Fit artboard to selected artwork including effects

In Photoshop, if I have a layer with a style such as a drop shadow, and I click on Image > Trim, I can crop the canvas to the exact points where the drop shadow fades out. I want to do essentially the same thing in Illustrator. I have an object with a drop shadow. I select the object, double-click on the Artboard tool, and in the dialog that appears, from the dropdown menu, I select "Fit to Selected Art". This succeeds at cropping the canvas to the dimensions of the object, but but it also cuts off my drop shadow. My only solution has been to eyeball the cropping of my canvas, but I really want to be precise and automate this process. Does anyone know how to do this?

It's an unexpected behaviour in conjunction with groups. Has been discussed here a couple of times.
You may also call it a bug.

Similar Messages

Using "Fit Artboard to Artwork Bounds" in an action?

Hey all,
I'm using a handy action that does some what I call "clean up" on various open files, nothing fancy - names all the used swatches and deletes unused etc - but I'm having trouble getting it to do another major part of my workflow:
Let me explain - I want to have an action that is able to do the following:
1. Unlock All objects
2. Select All objects
3. Artboard Tool (SHIFT-O) - and then
4. Fit Artboard to Artwork Bounds
I got it to work up to step 3. It can Unlock and Select, but it seems that recording an action while using the Artboard (Shift-O) tool won't record. Is there any way to automate this? Or does one have to use the Artboard tool manually each time? Thanks!
CS4, Mac

Same problem in CS6: neither "Fit to artwork bounds" nor "Fit to selected art" will record for me (although strangely, "Fit to selected art" recorded on the first attempt but never worked again, even after restarting).
Seems to be one of these temperamental flakey things that sometimes conks out. I imagine trashing preferences would fix it, but it's not worth it since the workaround works (albeit clunkily):
Flyout menu in the the Actions palette
"Insert menu item"
From the top menu, choose Objects > Artboads > Fit to Artwork Bounds
Even this seems to be a bit temperamental, though. Sometimes it seems to not actually size the artboard down properly, and sometimes it seems to give different results for running the same action on the same file. Something that seems to work more reliably is the following in your action:
Fit to Artwork Bounds
Select all
Fit to selected artwork
In theory that's just duplication, but it seems to work more reliably than just one or the other .

How do I change the Gradient in the Artwork and Effect Text tool

How do I change the colors used in the gradient under the Artwork and Effects Text Tool? It always comes green and blue and I dont know how to change it.

Gradient usually picks up the foreground & background colors from the chips in the tool bar, but that is for the default gradients. Sounds like you have one of the pre-set gradients selected in the drop down list in the gradient options bar. Select the gradient tool, then look in the options bar at the top of the screen. The second item from the left, if I remember correctly, is a drop down list of various gradient possibilities. Select the top left gradient sample for the foreground to background gradient.
Bob Warren

Fit Image to selection.

I was thinking a nice feature would be to have the ability to select a layer then create a marque selection and have photoshop deform the image to fit within the selection evenly.

I was thinking more of a custom Marquee selection, something non-uniform in shape. I work as a 3D artist and use UV mapping, kind of skinning a 3D model to a flat surface, to create textures. I was thinking that being able to take lets say a square scarf texture and use a fit to marquee selection and the "square" image distorts to the contour of the custom selection.
I don't know if that makes since but it would be awesome to see that feature included, or a plugin :]

Using Crop Shapes in Artwork and Effects

I am going insane! All I want to do is take my photo and edit it so that the photo is a shape in the "crop shapes" in artwork and effects. But when I drag a shape over, the inside of the shape is black, and the photo shows around the outside. How do I flip this, so the photo shows on the inside, and the outside is black (or white or whatever color)??? There must be a simple answer, but I just can't seem to find it.

