Rasterizing capabilities of Illustrator?

I have a long time experience with Illustrator but haven't noticed this before
When I place and rotate raster images and then save for the web the result is terrible. If I rasterize the images before saving for the web it smoothes them out but still much worse than rotating the same images in Photoshop.
For example I needed to use this Google logo that I found on the web
http://www.logostage.com/logos/Google.png
When I place that logo in Illustrator and rotate it a bit then save for the web the result is unacceptable.
Do I have to rotate all my raster images in Photoshop before importing them in Illustrator? Or I'm missing something?
Another thing that I need to do often is combine raster images with vector elements created in illustrator, group all, apply envelope distort and then distort the group with the Wrap tool to make things like logos and t-shirt graphics to conform along the shape of the clothes on a illustrated character. While this gives a very good control over the shape of the group the rastrized quality of the raster images in the group becomes terrible. Any idea if this can be done better?
And there is another thing which is not a big problem but it will be good if someone knows what's going on. That Google logo from the link above when imported in Illustrotor and Photoshop it comes as 5000 pixels per inch while Bridge reads its meta data as 72 ppi.
edit: never mind for the rasterising issue, it turned out that I have forgotten the Optimize settings in the Save for the Web to Type optimized from previous session. The rasterizing becomes perfect with optimized for images. However this brings the question how about when you need both type and image optimization?

Tank your for the reply folks,
anti-aliasing didn't make a noticeable difference, but as I said switching the save for web settings to art optimized gives very good result with the transformed raster images that I placed.
The problem that remains is when I need to have both, type and raster images optimized because Illustrator doesn't seem to be able to do both at the same time. This means that In these cases, once I create the layout in Illustrator I have to recreate the transformations of the placed images in Photoshop, then place and recreate the layout in Illustrator again with the images already transformed. That's going to be a pain
I'm using the latest version CS5.

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Using variables in Illustrator

Hi,
I am trying to create templates which I can re-use for wireframing purposes, and I'm trying to find similar functionality as in OmniGraffle, where I can define generic fields, such as "Author", "Copyright" "Date", or "Description", and then insert them into the document.
Within the document in OmniGraffle, they are typically inserted by a variable convention that looks like this
<%CreationDate%>.
Some of those fields are then populated by the system (such as the creation date) or they can be filled in through a panel interface (such as description).
I did some research, but all I could find seems to be related to batch operations such as replacing graphics. Are there at least some basic variables that can be created?

Illustrator does have the option to use variables (Window - Variables). However the variables capabilities of Illustrator isn't nearly as robust as InDesigns and it's also a lot more difficult to use as you can't just create a nice easy to follow Excel CSV file and use that, instead it uses an XML sheet with a naming convention that is more difficult to follow. The general concensus is to avoid Illustrator's variables and use InDesign unless you absolutely must. It's rather unfortunate that Adobe has added better usable to the variables in Illustrator, it could be extremely handy.

Combine photoshop with illustrator PLEASE

Yes i could open illustrator and bring art in photoshop. But that's very annoying there are things that i like about photoshop and there are that i like about illustrator so my opinion is to make a new version that have both this way it won't offend people who dont like what i like.
Photoshop:
-line tool is bad.
-Lacks much of the basic vector tools, which most are available in illustrator. (line width change, pen pressure dependent, smooth)
-choosing color is much easier than illustrator. More sensible
-You can more easily draw gradients on shapes.
Illustrator:
-make lines that are trully art of work.
-merge, combine seperate shapes just by overlaying them.
Basically, most tools in PS are great but it lacks a lot in vector area. I also like transform tool. I want all capabilities of illustrator on top of photoshop's but with some improvements at illustrator side. So i don't want adobe to bring bad things about illustrator in photoshop and break it.
Selecting color should be easier than it's in illustrator.

This is a user to user Forum, so you are not really addressing Adobe here, even though some Adobe employees thankfully have been dropping by.
The proper place for feature requests is
http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family
And personally I oppose your (edited) request.
Apart form the principal differences of the applications’ approaches the Illustrator team does in my opinion have a bad track record with bug fixing (which may be more about management’s distribution of resources than about the team members’ capabilities or ambitions) and Illustrator’s path handling is in some regards inferior* to Photoshop’s so better to keep that away from Photoshop.
Edit: Admittedly bug fixing for Photoshop may also be below many users’ expectations, though.
*) The adjectives I would like to employ to describe just how inferior would be inopportune on this Forum.

