Free Form Cropping jpeg in Adobe Illustrator

[jayw30539691]

Greetings. I have been trying for hours to learn how to free-form crop part of an image to remove the background. IT IS FRUSTRATING!

I want just to crop an image of a car out of a jpeg image. Can someone PLEASE tell me if this is even possible in AI?

Thanks.

[tromboniator]

You can mask it in Illustrator, but not do a precise crop. That is almost by definition a job for Photoshop.

Peter

[jayw30539691]

Thanks, Peter;

I use PhotoShop and it has changed over the years. I used to use the LASSO tool that grabbed arts of an image, but for some reason it doesn't work the same way it used to. I did find out the I can Clip Mask and do it that way, from direction that the reply stated just below. Thanks so much for your input.

[federico platon]

Raster images cannot be cropped in Illustrator other than using a rectangle frame.

What you can do is mask (hide) the desired areas of the image using a clipping path.

Place your car picture on a file, use the Pen or pencil to silhoutte around it. You will create a path around it.

Select that path and the picture, and choose Obejct>Clipping Mask>Make, (Ctrl/Cmd+7).

The outside area f that path gets hidden.

[jayw30539691]

Thank you! This worked perfectly. Now I just need to figure out out how to smooth the edges and turn the color into outlines for Laser Etching onto a PINT glass lol. I wish I could place an image of my work here, but oh well. lol

THANKS!

[Jacob Bugge · Accepted solution]

Jay,

You can do the dirty destructive deed, with the Clipping Mask selected (exact way depending on version):

1) In the Transparency palette/panel dropdown list select anything but Normal (Multiply is fine); this step is undoubtedly unneeded in your version, you may try without it;
2) Object/Edit>Flatten Transparency, just keep the defaults including 100% Vector;
3) Shudder (optional, unless unavoidable).

This will crop everything to the Clipping Path, so everything outside is actually gone, but a raster image can only be rectangular regardless of where/how it is created so it will have transparency/emptiness to fill its Bounding Box.

[jayw30539691]

Thank you so much, Jacob. I have applied your instruction with others and have found it to work great. Now just to smooth the edges and turn the colors off to make an outlined image for Laser Etching onto a PINT glass.

TAHNKS!

[Jacob Bugge]

For my part you are welcome, Jay.