Issue Overprint and layers

[campanero_Dublin]

Hey all,

I have an issue with a file.

Its layered into Artwork white and the Keylines.

At some point a outlined letter in the Artwork droped to the white layer changes the colour to the white.

I was not able to grab it only in the outline modus of illustrator.

it was not detectable as it was in the white colour.

Yet it somehow still managed to keep the knock out the on the artwork. Which in this location doesn’t make sense. 

Never seen anything like it.

Can I rule out human error? No, but…..

This would actually require a good bid of work to copy the element out, re-colour it to white and lock it in.

That would not be an easy job that is done accidentally. The only thing that would make more sense is, that there was a glitch when writing the final pdf that would have caused the code to not output correctly.

Has anyone any idea what could have caused this?

[Monika Gause]

Difficult to solve without actually seeing it.

Can you please show something? The original file would be best. Delete everything from it that is not relevant for the problem.

[campanero_Dublin]

There seems to be only the mask on the wrong layer.

[Jacob Bugge]

campanero,

I wonder whether you have set the white for the Layer, overriding any other actual colour(s).

If you know the colour of the dropped letter, you can select something with that colour and then Select>SameFill Color (or Stroke Color).

Otherwise, working on a copy, the letter may appear if you remove the white from the Layer.

Or  maybe you can recognise the letter (shape) in the Layers palette

Or there could be other ways.

[campanero_Dublin]

Thats what I do. Artwork is the lowest and locked layer.

I only move the Technical spotcolours with that method to their own layer.

Ther odd thing is that the "E" disapeared from the Artwork layer (colourd in dark red) to the background, used that colour and is not touchable, except in outline modus. I suspect that it is a mask.

[campanero_Dublin]

Just to be clear, I get the artwork delivered and just seperate the technical layers. so I aim to touch the artwork as little as possible. But I need to understand what happened.

[Jacob Bugge]

Thank you for sharing the outcome, campanero.

I hope you will share how you managed to find and change the evasive part.

This might very well be the key to understand what happened in the first place.

And unknown to most, it is quite easy to directly show images in posts, hence the following general suggestion:

Please show images by using the Insert Photos button (looks like moon over mountains) for each at the top of the reply box which makes everything appear right there in your post together with your text, rather than the more conspicuous Drag&drop attachment which requires helpers to open a new tab for each image and wait for its showing, then go back and forth; and if they just click it and wait for its showing and press the X to get back to the text, the image is gone so they have to open it again and wait to see it again.