Objects outside clipping mask - how to eliminate or ignore?
Confused
Illustrator CS3
I have a file from a client that has tons of large bitmaps and objects that are placed inside a
clipping mask. Probably 80% of most of the objects are outside the clipping mask and are not used.
What I need to do is to create a bitmap of everything in the clipping mask, but when I try to
rasterize, it tells me the object is too big at the current resolution. The reason the object is too
big is because it's trying to rasterize all the extraneous stuff that's outside the clipping mask
that I don't care about, and would only be white anyway. Essentially, the image I'm trying to create
is about 3x12 inches, where the whole area of the objects in the clipping mask are about 10x12. I
don't need that whole area, just the stuff that actually showing in the mask.
Is there any way I can tell Illustrator to ignore all the stuff hanging over the edges of the mask
and just work on the stuff that's showing? I could swear I had found a way to do this before but
have since forgotten how.
Any help appreciated.
Still confused.....
steggy
Maybe to simple......but why not select the stuff you need, group it.
Select all, deselect the group and hit delete?
LawnElf
says...
I believe Confused is referring to parts of the raster images that are
not seen because of the clipping mask, in which case I think the only
way to eliminate the unneeded parts is to crop them in an image editor
such as Photoshop. I'm using CS2 - I think I read that there's a crop
function in CS3, so you could possibly try that too?
If they're truly objects, try making a rectangle at 3x12 inches on top
of everything, then select all and use the Divide function on the
pathfinder pallette. Next ungroup everything, select the unwanted bits
and delete.
Hope that helps.
-- Elf
steggy
Good answer. And yes I believe you are right, seeing now Confused is
talking about bitmaps and such.
I do not know how you can get rid of them in Illustrator, as you said:
Photoshop or the like.
AES
steggy <ste...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > What I need to do is to create a bitmap of everything in the clipping mask,
> > but when I try to
> > rasterize, it tells me the object is too big at the current resolution. The
> > reason the object is
Screen capture?
steggy
This group is text only;)
Confused
Thanks for the input, everyone. Here's a little more detail: The file is made up of several large
bitmaps, the largest of them is 6x9. Generally, only a very small part of those bitmaps are actually
being used, maybe a 1x2 area of each. The rest of the bitmap is "outside" the clipping mask and
useless. On top of the bitmaps are several vector objects with transparency, shadows, etc. I tried
the divide trick, but that just unclipped everything and made a mess. I can't crop the file in
photoshop without converting it to a bitmap first, and Illustrator won't let me because it's too
big, at least at any usable resolution. I can't crop the bitmaps and re-import them since I have no
idea how they were positioned to begin with, I didn't generate the file.
I could've sworn I had figured out a way to tell Illustrator to ignore everything outside the
clipping mask, and that it was fairly simple once I knew how to do it, but can't remember how at
this point. Stupid memory, first thing to go, they say :-)
The crop area tool doesn't do anything different from just selecting an object and setting it to the
crop area, at least that I can tell.
At this point, I'm just going to have to go with the minimum resolution it can support. I just tried
to convert a rectangle by itself at the resolution I wanted and it won't even do that, so even if I
did figure out a way to convert the clipping mask, it still wouldn't go to the resolution I wanted.
Unless someone can tell me how to increase the maximum size of a bitmap created by Illustrator, it
won't matter anyway.
conf.
tphinsf
If your clipping mask shape is rectangular, use the Crop tool to crop
the area needed, and depending upon type of file desired, either
File>Export or Save for Web and Devices to get your final bitmap.
--th
Confused
Thanks for the suggestions, but trying to export to TIF doesn't even allow the same resolution that
converting to bitmap in the program does. Seems I can export to TGA at a higher resolution but that
only supports RGB. I'd rather not have to convert it to RGB then to CMYK again. I've pretty much
finished with this one anyway, so it will have to go at the resolution I could get.
Thanks again
tphinsf
I didn't know you needed a resolution higher than 300dpi...
Confused
Yes, since the customer sent vector art, they are expecting vector output, unfortunately the art
can't or won't go through the RIP as vector, it chokes on it. Like I said, there are tons of
tranparencies and clipped bitmaps, etc, and something is not sitting well with the RIP. First time
I've had a file that the RIP couldn't handle. Anyway, in these cases, converting to bitmap is
usually the best option, since it simplifies things tremendously. I'd like the output to be as high
a resolution as possible to avoid any problems later. As it turns out, I ended up just converting
the black elements to a grayscale bitmap and could get a higher resolution out of that than trying
to convert the whole thing to a CMYK bitmap.
conf.
AES
Confused <nob...@nowhere.com> wrote:
> >I didn't know you needed a resolution higher than 300dpi...
>
> Yes, since the customer sent vector art, they are expecting vector output,
> unfortunately the art
> can't or won't go through the RIP as vector, it chokes on it. Like I said,
> there are tons of
> tranparencies and clipped bitmaps, etc, and something is not sitting well
> with the RIP. First time
> I've had a file that the RIP couldn't handle. Anyway, in these cases,
> converting to bitmap is
> usually the best option, since it simplifies things tremendously. I'd like
> the output to be as high
I'd suggest again that one relatively simpler way to do this _might_ be
to get your hands on a large screen/high resolution external monitor;
arrange for the portion of the image that you wish to capture to fill
this monitor to the maximum extent possible; then do a screen capture of
the displayed monitor image.
If the on-screen resolution is good enough when the image is displayed
at that full screen size, the captured bitmap _might_ be good enough for
anything the customer wants to do that involves displaying the image at
that size or smaller (especially with some Photoshop smoothing or other
chicanery) . . . ???
Confused
In some cases, yes that might work, but this was to be output to a 2400 dpi film imagesetter for
commercial printing. A screen capture would only be at best 96 dpi and let's not even get into the
issue of color accuracy. Anyway, the customer changed gears in mid-project and decided to go with
spot colors anyway, so the convert to a grayscale bitmap for the black elements at 600 dpi was fine,
then I could overlay the color elements on top of that. Whatever the problem that was causing the
RIP to choke was in the black stuff anyway, the job ran fine after that. They seem to be satisfied
with the finished product, so I guess all my worry was for nothing.
conf.