Hi, this is Anne with Graphic Design How To, and today I'm going to show you how to hide everything
that's outside your artboard in Adobe Illustrator. Alright, let's get started. Alright, I'm here in
Adobe Illustrator and you can see my artboard is right here. And all this stuff out here is just
hanging over the edge of the art board, which I like to keep it that way, honestly (so I don't
end up getting a little white line or something like that when I export). But I'd like to see
how this looks without all that extra stuff. So in InDesign, there's an easy shortcut for this, and
you just hit the W key on your keyboard to toggle it off and on. But here in Illustrator, we have
to come up here to View and then go to Trim View. And that will just show us what's on our artboard.
Now everything else is there. And it's selectable, you can still move it around and everything,
but you just can't see it. So let's come back here to view and turn this back off. If you find
that you're wanting to use that a lot, you can always set up a keyboard shortcut. So to do that,
we'll go to Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts, then we can change this to Menu Commands,
we'll just come down here to View and then Trim View is right here, I can just click in here
and then set my own keyboard shortcut for this. So if you're used to using W and InDesign,
you actually have to add something to that, like CMD W or SHIFT W. CMD W is the keyboard shortcut
to close the document, and I use that one all the time, so I wouldn't want to use that one here.
SHIFT W is to switch to your Width tool, which is something I also use a lot. So those two wouldn't
work well for me. But if you don't use those on a regular basis, you can just choose one and type it
in here. Oh, apparently you cannot use the SHIFT key, either. It looks like you can only use the
CMD or CTRL modifier, or use a function key, the F keys at the top of the keyboard. I'm going to
click in here and choose CMD W. And it does give me a warning saying that that's already in use
by the close command. So that keyboard shortcut won't work anymore for closing your document.
So I'm going to undo, but that is how to change the keyboard shortcut for that. And we'll say,
OK. Now, let's say we are wanting to sell our vectors on a site like Shutterstock,
or IStockPhoto, or something like that, or just any stock image website. Most of those sites don't
allow you to have anything overhanging like this. So in that case, going to trim view will not help
because this stuff all still exists out there, you just can't see it. So in that case, we'll want to
include everything in a clipping mask. So I'm going to zoom out with CMD minus or CTRL minus.
I'll get on my rectangle tool, and I'll draw a rectangle exactly the size of my artboard.
This also needs to be on top of everything. So
if you're on the wrong layer, let's say you're drawing your rectangle down here on layer one,
this is not going to work. So make sure you're on the topmost layer, and then we'll select
everything and then come up here to Object > Clipping Mask > Make. And this gives us the same
view, but there's actually nothing outside the artboard. Now, I mean, there is, but it's masked,
it's not quite as easy to get to. So if you submitted this to a stock image website now,
it would work fine because they do allow clipping masks. Now you notice when everything's in a mask,
if you use your regular selection tool, you will select the whole image. So you'll want to use your
group selection tool. So we'll get in here and choose Group Selection. And now, depending on how
things are grouped, we can just click in here and move things around with our Group Selection tool.
Alright, so let's undo. And we'll get back to this view with the overhanging stuff. I want
to show you how to export so you only get what's inside the artboard is very easy. You just go to
File > Export, and then Export As. And then you'll choose PNG or JPEG or whatever you want here. And
then here's the key, click Use Artboards. And when you click that, it means the artboard is going to
crop the image to the artboard bounds. So we'll say Export. I'm just going to put this at 72 PPI
and we'll say OK, and now I'm just going to grab this PNG file and bring it into my design.