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Hi everyone,

In today's episode of "Steve can't make something work" I'm trying to check if a PDF has gradients with spot colors applied. My action list has a "Select shading objects" line, followed by a "Check Spot Colors not used" action:
The part I'm struggling with is that it selects elements in the PDF with a gradient fill and puts an error in the report, but doesn't select anything with a gradient stroke. Is there a way to have it select the strokes like it does the fills so I can also have that in the report?

After a weekend away from the problem I figured it out, posting here in case anyone else would benefit from it.

I opened the file in question in Pitstop and inspected it, turns out that a gradient fill and a gradient stroke use two different methods to implement them.

A gradient fill is made into it's own Shading Object, with any associated stroke as a separate object in the stack (in this case it was a simple black outline):


A gradient stroke is defined as a Smooth Shading Pattern, however:


I then used the "Select DeviceN with Attributes" action with spot color definitions checked to select them and logged that selection as an error.