Boolean
Combine shapes: union, subtract, intersect, exclude — and animate the cut.
Boolean takes this shape and another shape layer, and returns one shape. Union welds them, Subtract cuts the second out of the first, Intersect keeps only the overlap, and Exclude keeps everything except the overlap.
The cut is live. Move the cutter and the hole moves with it. Keyframe the cutter and you have an animated cut, which is not something you can do by flattening shapes in a vector editor.
When to reach for it#
- Building an icon out of primitives instead of drawing it by hand.
- Crescents, rings, notches — anything that is one shape minus another.
- Animated reveals where a shape eats into another.
How it works#
You pick one or more cutter layers. They keep existing as layers — hide them if you do not want them drawn separately. The Boolean reads their live resolved outlines, so a cutter with its own modifiers, its own Bend, or its own keyframes contributes the shape it currently has, not the shape it started as.
Order matters for Subtract. The layer carrying the modifier is the base; every cutter is removed from it.
Parameters#
Union merges outlines into one. Subtract removes the cutters from the base. Intersect keeps only where they all overlap. Exclude keeps everything except the overlap, which gives you a ring when two discs cross.
Which shape layers take part. More than one is allowed, and they are applied in order.
Stops the cutter layers drawing on their own. Almost always what you want — otherwise the cutter sits visibly on top of the hole it made.
Recipes#
A crescent moon
- Draw a circle.
- Draw a second circle, slightly larger, overlapping the first.
- Select the first circle and add Boolean, operation Subtract.
- Choose the second circle as the cutter and turn on Hide cutters.
- Nudge the cutter to set how thin the crescent is.
A wipe that eats a shape
- Draw the shape you want to remove.
- Draw a large rectangle off to one side as the cutter.
- Add Boolean, Subtract, pointing at the rectangle.
- Keyframe the rectangle moving across the shape.
This reads differently from a mask wipe. The edge is a real outline, so a stroke on the base shape follows the cut as it moves.
Things that catch people out#
Cutters must be shape or vector layers. Pointing a Boolean at a group does not resolve the group's children.
Deleting a hidden cutter deletes the cut. If a Boolean suddenly stops working, check whether its cutter still exists.
A path that crosses itself has ambiguous inside and outside. Clean the outline up first — Offset Path at 0.01 will often resolve it.
See also#
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