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A really quick & handy trick to edit clipping paths in Illustrator

by | May 31, 2010 | Articles, Illustrator | 9 comments

I was playing around with Adobe Illustrator yesterday, and I had to use a clipping path on a photo. I need to be able to get it just right and show what is needed and hide what isn’t needed, but sometimes you miss your mark.

Here, I wanted the brand logo to show, and realized that I clipped too much. I was annoyed, because I thought that I would have to release the clipping path, and edit the clipping shape, and then re-clip it. Then, I realized (I don’t know how long this feature has been around) that you could double-click the clipping path and it acts like a smart object in Photoshop, breaking down the elements of the clipping path. It gave me the photo, and the box that I was using to clip the image with, and they were both free, un-grouped objects.

I re-sized the box to my liking, and then clicked the back arrow in the upper left hand corner of the window to go back to the main artboard.

How easy is that?! Now, when you have a complicated group of elements that include multiple clipping paths, you can simply double click until you get the the breakdown of objects, and then edit them separately. this is both convenient and efficient.

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