Anyway to crop a photo in Illustrator?

[TRSspidey]

Hey all!
Another sorta silly question I wanted to ask. Is there any way to crop a photo or image in Adobe Illustator? I realize photoshop would probably be much better for editing or copying raster images but I'm restricted to using Illustrator.

My first idea was to try to use the divide tool in the path finder option but that didn't "crop out" a certain part of an image I wanted.

Of course I could also use MSpaint.... but I was wondering if Illustrator could do it perhaps pixel by pixel? I was hoping to copy an small part of a image and paste it somewhere else in the image.

So can illustrator do this or should I just go with MSpaint?

Thanks and sorry for the silly question!

[Tamlin]

Don't know much about Illustrator, but I did find this tutorial:

Requested Tutorial: Crop Excess Illustrator Artwork | BittBox

Any use?

[TRSspidey]

Hmmm.... not quite...

This works if the base image your working with is a bunch of vectors, but doesn't work if I just stick a raster image in there from a .bmp or a .jpeg. Thank you for the try though!

Any other takers on this one?

[agentxi]

what i would do is create a new file, for the photo that you want to crop, then use the "slice" tool and "save for web" with the slice that is "cropping" out the section you want, then you have the actual image in the cropped size you need.

Alternatively if you are using CS3 you can use the "crop" tool, and then "export" the file with the crop selection box you have selected, this will only save what you have within the crop box.


A third possibility could be using the clipping mask in illustrator. if you want to "copy/paste" the section, then you would duplicate your image layer, then apply the OBJECT>Make Clipping Mask. Just keep in mind, that this method does boost up your file size alot with the more clipping masks that you use.

[stiney51]

Depending on what you need it for you could also fake the crop. If you are using a white background, just draw white boxes over the un-needed area. It's a pretty down and dirty way around things, but it might work for your solution.

If you find yourself needing to do this more often, then I would layout whatever you are doing in InDesign rather than illustrator, that way you can bring all of your vectors and rasterized graphics together more easily and be able to crop, shift items around etc without the restrictions of the native program.

[Jolt]

Do not draw white boxes over things. Huge issues can develop due to this technique especially in printing because Illustrator, by default, overprints white.

Use a clipping mask, as agentxi eluded to. It's the proper method, although it's not technically a "crop."

Place you raster image. Draw a shape above the image (any shape - it doesn't have to be a rectangle).

Select your image and the shape and from the menu choose Object > Clipping Mask > Make.

[retsbob999]

Ok, here's what I do if I ever need to crop out excess parts of an image. I especially like to use this for large images in order to reduce file size. Make a rectangle to the size that you want the final cropped image to be. Place this rectangle over the image to mark the cropping area. Fill the box with a color, any color will do. Open the Transparency Pallette and change the transparency of the colored rectangle to 0%. Select both the transparent rectangle and the image. Click on Object in the menu bar, then click Flatten Transparency. Change the Preset to High Resolution. Click ok. Now, release the clipping mask and ungroup the image. You should now be able to select the out portion (the part being cropped out) and delete it. There will also be a couple rectangles that have to stroke or fill color that you may want to go ahead and delete also. If there are multiple rectangles leftover that make up the image, you can always select these and group them. I hope that didn't sound too confusing. I do it so much that it's almost second nature to me. If you need more help let me know.