Copying a rectangular PART of a drawing consisting of many objects!

[landau66]

Hi everyone!

I am relatively new to Illustrator so I better explain the result I whish to achieve.

I have done a very nice drawing in illustrator. Now I want to copy a rectangular part out of it. I want to draw an rectangle and position it at a certain area of the drawing. This area of the drawing should be copied inside my rectangle. In the end I want to have one object or a group of objects. Is this posible whithout a clipping mask????

Many thanks in advance and greetings from Vienna Austria
Landau

[eugenetyson]

You should be able to draw a rectangle over your image and select the area using the white arrow tool. Just draw a marquee around the rectangle area as tight as you can.

Then you can use the pathfinder (probably divide or something) select around the frame now to delete the rest of the items. And leave yourself with the rectangle.

Might have some cleaning up to do after this.

[Lukas Engqvist]

Just curious perhapps.

[eugenetyson]

Well clipping masks still leave a huge image, it's just masked, right? So cutting away the unwanted parts and making the size you need might be what's after here.

[FreelanceIllustrator]

eugenetyson is right, the pathfinder tool is the way to go with this task.
I would make a copy of the entire illustration and save it (or just resave the file as something else) then group all the objects together. Then draw a rectangle where you want it to be, and fill it with 30% white so that it is translucent. Look through the rectangle to see if it is positioned in the right spot, then select both the rectangle and the group, and in the pathfinder palette, click crop. (it's the 4th one from the left on the bottom of the palette in CS4).
That will completely cut everything outside the rectangle, and you won't have any cleaning up to do.

Note; This only works with closed paths. If you have strokes, you will need to convert them to paths (Object > Expand, or Object > Path > Outline Stroke OR in the case of Brush Strokes - Object > Expand Appearance) before you can do this.

Hope this helps you...

[landau66]

Thanks for all the good advices but I see now that I still cant solve my problem. Ok, I will go into detail: My real problem is that I dont like the way Illustrator makes Shadows (Dropshadow). I am planing to create a website where the text is written on a hovering layer in the browser window: www.franziskatillmanns.com/exp/franz3.htm . For that I need a dropshadow. As you can see, the four corners appear a kind of roundish. That is due to the fact that in the corners the grey shadow pixels are not going out far enough. My solution for that would be to copy the corner part of the shadow and move it out a little. Of course some pixel work has to be done. But what would be the easiest solution for my problem???

Well, many thanks and greetings from Austria
Landau

[Lukas Engqvist]

I do not see any hovering text. But why use the drop shadow if you don't like the way it is done? if it is the grey shadow a standard blend would do? Especially if it is a square.

[vectorwizard]

can you use object/path/divide objects below?

you first draw a rectangle with the rectangle tool over the area you want to use as borders. This works like a cookie cutter and slices around the objects below in a rectangle.

once the cut is made, you will have to use the object selection tool to click on and delete the parts outside this area

from testing it wont cut just paths, only objects with either fill or stroke or both fill and stroke.