2 Replies Latest reply: Oct 14, 2013 2:54 PM by Paulyo RSS

    Object selection across layers

    Paulyo Community Member

      How can I select all objects that live in one layer, that are not grouped, that fall exclusively inside of a background object (background object happens to be line-based, foreground objects, including text, are dashed-line elements that are the result of a live trace of a scanned page.

       

      background

      background.png

      foreground (scan, live trace so all objects are isolated)

       

      foreground.png

      mashed together (I want the dashed objects to be deleted, and they are all grayish and black objects if that helps while all objects I want to keep will not be black; ignore the black sharpie and character on the screen for that reason)

       

      mashed.png

      specific effect (needs to just be the blank stroke, the text and stray lines that pass through the stroked background):

       

      Screen Shot 2013-10-14 at 4.18.33 PM.png

       

      path annotations

       

      Screen Shot 2013-10-14 at 4.21.52 PM.png

       

      the text

       

      Screen Shot 2013-10-14 at 4.23.28 PM.png

       

      So everything exclusively inside of the black strokes and the black text (which is on one layer and is boilerplate ie can be modified as a template) needs gone. The "same" selection options are too precise for the various objects, so I figure the best route is to isolate objects of a certain maximum size that are exclusively inside of the stroke region and are not out of it.

       

      Thanks in advance for your help.

        • 1. Re: Object selection across layers
          Mike Gondek2 Community Member

          You lost me, maybe you could simplify your question, seems like you are asking for more than one type of selection.

           

          Select >> same >> fill color for the dashes, then option lasso tool to deslect what is not int eh black.

          • 2. Re: Object selection across layers
            Paulyo Community Member

            Thanks Mike. You're right. Let me try again. I have a scanned page that is a layer. The objects from the scan I want to be deleted are objects that are just a dashed stroke version of the background solid stroke. They were part of the printed product as reference for someone to draw on aware of content that would be added later and also be easy to remove as post for live trace. I will be using whatever method will work through Javascript, so I won't be able to have subjective interactions like using the Lasso tool.

             

            The fill colors vary and are not responding to the 'same' selection options...like not at all, which is a first for me, but I don't deal with scans much. I do have to keep non-black/non-gray colors perfectly, though. So I was hoping there is a way to use color palette ranges to isolate the objects I don't want, on the layer, and delete them. I'm going to try to mess with the copier's settings, too. Maybe isolating black at the scan to get it more rich and more uniform for Illustrator's existing tools.

             

            Figured I would have to write something myself, but curious if there is already a content-aware selection script that does this.

             

            Screen Shot 2013-10-14 at 4.39.31 PM.png