Hi...I am wanting to know the answer to your "Crop Shape" question also. I can use it as a mat, or background for a picture, but can't get my picture cropped to that image...Surely there is a way. I am new to Photoshop Elements and don't know what all the bells and whistles are. Is there some sort of a manual???? Thanks for any input. Karen

Error "SELECT statement includes a reserved word"

Dear Sir,
I am developing Ms Access 2010 and XP is the operating system.
I have placed a combobox on a form, but when I tired to update new string value in the same combobox, it generates an error "The SELECT statement includes a reserved word or an argument name that is misspelled or missing, or the punctuation is
incorrect." .
I have debuged "Not In List" event and find this error generates soon after completing the "Not In List" event. I tried to find out any help on the internet but failed.
I shall be ever grateful if some one could help this regards.
Kazim

I think you need to do some homework on how relational databases work.
The following is my short description of the database relational model, but I emphasise the word 'short'.
The subject is a complex one with a huge body of academic and technical literature, so I can only hope to touch upon the basic principles of the model:
"The database relational model was originally proposed by E F Codd in a paper in 1970 in the journal 'Communications
of the Association for Computing Machinery'. Since then there has been a vast amount of further theoretical work, and the relational model has shown itself to be a robust one.
Without going too deeply into the theoretical basis, which can be quite abstract, a relational database in essence models a part of the real world in terms of its entity types and the relationship types between them.
Note the inclusion of the word 'type' in both cases here.
While its almost always used in the former case, its often omitted in the latter case.
This is a little bit sloppy but not too important. When one talks about a 'relationship' it really refers to a relationship value.
As an example 'marriage' is a relationship type, but my being married to my wife Fiona is a relationship value, represented by our names on the marriage certificate, which is the physical equivalent of a row in a Marriages table with columns Husband
and Wife, each referencing the primary key of a table People.
This is a many-to-many relationship type (I've been married twice so would be in two rows, my first wife would also be in two rows as she remarried too).
It is resolved into two one-to-many relationship types, People to Marriages in each case, in one case via the Husband column in the other via the Wife column.
In a relational database tables model Entity Types.
In the above example People is an entity type, modelled by the People table.
Marriage is also an entity type, modelled by the Marriages table.
As we've seen it's also a relationship type. In fact a relationship type is just a special kind of entity type.
Each column in a table represents an attribute type of each entity type, so attribute types of People might be FirstName,
LastName, DateOfBirth etc. This table would also have a PersonID numeric column (usually an autonumber) as its primary key as names are not distinct.
Each row in a table represents one instance of the entity type, and the attributes of each instance are represented by values at column positions in the row.
This is the only way that data can be legitimately stored in a relational database.
It's important that there is no redundancy in the information content of the database.
This is achieved by the process of 'normalization'. Normalization is based on a set of 'normal form's ranging from First Normal Form (1NF) to Fifth Normal Form (5NF) and beyond, though the higher normal forms are of a rather
different nature and we need not concern ourselves unduly with them.
There is also a Boyce/Codd Normal Form (BCNF) which was inserted when it was found that the original Third Normal Form was deficient; it didn't cater satisfactorily for tables with two or more candidate keys where the keys were composite and overlapped,
i.e. Had a column in common. I won't go into the details of normalization here; you'll find it written up in plenty of places.
To see an example of redundancy and therefore a table which is not properly normalized take a look at the Customers table
in the sample Northwind database which comes with Access. You'll see that it includes City, State/Region and Country columns.
If you look at its data you'll see for instance that we are redundantly told twice that Boston is in Massachusetts, and that this is in the USA
twice. This is not just inefficient, it is dangerous as it leaves the table open to inconsistent data being entered.
There is nothing to stop somebody putting Boston in the Massachusetts in one row and Milwaukee
in another, or putting Milwaukee in the UK in one row and the USA in another.
To normalize the table it should be decomposed into Customers, Cities, Regions and Countries tables, each of the first three with a foreign key referencing the primary key of the next table up in the hierarchy."
In your case you say a book can have more than one publisher.
This is true if you regard the entity as the book as a single 'work', not as a title.
I have two copies of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park for instance, each by a different publisher.
It is a single 'work' however. I've no idea if anyone else has written a book called Mansfield Park, but there is no reason why not, so let's assume that one exists.
This is not the same 'work' as Jane Austen's book, so conceptually is a different entity of type Books, and would be represented by a separate row in a table Books.
In the above context there is a many-to-many relationship type between Books and Publishers.
There is only one way to model such a relationship type, which is by a table which resolves the relationship type into two one-to-many relationship types.
So the model would, diagrammatically be:
Books----<BookPublishers>----Publishers
Title is a non-key column of Books.
The same title may appear in different rows, as with our hypothetical Mansfield Park by another author.
The primary key of books is a numeric BookID, usually an autonumber.
The BookPublishers table would have foreign keys BookID and PublisherID referencing the primary keys of the two referenced tables.
It would also have columns representing any attributes of the relationship type between the book and the publisher.
The primary key of this table is a composite one of BookID and Publisher.
To record multiple editions of a book published by a publisher requires another table along the following lines:
BookEditions
....PublisherID
(FK)
....BookID
(FK)
....EditionNumber
....EditionDate
.....ISBN
In this table PublisherID and BookID are a composite foreign key referencing the primary key of BookPublishers.
Note that ISBN is a column in this table as it applies to each edition of a book.
In the language of the relational model it is said to be functionally determined by the key of BookEditions.
Hopefully my short stock description of the relational model above, and my brief description of how it applies to the reality
which you are attempting to model will give you an insight into how to build a database, but I would strongly recommend that you first do some background work on how the database relational model works and how to apply its principles in Access.
I'll leave you with my own four, not altogether serious but nevertheless valid, ground rules for designing a relational database:
1.
KISS (Keep it simple, stupid!).
2.
When in a hole the first thing to do is stop digging.
3.
Always take account of Murphy's Law: 'If something can go wrong, it will go wrong'
4.
Always follow the advice given by Richard Feynman to his students: 'Don't write it down until you understand it'.
Ken Sheridan, Stafford, England

