Create, edit, and delete crop areas

The crop area sets the position of the printer’s marks on your document and defines the exportable boundaries of the artwork. By default, Illustrator crops artwork to the boundaries of the artboard, which you specify when you select a document profile in the New Document dialog box. However, you can choose to crop your artwork to a preset crop area or to a custom crop area that you define.

You can create multiple crop areas for your document, but only one crop area can be active at a time. When you have multiple crop areas defined, you can view them all by selecting the Crop tool and pressing Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS). Each crop area is numbered for easy reference. You can edit or delete a crop area at any time, and you can specify different crop areas each time you print or export.

Crop area boundaries are represented by a dashed line surrounding the artwork—areas outside of the crop area appear dimmed while the Crop Area tool is active. You can also choose to display a center mark, cross hairs, video safe and screen edge markers, and rulers around the crop area.

To see a video on using the Crop Area tool, see www.adobe.com/go/vid0213.

Define a single crop area

Do one of the following:
- To define a custom crop area using the Crop Area tool, select the Crop Area tool and drag in the work area to define the crop area.
- To use a preset crop area, double-click the Crop Area tool, select a preset for the crop area size in the Crop Area Options dialog box, and click OK. Drag the crop area to position it where you want.
If you want the artwork to contain a bleed, make sure that there’s enough artwork beyond the crop area rectangle to accommodate the bleed.
To commit the crop area and exit the crop-editing mode, click a different tool in the Tools panel.

Define and view additional crop areas

Select the Crop Area tool, and then do any of the following:

To create a new crop area, hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) and drag. Each crop area has a unique number in the upper-left corner.
To view all crop areas, press Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS).
To set a crop area as the active crop area, hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) and click the crop area you want active.
To rotate between crop areas, press Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) and click an arrow key.

Delete a crop area

Select the Crop Area tool, and do one of the following:

To delete the active crop area, click Delete in the Control panel.
To delete one of multiple crop areas, hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) to view all existing crop areas, and click the Delete icon in the upper-right corner of the crop area you want to delete.
To delete all crop areas, click Delete All in the Control panel or press Alt+Delete (Windows) or Option+Delete (Mac OS).

Edit or move a crop area