Illustrator and excel

I work with info-graphics and normally I analyse the data in excel and then I copy/paste the graphs into Illustrator.
A couple of months ago this process turn all these .ai files into conflicted ones (the doc opens but it's empty).
Any help is appreciated.
Regards

After copy/paste from Word to Illustrator CS5, I have to do
Object-Clipping mask-Release several times, and then the chart becomes an
editable graphic. I still think that plotting the data in Illustrator is
the best way to go, as long as the requestor has that data available in
his or her Excel file and will provide the Excel file instead of the chart
embedded in Word. This will only work if Adobe expands the graphing
capabilities in Illustrator. Many of the charts I receive from researchers
cannot be plotted using Illustrator's existing charting function.
Karen Nelson
Visual Information Specialist
Forest Products Laboratory
608.231.9232
clcorrea <[email protected]>
02/16/2011 05:41 PM
Please respond to
[email protected]
To
Karen Nelson <[email protected]>
cc
Subject
Illustrator CS5 - Coping from Excel and pasting into
Illustrator
Ok, this thread is the closest thing i have found to a solution, so I hope
that I just need a minor tweak here. We are using Illustrator CS4 and
Excel 2008 to try and get vector graphics from excel to Illustrator. Using
these two applications, I used to click the chart in excel, save as PDF,
and then open that PDF in Illustrator complete with vector graphics. We
recently upgraded from Leopard to Snow Leopard. Now what we get when we
save as PDF from Excel 2008 chart and bring into Illustrator CS4 is what
appears to be a group of clipping masks rather than the vector pieces of
the pie. I am sure that Snow Leopard is partly to blame here, but any
thought on this latest wrinkle? Thanks in advance
http://forums.adobe.com/servlet/JiveServlet/showImage/58319/piechart.jpg

Contour Cut Line on Rasterized Image

I am trying to create contour cut lines on rasterized images using Illustrator CS4. I have been changing the PNG files to TIFF files and saving with preserve transparency and then placing them in Illustrator. From there I live trace a copy to make a vector outline of the image, but I am uncertain what to do to make it so that I can upload my file into FlexiSign, make contour lines from that file, print, and cut. Everytime I save the file into AI format and bring it into FlexiSign it just contour cuts a rectangle around the image instead of making an actual outline of the picture.

Did you expand the trace first?
Object>Live Trace>Expand

Indesign CS4 adds square boxes around images when exporting to PDF

When I export a brochure created in InDesign to PDF, for some reason the .pdf file (only the PDF - the InDesign version doesn't show these) shows faint squares around images/graphics that have shadow effects applied. These appear around photos, as well as graphic objects that have a solid colour background, for example an orange circle. Some suggested rasterizing images in Illustrator and that didn't help. Transparency doesn't seem to be at fault either. Would anyone have any idea what may be causing this and how to remedy the problem?
FYI, the PDF export pre-sets in InDesign are as follows (I only mention options that are checked, the rest are turned off):
COMPATIBILITY: Acrobat 5 (PDF 1.4)
GENERAL:
     HIGH QUALITY PRINT (modified)
     Export Layers:Visible & Printable Layers
COMPRESSION:
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     Bicubis Downsampling to 300 pixels per inch for images above 450 pixels per inch
     Compression: Automatic JPEG
     Image Quality: Maximum
GRAYSCALE IMAGES:
     Bicubis Downsampling to 300 pixels per inch for images above 450 pixels per inch
     Compression: Automatic JPEG
     Image Quality: Maximum
MONOCHROME IMAGES:
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     Compression: Automatic JPEG
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FYI - I use Mac OSX 10.5.8 and InDesign 6.0.3.
I have attached the PDF for your review.
With many thanks,
Alex

BTW, don't use OSX's preview to look at PDFs created by InDesign if they take advantage of high end features such as live transparency.
Preview simply isn't up to the task and you should be using Acrobat or Reader.
Bob

How do I put a white stroke on EVERYTHING in my design?

