Image Crop Script

“How do I crop a Photo in Illustrator?” is the All-Time hottest topic in the Adobe Illustrator Forum, there’s a long thread with answers that go from “not possible”, to “use Photoshop”, to “use clipping masks”, to “use Artboards”. The thread also has the real answer to the question, cropping raster images in Illustrator is possible using a “cutter” path with a blending mode other than Normal, then Flattening Transparency. Great answer!! now this script tackles on the same principle as Flattening Transparency, it rasterizes the image within the bounds of the “cutter” path and discards what’s outside of the path bounds.

to use the script to Crop this image

imageCrop1

draw a rectangle on top of the image to use as “cutter” path

imageCrop2

select both, the image and the “cutter” path

imageCrop3

run the imageCrop script

imageCrop4

that’s all, the image gets cropped, embedded, unwanted pixels get discarded. If you don’t want your images to get destroyed, please use the other Masking methods.

Script Features

Press Shift Key before running the script to Rasterize using TypeOptimized option otherwise the script will use default ArtOptimized
Press Alt Key before running the script to Rasterize using custom Resolution, otherwise the script will use an average of the base image resolution.

Download imageCrop.jsx script

21 Comments

  1. Pingback: How to Crop in Illustrator: A Comprehensive Guide - backgroundillustration.online

  2. Pingback: FREE Illustrator Scripts - Fonts Beast

  3. Pingback: 7+ Amazing Free Illustrator Script | Doing This

  4. Pingback: 6 consigli per lavorare più velocemente con Illustrator - Grafigata! Tutorial

  5. Pingback: 7 FREE Illustrator Scripts (MUST HAVE) | Nikkies Tutorials

  6. Thanks for the script it is awesome.. I made a change to it because holding the alt key was making the menu disappear in AI CC. I changed it the ctrlKey.

    line 38 from:
    if(ScriptUI.environment.keyboardState.altKey) { // press alt key to Enter a custom Resolution, otherwise use the image resolution

    to:
    if(ScriptUI.environment.keyboardState.ctrlKey) { // press ctrl key to Enter a custom Resolution, otherwise use the image resolution

    note if you want to change the default resolution change lines 55 and 56 to reflect your dpi like 300 instead of 72.
    the resolution listed on line 40 is just the default on the popup.

    Lastly I could not get it to come up on the “file,scripts”. I had added the script to the wrong folder mine in a windows 10 setup using AI CC 2018 went in this folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CC 2018\Presets\en_US\Scripts\

  7. Jaime is right, the script is rendering the images at 72 dpi .
    You can edit this behaviour by changing the “var resw and var resh” under “funktion objectResolution(obj)
    to you desired values.( line 55+56) . Just use notepad or any editor.

  8. Hi Carlos,
    really nice script, only learned about the technique through your explanation, but the script makes it even easier.
    Can’t really say what specifically triggers it, but one image (that I received already embedded, so no idea what they did to it) throws the following error when using the script, but not when cropping manually (I flatten with blend mode ‘darken’):
    Error 1239: Specified value greater than maximum allowed value
    Line: 45
    -> rasterOpts.resolution = objectResolution (image);
    As I said, I can crop that manually, just a heads up that that’s an error that can happen.
    bw,
    Tobl

      1. I was able to replicate (well, more stumbled upon once again) by rotating images exactly or very close to +/-90° before trying to crop them. (88.25° was fine, 88.5° not) The threshold seemed to be independent of image size or aspect ratio (tested 100x100px and a 5000x7000px).
        I also noticed that, as I got very close to the threshold, computation time increased by a factor 10 or so, though that was only obvious with the larger image.
        Win7x64 with 8GB RAM, though if that should be relevant, it’s likely not on a level you have control over.

  9. Thank you for the script. But it can only crop rectangle shapes. And not custom shapes. Especially when using a pen tool to draw the specified shape to crop.

      1. Hi Carlos. I see the script renders image at 72 dpi unless I change it pressing alt (AI CS5 and AI CC).
        About color, I would like the script detects if the image placed is grayscale or bitmap?
        Thank you

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *