"An unknown imaging construct was encoutered"

[AllisonR]

When opening files in Illustrator CS2 or CS3. I am fine with that. But I want to know is exactly which element in the file this comment refers to. It would be very helpful.

 

[G_Town]

Re: "An unknown imaging construct was encoutered"

Dunno, I get that when opening a pdf or ai file exported from Artpro.

So far it hasn't been an issue as I have not had any issues. I agree it would be good to know what it means.

 

[Rob.Morgan]

Re: "An unknown imaging construct was encoutered"

Open up your layers tab and tip down the triangle(s) to reveal the individual objects. You should see some items labeled "non-native object". Click the little circle on the right and it should get selected - that will be the object that Illustrator was not able to convert into a native Illustrator object.

As, the Adobe guys have previously mentioned, Illustrator is not a PDF editor. There are many PDF objects that cannot be converted into Illustrator editable objects. Certain shadings and objects in DeviceN color space to name a few. (Traps are commonly filled with DeviceN colors, especially when spot colors are involved)

You might not have much trouble if you open a PDF in AI and get that message, you just won't be able to edit the non-native objects any more than you can edit an placed file. However, you should take extra care that those objects look the same on the way out as they did on the way in.

Regards,
Rob Morgan
Kodak

 

[disbellj]

Re: "An unknown imaging construct was encoutered"

In my experience, it's a gradation. Once opened in Illustrator, you can choose the gradation that gave the error, and use Expand (under Edit menu maybe?) to turn it into an editable gradation. So if embedded fonts could be used (not wanting to get into it, just saying), then yes Illustrator might make an OK PDF editor. Thing is, you can't have different color spaces in an Illy file, it's either RGB or CMYK, not both. So there's many reasons that one would want to use an app like Neo instead (a true PDF editor).

Don