Issues with Clipping Masks When Opening InDesign PDFs in Illustrator

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
October 17, 2024
5 replies
1035 views

Good morning,

In my company's process we need to export a PDF from Indesign, then open it with Adobe Illustrator (I know, it's not optimal, but it is what it is). The problem is that many clipping masks are created (during export? when opening in Illustrator?) while they do not exist in InDesign. The file then opened in Illustrator is unusable because it takes a long time to delete them one by one. These masks appear randomly on very different elements on the page. Sometimes there are even full-page masks for a single microscopic element. It's really incomprehensible. I've tried all possible types of exports but nothing works and I'm lost! Could you help me?

Thank you so much

Bug

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Correct answer Isabelle29595328wibm

Adobe support found a solution : to export in EPS type and not PDF. It worked well. Thanks to them !

JR Boulay

Community Expert

Well my IT team uses Illustrator to "vectorize" evey element on the page to export it on Animate (our program uses Flash).

This process is really old school, they should open the PDFs with Acrobat Pro to vectorize properly.

Acrobate du PDF, InDesigner et Photoshopographe

I

Isabelle29595328wibmAuthorCorrect answer

Inspiring

Adobe support found a solution : to export in EPS type and not PDF. It worked well. Thanks to them !

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

Are you aware that EPS shoud be avoided in modern times? Use PDF and AI. If you want to open in Illustrator without damage, go to Acrobat Pro, there mske outlines of all text. This is 1 command. Then you can open the file in Illustrator without damaging text. But EPS is not any solution in any way.

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

The OP said they were using Flash. I don't think "modern times" is a concern to them! 😜

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

Illustrator is not a common PDF editor. Therefore you will always run into problems of different kind.

BobLevine

Community Expert

Unless you can explain why you're doing something that you already know is "not optimal" you're not likely to get any help at all. The only PDFs that you can reliably edit with Illustrator are PDFs created by Illustrator and saved with the capability to do it.

I

Isabelle29595328wibmAuthor

Inspiring

Well my IT team uses Illustrator to "vectorize" evey element on the page to export it on Animate (our intern program uses Flash).

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

Well my IT team uses Illustrator to "vectorize" evey element on the page to export it on Animate (our intern program uses Flash).

By @Isabelle29595328wibm