Aligning clipping masks
latchet...@adobeforums.com
I want to centre align a couple of objects including a clipping mask. When I align center, the clipped path uses its larger bounding box (of the clipped object)instead of the smaller clipping path. Can someone please advise how to overcome this.
Thanks
Latchet
Bob...@adobeforums.com
Overlap your object and clipping path object, Align vertically center, then align horizontally center and Object, Clipping Path, Make. This will center both and then the clipping path will take the center of the object being masked from it's center, regardless of shape. The center of the object if other than rectangular (no dot) will be the center handles of the bounding box.
Bob
Teri Pettit
I imagine Latchet doesn't have that much flexibility in how he aligns the clipping masks onto the contents. Probably he would need to modify the contents much more than is convenient to get their sizes to be appropriate for mutual centering.
For example, suppose he has placed a bunch of photographs, and put an oval clipping mask around just the face in each one. Since the faces are at different places within each photo, the clipping masks are not centered on the photos. Then he might want to take all those clipped photos, and some caption text, and align them in a vertical column so that each person's picture was above their name and all the clipping ovals were centered.
Illustrator won't do that, because Align always works on bounding boxes, and the bounding box of a clipping group includes its contents. What he's asking for is a feature request, to consider the bounding box of a clipping group to be the bounding box of the mask alone.
To get your "mutually center the contents with the mask" method to work, you would have to first make sure that the center of the whole contents was what you wanted to be centered in the mask. With images, you would have to do that in Photoshop or some other image editing program; with vector art it would be even harder. You might be able to do it with Pathfinder, but maybe you really don't want to permanently lose the pieces you are clipping out.
Latchet,
You can't really do this with the Align palette. You will have to use a workaround.
My recommendation is to pull out a guide to where you want your clipping masks to align. Then manually select each group by mousing down on the center point x of the clipping mask, and drag it onto the guide. That's what people had to do with all kinds of objects before the Align palette was available. (AI 5, I think.)
latchet...@adobeforums.com
Teri you hit the nail on the head exactly. What you desrcibe is exactly what I was trying to do. Perhaps I should have explained it better.
And I did as you suggested with the guide but thought there must be a smarter way or option... guess not.
I have seen several posts about people wanting to know how to delete the clipped image bounding box and guess it could have been for this reason.
Thanks as always.
Latchet
Teri Pettit
latchet...@adobeforums.com
Latchet
Poul_Solb...@adobeforums.com
clipping mask. It is not yet rewritten for CS, but I know the developer
is working on it..
Poul Solbjerg
Teri Pettit
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Poul_Solb...@adobeforums.com
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