How to mask an image inside text in Adobe Illustrator CC

Hi there, welcome to this video. We are going to take images and crop them inside of boxes, inside circles. We're going to do entire multiple shapes and inside text, and the text is editable. Awesome! Let's go and learn how to do that now in Adobe Illustrator.

First up, if you're following along with the tutorial series make sure you're on your background layer, it's unlocked. Let's just turn the Eyeball on the top layer off. So we're just working on this one layer. We know we're working on this layer because it's blue. Next thing I want to do, I'm going to zoom out a little bit, and bring in an image. I'm going to 'File', 'Place'. We'll stop at this one called 'Desk', and click 'Place'. This is a very big image so if I click once, it ends up being this ginomous version. So what we're going to do is click and drag it out. I'm going to bring it in. I'm going to drag it, kind of-- it's a bit hard because it's a rectangle, so drag diagonally out. Just make sure it's bigger than this square that we're going to crop it into. Now with the 'Black Arrow', just move it so you roughly get it to the position you want. It's hard to see, I know.

What we need to do is that the gray box needs to be on top. The shape you're going to use is the Clipping Mask. It needs to be on top of the image. I'm going to click on this guy, go to 'Properties'. Go to 'Arrange', I'm going to 'Send to Back'. I'm going to get him into kind of a rough position. I kind of want to clip. We can adjust that afterwards. Now I need to select both of these so I'm going to click 'Rectangle Tool' first. Sorry, the 'Gray Rectangle', hold 'Shift', grab the image, so they're both selected. Now over here, I've got one that says 'Make Clipping Mask'. Awesome, huh! Doesn't really matter what the shape is. Let's do a 'Circle'. So, 'Ellipse', I'm going to drag a circle, I'm going to bring in an image. Doesn't really matter if that has a Fill or Stroke. Just going to give it one so you can see it.

Let's go to 'File', 'Place'. There's one called 'Drawing 2' that we used earlier on, we'll use him again. Again, I'm going to drag it so it's big enough to go in the circle. Get it into a rough circle position for me. This one needs to be at the back; 'Arrange', 'Send to Back'. Select them both, make Clipping Mask. Doesn't really matter, you can draw with stars, pentagons. Whatever you want to draw with. You can draw something custom with the Pen Tool or the Curvature Tool. Now there will be a time when you want to readjust this image. So remember, the Black Arrow kind of physically moves stuff around. The White Arrow gets in there, right? So if I click on there, click off, click back in there. It's clicked on the image, you can kind of see, it's sprung to life and I can move this around. So just the size. Actually I need to switch back to my 'Black Arrow'. It kind of remembers that I've got the image selected. Holding 'Shift', let's say I want to get it perfect in there. It will still adjust it. So that's how to get in there and adjust him. Click off.

There'll be times where you need to actually just pull him apart. Like, "Come out of there." Happens if you're opening up somebody else's image and it's clipped, and you're like, "How do I get it out?" With it selected, there's one over here, it says, 'Release Mask'. Click on that, and that's kind of come apart. Now the circle that we had here, remember, I had, can't remember what color we had, it was blue, I think. But it's disappeared, it's still there but it has no Fill anymore. That's just something to be noticed. I'm going to undo, put it back where it was.

Let's look at another way of masking. It is, using multiple shapes. There's a little trick you need to do. So I'm going to draw an Ellipse. Doesn't matter what color. I'm going to duplicate this one. A cool way of duplicating, you can copy and paste but I like to hold down the 'Black Arrow' then hold down the 'Option' key on a Mac. You can see, the cursor changes it a little bit. And it's 'Alt' on a PC. So while dragging, I'm holding down the 'Option' key and you get multiple options. I'm going to have, for these little guys, I'm going to group them. So I can make another set. I don't know what I'm doing, really. I guessed it for instance. I'm going to use this. I'm going to bring in an image. So 'File', 'Place', and the one called 'Color Bomb'. And I'm going to click 'Place'. I'm going to drag it so it's kind of covering this whole thing. Remember, it needs to be at the back; 'Arrange', 'Send to Back'. I select them all, and I go 'Make Clipping Mask', and it doesn't work.

So the trick you need to do first is you need to select everything, except the image. So I selected them all, held 'Shift' to deselect this back one. Any which way you've got, select all of these guys and you need to convert it into what's called a Compound Path. Now we'll cover Compound Paths properly in the next one but for you, in this case, all we need to do is, go to 'Object' and go to 'Compound Path', and just go to 'Make'. Nothing changes with it except, now when I have them both selected and I go to 'Make Clipping Mask' hey, they work. So, make it a Compound Path That can be any shapes. Like I've just used circles, there could be bunch of random shapes or outlined text, anything like that.

Next thing we want to do is within text. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn my Layers back on, and grab my 'Type Layer'. I want this thing, that I drew earlier. I am going to just move it up here. I'm on my Type Layer now. I'm going to bring in another image. I'm using my shortcut now. I'm getting tired of 'File', 'Place'. You can see, 'Command'-- in my case it's 'Command-Shift-P', because I'm on a Mac. It will be 'Control-Shift-P' on a PC. One of the common shortcuts. I'm going to bring in 'Color Bomb' again. What I'm going to do for this one is I'm going to drag it quite big over here. I got a plan for multiple lines. So, Text is pretty easy, right? All I need to do is make sure he's behind. 'Properties', 'Arrange', 'Send to Back'. So here's my Text Layer, you can't really see him. Doesn't really matter what color he is, I'm just showing you, so you can see. So, select them both, then go to 'Make Clipping Mask'. Awesome, huh! You can kind of see it. See the edge there?

The reason I did that is because I want to do this. Because it's editable Type I can double click on it and I can go into here, and go, 'Boom'. Anybody else remembers that song? I had the song cassette. Single, I think it was called. I loved it. The cool thing about it is I double clicked on it, the weird thing is I ended up going inside the shape. We looked at this way at the beginning, it's called the Isolation Mode. I've kind to go inside of this Clipping Mask. To get back, click on this arrow loads of time until it disappears. You can see, the image, editable Text, the image is there. You can go on and change-- say we want to move the image because it's a bit dark up here. Same thing again, double click it to go inside. Then, if you kind of move around-- you can see, I'm selecting the text, and over here is the image. So I've double clicked to go inside, I'm inside this clipping group.

Now I can move this image around. It's a bit fiddly. Not going to lie to you. So have a little play around with it so you can get it to work, but when you're finished, definitely smash away this arrow, until you back out. And, that is Clipping Masks, with Text. We did it with multiple shapes, remember, Compound Path. And just any old shape you like by just using the option down here. All right, that is Masks. I said that twice. Let's get on to the next video.