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Pathfinder imprecise results

Pathfinder distorts curves and these distortions create stray points and small vector artifacts when I "slice".

This has been an issue from IL5 (pre-CS and pre-CC), when Pathfinder was first introduced.

Until Adobe increased maximum magnification, it was hard to tell what was happening, but in CC I can clearly see that in Pathfinder, smooth curves distort. My guess is something analogous to mathematical rounding errors in defining the berzier curve.

Sometimes, the distortion is very "squiggly", appears to be introducing the 'QuickDraw error (reported separately), and produces unusable results.

While most of these errors and artifacts are essentially microscopic, and can be minimized by applying pathfinder to oversize art and scaling-down, it is still an issue and can be a serious problem if you're creating art that needs to be scaled-up to sizes where the errors and artifacts become conspicuous.

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Doug Milllhoff shared this idea  ·   ·  Report…  ·  Admin →
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Resolved (Comments Open)  ·  AdminEgor Chistyakov (Admin, Adobe Illustrator) responded  · 

If this does happen for you, please open your Pathfinder panel’s options and change the Precision value it has. Lowering the values improves results, especially on very long curved segments, but also increases the overall time a complex pathfinder operation takes.

Please comment below if this advice helps — the team can use this feedback to reconsider the default value.

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  • Anders Alexander commented  ·   ·  Report

    So I think my file was corrupted. I work in Adobe PDF format files and I saved it to an .ai and back to a .pdf and the issue seems to have resolved itself.

  • Anders Alexander commented  ·   ·  Report

    Seems there is a bug in Pathfinder in Illustrator 29.7.1. When I use the 'divide' setting, it produces incorrect/unexpected results. Seems to be a new issue since upgrading.

  • Red Bryant commented  ·   ·  Report

    I have now altered the precision setting in pathfinder options to 0.001pt and it's working correctly now. The default isn't low enough!

  • Red Bryant commented  ·   ·  Report

    This is also happening for me, when I use pathfinder to subtract a shape from another, the remaining path is different slightly. I'm using v2023 27.0.0

    In the attached screenshot, you can see the original (blue shape) and the new shape (brown) with the bottom removed after using pathfinder

  • Aaron commented  ·   ·  Report

    I have the same issue with Pathfinder "Minus Front" and "Trim". If I made two organic shapes, overlap one on top of the other, copy the top object, Pathfinder Minus Front, then paste in place the top object that I just cut away, the objects no longer line up properly. It's more noticeable the closer you zoom. This showed up for me in Illustrator 2022. This happens in both GPU and CPU view.

    In CPU view I can correct this issue by going to Pathfinder preferences and setting Precision to .001. However, GPU view remains messed up. This may be due to a need for a stronger GPU to handle the magnification.

    I've attached images to show the issue:

  • AdminEgor Chistyakov (Admin, Adobe Illustrator) commented  ·   ·  Report

    JQ, please provide the file that gives the result you demonstrate. Without a case that is reproducible, little can be done to fix it.

    As for the last sentence you made — I am totally agreed with you here.

  • Lance commented  ·   ·  Report

    JQ,

    Can you share some specific examples of others that have had / are still having this issue? I've experimented on my installation and cannot get the pathfinder divide tool to produce inaccurate results *right now* but could swear I've seen it do weird stuff in the past.

    Maybe I'm not experimenting with the right kind of vector shapes.

  • JQ commented  ·   ·  Report

    Mac OS 11.6
    Illustrator 25.4.1

    I know this is not a new complaint, but it has not been addressed. When I used the Pathfinder Divide tool to divide an element with curves, the resulting shapes are not precise. This renders the tool useless for many operations where users need those lines to sit exactly on top of one another. See image for example.

    There are many users, including me, who are begging Adobe to stop adding features we would rarely/never use and please, for the love of all that is holy, concentrate on fixing the basic tools we use every day.

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Report

    It seems that with more complex paths, using the unite and divide Pathfinder tools create jittery shapes (when you zoom in very very close, you can see that the merging / division isn't perfect and that shapes have been disfigured). Same with paths / shapes where smooth corner have been used: use of Pathfinder tool is going to disfigure them. (posted to the support on Twitter)

Illustrator (Desktop) Bugs: Pathfinder and Compounds

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