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Need Help How to delete part of a raster image in illustrator after creating clipping mask?

CSOCSO

I don't hate paint, I just overlay it.
In this day of age one would think you can find ANY answer real fast on the webs. Well... not the case with me and I can not tell you how much I just want to take the keyboard and push it through the monitor.

I have a file where I have to take 1 logo and put it somewhere else. The whole artboard is rasterized and it is 50x30 inches. The logo I need to copy and place somewhere else is only 5x5. The background is white. I could just take the raster image, make a shape around the logo and do a clipping mask but when I try to rasterize the image so spot color would work (can not have transparency) the whole raster image shows up white. making the image larger than what it should be. How on earth can i make a clipping mask and delete the rest of the image? I know how to do this with shapes and vectors. But i need to delete the rasterized image of whatever its outside the clipping mask.

please help.

Yes... i could just open it in photoshop and do my changes and import it back to illustrator but i am just trying to see if this can be done as easily in illustrator without the extra steps. By the time any answer will come in I will probably go around the issue but i still want to know the answer because i don't wanna go crazy. thanks
 

Boudica

Back to "educational purposes"
I thought I could help - I'm not sure I understand - can you re-explain why you cant just clip it? You can clip anything in illustrator, then anything outside the clipping mask is invisible. I can't picture what's happening here
 

Boudica

Back to "educational purposes"
The spot color part... is it for white ink? Can you just draw a circle on a separate layer and apply the spot to that? ...just still try to guess what's going wrong here.
 

Bobby H

Arial Sucks.
unclebun said:
In Corel Draw you could...;)

CorelDRAW doesn't have any functions to actually delete portions of a placed pixel-based image, much less have any functions to knock-out white backgrounds of imported pixel-based images like a JPEG logo grabbed off the web.

You can use the node editing tool to change the size of an image's container box as a ghetto method of hiding part of the image. Or it can be power-clipped in very much the same way clipping masks work in Adobe Illustrator.

CSOCSO said:
I have a file where I have to take 1 logo and put it somewhere else. The whole artboard is rasterized and it is 50x30 inches. The logo I need to copy and place somewhere else is only 5x5. The background is white. I could just take the raster image, make a shape around the logo and do a clipping mask but when I try to rasterize the image so spot color would work (can not have transparency) the whole raster image shows up white. making the image larger than what it should be. How on earth can i make a clipping mask and delete the rest of the image? I know how to do this with shapes and vectors. But i need to delete the rasterized image of whatever its outside the clipping mask.

First, does this logo have to be pixel-based? Does the artwork have some kind of texturing effects or other stuff that requires a pixel-based approach? If the shapes are all hard edged and colors are flat (or nothing more fancy than gradients) it would be far better to use a vector-based version of a logo.

Otherwise you're going to have to edit that raster-based logo in Photoshop to get rid of the white background. Do that either by creating an alpha channel mask or floating the logo up on a layer above a transparent background.

I don't understand your need for using a spot color for the image however. Heck, if the background is pixel-based and the logo is pixel-based I wouldn't even see any reason to get Illustrator or any other drawing program involved. Just compose the whole thing in Photoshop.
 
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I'm sure I could answer your question, but it's soooooooo long and detailed, nobody will read it trough.
 

Z SIGNS

New Member
I've found when I run into these problems. I just keep clicking away till the computer surrenders and lets me do what I want it to do.
The tools are there.The challenge is wielding em.
 

unclebun

Active Member
CorelDRAW doesn't have any functions to actually delete portions of a placed pixel-based image, much less have any functions to knock-out white backgrounds of imported pixel-based images like a JPEG logo grabbed off the web.

In Corel you click "edit bitmap" which opens the bitmap in PhotoPaint, perform your edits, and when you save it in PhotoPaint, it puts the edited image in place of the original in Corel Draw.
 

Bobby H

Arial Sucks.
unclebun said:
In Corel you click "edit bitmap" which opens the bitmap in PhotoPaint, perform your edits, and when you save it in PhotoPaint, it puts the edited image in place of the original in Corel Draw.

That's still not doing anything to edit the pixel-based image from within CorelDRAW. The function is no different than editing "Smart Objects" or even old fashioned linked/placed objects between Illustrator and Photoshop.
 

Boudica

Back to "educational purposes"
In this day of age one would think you can find ANY answer real fast on the webs. Well... not the case with me and I can not tell you how much I just want to take the keyboard and push it through the monitor.

I have a file where I have to take 1 logo and put it somewhere else. The whole artboard is rasterized and it is 50x30 inches. The logo I need to copy and place somewhere else is only 5x5. The background is white. I could just take the raster image, make a shape around the logo and do a clipping mask but when I try to rasterize the image so spot color would work (can not have transparency) the whole raster image shows up white. making the image larger than what it should be. How on earth can i make a clipping mask and delete the rest of the image? I know how to do this with shapes and vectors. But i need to delete the rasterized image of whatever its outside the clipping mask.

please help.

