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Hello! I apologize for the vague title. I have no idea how to describe this in a brief headline.
When I make a repeat pattern, I drag the pattern to swatches and it looks like the pattern I made.
But when I pull it out of swatches, it changes some, all, or portions of the motifs to black or white blobs.
It has happened whether I design in Procreate, Ai for the ipad, Ai on desktop or upload an image I've designed into Ai.
It does not happen consistently, so I can't record what I do leading up to it to cause it.
I know it happens when I use the blob brush, but I can't remember if it happens with other tools.
Sometimes it will happen when I make the pattern, too, before I pull it out of swatches.
I have been trying to figure this out for quite awhile now, almost a year, and I've been so far unsuccessful.
TIA,
Casey
Hi Casey, I had a look at your file.
Double clicking the pattern gives the clipping path warning, that happens when the old method (drag to the swatches panel with an invisible rectangle in the back) was used to create a pattern.
Double clicking the pattern in the swatches panel and clicking done seems to solve the problem.
I would recommend to use the pattern editor to edit your patterns.
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Screendumps would help understand the problem (please use the insert fotos button).
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I know, it would definitely help to have a picture, but I don't think I have any. When it happens, I've remade the pattern until it doesn't happen anymore. I'm not sure I have any left. But I will check. Thank you 🙂
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I found one! Here's an example: The image on the left is the pattern, the center image is when the pattern is pulled out of swatches directly into the document, and the image on the right is the pattern placed within an artboard. It didn't help, as I'd hoped. I'm disappointed to see this, too, because I checked this pattern a number of times and thought it was fixed. It's been about a week since I last worked with it. I've notice that happen, too - patterns I thought were ok, weren't after some time went by. I'm stumped.
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This looks like there is masking or some other combined object and it gets lost.
It would help if we could also see the structure of this in the layers panel. We would need to see the paths/groups/clipping masks (whatever there is) inside the layer, not just "Layer 1"
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How do I go about sharing that? I don't mind sharing the file but I don't think I've done it before.
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I just saw that someone else had a possibly similar issue with their pattern, and they said they needed to drag the pattern into a defined square. Then it didn't happen.
Could that be the issue here? I've never heard of that before but I'm new to Ai, just started using it last year.
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What happens if you double click the pattern in the Swatches panel instead of dragging it onto the artboard?
That will open the pattern maker for editing.
If you want to share a file, you can use WeTransfer, Dropbox, Google filesharing or similar services.
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I hope this works, I'm sharing file access. I'm attempting it through CC.
https://shared-assets.adobe.com/link/077d8038-d70e-4f6d-6752-a4305c99f752
Thank you again!
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Hi Casey, I had a look at your file.
Double clicking the pattern gives the clipping path warning, that happens when the old method (drag to the swatches panel with an invisible rectangle in the back) was used to create a pattern.
Double clicking the pattern in the swatches panel and clicking done seems to solve the problem.
I would recommend to use the pattern editor to edit your patterns.
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Oh my gosh, Ton, that worked! Thank you so much!
You're right, I did use the drag method to make the pattern; I didn't realize it was "old." lol
I really appreciate your help with this. It has taken me so long to fix it and I couldn't find anyone who knew what I was talking about. It didn't happen consistently, so I couldn't record it, and then for instance in this ring pattern, it would look ok, and we'd think all was good, but then it would act up again after a few days! How weird is that?
I'm so happy to know about this so I can fix any others I might still have! Hopefully by using the pattern editor it won't happen again, though. Is thte pattern editor up in Object>Pattern>Make ?
Thank you again, Ton, you've seriously made my day!
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Good to hear that helped, Casey. Yes the drag method is "old" it was introduced in Illustrator 88 🙂
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HI again! Well, guess what? The blobs returned. After "sitting" without being opened, when I went to open the file last week, the blobs returned when I pulled the pattern out.
So now it's not a big deal, I know how to fix it.
But can you tell me how I might have created that issue in the first place? I'd like to be able to avoid it in the future, rather than just fix it each time it happens. (Besides stop using the "old" drag method :-)!)
Thank you so much!
Casey