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

[sheratong92025904]

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

[Larry G. Schneider]

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]

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?

[JETalmage]

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]

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?

[Ton Frederiks]

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]

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]

glad to hear that helped!

[Kurt Gold]

> "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.