Yes... i could just open it in photoshop and do my changes and import it back to illustrator but i am just trying to see if this can be done as easily in illustrator without the extra steps. By the time any answer will come in I will probably go around the issue but i still want to know the answer because i don't wanna go crazy. thanks
There is a crop tool in Illustrator - did you try that?
 

BKBRO

New Member
You cannot actually delete any part of a bitmap image within Illustrator. Bitmaps placed in Illustrator can be scaled. They can be "cropped" or masked using the Clipping Mask function, but all the bitmap data is retained, which can result in file size bloat. Editing the bitmap in a pixel editing program (Photohop, Photopaint, etc.) is your only solution. These limitations are one reason why Illustrator is not the ideal application to work with bitmap graphics (it is a powerful application for vector graphics). Other reasons include the file bloat mentioned already mentioned. When saving Illustrator files with placed bitmap images, do not trust Adobe's assertions about the bitmaps being "embedded" in the file. Embedding works -- most of the time. I learned early on in my 30+ years using Illustrator daily to always treat placed bitmaps like I do linked images in other applications (like InDesign or Quark Xpress), send any placed images along with the Illustrator file, for those (not infrequent) occasions when the "embed" feature doesn't work.
 

tonyconner20

Production Manager
In this day of age one would think you can find ANY answer real fast on the webs. Well... not the case with me and I can not tell you how much I just want to take the keyboard and push it through the monitor.

I have a file where I have to take 1 logo and put it somewhere else. The whole artboard is rasterized and it is 50x30 inches. The logo I need to copy and place somewhere else is only 5x5. The background is white. I could just take the raster image, make a shape around the logo and do a clipping mask but when I try to rasterize the image so spot color would work (can not have transparency) the whole raster image shows up white. making the image larger than what it should be. How on earth can i make a clipping mask and delete the rest of the image? I know how to do this with shapes and vectors. But i need to delete the rasterized image of whatever its outside the clipping mask.

please help.

Yes... i could just open it in photoshop and do my changes and import it back to illustrator but i am just trying to see if this can be done as easily in illustrator without the extra steps. By the time any answer will come in I will probably go around the issue but i still want to know the answer because i don't wanna go crazy. thanks


What I would do in this situation is after making the clipping mask of the logo you want to move...

copy the clipping mask and the masked image onto a new file with the art board that matches the size of your clipping mask.
Then export that art board as an image, jpg or png which ever you need and just check your settings so that the image you are exporting maintains the appropriate resolution and then “Place” that exported image back into your designing art board.

otherwise, you could leave the masked image where it is and then export that whole art board as your print file image. You just can’t rasterize a clipping mask, but you can rasterize the entire art board if you export as image.
 

eahicks

Magna Cum Laude - School of Hard Knocks
You're wanting to do what Photoshop does, In Illustrator. Not gonna happen. It can be done WITHIN Illustrator, where the image can be edited in Photoshop then replaced automatically (same process as what someone mentioned about Corel/PhotoPaint).
 

GAC05

Quit buggin' me
Corel's cropping tool will cut through bitmaps and vectors at the same time.
I use it all the time to crop down to just the part of the bitmap I need without all the extra bloat hiding inside a Powerclip.
You can also crop a bitmap to shape by using a vector Powerclip shape and then rasterize it with preserve transparency option checked. You will end up with a bitmap without the white rectangle & no hidden parts of the image.
The Ai cropping tool does seem to do the job as well if all you need is a smaller rectangular section.
 

Z SIGNS

New Member
In corel you can take any bitmap... draw any closed shape around what you want ..select both the shape and bitmap and select intersect.It will crop it very nicely
 

Bobby H

Arial Sucks.
Z SIGNS said:
In corel you can take any bitmap... draw any closed shape around what you want ..select both the shape and bitmap and select intersect.It will crop it very nicely

That's true. But the intersect trick does not actually delete any part of the image. Using the node editing tool you can pull nodes outward and reveal more of the image being hidden. The function is a crude alternative to merely Power-clipping an image inside a container shape. The full image and its impact on file size is still all there.

shoresigns said:
Object > Crop Image is the correct answer, as mentioned by BoudicaBoudica and The Vector DoctorThe Vector Doctor. Just reiterating because there are so many wrong answers in this thread.

Wrong answers? It sounded to me like the OP was wanting to get rid of a white background that was baked into a pixel-based logo file. The cropping tool is only going to work if all you want is a rectangular end result with white still visible around that logo. If he is wanting the white all gone around the perimeter of that logo then he's going to have to use some other methods to arrive at that end result.
 
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