Well, the workaround is Zig Zag. Just look at the Appearance palette while the cured one is selected. As a side note, Mr. or Mrs. Gans, I have to rebuke you a little bit because you awarded Ton to have introduced the Outline Object workaround, although he just confirmed that it worked. Well, not important at all I'd say. Bunting_Banner, as long as you are not applying some other weird additional effects, there should be no drawback. ... View more

Perhaps. It would be helpful to know how you create your spot swatches typically. That is, do you create some swatch libraries with many colours in different files based on existing objects which you select manually and then make the swatches? Or aren't there any objects at all and you just use the Swatches palette to create the swatches from scratch? Or do you go some other ways? Can you elaborate? ... View more

You can Cmd click on the New Swatch icon in the Swatches palette to do that. ... View more

You have never faced the blob issue? That has to change. You should enjoy it at least once in your lifetime. Look: blobs.zip - Google Drive (AI CC 2017 format) ... View more

I have a vague guess about the reason for that behaviour. It may have to do with the amount of (virtual) anchor points and/or their arrangement/distribution on the glyphs. I think it is related to the Blob issue in conjunction with tiny calligraphic brushes. That issue can be solved by applying a placebo Zig Zag effect (or Roughen effect) to add anchor points behind the scenes. The same workaround does help when you use it on the type objects that are affected by the unwanted distortions. That is, select the masking type object and apply Zig Zag with 0 (zero) size and some ridges per segment. For the same reason the Outline Object effect works as a temporary solution because it also increases the number of anchor points. The reason why some fonts are not affected may be some kind of fortune. They may just "luckily" contain the "right" or "ideal" number of anchor points and their arrangement is suitable for being a mask. Well, that's at least my assumption. ... View more

Not sure if you have installed the following fonts, but here is a sample list of fonts that are not affected on my machines (today): - Optima - Spumante - Zapfino - Savoye LET Plain - Shree Devanagari - Sinhala Sangam - Plantagenet Cherokee - Phosphate - Papyrus - Myanmar Sangam - Myanmar MN - Lao Sangam MN - Lao MN - Krungthep - Kefa - Futura - Classic Comic - Brush Script MT Italic - Baskerville There are probably some more. Again, yesterday the issue was not there at all … ... View more

I think that's why I said I couldn't reproduce it yesterday. In fact, I tested at least 6 fonts and couldn't see the issue, but today I thought it might have to do with some miraculous auto-correcting abilities of my eyes that faded away past midnight. Odd. ... View more

My first thought was that it may have to do with a side effect of the Align to Pixel Grid option, but this is probably not the case. So far, I couldn't reproduce the behaviour you are illustrating above. Can you perhaps share a sample .ai file that contains a common Myriad font with that issue? ... View more

As far as I can see, currently the Colour Themes palette in Illustrator is just an incomplete attempt. Probably it should never have been introduced in that inoperative condition. Unless I'm overlooking some subtle capabilities, of course. ... View more

Which version of Illustrator are you using? ... View more

What specific values do you mean by 'small increments'? ... View more

I've seen that several times as well. Sometimes it helps to close and retry. It seems more reliable to go to the general preferences and turn on the option to enable the traditional File > New dialog. ... View more

Well, mayhap you could take a field in the File Info xmp data section to declare in lieu of an oath that the current file was originally created in the past. That may sound silly at first glance, but it could pioneer some unimaginable ways to substitute familiar routines. ... View more

That usually happens if you do a Save as while replacing an existing file. Guess you did that. The File > File Info … workaround is only safe to operate when you are executing plain Save commands. And you may have to close and reopen the file to get the correct dates. I should have mentioned that. ... View more

I'm pretty sure that this can also be done. Admittedly, I'm not sure if I understand your second request. Can you perhaps provide a sketch that shows what you are going to achieve? ... View more

Yes, the metadata does show the correct dates. That's why I suggested to use File > File Info … as one workaround. The current behaviour is an anomaly. Probably just caused by a little bug in Illustrator, Sierra or both of them. ... View more

I'm afraid I don't have a clue. First I thought it may have to do with the Autosave option for Data-Recovery, but turning off that option did not help. As for the Illustrator and OS jumps, I also jumped from CS5 to CC 2017 (still mostly using CS5) and the OS jump was even longer (Snow Leopard to Sierra, still using Snow Leopard most of the time). Therefore I cannot tell which Illustrator or OS version introduced the misbehaviour. ... View more

I can confirm the wrong behaviour as well. It looks like Illustrator is the only programme that is affected by the issue. You also mentioned Photoshop and Acrobat. They behave fine here, so I cannot confirm the second part of your complaint. As far as Finder is concerned I don't know how to cure it. Probably you just can't at the moment. Two workarounds for Illustrator as a temporary solution: Take Adobe Bridge to get the correct infos or – right in Illustrator – go to File > File Info … ... View more

Try to first create a compound path, then apply the gradient. ... View more

The partial truth assumption was probably just an aberration on my part. I was thinking about partially transparent linked images. With them it should work. Well, partially. The reason why it doesn't work with plain linked images is because behind the linked curtains an encapsulated, but not detectable nor selectable clipping path is already there. It protects the image from being visually affected by the Offset Path appearance. You can verify that by expanding the appearance and taking a look at the Layers palette. Not sure what it is that whispers in my ears that this Outline thing may not be the most urgent challenge on this planet at the moment. ... View more

Reading the beautiful word 'perseverating' coerced me into finding out what that means. Now I know. Thanks for introducing this term. I don't know if I can answer your inquisitive questions satisfactorily, but for what it's worth: 1. Yes, that's the reason. Moreover, as far as I can think or assume, the Outline Object effect was originally dedicated to transparent raster images in order to detect and outline transparent or non-transparent areas in those images. The fact that the effect also affects the behaviour of bounding boxes when you apply it to type objects may be just a secondary effect. To be sure, you would have to ask the software engineer who developed the effect (he may be retired or deceased). 2. That is more probably than not a partial truth. Have you already tried a linked .psd file? 3. Rarely. As for the example you are mentioning, to me it is rather a convoluted stopgap that may compensate the lack of pragmatic solutions to some degree. It goes without saying that you can play around to explore some other "useful" things, but I would't expect too much. ... View more

Just a historical or nostalgic addition: The Outline Object effect in combination with an additional fill and the Offset Path effect once was the only speedy way to apply correct Drop Shadow effects to transparent raster images as the Outline Object effect was (and still is) able to detect transparent (or non-transparent) areas inside transparent raster images. You can still create an appearance set to see how those drop shadows could be done in former times (Illustrator 9, 10 and probably the first version of Illustrator CS as well). For example, draw a filled heart, then draw a filled circle on top of the heart, select both and create a compound path. Go to Object > Rasterize and choose the Transparent Background option in the Rasterize dialog. Add a new fill to the rasterized heart with a hole and drag that fill below the image item in the Appearance palette. Apply the Outline Object effect to the additional fill, then apply the Offset Path effect to the fill and take a small negative offset value (-0,5 mm for example). Apply the Drop Shadow effect to the fill. Save the entire appearance set as a graphic style, so that you can apply nostalgic shadows to other transparent raster images in the future. ... View more

The file that you provided in post 2 contains 34 clipping masks (at least when you open it in Illustrator CC 2017). 7 clipping paths are completely superfluous (they are surrounding the artboard). The selection issue will be cured if you delete one or all of them. It may be that your client just opened the PDF portion of your .ai file and resaved the modified version. That often happens when the file is opened with earlier versions of Illustrator. That could also explain why there are clipping paths although you did not create them in your original Illustrator document. ... View more