Release all clipping masks in Adobe Illustrator

Have you ever struggled with CAD drawings or Stock artwork that’s full of unnecessary groups, clip groups or compound paths?

There’s a quick way in Adobe Illustrator to release all of your clipping masks in one go:

1. Select the Objects: Select the objects you want to release or alternatively select everything by using the quick key commands: Command + A (mac) / Ctrl + A (Windows)

2. Release the Clipping Masks: With your objects selected, go to the top menu and choose Object > Clipping Mask > Release. The quick keypress for this action is: Command + Alt + 7 (mac) / Ctrl + Option + 7 (Windows)

Still have unnecessary nested groups?

The VectorFirstAid plugin from Astute Graphics has 20+ menu items that can clean-up your Illustrator documents. VectorFirstAid can instantly find and remove:

• Unnecessary groups

• Unnecessary clip groups

• Unnecessary compound paths

• Off-artboard art object

• Unneeded points 

…and so much more!

The VectorFirstAid panel can check your document with one-click, providing a list of the immediate issues found, and you can then choose to fix them one-by-one or fix them all with one button press.

With VectorFirstAid we have taken this vector stock artwork, and without altering any of the original path’s geometry, cleaned it up ready to use and lowered the file size from 29.2MB to 11.6MB.

In total we removed:

• 99,925 anchor points

• 6,380 unnecessary groups

• 8 unnecessary clip groups

• 92 unnecessary compound paths

• 16 off-artboard art objects

Want to try it for yourself? VectorFirstAid is one of the 21 plugins you can try for free for 7 days with just your email address.

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Ensure you have the VectorFirstAid plugin installed through your Astute Manager, then you can find the VectorFirstAid panel in the Window > Astute Graphics > VectorFirstAid. 

Need more help on this tool? Here's the full documentation…