adobe.illustrator.featurerequests

Subject: Removing Gradient Mesh

Many of our customers supply us Illustrator files that rely heavily on the use of Gradient Mesh, however in our line of work, we need to remove all those meshes. Right now, I'm knee deep in a job for a very large company removing the gradient mesh from a group shot of cartoon characters.

I found a thread that addressed this issue ( ) and it has some helpful tips, however, I'd like to see the option in the future to more easily remove the gradient mesh from an object.

I do understand now that using the Gradient Mesh converts an object to a completely different kind of object, as Teri described. Unfortunately, I don't think most designers realize that this is a "point of no return" sort of thing.

In Teri's example, she likens it to converting text to paths. That analogy works for me, but if you examine what happens when text is converted to paths, as a designer, it's very obvious that a significant change has been made with how I can interact with that text. Even when selecting text, it highlights differently before and after being converted.

On the other hand, with objects that have undergone the Gradient Mesh conversion, they still seem an awful lot like the original object: I can direct select points on the original path and move them around, fine tuning the shape. I can still direct select the path and see it there. From a designer's perspective, it seems like I should just be able to somehow dump the mesh - the path IS still there, containing the mesh after all.

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