Dale L. Miksch talks to us about easier ways to clip images.

"I work with civil plan and profile drawings that have an aerial photo attached in the plan view. Sometimes the stationing changes on a project centerline, which necessitates moving the plan view, including the background photo. The Extended Clip command, which is found in Express Tools, comes in very handy. When using Extended Clip, the part of the photo that is clipped is not erased. Therefore, re-clipping it after moving it restores what had previously been clipped."

Notes from Cadalyst Tip Patrol: The Express Tools were last updated in AutoCAD 2004, and haven't changed since. AutoCAD 2009 didn't even have them in the ribbon; you had to get to them by other means. AutoCAD 2010, thankfully, put them in the ribbon. These tools improved on commands in AutoCAD, giving us abilities that we didn't have before. Many regular commands in AutoCAD can now do what only their Express Tools counterparts could do before. For example, Image Clip can now clip an image with an object, even arcs, splines, and polylines. Just like Extended Clip, it doesn't delete the image at all. It can easily be "unclipped." That doesn't mean that Extended Clip is useless, it is very easy to use, and in fact requires fewer steps than Image Clip does, especially when clipping via an object. Image Clip has you jump through some hoops, whereas Extended Clip only asks you for two selections: the clipping object and then the image.