PDF objects suddenly loose quality after cropping in Adobe Illustrator and get pixelated

[Andreas5C23]

I routinely placed and cropped PDF objects within Illustrator, without any issue. From today, when I crop a placed PDF, it gets kind of pixelated after cropping (example below). This never happened before. The quality loss is also observable after exporting the project.

I already removed and re-installed Illustrator, but this didn't help.

Can you please advice how I can fix this?

[Monika Gause]

Exactly how are you cropping it?

[Andreas5C23]

First I select the PDF object with the selection tool. Then I click on "Crop Image" on the Properties panel under "Quick Access". Then I select the area how to crop the image. To finish the process I click "Apply" on the Properties panel under "Quick Actions".

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

This rasterizes the image. So it's not a surprise that you are seeing pixels.

[Ton Frederiks · Accepted solution]

You may want to use Mask Image for linked PDF files.