Spot overlapped paths

[lemiran]

Hi there

I wonder if there is a trick in order to see and spot easily overlapped parts of all my paths in an Illustrator document.

Thank you!

regards

Miran

[Monika Gause]

Just how complex is the file?

What kind of edits are allowed in order to spot those overlaps?

[Mylenium · Accepted solution]

Aside from complex mathematical solutions using scripts there's not really a good way to detect such issues. It all comes with experience and designing your artwork meticulously. You can, however experiment with applying a uniform stroke or fill to all your objects and then zoom in and out. If areas form conspicuous "splotches" at small zoom levels where there should be separate lines or objects suddenly start blending together that could indicate you may have an issue.

Mylenium

[Jacob Bugge]

Miran,

You may have tried it, but especially if you know your artwork well, you may try and see how well (or bad) toggling between Outline and Preview (Ctrl/Cmd+Y) works; you can see most without zooming in, and zoom in when in doubt.

And maybe it is too tedious, depending on your artwork.

[lemiran]

Hi!

Thanks a lot to taking your time 🙂

@Monika Gause The file can be as simple as overlapped squares but it can also be a complex design... The ideal functionnality would be a color spotting (without editing anything) when we activate a script or button, but when deactivated, this color disappears. A little bit like in the window that permits to simplify a path, when we thcik the box preview Illustrator shows some provisional elements... (sorry for my basic english 😛 )

@MyleniumYou are right thanks

@Jacob Bugge The cmd + Y trick is a good idea, but in some case that is very difficult to distinguish overlapped elements

[Jacob Bugge]

Miran, based on your descriptions, and depending on whether the paths are filled or not, and depending on the actual fill colours if any, there may be at least two ways to get what you are after, now or in the future.

One simple way, for cases with different fill/stroke colours, could be to select everything/the relevant path(s) and set a suitable Blending Mode (maybe Luminosity),

https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/transparency-blending-modes.html

Remember to reset the Blending Mode.

A simple general way could be to use highlighting through hovering (placing the mouse on top of the path):

When you hover over a stroked path with no fill, the spine of the (bounding) path is highlighted in the Layer colour; you have to hover over the actual path.

When you hover anywhere over the filled area of a filled path, the spine of the (bounding) path is also highlighted in the Layer colour (unless the preference is set to select by path only).

This way you can switch between hovering over each two possibly overlapping paths and see; you can also (see if you can) hover over both and have both highlighted.

This could be enhanced with a feature that highlights the whole area of the path, like a fill colour which would be much more conspicuous than the highlighting of the spine of the path.

I am unsure whether it has been made. Otherwise, it might form the basis of a feature request,

https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests
https://illustrator.uservoice.com/

[Kurt Gold]

What is the purpose of your request?