How to exclude objects inside forms?

[DomH]

Hi all

I have an action list that converts blacks to rich blacks, however, when I have art with a transparent black overlayed on top I don't want this converted to a rich black, as it makes the underlying artwork too dark. Basically, I'm wondering if there's a way to exclude the colour conversion from taking place to the object inside the form, or to exclude a form with an opacity setting other than 100%.

I'm not too savvy with setting up action lists, but what I'm thinking is that the form (clipping path in Illustrator) has the opacity setting applied, so the action list will always select the black fill and change it. Hopefully there's a way around this.

Thank you in advance

[magnussandstrom]

Hi! Could you post your Action list and an example PDF that contains the transparency in question? That would make it much easier to help out.

[DomH]

Hi! Could you post your Action list and an example PDF that contains the transparency in question? That would make it much easier to help out.

Hi, no worries. Sample files are attached here

The rich black action list is as follows:

- Select All
- Select Fill Colour
- Change Fill Colour
- Select All
- Select Stroke Colour
- Change Stroke Colour

Im just not sure where/how to add modify it so it doesn't change anything (preferably just 0/0/0/100) within a form, or if it's even possible

[freddyp]

You want to change 100K objects that are not part of a form that is a transparency group. The ideal solution would be:
Select objects that are not in a transparency group
Select fill color
AND
Change fill color

However, there is no action "Select objects that are (not) in a transparency group" but the first 5 actions of what follows will do that.

Select transparent objects (you may want to choose certain types of transparencies, but in this case it is alpha)
Select forms
AND (now forms that are a transparency group are selected)
Select form content if form is selected (now the objects inside those forms are selected)
NOT (now all the other objects that are not part of the transparency group are selected)
Select fill color
AND
Change fill color

Here is the action list:

100%K to Rich Black - TEST FP.eal.zip

(3.03 KiB) Downloaded 500 times

[DomH]

Amazing! Worked like a charm! Thank you Freddy. I had tried playing around with the forms actions, but just couldn't wrap my head around the order of them.

Thank you so much!