: Intersect (Pathfinder) a picture and shape on Illustrator How to subtract a shape from a picture without using Clipping Mask? I don't want to use Clipping Mask because it lefts a bouding box

@Turnbaugh909

Yes, Clipping Masks or Opacity Masks are the only way.

Illustrator is not a raster image editor. You can not easily crop or change the shape of an embedded or linked raster image within Illustrator.

Newer versions of Illustrator would not show the rectangle outside the clipping mask. And there are third party plug ins like Rasterino that bring some raster cropping functionality into Illustrator.

There is a trick you can use within Illustrator. . .

Rather than making a clipping mask


Draw the shape you want the mask to be
Fill the shape with white and set the opacity of the shape to 0% using the Transparency Panel.
Select the raster image and the shape and choose Object > Flatten Transparency.


This will essentially cut a hole in the raster image which matches the shape. Just delete the remaining portions of the raster image you don't want.

Vote Up Vote Down