Participant

Question

Is there any way to crop in Illustrator?

Forum|Forum|10 years ago
April 6, 2015
7 replies
52568 views

I feel like this ought to be a simple process but I can't figure out how to crop an image in Illustrator. Do I need to crop the image in a different program and then bring it into Illustrator, or is there a way to crop in Illustrator? Sorry if this is a dumb question with a really obvious answer I am missing.

This topic has been closed for replies.

G

George5C82

Participating Frequently

adobe loves to make very simple thing absolutely impossible ... thanks adobe....

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

Is Object > Crop Image impossible?

G

George5C82

Participating Frequently

No unfortunately not, and clipping.masks doesn't want to work either

Adobe always seems to make really simple operations difficult to do and it
doesn't matter which program you're using.

Thanks Adobe

George Lorimer
General Manager
PAPR SOLUTIONS
personal details removd by moderator

K

kercheval

Known Participant

Open pathfinder (View-pathfinder).

Place a frame over top of a vector image, select all. Click the crop tool in pathfinder. It will be the 4th button from the left.

What I recently found out, if the crop doesn't work, then the frame is too complicated. I revised my frame and it worked fine.

Very simple, most of the answers here are too complicated for me...

Lindas Lovely Loot

A

Anonymous

This is not answer, rather building on your question, kymg.

I also need something like "crop" in AI CS6, but having tried the masking and other hints I realize that asking for crop was not the right question. Gives too much freedom to give a perfectly accurate, but perfectly unusable answer.

I really need an answer to:

"How do I force the "export" function to save only the area left visible by the clipping mask?"

or

"Regardless what the functions are called, how can I generate non-vector graphics showing only a subset of the vector graphics (object collection) in the AI file?"

So far I see that advice (Larry G. Schneider) of making new artboard will lead to the desired effect and the one (Jacob Bugge) with flattening transparencies does the job, although seems to be changing the AI file irreversibly. Is there no way to just do it based on the (simply rectangular in my case) clipping mask without the irreversible change?

bilboleo

Participating Frequently

Kymg, apparently your answer is "NO" you cannot directly crop an image in illustrator. The only info Adobe help gives is to use Photoshop to crop, which is just stupid. The workaround is the clipping mask activity that SRiegel provided (or anything similar using the clipping mask). Jacob's answer sounds like you will need to learn to be an expert with Illustrator before you can get it to work. Cheers.

sishamIAGD

Community Expert

Illy is a program to create vector graphics not and image manipulation program (like Photoshop) so why should you need to crop images? But if needed using the clipping mask is just fine.

bilboleo

Participating Frequently

sishamDDS,

For a few reasons (at least):

1. We (my company) purchased Illustrator (or the design suite) as a replacement for CorelDraw, which it was specifically marketed by Adobe as being most appropriate for. CorelDraw does allow for import and manipulation of image files within the program, so there is a direct representation between the two programs and what users may expect to be able to do with them.

2. Illustrator allows for the import (place) of images, so why not the manipulation of them once inside the program? I find it disingenuous to require me to go out to another program to crop (or resample, which I have not been able to figure out how to do either) an image file before I bring it into Illustrator. If I have to go through ALL of this crap to take care of simple steps, why shouldn't I just stay with the competitors program?

3. I tried Photoshop; it is even less user friendly than Illustrator. And to spare you the details, I just won't go there.

4. In addition to cropping an image, I would like the file size to decrease as well when I do crop (remove the unneeded parts). Illustrator seems to expand quite rapidly in file size as new images are placed, putting an otherwise unnecessary load on my computer.

I appreciate you attempt at a response, but as kymg asked, it's about cropping an image. Going through 3 steps to create a clipping mask works, but it seems like a lot of extra effort if you have to do so repeatedly. I would like to think that some of these discussions about what can't be done in Illustrator get back to the developers so they can improve their product, thus the explanation here. Cheers

Larry G. Schneider

Community Expert

Or make a new artboard the size of the area to be cropped and use Export with Use Artboards checked and the number of the artboard in the Range box and replace the image with the new one.

Jacob Bugge

Community Expert

kymg,

In addition to what SRiegel said, if you wish to really, literally crop, there is the dirty destructive deed, with the Clipping Mask selected:

1) In the Transparency palette/panel dropdown list select anything but Normal (Multiply is fine; this step may be unneeded in your version, you may try;

2) Object>Flatten Transparency, just keep the defaults including 100% Vector;

3) Shudder.

This will crop everything to the Bounding Box of the Clipping Path.

C

claudspet

Participant

Hi. I am brand new to Illustrator. Trying to learn my way around it. Why do you call the way you described destructive? Is this a bad thing?

Thanks

M

mecdos

Inspiring

destructive means that you modified the artwork in such a way that you can't go back to the original without Undoing. example: if you apply a contrast effect on an image, at any time you can remove the effect and have the original image look the same again. but if you adjust the actual contrast on that image not as an effect, you may not be able to go back to it's original contrast.

S

SJRiegel

Legend

Draw a rectangle the size of your crop area, select the rectangle and the image. Then Object > Clipping Mask > Make

M

mc_mark

Known Participant

I have CS6 on Windows. I have a vector based file containing artwork created for an older project. I need to take part of this artwork and repurpose it for a new project. The original file has dozens if not hundreds of layers. I've drawn a rectangle around the area I want to crop then did Object > Clipping Mask > Make and now just the part of the artwork I need is shown. But now I need to send this cropped artwork off to a 3rd party in .ai format but before I do that, how can i permanently delete all the artwork that is hidden by the clipping mask? I don't want the 3rd party to be able to release the mask and see/have access to everything I hid.

sishamIAGD

Community Expert

You could release the mask then select all, use the divide pathfinder tool, then select everything outside the rectangle with the direct selection tool and delete.

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