I am fairly new to Illustrator, although since I'm pretty good at Photoshop (I have used it exclusively for graphic design for 10 years) I have been picking up Illustrator fairly quickly. I created a design but would like to put a white stroke on everything so that it will look good on both dark and light colored shirts, but I can't figure out how to do this. It's SO simple in Photoshop, but I need the vector capabilities of Illustrator more and more these days so I really need to learn how in Illustrator.
All of my objects are in separate layers so I have tried to combine them and merge them to create a new stroke around them but all this does is group them and still create new strokes on each individual object. How do I literally MERGE them as they are (front object stays in front, back object stays in back, and they retain their coloring) so that I can put a white stroke around them?
Thank you! I apologize if this is something simple. I wasn't able to find a solution in earlier posts.

Create a new layer and drag all the current layers into it.
Click the circle to the right of the layer to "target" it.
In the Appearance panel create a new Stroke by using the flyout menu.
Assign "white" to the stroke.
This will add a white stroke to any object within the targeted layer. If you want the stroke to be seen only on the outside of the objectes drag the "Stroke" attribute below the "Content" in the Appearance panel.
By adding an "appearance" instead of actually "merging" your artwork, you can freely edit your artwork and the white stroke will be assigned to any changes. Read more about the "Appearance Panel". It will be WELL worth your while.

Generating a PDF programatically with precision placement...

I have a coworker who is creating a poster-sized calendar in Illustrator. Imagine a calendar with 100 events on it, each represented by a rectangle containing text describing the event, and some other details, in a nice typeface, and a few other simple but very nicely-designed symbols, and maybe a drop shadow around the box. All the elements are not complicated, but they are hand-designed.
The problem is the customer would like several different renditions of this calendar poster, with events placed in different ways. And then they could call each week with new events to add. This is too much work for someone to hand-place all these elements and enter text for each one.
So I can write software however I need an API or SDK that allows a way to create this kind of diagram by the software reading the events from a spreadsheet and then placing them in x-y space. I know that in theory I could have a program generate SVG for example, but then I have to translate all the careful designs of the elements into mathematical descriptions, right? Also, how would I get SVG into a pdf?
I have written Flex software to display this calendar in Flash player, however there appears to be no serious Adobe capability to convert Flash DisplayObjects to PDF. There are some open source libraries written by soloists (e.g. Prawn) but I need something more mature.
It's not enough to just create rectangles with ugly text -- that may be impressive for a developer audience but I need this to look like what our designer created in Illustrator. Most of the examples of dynamic PDF generation I see are ugly and not presentable -- or the programming becomes just too complicated.
Thanks for any advice!

If you need the formatting capabilities of Illustrator, you probably want to
work with the Illustrator SDK (http://www.adobe.com/devnet/illustrator/sdk/).
Creating text effects in PDF is not impossible, but much harder to do.
KHK

Relative Values in the Appearance Palette

The values in the Appearance palette should have an option to be relative. For example, in the Transform Effect, you should be able to specify a Horizontal or Vertical movement based on a percentage of the height or width of the Object instead of an absolute value of 0.139", for example.

The relative values are very very much needed functionality. Through the use of effects and the philosophy of the use of applets apperance significantly changed the quality of the work and the capabilities of Illustrator.
Are there any flammable implement this functionality?

Transforming perspective of smart objects

I am trying to bring a poster that I've made in Illustrator into a photoshop image(a storefront).
I am pasting the .ai file as a smart object so that in the future, I can swap in other posters that are made in AI. I also will need to distort the perspective of the posters. The problem I'm having is that when I place an .ai file as a smart object, my only transform options are scale, rotate, skew and warp. Ideally I'd be able to use distort, which isn't available. As a last resort I could use warp.
However, when I use warp on a smart object and then go to edit contents, the layer opens as a .psb file rather than opening in Illustrator. Is there any solution for this?

What about rasterizing your poster in it's actual size in the photoshop parent doc. Then save it as a smart object. Then apply a Warp to the smart object.
Then when you have an alternate poster to place just open the smart object and place the new poster (rasterized) into the same .psb file as a new layer and update.
Then it will take on the existing Warp of your previously placed poster.
The only additional step for you would be the rasterizing of the illustrator art.