When using Adobe Photoshop Elements, is it legal to use shapes etc. (displayed in 'Artwork and Effects') when creating a product to be sold? Thank you.

When using Adobe Photoshop Elements, is it legal to use shapes etc. (displayed in 'Artwork and Effects') when creating a product to be sold? Thank you.

Thank you very much for answering my question. Have a great day.

New Lightroom catalog always selects and includes some files from folder Applications/Mail/Contents/Resources. Why? Mac Mini OS X 10.10.1. Lightroom 5.7

Whenever I create a new catalog, Lightroom selects and includes some, but not all, TIFF files from the folder Applications/Mail/Contents/Resources. Why does it do this: I don't select this folder to be included. Mac mini OS X 10.10.1. Lightroom 5.7.
Help much appreciated.
Regards
Dan O'Neill

Whenever I create a new catalog, Lightroom selects and includes some, but not all, TIFF files from the folder Applications/Mail/Contents/Resources. Why does it do this: I don't select this folder to be included. Mac mini OS X 10.10.1. Lightroom 5.7.
Help much appreciated.
Regards
Dan O'Neill

Not downloading Artwork and Effects panel

I am using Photoshop Elements 5.0. around 1.5 year, and met the problem for the first time.
Artwork and Effects panel doesn't have drop out window so I can't choose any effect to use it.
The same with Create panel - it doesn't have any patterns for creation.
jpg. screenshots are attached.
This is what I tried:
1. Restart computer - no effect.
2. Repair the program with original disc - at some point the windows showed up: "Please, insert the disk: 1" and the only thing for me is to stop repair. Futhermore, now I am not able to start the disk at all.
I would really appreciate your help.

Hi,
Please follow the following steps:
1. Close PSE
2. Go to this location: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Photoshop Elements\5.0
3. Delete MediaDatabase.db3 and ThumbDatabase.db3 from the above location
4. Relaunch PSE.
On launch the database will be rebuilt and the panels should appear fine.
Thanks/Tarun

Fit artboard in window for all open documents

I did a quick search and didn't see an answer for this. I often have to open 10 or so images from a client and they all need to have me fit artboard to each one seperately. Can I run a script that would run that command on every open file?
Thanks
Marcus

If I've understood you correctly then this should be all you need to do?
#target illustrator
function fitArtboards() {
     if (app.documents.length == 0) {
          alert('Open a document before running this script');
               return;
     } else {
          for (var i = 0; i < documents.length; i++ ) {
               app.activeDocument = documents[i];
               app.activeDocument.artboards[0].artboardRect = app.activeDocument.visibleBounds;
               redraw();
fitArtboards();

Use Javascript to select artwork on a particular artboard?

