Dissapearing Objects out of bounding box

[Vincent Rosati]

I’m not sure we have enough info to say exactly what’s happening here, but speaking to your suspicion, isolating components from complex illustrations can be difficult and time consuming.

I’m sure there are dozens of approaches to this, but I’d start with three:

1. Object > Ungroup
2. Object > Compound Path > Release
3. Group Select Tool

These might be the only functions that you’ll need, but it would be difficult to say what possible combination you might need to use.

Ungroup and Release is a peeling away approach. You keep peeling away until your desired element breaks, than Ctrl+Z one time.
Using the Group Select Tool is more of a pin pointed approach. You may have to Shift / Select multiple objects as you Copy / Paste.

It’s a good idea to learn the keyboard shortcuts for these exercises, they are right next to the items in the menu. It makes the process much faster.

Vince

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[Thie Thomsen]

You are editing items that are enclosed in a ‘clipping path’. What this means is that the top element in the group acts as a mask, cutting off/hiding everything outside of this shape.

Flattened and reimported PDF files use these on just about every objectlayer in the artwork.

You can recognize clipping paths in your layers panel as they are almost always the top object of the masked group, and their names are underlined. Moving an object out of it’s group (in the layers menu) will effectively stop the mask to affect them. Alternatively you can release the clipping mask by selecting the group affected, and selecting ‘object’->’clipping paths’->’release clipping paths’ (or alt+7).

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I can see your spot colours…