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Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Contour Masks in Illustrator

The standard convention for labeling contours is to knockout the line behind the label. Obviously we could cut each line and delete it, but in a small scale mapping project this would not be very efficient. In Illustrator, it is much faster to use a clipping mask to style all the contour labels. And thanks to a few tips from my friends at NACIS, it’s quick and easy. Here is a link to the text version, along with a little video tutorial.

Posted by Kevin at 9:57 PM

2 comments:

  1. AnonymousMay 14, 2011 at 12:42 AM

    I'm a GIS student who not only loves mapping, but firmly believes in maps as a form of art. I've just finished tracing a map in Illustrator and I was wondering how to do exactly this!

    Thank you so much. I've just found this blog and am devouring every post.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousDecember 19, 2011 at 7:29 AM

    Thanks for the video. This was perfect - just what I needed to make labels that mask out roads.

    ReplyDelete

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