In outline mode and some of my icons have lots of lines on them
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I exported my file to pdf and found that some symbols wouldn't print when opened in Adobe Acrobat. Then I found that these symbols have a bunch of lines on them in the outline mode.
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Does anybody know what they are and how to fix it?
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How does this symbol look in Illustrator? What is the fill color?
Looks like a gradient is converted to blend steps.
How do you save your PDF? Is transparency flattened?
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The icons that aren't printing all have a gradient, but there are a bunch of icons with gradients that are printing. I tried 'Flatten Transparency', but the lines are still there. I also tried to 'Expand', but it didn't make a difference. Attached is an example of a page where some icons are fine and some are not.
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Flatten transparency could be the cause of the lines. Can you get rid of the lines and use a real gradient instead?
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Oh, actually I flattened the transparency after you asked about it thinking it was a solution, so the problem was there before flattening transparency. How can I get rid of the lines?
In the example attached, I used an eyedropper to get the color pink on the heart so the heart has a solid pink fill, but in outline mode, the lines are still there.
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The lines are probably inside of a clipping mask, when selected you must be able to see them in the Layers panel, release the clipping mask, delete the lines/objects and fill with a gradient.
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I released the clippng mask as shown in the screenshot, but could you tell me how to delete the lines? When I try to delete them, it cuts away at the object.
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I still see the clip group.
In order to remove the boxes, you need to select the clip group and select Object > Clipping Mask > Release
Then you can delete the boxes and fill what once was the clipping mask with a gradient.
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When I released the clipping mask, the shape disappears and becomes a box.
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Try Object > Compound Path > Release and get rid of all the <Path> below it.
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When I do Object > Compound Path > Release, the whole object disappears
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What things are not printing? I'm not clear from your screen grabs what's missing?
Where did these icons come from? e.g. are they old files? perhaps EPS? maybe not even Illustrator files?
Before Postscript was capable of defining smooth gradients (In level 2 and level 3), gradient blends like these were made with individual slices of rectangles. This "blend" was then cropped to shape using a clipping path. This is what you are seeing here (they aren't "lines". If you zoom in, you will see the rectangles.). The first and last one will have the color values of the extremes of the gradient, and the ones in between will change along the way. (This probably has nothing to do with flattening.).
In any case, There's no way to fix them except (as @Ton Frederiks indicates) to redefine the gradient. Create a new gradient swatch using the first and last colors However if they are printing fine, there's actaully no need to do anything, this is the way things were on the "olden days"
If something isn't showing in your printed output, I would suspect there might be an errant overprint assigned to an Icon, so they aren't showing up against the Black background in the printed piece. If you view the file using Separations Preview, and toggle the Overprint Preview on and off, do any of the icons disappear?
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The icons are SVG and it turns out they were fine when I imported them into my design, but when I expanded them, they became like that in outline mode. Is there a way to fix it?
When I tried to edit the gradient, each box had a gradient in it (screenshot attached)
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When opening the Separations Preview panel, the options are all grayed out. When View > Overprint Preview, it doesn't disappear and just looks like attached screenshot below.
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When you Expanded your icons (why?), did you select Gradient Mesh, or did you select Steps. If the latter, that's exactly what has broken your graphic into each individual color step as a separate rectangle slices, and as many as you specified (e.g 255, probably).
Go back to your original icon.
Still, that in itself wluldn't necessarily cause a no printing issue.
Can you upload a sample file where an object is disappearing?
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Here is the ai file: https://assets.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:VA6C2:2f6c927e-3ae2-4198-8718-6e95b43f6f5d?view=published
Here is the pdf I'm printing from: https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:VA6C2:b5e4dbdb-a68b-4e54-b42a-9e1f759ee584
The 'original icon' and 'icon expanded specify 255 objects' aren't printing, just the 'icon expanded gradient mesh' is printing.
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Hi Brad, just checking in with you, haven't heard from you all for a while.
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Sorry! Missed this post somehow.
I'm having no issues with any of the shapes in your file. All print properly. Not sure what to tell you!
What are you printing to?
In any case, there's no reason to expand the icon, so not sure why you are bothering.
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