Enfocus Community

Adobe Illustrator allows the alignment of strokes.

The issue we are having is some customers are using the Inside or outside stroke alignments. When the PDF saves the stroke is treated as a fill.

Is there a way to have an action check for this and set the alignment for the stroke to centre?

I have looked through the action lists etc and maybe I am missing something.

The stroke we are looking for is a cut line and we have a list of about 20 aliases the spot colour can be named.

The problem here is that the PDF specification only allows strokes to be centred.
That's probably why you are getting fills when you export them from Illustrator, there's no other way to create the correct shape otherwise when the PDF is created.

I'm not sure that this can be detected or fixed. But I think an approach could be to look if a correct stroked path is NOT there.

To do this what you would need is ''Select Spot Color', and use the option 'Select Spot Color by name from list'.
That way you can add all the various names that the cut line separation could be called.
You need to the combine that with another Action to select the stroke. I think 'Select closed paths' might be best.
You then need a 'Log Selection' and set this to Log message if 'no objects are selected, and then you can write your own error message.

So the Action List would look like.

Select Spot Color by name from list
'Select closed paths
AND
Log absence of selection.

Not tested this, but it's an approach that should work.
The only false hit you might get is if a stroked path is not closed, but you probably want to know about that anyway.

Hey AB,

I'm currently using this approach.

The issue is Pitstop is still actually detecting a stroke present for when it's either left or right-aligned. But when you open the pitstop inspector and select the stroke it shows it as filled.

That's why I was looking for a way to correct it.

If you look at the attachment you can see it's detecting the inside and the outside of the stroke.

Unless I am using the wrong actions.

The issue is Pitstop is still actually detecting a stroke present for when it's either left or right-aligned. But when you open the pitstop inspector and select the stroke it shows it as filled.

Can you show the 'stroke' in the Inspector?

What you are selecting there is just the 'Select Line Art'

Inspector details are attached.

https://mediapoint.com.au/Testfile.pdf

For the file in question.

Yep, it's not a stroke.
It's two paths defining a shape that is filled.
If you grab one of the paths and move it you will see what I mean (see screenshot)

What kind of edits are you hoping to make to this?

Is it possible to select 'strokes' that have one of the spot colors named and log the absence of selection for that?

So in this instance, it should log an absence of the spot colour as it's a fill and not a stroke.

yep, see second post in the thread.

So the Action List would look something like.

Select Spot Color by name from list
'Select closed paths
AND
Log absence of selection.

Thanks, AB. I should have done what you suggested from the start and added Select Closed Paths after the spot colour.

It''s working now

Hello,

I have the same problem.
However, when I create this action list, I get the log in documents with this error as well as the ones without this error.

Select Spot Color by name from list
'Select closed paths
AND
Log absence of selection.

What am I doing wrong?

Many greetings
Florian

Do you want to send me email? loica (a) enfocus (dot) com