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Question

Selecting only visible objects in a clipping mask

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
December 5, 2023
4 replies
2322 views

I have a very complicated PDF that I'm trying to modify in Illustrator.

They can take up to an hour just to open.

It uses clipping masks that hide some objects.

I'm trying to delete all unnecessary objects to "dumb it down".

The clipping masks hid a lot of objects.

Is there a way to select ONLY the objects the mask allows me to see and not the hidden objects?

That would go a long way to making this work.

Thanks in advance.

How-to

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Kurt Gold

Community Expert

Paul, up to an hour to open such files indeed poses a staggering challenge.

Can you perhaps share a sample .pdf file for inspection?

P

Paul32995277fd7hAuthor

Participant

Kurt,

I'll attach a "dumbed down" section of on of the PDFs as the original is 58 megs.

The original takes me an hour to open.

This should open fairly quickly but you'll see the clipping layer named "Marsh" is the issue.

It's the very first layer.

I split the PDF up by deleting that layer and it's manageable.

However I lose some of the detail.

I doubt there's a way to select only those "bits" that the mask shows.

Clipping masks are a double edged sword in my experience.

If you're interested in seeing the entire PDF you can download a section here:

downloader

Basically, whatever software that's creating these maps is incorporating clipping mask and there's a lot of small parts that are hidden.

MA_Marlborough_20210309_TM_geoBottom.pdf

Kurt Gold

Community Expert

Thanks for providing the sample files, Paul.

I know these kinds of .pdf files provided by USGS. They often are difficult to handle with Illustrator for various reasons. The first thing I recommend to do is to optimise the initial files in Acrobat in order to reduce the overall file size. 50 or 60 MB files can be changed to 3 or 5 MB files without losing anything. Also, placing the files in InDesign and (re-)exporting to .pdf may help a lot to optimise the files.

This way, most of the time it shouldn't take one hour to open the files in Illustrator. Usually, it will then take just some seconds or a minute. But some files may still contain insane constructions, so Illustrator may be knocked out when trying to open them.

As for really cropping according to only the visible objects inside the clipping path(s), I have an action in progress that is supposed to handle that. Unfortunately, the action is dependent on virtually countless eventualities. Some weeks or months ago I posted a request here, asking for sample files for inspection in order to optimise the action. Unfortunately, there was no feedback at all.

D

defaultacyghmmgm4c7

Participant

btw, last post, use the open arrow

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Paul32995277fd7hAuthor

Participant

Please try the file I uploaded. There are simply too many points to select and each selection you get a spinning ball.

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defaultacyghmmgm4c7

Participant

Select all in the outline format (vector view) and then option shift click the images you want to keep which will deselect them and then you should be able to globally delete the remaining unwanted elements. You can start with a few that way and check in overprint preview mode to make sure you are on the right path. (no pun intended there, lol)

Michael Ambroise

Community Expert

Can you share a screenshot with the panel layer open?

_______Senior graphic designer | United Nations Population Fund

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