Is there a way to use Javascript to select all artwork on a particular artboard?
Or if you couldn't designate the selection based on the artboard index, another way i could see doing it would be to select all artwork within a bounding box? For example if i were to measure the artboardRect of an artboard and then set the selection to all pageItems within that bounding box?
Thanks in advance!

awesome. i'll keep that one for my records. for my purposes right now, the selection by active artboard function is perfect. now i just need to work out how to loop through each pathItem within that selection and determine if it contains a certain spot color (and if it does, add to a counter of some sort) and verify that the number of occurrences of that spot color equal the total number of arboards in the doc (that is to say.. verify that a certain spot color exists at least once on every artboard).
so i assure you i'll be back to soak up as much of your experience and knowledge as i can get my grubby paws on. =)
Thanks again, so much. you've been incredibly helpful. CarlosCanto as well.

Padding When Fitting Artboard To A Shape?

I could have sworn a while back that I had stumbled across an option within Illustrator (I'm currently using CC) to specify a certain amount of "padding" to leave around an object when cropping it. I can't recall if I saw this in the Artboard settings, in the Save For Web settings or somewhere else - if at all. Does anyone know if this is possible within Illustrator. In other words, if I draw a shape and want to crop the artboard to fit the dimensions of the shape, plus leave an extra 25px of padding around the shape.

I wrote a script for that, but you could also record an action and assign a hot key to it, that would the faster
first, grab a couple of shapes, group them and
- go to Effect->Convert to Shape->Rectangle...
- enter the desired padding amount
- drag this group to the Graphics Styles Panel
now select some art and record an action that will apply this graphic style to your selection and resize the artboard + padding. Give it a shortcut key.
- stop recording.

Is there ANY way to get the absolute bounds(including effects) of an object?

I am currently working on a xml export script. I have stumbled across this problem:
Our tool cant work with drop shadows, so I need a png for that purpose. So I am checking on a page item for applied effects(in our case only drop shadow) and if it returns true, it is exported as a png.
    function testEffects(object){
        if(object.transparencySettings.dropShadowSettings.mode === ShadowMode.drop)
            return true;
        else
            return false;
So far so good. The problem is, that the bounds of the object, doesn't reflect the size of the .png. A workaround is easy. Place the exported .png somewhere on the page, get the bounds of this, width and height are defined. The big problem now: the correct x and y are missing.
If the shadow is on the bottom or/and right side (you could test this with the angle and the shadow offset) the x and y stay the same. But what if the shadow is all around the object? And moreover, a little more on the left than on the right. How can I possibly get the right x and y coordinates, so that everything is perfectly aligned?
Does anyone have an idea on this?
Best regards and thanks in advance

