How to Minus Front In Adobe Illustrator with split shapes and masks

Sometimes the Minus Front from Pathfinder doesn’t work when subtracting two shapes. There are two situations where that happens.

Situation One: Minus Front from a shape that you’ve already minus front from

Below I already minus the front from the middle of the rectangle.

Here I will attempt to minus the pink circle again from an item that’s already been “Minus Front”

When I tried to do it the “normal” way, this is what happened.

To not have this from happening, you have to double-click on the part you want to “minus front” from. You are isolating the shape from the other rectangle. It should look like the one below, where the other rectangle is faded.

Now you can go about it doing it as you’ve done before. Put the circle on top, and select the two objects. Then in the Pathfinder panel, choose “Minus Front.” You can see below that it’s now right.

Situation One: Mask Objects

Below you can see I masked two circles.

When I attempt to minus front, a shape on top of it…

This happens when It tries to select the two objects and minus from them. It disappears.

You will have to do the same thing in the above scenario. Double click on the part you want to minus front from till it becomes isolated. Put the circle on top, and select the two objects. Then in the Pathfinder panel, choose “Minus Front.” You can see below that it’s now right. Below you can see it’s successful.