Now, I’m never out of it and the irony is, that I actually use it for type manipulation and logo design far more than I use it for creating original illustrations. Luckily, I grew up with a graphic designer mother, who didn’t waste any time dragging me into the family business, which included getting up close and personal with all of the Adobe tools.

I mean, I’m not an illustrator! Who did I think I was daring to open such a fancy-sounding piece of software. Normally it's invisible.When I first started working with the Adobe design programme, Illustrator (or AI), I’ve got to admit that I was a bit intimidated.

The blue hairline as the border of the result is visible only as the selection. It's not available for a group of various objects.Ħ) Use the resulted difference as the clipping mask. The result is filled with grey only for demonstrating. The mask object unfortunately loses its color when it's releasedĤ) For inverse mask draw another (=complementary) shape (=red rectangle) that covers all objectsĥ) In the pathfinder panel minus the top object (=Circle) from the complementary shape. Until this you can release the Clipping mask and have the objects all visible. Nothing is deleted until you expand the result. Bring it to the front.ģ) Select the mask object and the group of other objects. See a cartoon:ġ) Select all your objects and make a groupĢ) Draw or drag the mask object over the objects to be masked. A closed shape on the top of another shape or a group of shapes define what's actually visible. In Illustrator there's the Clipping Mask.

Illustrator subtract shape