RTD Vector exports = Strange Illustrator Files

Hi All,

I've been dealing with the format of the PDF's generated by RTD when I open them in Illustrator but thought someone out there may have a better solution.

The scenario:

When I vector export a customer's design from RTD into Illustrator I find that the design has many clipping masks embedded in the design. Instead of being able to directly select each of the design elements and perform functions on them like Live Tracing, I have to first find and delete what seems to be a great number of clipping masks around the object itself to get to the actual embedded image.

This is probably something to do with the way that PDFs are rendered in general but if anyone knows any tricks to stop this "clipping mask" behavior in Illustrator it would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

John

I can't help on the specific task as I don't have Illustrator here, but I have a curiosity:
If you try to export a vector order with the Include Items as Separate Layers option to YES and then you try to open single layers, which kind of masks can you still see? The same as of the final file?

When using that option, the PDFs included in the zipfile are exactly the layers RTD merges together into the final image.
So they really are the step before final aggregation. It would be interesting to know if such masks are there even in the layer files or not, as it would help to understand WHEN they're being "added" (could be something in the merge process perhaps?)

This does in fact happen in Illustrator. The masks can be quite overwhelming at times. Our company uses SAInternational Flexisign Pro, FlexiDesigner and FlexiLetter to handle a lot of artwork tasks, simply because it is well suited to very fast production for the type of work we do. We do use Illustrator for a lot of custom design work, but production type stuff is through Flexisign. I believe I've written previously about this in the forums but couldn't just find it quickly.

Flexisgn will open an RTD PDF File and each element will be a separate item with a mask bounding the size of the element itself. If editing needs to be performed the mask on a per item basis is easily right-click separated (it becomes a black box) and then deleted. Usually this isn't necessary now that the old outline around the entire image is not longer there (thank you Alex for changing that default recently). This is all very quick and easy in Flexisign. In Illustrator, yes, it is a chore, as it seems every single thing in some images has a whole-page bounding box and it takes some trickery to sort through them.

I'm wondering if Coreldraw behaves the same as Illustrator? Our shop is pretty much Mac based for artistic production, so no Coreldraw.

There is a very basic inexpensive (about $100) version of Flexi called FlexiLetter which has most tools to easily handle RTD files. If no other solution can be found for your needs, then I would recommend it. Even as a simple file translation tool it does a great job, but also has a lot of great features for such an entry level solution.

FlexiDesigner is a full featured design tool that is a bit more expensive ($1000), but has tons of features to work in depth with RTD files. It just doesn't drive any output devices, which may not need at all. For driving output devices you would need the FlexiSign or Pro version. But for this discussion, that doesn't appear likely.

Both of these products are certainly great compositing tools for putting together large format image files if for no other uses.

Link to FlexiLetter product page

Link to FlexiDesigner product page

Hope this helps.

@Alex - Hi #1, I tried the "layers" option, opened the individual element in Illustrator but still see the "Clipping Path / Mask" behavior. I've seen this outside of RTD when customer send PDFs. Not sure where the root of the problem is but I can continue to work around it.

@Cos - Thanks for the insight on Flex. I'll check it out as it may join my team of applications that wrestle files for me! Next one I'm looking for is a good automated clipping path tool for bitmaps.

Speaking of Apps -- is an iPhone app on the roadmap for RTD shop owners / administrators? Would be nice to see our orders and preview what customers have designed when away from our computers. I love it when I get a notification on my phone that I just made a sale!

Again thanks!

John

Yeah, I'd be curious too to know about the root.
Not that I could do much though: it's more to have a better overview of pros/cons of the different tools.

About the App, I was thinking at that about a year ago, actually.
The API can already obtain those data, so technically it would be already possible to build such thing.
Only thing is I'm not an App developer at all.
However I may look at that in time. All I'd need is to find an App developer to instruct about our API!

About the app - Couldn't this be done simply by making a responsive web page for the Manage Orders?

Get the notification email on your phone . . . works great. Depending on how you have the email formatted, you can have it fit whatever suits you.

This is one of the reasons I would like to have multiple email notification options for Company Email formatted for different scenarios.

Of course, api and app is a good choice, but depends on development as Alex said.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/10/2013 10:34AM by cos.

In general, no matter which the device will be, these kind of projects should always be done via API.
Even in the event I would create something myself internal to the RTD I would do so.
Reason is simple: all those data (including email templates) can be created via API, so better to avoid adding more "stuffs" to the core tool.
Creating a page that will send even 4 or 5 emails to different accounts, each using a different email template is something that can already be done.

I think it could be part of a future project similar to an "API based toolbox" for RTD admins

Quote
Alex
Creating a page that will send even 4 or 5 emails to different accounts, each using a different email template is something that can already be done.

Could you elaborate on this a bit more? Are you referring to using the api to create this page?

Yes.
There's the GetOrderDetails API action which exports all fields registered for a specific order ID.
But you can also pass the optional ExportTemplateID to it too, which will instead return the formatted code of the order as exported by using a specific email export template... which actually means almost everything (HTML included).

That's probably the easiest way to create things like invoices or sending of multiple emails with different contents to distinct departments, if needed

I recently started having his issues with clipping masks too. In fact they are causing a number of files to be seen as corrupt when trying to import.
I did not have this problem 4 months ago..

4 months ago all was fine? That's strange, as I changed nothing about vector generation in the latest months...
As we were discussing, it's often an application soecific issue. Are you using Illustrator too?

I use illustrator too. I was thinking perhaps it was the way I set up my template. ? ;)

I think it's something specific with Illustrator.
There are a lot of users that seems to have problems, but with that tool only.
One day I'll have to install it here too, in order to see what we're talking about...... am I supposed to become also an Illustrator expert?

In the meanwhile: would anyone be able to please attach some screenshot of the issue?
I don't have the tool, but "seeing" something may perhaps help me a little bit.

Just tested 5 hires pdf files from this week opening in illustrator. No issues. Two were from our templates and three from customer builds. In fact, they all opened without the usual containing masks described earlier in this post. They all opened like we usually see in Flexisign. Strange world we live in.

The process is always the same, technically.
The only thing that could make a difference, IMHO, are the cliparts used in the design.

Actually this problem has a VERY simple answer.

open your RTD generated file in illustrator, before doing ANYTHING else go to

Select > Object > Clipping masks, then hit the delete key

Are you kidding? Simply that? For real?

Now I have to scramble around to find a file to test this with. That's great. thanks psgraphics.

and, nice shot of you at the show Alex. I knew you were a viking!

Used the psgraphics solution on a fresh order file today. Had several clipart's with important masking elements which deleted. Everything else worked fine. Keep this in mind when you do this.

I am having the same issue with CorelDraw X5. When I import a pdf or ps file that was generated through RTD each element such as text, comes in as a symbol. I have to take each symbol and choose "Revert to Object" a few times on each before I can get to the root element to do any editing to it.

Has anyone else come up with a fix or work around?

Steve

Try again importing the .ps file - we use corel x5 and x6 all the time and have no issues with the ps format. This is a known issue with Corel and PDF.

Mark

As I started this thread I finally found the solution that works well for me with Illustrator CC:

* when you have a document with a lot of clipping masks:

Select all and goto object/clipping masks and release all

Then select one invisible object and goto "Select/same fill and stroke and delete those objects.

Nice!

Thanks for sharing