Comments on: Improve Your Illustrator Workflow with Layer Masking

By: Learn Adobe Illustrator: All the Basics for Beginners | Vandelay Design Blog

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 13:02:08 +0000

[...] Improve Your Illustrator Workflow with Layer Masking [...]

By: Comprehensive Guides For Understanding The Basic Fundamentals Of Illustrator | Creative Nerds

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 00:02:40 +0000

[...] [...]

By: The Black Rhino

The Black Rhino — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 23:45:19 +0000

Brilliant. Just what I needed. Thanks and God bless ya.

By: Joe

Joe — Wed, 26 May 2010 16:11:02 +0000

Hi Abi,

Look above to the tutorial links I posted. There is a different way to do masking within illustrator, that is much more flexible (in my mind). It takes a little while to get used to, but it allows you to edit your masks, infinitely, including inverting them, so you can have a transparent cutout. Between this masking method and the pathfinder options, I can make whatever cutout or mask I want, with as complex and layered an image as I want.

Good luck and shoot a response if you have any questions.

By: Abi

Abi — Fri, 21 May 2010 19:08:27 +0000

This is very useful, but what if you wanted the opposite effect (like you can do in Photoshop with layer masks); if you made a shape and wanted every sublayer underneath it to not show within the boundaries of the original shape, only on the outside (like a transparent cut-out)?

By: blue_angelica

blue_angelica — Wed, 12 May 2010 10:42:46 +0000

Wow, I don’t think I will ever use a clipping mask again! Thanks for these tutorials, they are invaluable!

By: Ron

Ron — Sun, 09 May 2010 08:01:32 +0000

Great tip. I can’t believe it that I only now learn about this option… I’ve been using Illustrator for 3 years now….

By: Rachel

Rachel — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 15:18:12 +0000

Very new to Illustrator and just trying things out at the moment – for what I need this is ideal – and easy as well! Thanks very much!

By: Arthur Lee

Arthur Lee — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:25:27 +0000

I’m new to Illustrator. The drawback I think to this method is, if you have many layers, you have to create many mask layers. Why not make just one layer on top. Make four rectangles on that layer with a white (or whatever) fill and a zero stroke. The rectangles border what you want to show. Now just making that 1 layer visible or not will truly in the literal sense of the word “mask” whatever is underneath. I suppose you could make a single compound shape of rectangle within a rectangle and make it even simpler. You could just copy this shape to any different file, and resize it as appropriate

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 03:34:27 +0000

Hey, I just wanted to drop a note here thanking you for this little tip. I’ve been wasting so much time making clipping masks. You make them, but before you can edit anything you have to release them. This is going to save so much time it’s crazy.

By: Arif Kabir

Arif Kabir — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 19:02:27 +0000

Thank you sooo much – I used to have to manually put white boxes all around the border and then have to lock them, but this way is soooo much easier! Thank you once more!

By: Marcus

Marcus — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:00:25 +0000

THANKS I REALLY APPRECIATE IT!!!!

By: CasTex

CasTex — Tue, 19 May 2009 05:10:30 +0000

Very nice job, thanks!…

By: joe

joe — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:23:48 +0000

Hi Aira,

Not sure what your issue is specifically. It’s been a while since I had my issues with masks that I mentioned above. However, there are quite a few ways to mask something.

Since learning this technique, I’ve learned another (along with the original clipping mask technique that I don’t seem to use very often).

Try this tutorial for another method that seems to have all sorts of edit capabilities:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzkeIGrPC2s

The guy who does these tutorials uses this masking technique in a lot of his other illustrator tutorials, so if it doesn’t make sense at first, try a couple of his other tutorials and you should get the hang of it. The ones on making an Iphone icon and making a glass button use the masking technique several times each.

Good luck,

-Joe

By: aira

aira — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:25:31 +0000

I have the same problem with musique, have tried to compound path, and doen’t work either.
The shape just disappears, wondering what’s wrong???

By: Sew

Sew — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:01:07 +0000

This is an awesome feature!! Thanks for sharing!

By: Requested Tutorial: Crop Excess Illustrator Artwork | BittBox

Requested Tutorial: Crop Excess Illustrator Artwork | BittBox — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 22:48:05 +0000

[...] a non-destructive way to acheive a similar effect, I have a post on “Layer Masking” in Illustrator. It’s not the same as a clipping mask, and It gives the same effect as this tutorial without [...]

By: joe

joe — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 20:07:27 +0000

Musique.

I was having the same problem and looked it up on other posts. My problem was that the path I was using to create my mask was a grouped path. This confuses illustrator and makes it freak out and axe everything. if your path is made of more than one object, select them and chose:

object/compound path/make

then retry the mask. Worked like a charm for me, and I was pulling my hair out over this for hours, trying to figure out what I had done wrong.

good luck

By: musique

musique — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 07:39:33 +0000

It didn’t work for me, sadly. I have NO IDEA what I am doing wrong … after aligning, when I click “apply your mask”, it disappears with leaving everything hanging outside.

I created plain circles of 2 different colors on 2 different layers, created a 350×350 pix rectangle on top of those circles layers but after selecting the rectangle layer and clicking on the mask toggle thingie .. rectangle disappears.

Someone please help!! Thanks ….

By: prischan

prischan — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 20:30:23 +0000

thanks. is very useful…I really needed this.