Thin outlines appear around certain painted areas (not in ai document, only when I export to PDF)

[julia_4955]

Hi all! I'm working on an Illustrator file and have used Live Paint for several areas. In the Illustrator document, everything looks good, but when I export to PDF, thin white or clear outlines appear around certain painted areas (where I've live painted in a new color, or erased and then filled in a color): see screenshot below. I can't figure out how to fix this and would so appreciate any insights. Thank you so much!

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

The problem exists because Live Paint is a special, live object which is rendered differently inside ILlustrator. In the PDF it is expanded automatically and then you get those paths and when they are rendered on screen, you get those white lines as antialiasing artefacts.

Most probably this will not be visible in print. But it can show up in some circumstances.

What you can do: make a copy of the file. Expand the Live paint. Hit the button Merge (bottom row) in the pathfinder panel. Then you will only get antialiasing between differently colored areas. That could possibly be solved by applying thin lines of the same color to the shapes. Or to some of the shapes.

[julia_4955]

Thank you so much! However, when I select all the pieces of the image, then go Live Paint>Merge, nothing changes — for example, the various pieces of sky that are the same color blue remain fragmented pieces, rather than merging into one big blue piece. I have also tried Effects>Pathfinder>Merge, and that has not actually merged pieces of the same color together either. Am I missing something? Thank you so much!

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

Live paint megre does something differently.

You need to expand your live paint and then use the pathfinder panel, not the effects.

The pathfinder panel is in Window > Pathfinder.

You first need to delete the effect from the object by opening Window Appearance and getting rid of it there with the little trashcan in that panel.