Participant

Answered

How do I crop a photo in Illustrator?

Forum|Forum|17 years ago
May 29, 2008
39 replies
2195781 views

I can't believe I can't figure this out. (I came over from Freehand, and it was simple).

All I want to do is:
1) Crop a placed photo within Illustrator
2) Create a border around it.

I can't seem to find the answer in any help file. Is it so simple in Illustrator that they don't explain how to do it? I don't want to create crop marks for the entire image, just crop off part of a photo without going back into Photoshop. How?

Thanks very much.

Mark

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer

Clipping paths and masks can be temporarily applied, and then released from release (accessible in the objects panel). This can restrict parts of the image for viewing, or make them viewable again layer. Here is a link to a video explanation: click here

Go to view --> show edges or use (control H or cmd H)
Press V on the keyboard (brings up selection tool), then click the picture you are wanting to crop
Somewhere on the screen (probably top), a mask button appears on top of the control panel
Click the Mask button (in that control panel) --> creates a clipping mask

Two buttons at the far left of the same panel that had clipping mask button show up (far most left-two buttons). after you click the first of those buttons, use (keyboard a shortcut) to start clicking anchor points at the far-most corners of the image

After selecting topmost anchor points, use shortcut shift down.
You can select any edge (made of at least two of those anchor points (and use shift key + UP DOWN LEFT RIGHT aft)

ANOTHER TRICK= OPACITY MASK

Use the shape drawing tools (i.e. ellipse tool) --> then use a white fill color (optimally)
Create white circle atop the car (or above the vector artwork)
Use V key to select the white ellipse, then shift select the car to select the image behind the ellipse, and then open the transparency option (window panel ==> transparency panel)
Within the transparency panel, expanding the menu that appears, and select the make mask button, which allows you to see ONLY WHAT YOU HAVE IN THE FILLED SHAPE or ellipse (as shown in the video linked at the top).
you can adjust the mask or the artwork you are trying to restrict and also, you can release any of these clipping masks

Advantages over cropping:

In the video, you can actually modulate some property of the clipping mask (say add a gradient and opacity mask), which actually saves you some time by allowing you to not only crop, but change the entire image, and making it easy to release that mask so your raw materials are usually in tact.

Show previous replies

M

matttexp04

Participant

There has always been a crop tool ACTUALLY.. I just got CS5 not too long ago and have found that is has been renamed to Artboard Tool.

Use this tool to create the bounding box and once you're ready to export, do so and then click on the 'use artboards' box at the bottom of the export window.

Fray55

Participating Frequently

Thanks, that's all I needed.

I

inzam

Participant

if you want to crop any image.than i will suggest you to visit the link below

http://www.raiseitsolutions.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2

thank you very much.

W

Waylon_Diablo

Participant

You miigt be able to solve some problems using the art board tool. this tool will help you "resize the canvas" so to speak. ; )

Jacob Bugge

Community Expert

Has anyone (else) noticed the dates from the OP until post #3?

H

Harron_K_Appleman

Inspiring

Yes.

Kurt Gold

Community Expert

The Links Palette is another option in case we're talking about rectangular crops. A couple of stumbling blocks included.

T

TheMarkness

Participant

If you use the clipping mask tool, it will "crop" your image, but if you try to export it as a raster file, your dimensions will remain the same as the original photo's dimensions, meaning you will have white space in your jpeg/png/bmp/gif/tif file where your clipping mask is...I've had this problem before, the way I deal with it is...get ready...I use MS paint to easily crop out the white space by pulling the image limiters(little blue dots)to only where my image should show, rotating the image if necessary, and repeating the process until I have my image cropped...no need to go back into photoshop, or even use photoshop.

One of the RARE times when MS paint comes in handy...to be honest, I've never used it for anything else.

H

Harron_K_Appleman

Inspiring

If you want to totally eliminate content outside a mask in Illustrator (giving you a true crop), you can use the following method:

Select the path that you would have used for the clipping mask and, instead of making a mask, fill it with, oh, say, white. Then, set the opacity for that masking object to 0% using the transparency palette/panel. Then, with that object and the underlying raster image selected, flatten transparency. (Use 100% vector on the quality slider and make sure the 'Preserve alpha channel' option is unchecked.) Ungroup the result.

You should now be able to independently select the various portions (inside and outside the mask) and discard those you don't need. The links palette/panel will show you what's going on.

You can use this method with multiple clipping masks in a single operation. You don't even have to initially embed the underlying image for this to work.

F

fspidle

Participant

Thanks for this, I've used the clipping masks, but I didn't know how to flatten images. After the clipping mask, I have cropped, then exported as an image file in order to print. For some reason Illustrator couldn't deal with the masks and complicated images below when asked to print.

_

_Mark_Nadell_Author

Participant

Cool. Great videos, thanks.

Amazing how sometimes Freehand was sooo much easier.

Mark

PrepressPro1

Legend

Yeah, there is no "Paste into" in Illustrator, you will get used to using masks to crop your photos. I like it a lot better then the way I had to work in Freehand.

R

rvdebby

Known Participant

Not sure if I am misunderstanding. I am very new to illustrator,but ctrl V pastes into it very well.

Mario Arizmendi

Legend

As Kev Say, illustrator don't crop an image, it mask the image

see here migrating to Illustrator
http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/illustrator/articles/illcs2am_creativity.html

see here tutos on illustrator basics
http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop/

mdeclaro

Participant

here some illustrator.

http://www.adobe.com/colordesign/videoworkshop.com

K

KC29

Participating Frequently

You can't really "crop" a photo in Illustrator the same way you can in Photoshop. It's not designed for that.

In Illustrator you can mask out an area you don't want. Search the Help pages under "Clipping Mask"

A

Anonymous

Correct answer

Clipping paths and masks can be temporarily applied, and then released from release (accessible in the objects panel). This can restrict parts of the image for viewing, or make them viewable again layer. Here is a link to a video explanation: click here

Go to view --> show edges or use (control H or cmd H)
Press V on the keyboard (brings up selection tool), then click the picture you are wanting to crop
Somewhere on the screen (probably top), a mask button appears on top of the control panel
Click the Mask button (in that control panel) --> creates a clipping mask

Two buttons at the far left of the same panel that had clipping mask button show up (far most left-two buttons). after you click the first of those buttons, use (keyboard a shortcut) to start clicking anchor points at the far-most corners of the image

After selecting topmost anchor points, use shortcut shift down.
You can select any edge (made of at least two of those anchor points (and use shift key + UP DOWN LEFT RIGHT aft)

ANOTHER TRICK= OPACITY MASK

Use the shape drawing tools (i.e. ellipse tool) --> then use a white fill color (optimally)
Create white circle atop the car (or above the vector artwork)
Use V key to select the white ellipse, then shift select the car to select the image behind the ellipse, and then open the transparency option (window panel ==> transparency panel)
Within the transparency panel, expanding the menu that appears, and select the make mask button, which allows you to see ONLY WHAT YOU HAVE IN THE FILLED SHAPE or ellipse (as shown in the video linked at the top).
you can adjust the mask or the artwork you are trying to restrict and also, you can release any of these clipping masks

Advantages over cropping:

In the video, you can actually modulate some property of the clipping mask (say add a gradient and opacity mask), which actually saves you some time by allowing you to not only crop, but change the entire image, and making it easy to release that mask so your raw materials are usually in tact.

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