Help with Clipping Masks/Clipping paths

[JillyMeps]

Hi,
I am new to the forum and after hunting high and low on web, I am calling to any experts of Illustrator who can help. I am masking an image inside a shape but want some of the image to appear outside of the shape, as per pic here of baby. I know how to do in In-design but not in Illustrator.

If anyone knows the solution, I would appreciate any help.1637

[kialua]

Hi and welcome to the forum, just a couple quick questions to help clarify:

Is this image a photo or a drawing?
Can you tell us why you need to do this in Illustrator?

I think this would most often be done in Photoshop.

[JillyMeps]

Hi

No problem, I would normally do this kind of thing in In-Design but the end product is wanted in Illustrator (out of my control).

The image is a photo, its a photo of a girl which is to go into a circle with an outline stroke but I want to have it so that her head comes outside of the circle. If its not possible in Illustrator, I have tried in Photoshop but my process was very crude and lengthy and there's probably an easy way to do it so if you have any tips on how to do it in Photoshop as an alternative, that would be great.

thanks

[Billb]

Greetings...

I created a new baby pic from the old one. I think if you follow my steps you will get an idea on one way to do this in Illustrator. Others may use different methods but this works too.

First I "Placed" the original baby on the bottom layer.

Then make a layer above this. Using the pen tool, I made a path around just the baby.
Select both layers. then do: OBJECT > CLIPPING MASK > MAKE

This isolates the baby.

Next make a layer below the baby. Using your shape tool, create a new rounded rectangle (filled with color) Here I used orange and blue.

Place your baby over this new box in the position you want. It will be OK to cover some of the blue border up, just try not to go outside the border.

Duplicate the rounded rectangle layer. Move the copy of this new layer to the very top of everything. Get rid of the Fill. (we only need the blue border.)

Make a new top layer. using the pen tool, make a new clipping mask that will keep the blue border visible EXCEPT the small piece in front of the babies head. In other words draw around the whole blue border except over the babies head. now: OBJECT > CLIPPING MASK > MAKE

This should give you what you need.

** The reason we used two blue borders is so that you don't have to screw around with the lower half of the baby. If you are good with the pen tool, you can just carefully cut the baby out and place it on a new rounded/filled box. If your not great with the Pen tool, this gives you a bit of slop to play with, and it will still look good.

Save your new file as an .AI file and you can "place" it back in Indesign to use.

Hope this helps...



Bill

[JillyMeps]

Thats great, I followed your instructions and it worked.

thanks very much
:)

[Billb]

You are welcome! Have fun....:)

Bill

[genroxbro]

I have spent the last few years lost in the depths of PS but since getting involved in a print business I have turned to Illustrator and Indesign.

Just a quick question?

In PS you can clip an image to another layer by holding alt inbetween layers to clip the image above to the layer below. Usefull for clipping images to text etc.

But how do you do the same in Illustrator ? I just want to clip a jpeg to a vector shape.

create clipping mask doesnt want to work as the image does not have any paths?

Any help appreciated

I am using CS2
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