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Question

Flatten Transparency creates huge file that is difficult to process

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
March 10, 2022
3 replies
1285 views

Hi,

I am having a lot of problems with the Flatten Transparency command on an illustrator file.

I am using a: Dell Alienware i7-9750H with 32GB Ram, virtual memory of 40GB, free disk space of 90GB and a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 running on Windows 10 64-bit and Illustrator CC.

I have been working on an architectural drawing that has some 9 overlapping layers - the main top layer being black lines for the building and then subsequent layers displaying different conditions that have generally a single color line and filled with a tiled red and white pattern or black and white or turquoise and white etc. The file itself is only 3MB large.

I have not had any problems working with the file, but after creating a 743KB PDF file heard it was taking an inordinately long time to flatten and print. I therefore attempted to use FLATTEN TRANSPARENCY and problems emerged immediately. After numerous crashes, I finally managed to flatten the image and it created a monster 444MB file. I do not understand why flattening all the transparent overlapping layers would make a file that is 100x larger.

I am adding an example of the image here:

This topic has been closed for replies.

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

Does not have to be the whole monster, a little bit (with a pattern and transparent area) will do.

You can check which areas will be affected with the Window menu > Flattener Preview panel.

A

Avatar LucasAuthor

Participating Frequently

Ton, you were right. The chequered pattern was the issue and when I changed to a 50% opaque single color there were no more problems. Seems strange that Illustrator would have such an issue with a basic white and colored pattern but it does.

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

Good to hear that helped.

A pattern is very efficient. It is defined once and every time it is used it only points to that same definition. Flattening creates many separate instances of that pattern.

Kurt Gold

Community Expert

This monster is not normal.

Can you share the original file (before any kind of flattening), so one may take a look at it?

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

Flatten transparency can make huge files when the Raster/Vector Balance is high.

https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/transparency-flattening-acrobat-pro.html

Your pattern fills look like the contain many tiny squares. As long as they are patterns they do not take up very much space, the fill refers to a single pattern tile that is repeated. If that pattern fill is combined with transparency and flattened it will create many tiny squares.

I wonder if it is necessary to use patterns instead of a flat fill color, it certainly will make the file smaller after flattening.

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