I was replying to another thread but it got locked down before I hit the post button. Rather than Private Message the information, I figured I’d post here since it may be of value to people:
The original post I was replying to was:
So, @Bibliocat - here is a really quick and easy way to crop photos and other rasters into whatever shapes you want, without destructively editing the source file (in Illustrator, at least).
A quick and simple way to do this is to make your crop design, make it into a clipping mask (Object > Clipping Mask > Make) and then Object > Rasterize that clipping mask you just made. This will leave the source file completely alone. If you choose embed, it will write the image data into the file. If you choose “linked”, it will create a new raster image rather than modify the original image.
If you also wanted a cut line, you could just make your crop shape, make a copy of the shape and temporarily hide it, make your clipping mask and expand, and then unhide the copy before you save to SVG.