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sheratong92025904
sheratong92025904
Participant
October 9, 2019
Question

I need to create a script for "select white fills" in illustrator

  • October 9, 2019
  • 4 replies
  • 1262 views

Since Illustrator CC does not allow you to set custom tracing defaults that ignore white anymore, I need a work around for batch tracing a bunch of BW Bitmapped TIFF files. I know Bridge will do this, but it forces you to select a document profile which doesn't work for me since the images are of various sizes. I would like to preserve the artboard sizes from the TIFFs that are generated in illustrator upon opening.

 

I was thinking of using ations to :

open > select all > trace and expand > ungroup > select white fills??? > clear > select all > group > save as > close

 

Is it possible to select white fills?

 

Any help is much appreciated.

 

Thanks

This topic has been closed for replies.

4 replies

Kurt Gold
Community Expert
Kurt GoldCommunity Expert
Community Expert
October 10, 2019

> "In order to get select same fill color to work in an action you would first have to get it to record the selection of white shape, which it will not do."

 

It can be incorporated as part of an action, but you cannot record it by just selecting a white filled object. You would have to create a temporary path and set its fill/stroke colour to white. Then use the Select > Same commands.

 

 

Ton Frederiks
Community Expert
Ton FrederiksCommunity Expert
Community Expert
October 10, 2019

You can do it in 2 steps.

You can create a preset that ignores white.

Create an action that selects All and chooses Objects Artboards > Fit to Selected Art.

Use Bridge to trace the images with your ignore white preset.

Use Illustrator Actions to Batch the resulting files.

    sheratong92025904
    sheratong92025904Author
    Participant
    October 10, 2019
    This will work Ton! Thank you! It will be perfect since I need to do the expand and save as EPS as an action batch anyway. I've seen many others with a similar problem, I'll spread the word!
    Ton Frederiks
    Community Expert
    Ton FrederiksCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 10, 2019
    glad to hear that helped!
    JETalmage
    JETalmage
    Inspiring
    October 10, 2019

    And for a general answer to your quesiton, you don't need a script to make such selections. For any given fill color:

     

    1. Select an object with the fill color of interest.
    2. Select>Same>Fill Color

     

    JET

    sheratong92025904
    sheratong92025904Author
    Participant
    October 10, 2019
    I know I can do that manually on an image by image basis, sure, but I want it to be used in an action. In order to get select same fill color to work in an action you would first have to get it to record the selection of white shape, which it will not do. Any other ideas?
    Larry G. Schneider
    Community Expert
    Larry G. SchneiderCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 9, 2019

    You're wrong. In the Control Bar or the Properties Panel is an icon which opens the Image Trace panel. Click on the Advanced line and at the bottom is a checkbox for Ignore White.

      sheratong92025904
      sheratong92025904Author
      Participant
      October 10, 2019
      Nope, when you click the ignore white box, the tracing preset changes to "custom". If you do that while recording an action, it will revert to "default" when playing the action back and thus not use the ignore white preference. That's why I was thinking a select white and delete might be a good solution. Any other ideas?
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