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frankbernhard
Participant
March 17, 2025
Answered

Potential bug: super fine line around shapes that are filled white

  • March 17, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 570 views

Hi there,

 

I see weird lines around white objects that drive me crazy and I am wondering if this is a bug. Is anyone seeing similar things?

 

I am working currently on updating a museum map. Various exhibition rooms have various colors. Walls are compound paths that are filled white. The white compound path sits on top of the filled-in rooms and hallways and stroke setting is transparent/0 width.

The original plan is over 10 years old. Just last week, I was working on it and it looked like expected.

The map is placed in an Indesign document. Today, I exported a PDF-X4 file for offset printing like I always do. When I checked the PDF, I noticed super thin hairlines around the white compound paths. 

First, I thouhgt it might be a display error. But when I check the color channels (Acrobat output preview), I can measure them. And when I render the PDF page in Photoshop, it does render these super thin lines.

When I zoom in thouh in Acrobat, the lines do not seem to scale. Whatever the magnification, the line stays super thin. 

My guess is the lines won't print because of how thin they are. But it's super irritating and I want to be more confident in telling my customer that this will not cause a problem.

I'll attach two screenshots. The first shows a corner of the building, rooms in gray, and a very thin pink line around the white compound path. Magnification 125%. The second screenshot shows a zoomed-in corner of the same area, upper left, with the dotted line for orientation. Magnification here is 3200%. 

I am confident that there aren't any objects in Illustrator that have a stroke color assigned to them. But even in Illustrator, I can see the line. I've updated to Illustrator 29.3.1 seven days ago, Mac OS 15.3.2

I am puzzeld. Thanks for any ideas what's causing this.

Correct answer Ton Frederiks

There is an effect applied to the layer.

Open the Appearance panel.

Select All.

You will see a Layer item at the top.

Double click that Layer item

You will notice a light pink fill applied

From the Apperance panel menu select Clear Appearance.

2 replies

Ton Frederiks
Community Expert
Ton FrederiksCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
March 17, 2025

There is an effect applied to the layer.

Open the Appearance panel.

Select All.

You will see a Layer item at the top.

Double click that Layer item

You will notice a light pink fill applied

From the Apperance panel menu select Clear Appearance.

frankbernhard
Participant
March 17, 2025

👏 Thank you.

Ton Frederiks
Community Expert
Community Expert
March 17, 2025

Good to hear that helped.

Anubhav M
Community Manager
Community Manager
March 17, 2025

Hello @frankbernhard,

Would you mind checking if you have Clipping Masks enabled to see if it helps? If the problem persists, kindly share a link to a sample file here after uploading it to a file-sharing service (if possible) so I can check it on my end.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

 

Anubhav

frankbernhard
Participant
March 17, 2025

Hi Anubhav,

 

thank you for looking into this. To simplify things, I deleted everything from the artboard but one of the compound paths that shows that line. There's no clipping mask. Here's a link to the file. It contains one element and it shows a faint pink-ish outline on my mac that's also there when exported as a PDF or PNG.


https://www.dropbox.com/t/UT0tafikPMnwX9u0

When I copy said compound path over into a new file, the outline disappears and the object is rendered as it used to be.

Thanks again for checking this out.
Frank