Vector Quality problems

[Kuttyjoe]

This is becoming increasing the norm for me. In decades of using Illustrator, I did not have issues like this and I'm not sure why it's happening now.  But, it may coincide with what I've been seeing visually in Illustrator.  Anyway, I start with a piece of text or other object.  I use the Appearance panel to put a stroke on the text, mostly stroke behind or outside.  Eventually I will expand the appearance, then unite the whole thing.  Normally it would be a single solid object with no gaps between the two colors, but this is the result I get regularly now.  A lot of gaps as if the two colors were never perfectly aligned.  If you look at the close up image below, you can see small gaps where the two colors are supposed to meet perfectly.  Something seems to have caused the quality of the vectors in Illustrator to become less perfect.  This problem is causing me A LOT of time in trying to clean it up before I can move on with my processes.  The one thing that coincides with this problem for me is my increasing use of the Appearance panel for adding strokes to objects.  In the past I did not use the Appearance panel nearly as much as I have in the past few years and maybe that is related to this problem.

 

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

Instead of doing this with  stroke, I would use Offset path. Spares you the uniting step.

But if you are using the Pathfinder: How is the precision set up?

[Kuttyjoe]

It still has to be united eventually.  And the appearance panel just gives more flexibility so it's not a solution for me.  As for the precision set up of the pathfinder, it's at it's default setting which I've never changed. 0.0283 pt.

[Kuttyjoe]

Changing the precision solved the problem.  I didn't even realize the option was there, but I suppose it comes at some kind of performance cost eventually.

Thanks!

[Kuttyjoe]

Thank you for this answer.  I spent so much time fixing the issue and had no idea that the setting for precision was there.  So you've saved me an awful lot of future trouble.  Thank you so much.

[Monika Gause]

You're welcome. Glad you could solve it!