I am working with a pretty complex traced AI that I received, and I want to basically make it so that all the visually black stuff is shapes, and all the white outlines (invisible here) are removed. Most of the spaces when a line crosses over another is created by a white outline.
I know about expanding appearance and the pathfinder tool, but because there are so many lines that are crisscrossing, I haven't had an easy way of minusing the fronts away. I could expand appearance and sort every object carefully, but I feel like there may be a quicker way of doing this.
If I put it in Photoshop as a smart object in 'screen' mode, it looks right.. I could put that back in Illy and trace it, but I don't want to complicate the paths.