Prevent words / sentences from breaking apart to multiple type blocks?

When I open an indesign file exported as an eps, or open a pdf in Illustrator; almost aways the sentences or words will become separate type blocks. They will be in the correct position, but be one letter or multiple letter blocks. Is there any way to prevent this from happening?

No.
This is because the PDF or Postscript file format does not support the layout capabilities of Illustrator within one object. Each line of type is a new object, as is anyplace where kerning has taken place, even if that kerning is automatic and build into the typeface.
You can select all the text objects, then paste them into a newly created text frame. You will probably need to add spaces where line endings used to be and returns t the ends of paragraphs.

Converting CS3 to Vector art

Hi Folks
I'm new at working with Photoshop CS3 but need some advise in creating Vector art that can be imported into CorelDRAW and manipulated.
I am importing part schematics (part diagrams) for a motor utilizing my scanner. Once imported I am erasing the background to make them transparent and saving them. This has been working fine but does not allow me to position the artwork at my discretion.
I need to be able to create the work, make them transparent and save them as vector art so I can import them into CorelDRAW and be able to move parts around.
Can anyone give me some advise
Thanks for you help
Michael

Photoshop is not a vector art program, it creates rasterized images. Illustrator is the appropriate tool for vector art work.
Susan

After Flash Catalyst discontinued - What Workflow Designer / Developper to use? and how skin compone

Hi,
Now that Flash Catalyst is discontinued before being totally usable,
I used Flash Catalyst for skinning components and prototyping design of App.
So i wonder how experienced people do that without Flash Catalyst?
And more im asking to Adobe the same questions. What do you propose to do now what Flash catalyst helped to do until now?
how do you skin components?
how do you work with designers to get their App Pages designs?
in a word, what is the WorkFlow?
Thanks

I couldn't agree more with you that developers need a solid WYSIWYG tool, and Catalyst was Adobe's closest rival to Blend. It had much more potential than the amount of attention it received. Adobe was very foolish pulling the plug on it, not to mention all their other recent decisions related to the Flash Platform.
My point was that with all of the importing and exporting capabilities of Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash Professional, and especially Fireworks, you already have all of the capabilities of Flash Catalyst, at least in regards to making creative assets available to the Flex framework. That was the sole purpose of Catalyst- to bridge the gap between Adobe's design applications and Flex. If you weren't concerned with Flex, Flash Catalyst would be of no use, even if it were still in development. Exporting a Catalyst project to Flash Professional or HTML was never on it's roadmap, although I'm sure I'm not the first person who thought of those possibilities.
Catalyst, simply put, was the FXG editor which Flash Builder's design mode was not. For example, you could not draw a rectangle using Builder's design mode. With Catalyst CS5.5, it allowed you to directly assign FXG assets to MXML skins for ten of the nineteen Spark components which use the MXML skin architecture. This was a huge limitition, and espeically obvious with the new roundtripping feature, because using any of the non-supported components could easily break the connection between Builder & Catalyst. Honestly, myself and many of the Adobe engineers I talked to on the Flash Builder team, still do not understand why Catalyst wasn't merged into Flash Builder in the first place.
Perhaps it's not as useful out of context, but I compiled a presentation a few months ago for my Adobe user group, titled "Creative & Production Harmony": https://acrobat.com/#d=jNyu*qRjpF68tbl*8lCiTw&x=s
Basically what it outlined, was when to use Catalyst, and when you are better off exporting straight from the other design apps. My conclusion, was that you're generally better off designing your assets in the app you're comfortable with. That IS your WYSIWYG editor, to the precision of 1px. It was also a future proof answer since Catalyst was discontinued and many of the other Flex related workflows have evaporated. The main loss behind discontinuing Catalyst, were its states, timeline, and visual editing of FXG less commonly preserved when exporting from the other apps.
A workflow example for a project I recently used Catalyst with, http://disneycruiseadventure.com/ was to open the PSD provided inside of Photoshop, launch Catalyst, draw a shape (or copy/paste in a vector smart object from Illustrator), and use it's properties panel to match the Photoshop layer styles. This basically the climax of the day, because the rest of it was all spent manually editing code in Builder (and often fixing a lot of the crap code Catalyst spit out). For advanced use of graphics, we relied heavily on the Flex Component Kit, which basically lets you work with any MovieClip inside of Flex or even insert Flex components into a Flash Professional container. The integration between Flex & Flash Pro is most commonly overlooked, which is sad because it still offers the very most design freedom for Flex and has been around long before Catalyst.
In my personal project, my workflow heavily involves Fireworks. It's exporting capabilities are unparralled by any of the other Adobe design apps. You can design with the 1px precision you are after, and almost always preserve that precision after exporting to Flex 3, FXG, and even CSS. Speaking of CSS, now you can export to CSS3 and jQuery mobile themes using Fireworks. If I had a choice between Fireworks and Catalyst, I would take Fireworks without any question. If you're looking for another workflow, consider the idea of taking HTML/CSS exported by Fireworks and opening it inside of Adobe Edge for adding animation and interactivity. Then do your final editing with Dreamweaver, or skip the Edge step if you don't need it.

