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Thanks for the support throughout all these years :)
Illustrator CS2
Removing a Gradient Mesh
In Illustrator there’s no command for actually removing a Gradient Mesh – once you create it you are basically stuck with it.
Fortunately there are tricks for getting around the lack of a proper command and I’ll be showing you a couple of them in this tutorial.
The first trick is really simple and is probably the best one. The second is a little bit more complex but a good source for learning new stuff.
Offset Path
With the mesh object selected, go to Object – Path – Offset Path.
» Set the Offset to 0 and click OK.
On the Layers palette you can see that a new ‹Path› has been created underneath the mesh object.
Now all you have to do is delete the mesh object and work on the new path.
Expand Appearance
With the mesh object selected, open the Appearance palette.
This is the information provided by the mesh object:
The Appearance palette can be quite useful, but sometimes it can also be misleading… As you can see, clicking on the Mesh Points activates the Delete Selected Item button, but clicking on this button produces no results.
So how can one use the Appearance palette in order to remove a Gradient Mesh?
First, click on the flyout arrow and select Add New Fill.
Then go to Object – Expand Appearance. This will result in a group containing both Mesh and Fill.
Right-click on the object and choose Ungroup.
On the Layers palette, select ‹Mesh› and delete it.
And that’s all there is to it :)
Tools, Menus and Palettes · Mar 24, 2007 ·