can place text files (in TXT or RTF format) from a word processor. The placed text will be embedded, not linked. But it will automatically pour into the selected shape. The following steps place text in a selected shape.
1 Select the shape into which you are placing text.
2 Choose File ⇒ Place and navigate to the text file. When you choose File ⇒ Place and select a text file, the Show Import Options check box becomes active. Ignore it. Whether or not you select that check box, the next dialog that will open is the Microsoft Word Options dialog.
3 Click Place.The Microsoft Word Options dialog opens. Use the options in this dialog if you want to include a table of contents or an index, not import a table of contents or an index, and include (or not include) formatting. Available options depend on the source of the text file.
4 Click OK to approve your import options.
5 Click the edge of the shape to insert the placed text inside the shape, as shown in Figure 3-5.
FIGURE 3-5: Placing text in an octagon.
Cropping rasters
You can crop placed raster artwork in Illustrator. Cropping a linked raster image breaks the linkage to the original file, so before you can crop a raster image you need to change a linked image to an embedded image. You can do so on the fly with the following steps.
1 Select the image, right-click, and choose Crop Image from the menu that appears, as shown in Figure 3-6.FIGURE 3-6: Selecting a placed image to crop.
2 If a dialog appears, reminding you that cropping the image changes the link status to embedded, click OK.
3 Use the side and corner cropping handles to crop the image, as shown in Figure 3-7.Hold down the Shift key to maintain the original height-to-width ratio while you crop.Hold down the Alt key (Windows) or Option key (Mac) to maintain the original center point as you crop.Click and drag on the center point to move the crop area. The area to be cropped appears dimmed.FIGURE 3-7: Cropping a linked image.
4 Press Enter (or Return) to crop to the area you defined in the preceding step.
Using clipping masks
What if you need to crop a placed image or define an irregular shape that determines what part of the image shows through but also maintain the text file’s linked status? One solution is to draw and apply a clipping mask.
Clipping masks hide sections of an image without cropping the image. To create and apply a clipping mask, follow these steps:
1 Draw a shape or path over the image demarcating a crop area, as shown in Figure 3-8.Normally, this shape will be a rectangle, like the one shown in Figure 3-8, but it can be any shape or path.FIGURE 3-8: Drawing a clipping mask.
2 Select both the rectangle and the placed image by using Shift-click or any other selection technique, and then choose Object ⇒ Clipping Mask ⇒ Make.The result looks like a crop, but the placed (and linked) image only appears to be cropped. The entire placed image is still in the Illustrator document.If you want to display the entire image in your illustration, you can release the clipping mask by selecting the placed image and choosing Object ⇒ Clipping Mask ⇒ Release.
3 To change the location of the clipped image, choose Object ⇒ Clipping Mask ⇒ Edit, and select and move the mask, as shown in Figure 3-9. To edit an existing clipping mask for a selected object, choose Edit ⇒ Clipping Mark ⇒ Edit Contents.
FIGURE 3-9: Editing a clipping mask.
Importing Sketches from Adobe Illustrator Draw
For millennia, okay, for a couple decades, digital artists have had to deal with the challenge of transferring sketches to Illustrator. They could draw in their sketchbook and scan the artwork into Illustrator. Ouch! Illustrator has powerful tracing tools, and I show you how to use them in the “Tracing Raster Images” section. But tracing scanned sketches and converting them to vectors is a hassle and usually produces unsatisfactory results.
You can sketch directly in Illustrator with a drawing tablet, such as a Wacom tablet. But what if inspiration strikes while you’re out in the field? If you grab your sketchbook, you have to wrestle with scanning the sketch into Illustrator. But if you have a mobile device and a stylus, or even a fingernail, you have all the tools you need to sketch on the spot and access the results in Illustrator.
The first step is to install Adobe Illustrator Draw on your iOS or Android device, using the appropriate app store. The app is free!
When you install Adobe Illustrator Draw, you’ll be prompted to sign in with your Adobe ID and password. Doing that links Adobe Illustrator Draw with your Adobe account and your desktop Illustrator app.
After you launch Adobe Illustrator Draw on your digital device, you’ll see simple but intuitive drawing tools. I can’t squeeze in an overview of those tools here, but you can find documentation at www.adobe.com/products/draw.html. For a quick-and-dirty sketch, just draw on the screen with your fingernail like I did when I confronted the odd creature in Figure 3-10, left. The easiest way to open the file directly in Illustrator on your laptop or desktop is to click the share icon in Draw, and choose Adobe Desktop Apps ⇒ Illustrator CC, as shown in Figure 3-10, right.
Presto! That’s all it takes to open an Adobe Illustrator Draw file in Illustrator.
FIGURE 3-10: Sketching in Adobe Illustrator Draw (left) and setting the sketch to open in Illustrator or Photoshop (right).
Tracing Raster Images
Two basic workflows lead to tracing raster images in Illustrator:
You're working with a sketch created in a raster program such as Photoshop or scanned from a drawing, and you need to convert that artwork to a vector image.
You're starting with a photo or other raster image, and you want to experiment with artistic effects produced by vectorizing that image.
As much as possible, you want to avoid the first scenario, so that you are working with vectors from the start. Illustrator has powerful
