Expert: Kevin Stohlmeyer - 12/28/2007

Question
Hi,

I wonder if there's any way to get rid of the invisible outlines of art that's been inserted into another object via the clipping mask function.

Specifically, say I have a rectangle that has a larger piece of art masked inside it. You can still 'see' the outlines of that art passing the cursor over it with the select tools, and if I save or export the file it will retain unwanted white space to the extent of the invisible masked art. The equivalent Powerclip function in CorelDraw crops this white space automatically and non-destructively, but I want to learn how this is done in Illustrator.

I want to get rid of that white space so that the exported file will only display to the extents of the masked art.  Am I just missing something simple?

Thanks,

JC

Answer
You will always be able to see the outlines of the artwork even with a clipping mask applied. This is so you can modify the object even when a mask is applied. It doesn't actually remove this area from the art.

The easiest way to have this unwanted white space not show up when exported is to create a crop area using the crop function. This is made by creating a rectangle shape and then go under object>crop>make crop.  This will only export the art inside the cropped area.