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What is the most efficient way to duplicate a layer via an action list?

I know layers are handled differently in a PDF than in something like an Illustrator file, but it's how I'm targeting the objects.

I need to create a varnish layer for some tags I'm printing. For this I'm using the 'Make Trace Path (ignoring white holes)' action.

It mostly works, but there are a few designs where white bleeds out to the edge and then the action does not trace around it.

Playing with the 'White Threshold' setting in the action does not help the issue, however I found that adding the 'Set Minimum Printing Dot to 5%, all Separations' fixed this, and then all of our designs were traced correctly.

But you can see where this is going... now that 5% curve has ruined the art, so my thought was to run that curve on a copy of the artwork instead of the actual art.

So how to do this?

My process was to (see screenshot):

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Select All
Copy

then after I copied the art, apply the color curve

now paste the original art back and add it to a layer

then send the original art to the back

so after this I would select all art that was not in the layer and run the trace on it.
******

But I always end up with the 5% curved artwork instead of my original artwork.

Honestly it's quite a mess.

Is there a way to make my method work? Or is there a better way?

You need a second version of the file contents that can be modified and afterwards discarded. Here is a strategy to do that.

Select all
Copy
Select all //this one is important before pasting
Paste
Select last added objects
Assign objects to layer with name, e.g. TEMP
//Now you have a copy in a separate layer
Select objects in layer with name TEMP
//do what you have to do to create the varnish, you already have that
Select last added objects
Assign objects to layer with name Varnish
//clean up
Select objects in layer with name TEMP
Remove selection
Select all
Remove empty layers

It worked like a charm, thanks much.

So that second Select All added before pasting - what exactly is that doing?

Good question. It is VERY important to realize that an action only does something if the selected objects are meaningful for that action.
Select images
Outline text
It is easy to understand that this does not do anything. If you do
Select images
Copy
Paste
that does not do anything either, because you cannot paste onto images. Paste works on a page and "Select all" will select the page object ("Select pages" will also work of course).

Similarly,
Select text
Outline text
Change trim box
will outline the text, but it will not change the trim box because text does not have a trim box, a page has.