Error message aggravation

Illustator CS3 XP Pro 4 gig ram
I get this error message when opening Illy CS3:
"The operation cannot continue because of an unknown error. IMP"
Then click OK and a second message appears, "An error occurred while processing the appearance of an object." I click OK again and the message goes away. Then I proceed to work. I select some art to delete with the white selection tool, hit delete and the same error procedure starts all over again. The art finally deletes, but the error messages keep coming on virtually everything I try to do. Then will stop and start all over again.
I have two internal drives besides the program drive selected as scratch disk and secondary scratch disk. All other programs work fine.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Joe

I seriously doubt that trashing the Prefs is the correct prognosis for this issue. It's a little naive to suggest trashing prefs as a catch-all for solving every error. But for the record, if you want to trash the prefs, you don't have to do it manually. From the manual:
Resetting preferences can be helpful if you are having problems with the application.
Do one of the following:
Press and hold Alt+Control+Shift (Windows) or Option+Command+Shift (Mac OS) as you start Illustrator. Your current settings are deleted.
Remove or rename the AIPrefs file (Windows) or Adobe Illustrator Prefs file (Mac OS). New preferences files are created the next time you start Illustrator.
Note: It is safe to remove the entire Adobe Illustrator CS4 Settings folder. This folder contains various preferences that can be regenerated.
But in this case resetting the preferences is barking up the wrong tree, I'm afraid. The issue is in the file, not the application, so prefs don't come into the equation. You get this for two reasons, it appears:
1. an issue with rasterized artwork in Illustrator (begging the question - what are you doing with rasterized artwork in AI in the first place, but I digress)
or
2. a geometry issue - most often this comes from one or multiple Pathfinder operations, or working with illegal / poorly constructed geometry coming in from another source (a font, or EPS file)
In the current situation I'm experiencing, it's on an outlined font (the letter "L" with no compound path) that I'm trying to cut manually with the Scissors tool. Once I perform the cut, the error dialog appears, saying "The operation cannot complete because of an unknown error [!IMP]". Following that is a second modal dialog saying "An error occurred while processing the appearance of an object".
Copying and Pasting
Because this is a geometry issue, copying and pasting the artwork into a new, blank document will not do anything toward mitigating the issue, as the erroneous geometry comes along with the artwork that's pasted.
Retracing
Retracing / re-drawing is certainly a workaround, but certainly not the most desirable solution.
Offset Path
The old Offset Path at 0px offset doesn't solve the problem (also tested on larger offsets and that did nothing as well).
Poorly constructed geometry - hidden compound path
Strangely, the Knife tool did not cause the same error. In my specific case, this will allow me to proceed, but now my curiosity is piqued.
Following up on the Knife tool, is it possible it doesn't like the unclosed path? So I cut the opposite side of the path to completely separate the object (same error). This has caused a Compound Path to be created (the object was NOT a compound path prior to this). Release Compound path (still error). Now close the two shapes. No more error.
So there's something in the geometry (quite likely came in with the Font) that had some kind of embedded closed / compound shape that doesn't actually exist and is causing the parser to choke.
I'm out of ideas for how to "clean" the shape. Simplify errors out and things just get weird from there. Overlaying a large solid box and using Pathfinder > Divide and extracting the "hole" out of the solid still has the same geometry error. So I don't think there's any programmatic way to remove the geometry error.
Anyone else?

