How to "paste inside" like in Freehand

[Julie Howard]

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!

[Monika Gause]

You can't select it by clicking on the fill of the mask itself.

Only by clicking on wither the path or on one of the masked objects.

[Ashley-Marie Eden]

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]

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

[Monika Gause]

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@Ashley-Marie Eden  schrieb:

(since Adobe selfishly destroyed Freehand).

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Nope, they didn't. FreeHand was already dead when Adobe aquired Macromedia. You can read about that in this blogpost by one of the developers: https://losingfight.com/blog/2007/05/17/rip-freehand/

On top of that: FreeHand was developed in a programming language that has been invented for exactly the purpose of writing FreeHand. Updating it to newer operating systems would have been kind of complicated.

 But now I'm forced to use it and my productivity is slowed to a crawl. Useless, hopeless and extremely frustrating.

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I've been using FreeHand for 15 years before I switched and during that time avoided Illustrator like the plague. When I made the switch (deliberately, because FreeHand no longer supported my workflows), then only one thing helped: forgetting all my workflows and learning new ones. You cannot expect that everything works the exact same way in an application that is the same age. CoralDRAW, FreeHand and Illustrator have all hit the market at around the same time.

If you have a workflow for which you want an equivalent, then most probably that exists in Illustrator and is also quick, but only different. So you can ask for it. Or if you want it quicker: hire someone to give you a training.

[Ashley-Marie Eden]

Re: Nope, they didn't. FreeHand was already dead when Adobe acquired Macromedia... Hi, thank you for your reply to my grizzling and complaining, but in what manner do you imply that Freehand was already dead when Adobe sabotaged it? lol. I don't think arguing over subjective opinions is helpful so I'll leave it at this one comment: I was using Freehand daily when it was acquired by Adobe, and it was very obvious that Freehand was in direct competition with Illustrator and had a strong following so Adobe purchased the rights to it and basically killed it by removing any available technical support and upgrades. That was nearly twenty years ago when Freehand was the original main stream Vector drawing tool and many of us loved that program. In fact there was a world wide outcry at the time which led to initiatives such as "Free - Freehand" (look it up) which sprang up driven by passionate artists just like us, who also felt betrayed by Adobe frankly. We all used Photoshop and in that sense enjoyed a good relationship with Adobe ... Until they pulled that dirty trick. Now we're wasting each others time discussing something that happened 20 years ago but the passion and the sense of betrayal lives on in many of our broken hearts (emotional rendering intentional lol).

Kind Regards, Ashley.

Ashley-Marie Eden| Technical Writer and Illustrator

+61 449 625 410

ashley.marie@live.com.au

[Ashley-Marie Eden]

I've since been alocated an Illustrator licence and had some tutoring thanks so I'm off and running now. Coming from twenty years of using Corel changing programs is difficult - especially at 61 years old.

[Ashley-Marie Eden]

Re: Nope, they didn't. FreeHand was already dead when Adobe acquired Macromedia... Hi, thank you for your reply to my grizzling and complaining, lol. I don't think arguing over subjective opinions is helpful so I'll leave it at this one comment. I was using Freehand daily when it was acquired by Adobe, and it was very obvious that Freehand was in direct competition with Illustrator and had a strong following so Adobe purchased the rights to it and basically killed it by removing any available technical support and upgrades. That was nearly thirty years ago. Freehand was the original Vector drawing tool and many of us loved that program. In fact there was a world wide outcry at the time and initiatives such as "Free Freehand" (look it up) sprang up driven by passionate artists just like us who felt betrayed by Adobe frankly. We all used Photoshop and in that sense enjoyed a good relationship with Adobe ... Until they pulled that dirty trick.
Now we're wasting each others time discussing something that happened 28 or 30 years ago but the passion and the sense of betrayal lives on in our hearts. Kind Regards, Ashley.

Ashley-Marie Eden| Technical Writer and Illustrator
+61 449 625 410
ashley.marie@live.com.au

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[Monika Gause]

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@Ashley-Marie Eden  schrieb:
and it was very obvious that Freehand was in direct competition with Illustrator and had a strong following so Adobe purchased the rights to it and basically killed it by removing any available technical support and upgrades.

That is not true. Adobe wanted to have Flash. Everything else was just bycatch. They also aquired Dreamweaver and kept it over Golive (their own editor). 
You can basically read about that Flash thing among financial analysts (just look it up - which is what I did). e.g. here: https://www.adexchanger.com/data-driven-thinking/flash-in-the-pan-historical-lessons-of-adobes-macro...

FreeHand was already dead at that time. It wasn't even contained in Macromedia's software packages anymore (the boxes in which they coupled their apps).

That was nearly thirty years ago. Freehand was the original Vector drawing tool and many of us loved that program. In fact there was a world wide outcry at the time and initiatives such as "Free Freehand" (look it up) 

Of course I know FreeFreeHand - I've been there at that time. 

Illustrator hit the market in 1987, FreeHand in 1988 - who was the original?

[The A-hole Artist]

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]

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@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. 

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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]

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.)