Illustrator Need help...trying to make a photo frame in ai and I'm stuck

[mandamay]

Hi. Obviously I'm new to ai and all things Photoshop. Thanks in advance for any help/advice!
I am trying o make a star photo frame to use on my sons birthday party invitations. I was using the pathways tool. I made a star, made a copy, resized a bit smaller to fit into the original star. used the Pathways tool to Unite and tried to minus front but it didn't work. Through trying to manipulate the frame I somehow found a way to place my photo into the star but the excess photo is showing on the outer edges of the frame. How can I get rid of this? TIA

 

[gedstar]

Hi Mandamay and Welcome to PSG
What do you mean by "but the excess photo is showing on the outer edges of the frame. How can I get rid of this"

Do you want to remove everything outside the star?

To create the Star you could have just used the Shape Tool in Photoshop

 

[hawkeye]

In Illustrator use the star shape first as a clipping mask on the image.With the star selected offset the path zero to duplicate it. Add a stroke and no fill.

 

[mandamay]

Yes, I am trying to remove everything outside of the star. I know less about Photoshop than I do AI.. but I WILL learn! I love this!

 

[gedstar]

I just made a selection of the star and added a layer mask



Make your selection and click here

 

[IamSam]

Amanda, are you using Illustrator or Photoshop?

 

[mandamay]

I'm using ai but I have Photoshop as well. I tried just for a few minutes to see if I could find my way and I couldn't. Better to stick with ai for this project.

 

[mandamay]

gedstar you make it seem easy ( it probably is. LOL)

 

[IamSam]

I'm using ai but I have Photoshop as well. I tried just for a few minutes to see if I could find my way and I couldn't. Better to stick with ai for this project.

OK.

This is very easy in Ps using a clipping mask. I'm not much help with Ai.

 

[Hoogle]

load your picture in illustrator
Draw your star and position it where you want it ( remember pressing the up arrow key will add more points, down arrow key will minus points, whilst dragging out the shape.
Obviously select no fill and add your stroke.
now use black arrow selection tool and select both the image and the star
Go to Object > Clipping Mask > Make job done

 

[Hoogle]

Sorry I did that from memory and may have missed out a few steps so I made a video, No sound as I can hardly talk due to tubes up my nose and down my throat..

But hopefully you can follow along I did it nice and slowly.

 

[mandamay]

Thank you all! I was able to complete my first invitation! How fun! Here is the finished project.

 

[agentmoeller]

Well done!

For future reference, once you load a photo into AI, you can live-trace it so it becomes a vector image, then just erase whatever falls outside your frame shape with the eraser tool.