Why Fireworks?

I am learning Photoshop for the web and was moving to Dreamweaver tutorials.
I do not understand why one needs Fireworks. Why do you need to build a prototype of a site, if you can move directly from PShop to Dreamwaver?
Thanks.

Jim, Pixlor: Okay, I see what you mean about people expecting Fireworks to convert the site well and why Adobe calls it prototyping. In that case Photoshop and Fireworks can both prototype so Adobe should stop making confusing claims. Fireworks is an excellent design software first - anything else that it additionally offers are bonuses.
Pendue: Dreamweaver doesn't really "do the rest", you still need to learn HTML and CSS to create professional websites - Dreamweaver does help (like a lot of other website development software) but you need to help yourself by learning to code websites a little - its not that tough and is amazingly interesting :-) I can see that you were searching for reasons why Fireworks can be used and when. Well there are several reasons one of which I was trying to highlight and it got lost in the whole scenario about prototyping. Fireworks is a vector based design software that was made for web design because it renders as for the web. It also rivals illustrator when it comes to graphic design and is better when it comes to designing graphics and vectors for the web because of its pixel perfect vector control. Its not great for photo manipulation and comes nothing close to what Photoshop has in the special effects department. But there are some pretty good reasons to use it in tandem with Photoshop.
A) Fireworks is easy to use and not as complicated as Photoshop. Hard to admit but I've tried using Photoshop in the past 6 years occasionally to design a complete website but every-time I'm stumped by why its so difficult to work with. To name a few:
Vectors are not vectors but masked layers. Duh?! Beats me why Adobe never used the drawing capabilities of Illustrator in Photoshop?
You can't click and select a visible item. You need to click its layer, super weird. Especially when you have a couple of hundred layers - boy are u lost. Comparatively Fireworks can not only select any visible item on clicking but you can even select items hidden behind other items using the "Select Behind Tool". In PS you never know what is selected but in FW the selection can be visibly discerned.
Gradients are difficult to manipulate in PS. In Fireworks they are easy to use and you can visually manipulate them easily with the Gradient handles that appear.
Some simple filters that are non-destructive in FW are destructive in PS. For example Convert to Alpha.
Neither stroke nor fill can be given without popping a panel. Shouldn't it be visible and changeable with an eye-dropper by instinct.
Undo steps (Ctrl-z) is just 2. Super weird. You need to use history panel constantly.
Subselection and moving of grouped items not possible without ungrouping and selecting layer.
In short: Photoshop requires too many steps for too many tasks.
B) Vector shapes and manipulation are too basic - check out the autoshapes in Fireworks - they make your job so easy. Especially the ease with which you can change properties like roundness, sides, corner type, etc. whenever you want. And in PS you can't do any sort of multiple vectors manipulation. In FW you just need to click and drag with the sub-selection tool to select any number of points belonging to any number of vectors in the area selected. Its a must to try out the Path Panel features and the advanced autoshapes in the Shapes panel to see its unique features (sorry too many to discuss). The reason I have put the vector capability as a separate point is because a huge part of website design involves drawing shapes which should preferably be vectors. The more you learn website design the more you'll get the hang of creating amazing high-impact designs built with dozens of subtle tiny effects - that's what Web 2.0 design is all about - subtlety and elegance.
C) Control over your elements is amazing in Fireworks - You have everything at your fingertips the dimensions, the positions, effects, color, stroke, you name it: mostly everything is right there for you to see in the properties panel. If you seek pixel perfection FW is the perfect tool. Finally: Slicing, optimizing and exporting your images is extremely easy (easier than PS if I dare say).
Hope this helps.
- Anita
Important note to the other expert designers - I hope I haven't been too critical of Photoshop - I know most designers use Photoshop with élan. I really would love to love Photoshop but I find it so difficult to get along with ;-) and so I use it only for creating photo effects and jazzy backgrounds. I guess rapidly designing in Fireworks for 11 years has made me a bit impatient with PS. I tried reading dozens of tutorials in futility and I've never been good at using or remembering shortcuts. If I've made errors in the points above please point them out.

Rasterizing capabilities of Illustrator?

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