Clipping Mask
Sometimes you will need to cut out a group of shapes or pattern with another shape, you can easily do this with Illustrator’s Clipping mask function.
- Arrange all of the images you are planning to mask.
- Create or duplicate the shape you want for your mask and make sure it is at the top of your layer stack (you can also do this with the keyboard shortcut
COMMAND SHIFT ]
). - All parts that the masking shape overlaps will be shown all shape not overlapped will be hidden when applying the mask.
- Select all the objects you want to mask and the masking shape and then press
COMMAND 7
or go up to the menu bar and select Object > Clipping Mask > Make to create your mask. - In your layer panel, you should now have a new group called Clipping Group which you can expand to modify both the mask at the top and the objects within the group.
A few things to remember about text
- Clicking the text tool will create a short line, dragging the text tool will create a text box for larger bits of text to live in.
- The weird latinish text is filler text called Loren Ipsum.
- If you use fonts that weren’t originally installed on the computer you will have to expand the text or send me the original font files.
Expanding Text and objects
- Select the text or objects you want to expand.
- In the menu select Object > Expand, and then click OK when the new window pops up.
- You’re done.
Finding your fonts
Font files usually have either a .ttf or .otf extension.
- On a Mac
- Open Font Book
- Select the font you want.
- In the menu go to File > Show in Finder.
- A new window should appear with the font you chose.
- On a PC