Hide contents outside of a clipping mask from the selection tool
Contents outside of a mask boundaries are still visible from the selection tool, so i's often tricky to select other objects behind. It would be great to have an option to just see the boundary of the mask with the selection tool.
 Anonymous
    
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       Amanda Jewell
    
 commented Amanda Jewell
    
 commentedI FINALLY figured out how to turn this option off after years of being annoyed by it. (Or it may be more of a work-around.) Go to the Smart Guide tab in preferences, and uncheck the "Object Highlighting" Box. This does make it so that objects NOT within a clipping mask won't be highlighted upon hovering over them either, but I'l take it. They're still highlighted once you actually click on them. 
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      Tan Choon Hong commented Was a feature in Aldus Freehand acquired by Adobe. I'm code-illiterate, but perhaps they can copy-paste a few lines of code from Freehand. 
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      But make it an option, because current default way is also can be useful. But not often :D 
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       Darcy
    
 commented Darcy
    
 commentedYes! This in combination with the 2nd most popular suggestion currently in the clipping category about being able to delete/crop things to the clipping mask, removing all of that extra unneeded information. 
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       Bulent Kiyiskan
    
 commented Bulent Kiyiskan
    
 commentedEveryone has this issue for years... 
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       sam
    
 commented sam
    
 commentedThis was already suggested and I missed it. Please vote on this thread instead: 
 https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-feature-requests/suggestions/32143312-hide-contents-outside-of-a-mask-from-the-selection
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       sam
    
 commented sam
    
 commentedSometimes I get a file a huge complex path inside of a clipping mask. When I hover my mouse on the outside of the clipping mask this path gets highlighted. Can we turn this off? I don't have any use for knowing what's hidden in a clipping mask, and this is incredibly frustrating. Video attached for reference. Does anyone else have this problem? 
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       Jotham
    
 commented Jotham
    
 commentedIt's because the objects are still being rendered. You can check this by viewing in outline mode (cmd/ctrl+y). What Illustrator does is use the top object as a sort of alpha mask to hide the areas visually, but they are still there. The objects would have to be deleted to not be rendered and that would defeat the purpose of a clipping mask. They could maybe code something that would hide vector objects outside of the clipping mask from smart filters/snaps but I am unsure of how that would be done. 
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      Mark Gould commented This is very important to my work as I use a lot of pattern fills - I would like the option to not only hide the art outside of a mask or clipping path, but the option to delete or crop them out for good! 
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      ozcanosx commented if there is a artwork with many points in clipping mask, mouse still snaps to anchor points of that artwork outside of the clipping mask. If i don't see that artwork outside of clipping mask, why snaps... 
 
           
              