No More Picture Clippings on Mac?

[cpbrodd]

I recently updated my OS from Catalina to Big Sur and I'm on Illustrator 2022. I can no longer create picture clippings from Illustrator. I used to be able to drag an object (or collection of selected objects) from my Illustrator artboard to the desktop and create a Picture Clipping file. I create these for consistency across many files or to update old artwork. I just drag a picture clipping from my desktop into an open Illustrator artboard and the objects would appear with all of the layering and swatches intact. Now I cannot drag anything from Illustrator to the desktop at all. It gives a werid noise. I can still use the old picture clippings that I've created, but I cannot create new ones.

Has anyone else discovered this?

I know there arent a lot of folks who use picture clippings, but they have been part of my workflow for decades. I tried using the CC Libraries as a substitute for our studio to use in a similar manner, but it was so slow compared to picture clippings. I just shared the library of picture clippings over the server and everyone in the studio could either drag them from there into their documents or they could copy the folder onto their desktop and drag them over locally. This proved much more efficient than the libraries and easier for everyone to use.

I hope there is a way to get this functionality back. I'm not sure this is an Adobe Illustrator problem or an OS problem. I wanted to ask here first because Apple will certainly have zero clue about this functionality if 99% of Illustrator users aren't even aware of it.

Any help is appreciated.

[Monika Gause]

I am doing this with InDesign, but with Illustrator?

Anyway: 30 years ago there was an old vector file format on Mac OS: PICT. Maybe Apple just doesn't support it anymore. 

[michelew83603738 · Accepted solution]

This is a very old file format and I had thought that MAC stopped supporting it before Catalina, but you are out of luck now. Many apps stopped support for it long before MAC did, unfortunately you will have to find a work around - maybe Snippets in InDesign

[WANNABUN]

It may be a combination of both OS and Adobe updates preventing the use of clips.
I can still drag a clip from a legacy version (Illustrator 2020) I keep running as a backup, in Ventura 13.7 (18/02/25) on an Ultra M2 Studio, but not from any later version of Illustrator.
I'm sure I could do this in Ventura with AIL 2023 before a patch update to Ventura last year (as I have a folder of clips used for annotations on artworks). And only noticed today that the feature no longer works in AIL 2025.
Probably because I had previously given up using AIL 2024/25 as latest versions are still bug laden (e.g freezes, crashes, overprints not imaging correctly using the Apple Silicon GPU - an ongoing issue since the first M1 Macs).

Maybe I will take a look at Affinity Designer.
Adobe did it to Quark. It could happen to Adobe if they keep ignoring the ball on quality by only focusing on profit.
It will be interesting to see what happens.