Search objects that have multiple fills in their Appearance.

[Tom VD]

Hi all,

We receive designs where certain objects have more than one fill colour. I'm not sure how they happen to become like this, only that every now and then they're there. 

The top fill is visibile, but masks off the underlying fills. The invislbe (redundant) fills must be some inherent appearance that just stuck around I guess.

When importing these Illustrator files into our prepress software PACKZ the objects with multiple fills apparently get converted into multiple overlaying objects . Still no issue: the top object completely covers the objects underneath masking the redundant colour fill, and the design remains visibly correct.

But when the printer uses these PACKZ files in his RIP process, the RIP somehow detects the underlying objects and adds them to the colour separation.

For example, if you have a rectangle in a blue spot colour on top of a red spot colour, both spot colours appear in the colour separation, instead of just the blue one.

So I would like try and find these objects with multiple fills, and remove the redundant aspects of their appearance before importing them into PACKZ and so avoiding the stacked objects.

Thanks for your thoughts and feedback 🙂

[Kurt Gold]

Can you share a sample Illustrator file for inspection?

[Tom VD]

Hi Kurt,

I can't share the original files (for non disclosure reasons), but here's a test file that has the same issues.

Hope this helps.

I can't upload .ai files to my message so I had to create a download link 🙄

https://we.tl/t-26rnicDxCk

I would like to find the text with multiple fills (blue and red), and ignore the other text (just blue).

[Kurt Gold]

Thanks for the sample file.

If the objects share exactly the same appearance stack in the Appearrance palette, you can select one of them and then use Select menu > Same > Appearance to select and modify all of them.

[Tom VD]

Yes, that is how we find the objects now, and I think we intercept most of them. But it's not entirely waterproof, because not all objects have the same appearance. Therefore finding all elements is time consuming, and no guarantee that all objects are removed (especially smaller objects like outlined texts).

That's why I was wondering if there is a way to search for specific appearance builds (extra fills) instead of specific colours.

Guess we'll have to continue searching by hand 🙂

Thanks again.

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

Is this about single paths or about groups?

The plugin FindReplaceArt (not for free) can find objects with multiple fills. But not groups.

[Tom VD]

So far we only had the issue with single objects, no groups.

I'm familiar with this plugin company, but not with that plugin - I'll give it a go.

[Monika Gause]

For the solution, please refer to Kurt Gold's post.

As for the explanation: Are these objects groups? In that case it probably happened because people are not aware of certain eyedropper behaviours.