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Illustrator - Minimum stroke weight

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
September 17, 2020
7 replies
6607 views

Hi there,

Most of the publishers I work with require a minimum stroke weight of 0.25 pt for their printed books. It is not uncommon to have the supplied .ai files trigger the minimum stroke weight preflight warning in InDesign. Is there a way I can select and change strokes under 0.25 pt in Illustrator?

The placing of a raster version to avoid the preflight warning is not ideal.

Thanks for your help.

Scott

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Monika Gause

It's possible with the plugin ToolShed.

It can adjust all paths to a certain minimum stroke width.

https://rj-graffix.com/downloads/plugins/#toolshed

Kurt Gold

Community Expert

Thanks again, Ton. I haven't tried the "new" script yet, but I trust your recommendation.

The script is pretty entertaining, by the way. One by one.

Sometimes I think it is a pity that Illustrator's Magic Wand capabilities have not been improved for decades.

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

Yes, Kurt. There are many tools that can be improved (Graphs maybe? or Freeform Gradients debugged?)

There are a lot of useful scripts all over the Internet, but the most recent scripts that are installed by Illustrator are 10 years old.

Kurt Gold

Community Expert

Thanks, Ton. When I execute the script the (not resizeable) dialog only goes up to "He..." (which probably means "Height").

The "Str..." entry as per your screenshot is not visible and cannot be accessed. Therefore my question.

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

I see, I had the script as part of a collection, but it behaves different (although the dialog box is not resizable) than the one I linked to.

Here you can find the better version of SelectPathsBySize.jsx :

https://github.com/johnwun/js4ai/zipball/master

Monika Gause

Correct answer

Community Expert

It's possible with the plugin ToolShed.

It can adjust all paths to a certain minimum stroke width.

https://rj-graffix.com/downloads/plugins/#toolshed

Kurt Gold

Community Expert

Did you perhaps mean a different script, Ton?

I don't see how the SelectPathsBySize script may help in that case. Am I overlooking something?

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

You can choose the stroke width in the script.

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

Or use a script to select these stroked lines:

~~https://github.com/nvkelso/illustrator-scripts/blob/master/other-authors/jwundes/SelectPathsBySize.jsx~~

Here you can find the better version of SelectPathsBySize.jsx :

https://github.com/johnwun/js4ai/zipball/master

Luke Jennings3

Community Expert

I'm not sure if there is an Ilustrator fix for you, but if the placed .ai file is enlarged or reduced in InDesign, the effective stroke width will change (unless the InDesign preference to include stroke width when scaling is turned off). The Acrobat Print production tool Fix hairlines can find lines smaller than .25 pt and change them to .25 pt.

You could also use a Preflight Fixup.

Kurt Gold

Community Expert

You may draw a stroke and set its weight to 0,125 pt. In the Magic Wand palette enable the Stroke Weight option and set the tolerance to 0,124 pt.

Take the Magic Wand tool and click on the 0,125 pt stroke.

A preflight in Acrobat is probably still the better option.

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