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Illustrator Pathfinder, divide tool, problem of shapes getting thiner and while printing


telephage

New Member
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Hi Everyone,
I am experiencing some issues with drawing in Illustrator.


I have created an illustration where the shape is black and details inside are drawn with white lines.
However, I would like my final illustration to be just black (i.e white lines will be transformed as "empty lines" using pathfinder > Divide tool).


After using the pathfinder, it seems my lines are now much thiner, both when viewed on screen and when
printed. Even if I try to make the original white lines much thicker, (like twice as big) once I use the pathfinder
it still look too thin, when printed and also when zooming out on the screen.


Anyone has an idea how to preserve the exact same thickness before and after removing the white lines
from the black shape?


Thanks in advance!
 

SPWA

Power User
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Select the white lines & go to Object > Expand. This will change your lines into shapes of exactly the same dimensions as the lines.

When you divide, it will slice on the outer edge of the area, instead of the central line as it was previously doing.

The 1st line in this image is before Expand, the 2nd is after.
Untitled.png
 
Last edited:

telephage

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Hi SPWA,

Thank you for your answer.

I got 1 stroke and the rest are shapes, and of course I transformed the stroke into a shape before using pathfinder.
It might not be obvious on a simple shape like your transformed stroke, but for something more complex you can see a slight difference before and after using the pathfinder tool, and unfortunately that makes all the difference for my drawing (when small on screen or printed).


Thanks for your time
 

telephage

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Here are 2 screenshots of my problem (not so obvious at that size but still visible):
1. Drawing white on black (before using pathfinder's divide tool)
Capture d’écran 2014-07-15 à 21.03.24.png

2. Shape after using pathfinder's tool
Capture d’écran 2014-07-15 à 21.04.10.png

Thanks everyone!
 

telephage

New Member
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if you can attach the ai file, ill take a quick look If you don't mind.

Hi SPWA,

Thanks, but I am afraid I can't share the file because of confidentiality policy of my employer...
Anyway, as I posted my problem on another forum, someone gave me an advice which might work out (an opacity mask), I just have to print out some tests to be sure, but it looks fine on the screen.

Thanks a lot for your time!
 

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