Erasure and/or Cropping: Equivalents with Illustrator?

[hohriver]

I should know the answer to these questions, but alas, I do not. I often experience my students in the Intro to Illustrator course I teach trying to perform the equivalent of 'erasing', like one can do in Photoshop. Short of removing anchor points, I never have a good answer for them about how to eliminate a misplaced path segment or other unintended fragment. What ARE you supposed to use in Illustrator?

Along those same lines, students are always asking how to crop their work. Short of Saving as a .jpeg, when the work is automatically cropped to fit, what should one do to bring in the boundaries and crop an image?
And finally, what does Acrobat have to do with Illustrator? I was trying to save some copied and pasted objects/groups into a new document yesterday, and everytime I arrived at the Save point, I was informed that Acrobat was having a problem and the file could not be saved.
Acrobat? I wasn't trying to generate PDF files. I was not "in" Acrobat, I was in Illustrator. Anyone know the answer to this one?

Thanks!
Instructor Baffled "The learning curve is a MYTH! Learning in this industry is represented best by a right angle..."

 

[Guest_imported]

As far as cropping is concerned (although Photoshop is the preferred program for photo/picture editing)Illustrator allows you to create a clipping mask. Use the rectangle or ellipse tool to create a boundary around the part of the artwork you would like to appear. Select the rectangle and the object below it and go to Object | Clipping Mask | Make. (Make sure the object and new rectangle are on separate layers.)

 

[carlow]

Hi,

about the acrobat connection.
Illustrator like any adobe product has a close connection with pdf. I beleive there is an option in illustrator in the preferences that you can choose between pdf and normal copy and paste format. probably there is the answer with your question. Change the way you want your copyboard, and you won't have this alert

hope I'm right
grillhouse

 

[askIllustrator]

Praise those who spread the joy of illustrator. As far as 'erasing' is concerned, I wouldnt even include that word in my AI vocabulary. AI is not the canvas that PS is, it is a contstruction site. You cannot think of 'erasing' since you dont actually do any painting. You may create a path using the brush tool, but mind you it is not painting. An AI document is a fluid assembly of shapes able to ebb and flow at your every whim, backwards is the same as fowards. Instead teach clean building techniques so your free to 'edit' through out the life of the document.

Dont sweat the PDF error, AI is PDF based now so the two formats are practically interchangable aside from editing capabilities. You cant fix it, but DO copy and paste everything into a new doc before closing it. The new doc should save without error (i know i know, its not like Adobe to do that).

As far as cropping, I cant think of many uses for a cropped piece of vector art. Most all destinations for cropped art end up raterized anyway like web pages or texture maps. Flash content should be brought in in sections anyway. If you have to combine vector with raster and you dont have access to Quark or InDesign, bring the PS stuff into AI. BEHOLD! As Steve Jobs introduces us the latest in desk-lamp technology!

http://www.apple.com