious behaviors in AI. Given AI's development history, how many decades will it take to correct them all?

I don't have that much time. A new-from-the-ground-up, truly industrial-strength (truly "professional") 2D drawing program is sorely needed to re-invigorate this important graphics segment.

JET

Monika Gause

Community Expert

Use a clipping mask.

Draw the mask above the obect you want to clip and then select all the stuff and press Cmd/Ctrl + 7

Mask may be a single or compound path or a text object.

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