Delete outside of clipping mask in illustrator

[johnbraduly]

Hi,

Could you please give me guidance how I can delete contents which are outside of clipping mask?

Thanks.
John

[_Redrum]

Make sure all your shapes are in the same layer. Then go to the layers palette and make sure your mask shape is the very top object in the layer. After that, just click on the "Make/Release Clipping Mask" button at the bottom-left of the layers palette. If you want, you can also group the objects together afterwards to make them easier to move around and transform.

There's another option. You could select all of the shapes including the mask, then right-click and select "Make Clipping Mask". This method isn't as good because it groups all of the shapes together and does not provide an "Ungroup" option.

I'm not an expert on plain clipping masks, but I think they are somewhat limited. You should consider using Opacity Masks instead. I think there's a tutorial on them in the Adobe Video Workshop.

Good luck!

[xpressions]

I tried what _redrum suggested, but, it didn't work for me....

What I did instead was: create the clipping mask and then in the pathfinder pallette I clicked on "trim", expanded it and ungrouped. This trimmed off the excess outside of the clipping mask.

Hope that helps....

[yossmoss]

upgrade to CS4 and all your problems will be solved

[jecrt]

group everything that you want to clip, the put the mask shape on top (not grouped) - then clip (command + 7)