GraFx Studio Adobe® InDesign® plugin: Clipping masks

v1.4.0

A clipping mask is a shape that crops an image frame so only the part inside the shape shows through — a common design technique in InDesign®. GraFx Studio recently added native support for clipping masks on image frames, and this release of the GraFx Studio Exporter for Adobe® InDesign® brings the export side up to par: clipping masks set up in InDesign® are now preserved when you export to GraFx Studio.

✨ New & Improved

Clipping masks on image frames

The exporter now translates InDesign® clipping setups into Studio-native clipping masks:

• Built-in shapes — image frames clipped with a rectangle or ellipse are exported as Studio clipping shapes, including corner-radius and stroke properties.
• Custom paths — image frames clipped with a custom path are converted to a path-based clipping mask in Studio, with the path's stroke preserved.
• Nested shapes containing images — when an image frame is pasted inside a shape, the immediate parent shape is exported as the clipping path and the image's own clipping is applied on top. If that parent is itself nested inside further shapes, those additional parent frames are ignored and not exported.

Strokes applied to clipped image frames are exported alongside the mask, and the preflight panel flags clipping setups that can't yet be exported.

How clipping masks are detected

The exporter looks for a shape that contains an image. That combination is treated as a clipping mask. A shape on its own — with no image inside — is exported to GraFx Studio as a standalone shape asset, keeping its geometry but not acting as a mask.

Known limitation

Complex paths — for example, multiple unconnected paths or a path that contains another path — are not yet fully supported and will be flagged in preflight.

More info

See the GraFx Studio Exporter for Adobe® InDesign® documentation for installation, usage, and the full feature support table.