@Stamm – I think, I did understand you from the beginning. :-)
Here my proof of concept with a snippet that is working on a selected pageitem with a drop shadow. There are no checks about the kind of selection, if it's anchored (that will break the script) and other things. Tested with InDesign CS5.5 so the resulting PNG is always 72 ppi with transparency.
If you like to test this snippet, save the snippet with an appropriate name before running, because the exported PNG will be exported to the folder where your script snippet file lies.
1. Before executing the snippet:
2. After executing the snippet:
Note 1: The original selected pageItem will be removed!
Note 2: In this scenario, you do not need to know the exact bounds of the effect.
Note 3: The clue is: Export the selected object two times. The first time to get the safety zone. The second time grouped with a rectangle that is the size and position of the safety zone. Move the placed PNG to the position of the group. Remove the group.
Note 4: I tested this snippet with InDesign CS5.5! In InDesign CS6 and above you can refine the export to a higher resolution and you have to turn ON transparency by purpose (that all in the pngExportPreferences of the app). In InDesign CS5.5 transparency is automatically set and you cannot change resolution (72 ppi only by default).
Here the code:
//Path for the exported file is where the script file lies
main();
function main(){
var myDoc = app.documents[0];
var myCurrentSpread = app.documents[0].layoutWindows[0].activeSpread;
var whatToCheck = myDoc.selection[0];
var selGB = whatToCheck.geometricBounds;
var _myScriptFile = new File($.fileName);
var myIDAsString = String(whatToCheck.id);
var myDateString = String(Date.now());
var myFileToExport = File(_myScriptFile.path +"/"+ myIDAsString +"-"+myDateString+".png");
whatToCheck.exportFile(ExportFormat.PNG_FORMAT, myFileToExport);
app.select(null);
myCurrentSpread.place(myFileToExport);
var myPlacedObject = myCurrentSpread.pageItems.itemByID(returnMaxOfArray(myCurrentSpread.pageItems.everyItem().id)).graphics[0];
var myPlacedObjectGBs = myPlacedObject.geometricBounds;
var myWidth = myPlacedObjectGBs[3]-myPlacedObjectGBs[1];
var myHeight = myPlacedObjectGBs[2]-myPlacedObjectGBs[0];
myFileToExport.remove();
myPlacedObject.parent.remove();
var newRect = myCurrentSpread.rectangles.add({geometricBounds : [selGB[2]-myHeight,selGB[3]-myWidth,selGB[0]+myHeight,selGB[1]+myWidth]});
var newGroup = myCurrentSpread.groups.add([newRect,whatToCheck]);
newGroup.exportFile(ExportFormat.PNG_FORMAT, myFileToExport);
myCurrentSpread.place(myFileToExport);
myPlacedObject = myCurrentSpread.pageItems.itemByID(returnMaxOfArray(myCurrentSpread.pageItems.everyItem().id));
myPlacedObject.move([ newRect.geometricBounds[1],newRect.geometricBounds[0] ]);
newGroup.remove();
function returnMaxOfArray(myArray){
    function numSortMaxToMin(b,a){return Number(a) - Number(b)};
    return myArray.sort(numSortMaxToMin)[0];
Hope, that helps…
Uwe

Get artboard of selected item

I have script where I select items on multiple artboard but I can't seem to get get active art board of the selected item. Is this possible?
each artboard has a text item and I would like them in the same position on each of their own artboards that they are already one. right now it adjusts them all to one artboard. here is what I have so far
doc = app.activeDocument;
for(i = 0; i < selection.length; i++){
    var firstItemPosition = doc.selection[0].position;
    doc.selection[i].position = firstItemPosition;
    var activeArtboardIndex = doc.artboards.getActiveArtboardIndex();
    alert(activeArtboardIndex);

hmm it seems it doesn't work the way that I thought it might. It still always positions items based on first artboard even when you set:
idoc.artboards.setActiveArtboardIndex(i)
I tried to implement it like this, any idea what I might be doing wrong?
// return each selected item's artboard index
// carlos canto 09/28/2013
// http://forums.adobe.com/message/5721205?tstart=0#5721205
var idoc = app.activeDocument;
app.userInteractionLevel = UserInteractionLevel.DONTDISPLAYALERTS;
var selec = idoc.selection;
var firstItemPosition = selec[0].position;
var sel = [];
for(i = 0; i < selec.length; i++)
    sel.push(selec[i]);
for(j = 0; j < sel.length; j++) {
    idoc.selection = null;
    alert('selection ' + j + objectArboardIindex (sel[j]));
for(j = 0; j < sel.length; j++)
    sel[j].selected = true;
app.userInteractionLevel = UserInteractionLevel.DISPLAYALERTS;
function objectArboardIindex (obj) {
    var idoc = app.activeDocument;
    for(i=0; i<idoc.artboards.length; i++) {
        idoc.artboards.setActiveArtboardIndex(i); // activate each artboard
        idoc.selectObjectsOnActiveArtboard(); // select all in artboard
        if (obj.selected) {
            obj.position = firstItemPosition;
            return ' is in Artboard ' + idoc.artboards.getActiveArtboardIndex();
        idoc.selection = null;
    return ' is outside artboard(s)';

Activate Artboard using selection tool - Not Working in Illustrator CS6

When using Multiple artboards, typically you just need to click within an existing artboard to activate it as the selected artboard. For some reason this function is not working for me suddenly. I can still activate an existing arboard in the artboard panel, but I am working with 40 artboards, and it's much more efficient when it automatically selects the artboard you're working on as the active artboard (for aligning, pasting, etc...). Does anyone have any idea how to remedy this?
Thanks!

Have you tried:
View > Show edges

Fit artboard to selected artwork including effects

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