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How to "paste inside" like in Freehand

Forum|Forum|16 years ago
October 30, 2009
6 replies
33302 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

minimum99

Known Participant

I am wondering if anyone interested in a plugin I created to allow clip mask to work like painting paths with color swatches.

That is, you create a library consisting of images (jpg files) you brought into illustrator. Then, you select one or more paths and click an image swatch, the path will be clipped. I also solve all the problems one might encounter when selecting, editting clipped paths. Also, I created a set of, what I called AlphaFinder, similar to pathfinder, but it works with clipped paths as well as regular unclipped paths. My plugin has many other powerful features to edit clipping mask. Attach image show the image library I mention above.