Don't remove stroke and fill for clipping paths
Please allow paths to retain formatting when they are made into clipping paths. I see no reason, other than cruelty, to remove the stroke and fill of a path when it is made into a clipping path. If someone can rationalize a benefit for making me have to apply a stroke and fill all over again then at least make a preference for any masochists.
Scott Falkner
shared this idea
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By default, Ai drops any appearance from an object that becomes a clipping mask.
If one wanted to keep the color, they needed to reassign it after clipping. Since the fact the clipping mask can be colored is not exactly widely known, many users tend to create duplicates of the clipping mask and place it under the clipping group — a tedious redundancy to manage.
Since CS5, we got another method to keep the color — Draw Inside mode, that keeps the appearance of the base object and allows us to create clipping groups in a different fashion. For many users this is the only method they know to create clips.
The classic method (place a path above, select all, Cmd/Ctrl+7, same as Object > Clipping Mask > Make) would benefit from getting an option to keep the appearance, for those who needs it. Not by default, certainly.
To complete the UX, I’d perhaps add a 'Remove appearance from clipping mask' menu in the context menu, to help those who needs it always, but occasionally need to strip it — even though it’s easy to do with selecting a mask and removing appearance... ah, wait. We can’t easily select it, because Ai won’t allow selecting it — as reported here: https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657/suggestions/31558588
At the moment, we have two classic scripts, developed by Herman van Boeijen: Clipper and Bottom clipper, to clip with path above or below, while keeping the color — https://github.com/nimbling/Nimbling_Scripts#clip-scripts
They use a clever hack — Ai won’t allow to select a colored clip by its fill, but does allow this, if the clipping path is a compound path! Alas, Ai intervenes, and pulls clippings masks to the top of their clip groups when a document is reopened, reported here: https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/601447/suggestions/48267722 — and this makes selecting clipped objects impossible, until the mask is sent to back. -
L Coyle
commented
I agree completely! Can Adobe just make this easy? We want to make a mask, we want it to have a color, fill and stroke, we want to be able to select it wherever we click, like anything else in Illustrator.
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Herman van Boeijen commented
I fixed this by writing some scripts:
https://github.com/nimbling/Nimbling_ScriptsHere they are as a panel:
https://github.com/nimbling/Nimbling_Scripts/blob/master/NimblingClippers.zxpOr run the scripts using shortcuts:
Clip:
https://github.com/nimbling/Nimbling_Scripts/blob/master/JSX%20Scripts/Clipper.jsxBottomclip: (the better one, have your clipping path be at the bottom, so you can see what you're doing)
https://github.com/nimbling/Nimbling_Scripts/blob/master/JSX%20Scripts/Bottomclipper.jsx
