Today's Illustrator Question...

[macthulhu]

Say I have an Illustrator (CS3) file that has a crapload of elements... some have masks, some are needlessly complex, things that are overlapped have not had hidden parts trimmed, etc. Is there a way to easily "flatten" it into just the visible stuff? Or do I have to trim the crap off of every element individually? I'd like for it to still be vector art, just not so messy.

[Mark McCormick]

hmmm.... i'd be interested to hear any ideas on this. i dont know of anything specifically, but you could make the graphics really big, rasterize them, and then auto-trace them back into vector. you might loose some clean lines tho.

[victor_howitzer]

Sometimes this works. I select everything, Pathfinder> Divide. and then select a color, Select > same fill color and then Pathfinder > add to shape area.

If it's really chaotic though sometimes it divides all into weird color patterns and doesn't work.

[victor_howitzer]

oh yeah and make sure all strokes are outlined first if there is any.

[victor_howitzer]

actually I just re-read your question. With the masks I'm not sure.

[phoondaddy]

Tell your client to do it correctly and get it back to you.


OMG.

[Charles T. Duck]

For masked objects, opt+click this button:

[Barry Obama]

or use 'expand'.

[Pfahlert Creative Labs]

man, i miss freehand.

[Mark McCormick]

i didn't think you could 'expand' a mask.