Opening a PDF in Illustrator cuts off an image

[calthescientist]

Hi all. I made a graph in R and exported that plot in PDF format. The colors in the PDF go beyond the "40000" mark at the bottom. However, when I opened the filed with Adobe Illustrator 2024, the graph is partially cut off (it doesn't even reach 40000). Any idea as to why this is happening? Thank you.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

You've reached the limit as to how many points can be in path in Illustrator (approx 32000). There is no solution unless you simplify the graph at the source.

[calthescientist]

Thanks for clarifying, Brad! 

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

This was covered here a few times, most recently with somone creating a graph in Cairo. I don't know anything about either Cairo or R, but a quick google search mentions this being a problem and that there are apprently routines you can invoke to simplify the sampling in your graph, or by splitting your graph into a few separate sections at a time so you have a few lines that you can butt up against each other. The other way, of course, is to render your graph as a high-resolution image file in Photoshop.

[Bobby Henderson]

Are the lines in the graph a single connected path? If so, it's possible the path may have so many anchor points that a portion of the path is being disregarded. I think 32,000 is the maximum number of anchor points a path can have in Illustrator.

[calthescientist]

Thanks for clarifying, Bobby!