Adobe® Illustrator® 10 Classroom in a Book®

Creating type masks

Masks crop part of an image so that only a portion of it is revealed through the shape or shapes that you create. You can use type as a mask without having to convert the type to outlines first. After creating a mask using type, you can still edit it—for example, by adjusting the font or size and even by typing in new text.

In this example, you'll create a mask using type and an embedded bitmap image. An image of a cloudy sky was pasted into the document to use as the background of the mask.

For more on embedding and linking image files in your artwork, see “Setting Up Artwork in Illustrator” in online Help or Chapter 2 in ...