Sizing in Illustrator

I am currently creating 5x4' posters in illustrator, Do I have to work with images at that size when creating the posters or can I work on a small scale and ramp up the size when done? I am not very well versed in Illustrator so bear with me! Any help is greatly appreciated.

Talk to the printer. They can probably work with scaled artwork. Remember to divide resolution requirements by your scale. That means if the printer requests 100 ppi images and you are working in 1:4 scale, your images need to be 400 ppi.

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Placing images in Illustrator for print ready files

I'm designing a brochure in Illustrator that contains several logos and photos. (Yes, I know, Illustrator... I've read several forums and know that InDesign may be a better program for this, but I completely underbid this project and really need to stick with something I know for cost efficiency.)
I need to resize several images in Photoshop to place in Illustrator and I'm wondering if I should save them as CMYK jpegs, or tiffs, etc. I need the file to be the smallest it can be for upload to the printer. I need the basics on different file types and their pros and cons.
Also, when I'm sending out the proof to the customer, any tips on saving the pdf so the images aren't too blurry and the file is still sendable?
Please help!! Any other information or tips on how to prepare my file as a print ready would be great. I love to learn and really need some great resources.
Thanks!

How many pages are we talking about? The key to file efficiency is Placing images at their final size, so you are on the right track. Let me try to help...
"I need to resize several images in Photoshop to place in Illustrator and I'm wondering if I should save them as CMYK jpegs, or tiffs, etc. I need the file to be the smallest it can be for upload to the printer. I need the basics on different file types and their pros and cons."
-Do not save as JPG. The compression artifacts will show up in print. Just Place CMYK .tiffs or .psd's without sizing in Illustrator. Another thing to keep in mind is "Linking" the image files instead of "Embedding" them. You have a little more control saving your page files as EPS before creating the final PDF.
"Also, when I'm sending out the proof to the customer, any tips on saving the pdf so the images aren't too blurry and the file is still sendable?"
-There are a few different ways you can create a PDF viewable as a softproof. You could send the final as a Standard PDF using defaults. Don't forget to embed the fonts and leave color unchanged. What I do is Export > RGB TIF @ 150ppi > Open the .tiff in Photoshop and Save-As Photoshop PDF with a JPG compression of 8. You could do that for each page and then reassemble using Acrobat for one assembled, final PDF optimized.
"Please help!! Any other information or tips on how to prepare my file as a print ready would be great. I love to learn and really need some great resources."
-Get Adobe's Print Publishing Guide. It has enough information in it to help you wade through all of the disinformation out there. Get in touch with a couple of local print shops and have them take a look at your files. Good shops can spot problems and give you some handy tips. Not all shops will take the time, so finding one can be tricky.
Thanks!
-You're welcome. Let us know how it all shakes out.

Placing in Illy CS2

Does anyone know how to do precice placing and sizing in Illustrator as Indesign does? When I place an object such as a tif or jpg, Illustrator just throws it anywhere on the screen at whatever size it is. I'm working in speed so sizing them prior to placing is irrelevant - I need custom sizing capability before it appears on the page. Thanks much - Michelle

But AI is not really a full fledge layout program if you are working for speed I would think this a document that you might want to do in ID. Photoshop has different requirements as you edit images with it.
We are talking about different animals and I know you are interested in using AI for certain types of AI specific documents that you might have many of still in all AI is not a layout program.
I think if you want this then you should make a feature request for a placement loaded cursor. I do not think I have ever read anyone requesting this or complaining about the behavior before on the forum.
Although no that I think of it it might be handy to have if you have a lot of art work for a complex work of art. I wonder how other users feel about this I am more curious as to why no one ever brought the subject up, well maybe I just missed it.

Why does Illustrator CS5.5 crash when opening 1.5GB sized vector layered files on my iMac OS X?

Why does Illustrator CS5.5 crash when opening 1.5GB sized vector layered files on my iMac OS X?

1.5GB for a vector file is very large. If you can ever open this file would recomend file >> save as >> turn off PDF compatibility.
Can you please tell us why your file is so large, you may have a problem such as deleted global swatches, or an exceptionally large number of items in your symbols, styles, brushes palette. For even the most complex illustration filling the entire 227.54" artboard, you should be under 20mb if you have no embedded or linked images.

Need help re-sizing Illustrator windows/toolbar

I'm new to Illustrator, and after watching a few tutorials online have decided to start by rearranging my workspace to fit my needs. However I'm having a slight problem with the left hand most toolbar, the one that contains things like the "eraser" and "brush" and "zoom tool" etc etc. The window seems perfectly thing until I collapse it into one line (the icons appear to be set across two lines by default), when I try to collapse this toolbar into one line, I lose quite a large portion of the bottom of it. The lowest icon available is the "artboard tool", so I end up losing the "hand", "zoom", and all the other quite important information and tools below that. Quite the same problem is happening on the other side of the screen with all the "windows", I can never seem to have more than 4/5 open at a time before they start automatically shrinking and hiding the information at a first glance from me, which is strange because I've watched an online video tutorial which shows the Developer having 5 windows open to the side of the screen at a time and Illustrator seems to show all the information at once with no re-sizing. But the first issue is more important I feel.
I've tried pressing F to change the screen mode and although it shows a bit more of the screen its still no where near enough to show be all the information on the left toolbar, I've also tried right clicking the window and trying to change things with the UI but to no avail. I'm basically just wanting to know how to actually shrink the windows and toolbar icons without cropping the windows themselves as that makes all the text and information bulk up into a mess.
Any help would be very much appreciated. Thank you.

Hey Mike, my resolution appears to be 1024 x 768? I've tried looking online to help me find it but I am unable to locate an application frame in the windows dropdown menu. I'm on a PC if this is any help. Thanks.

I intermittently cannot option+drag shapes, or even drag a copied object. Instead Illustrator will try to enact re-sizing or rotation.

This is so frustrating, having never had this issue in any prior versions of illustrator.
I'm using Illustrator CC, on a Macbook Pro Retina (newest), on OSX 10.10.2 ... using the trackpad for now in lieu of my tablet or mouse (suspecting that this might be the issue).
As I said in the title, very frequently, I'll go to option+drag an object to copy it and instead of it dragging out a new copy, it tries to either rotate or stretch the object instead. This is in every different file I try to work on. I'll try to do it the old fashioned way of cmd+C, cmd+F and then dragging it, but this too seems to run into the same issue. Dragging the newly copied object instead enacts rotation or stretch tools.
I'm sure you can appreciate how maddening this can be if you're accustomed to quickly multiplying lots of little objects on screen.
Thanks!

jomo,
We have had a few similar threads recently, active at the same time:
Re: Illustrator thinks I want to resize an object...
I have issues while trying to drag/alt+drag a relatively small odject.

Navigator-Window doesn´t function using big sized Disigns over 3 meters (Illustrator CS4)

Hi all,
I think this is a bug. Perhaps you have a solution for me.
I need a flag in the dimensions 1.2 meters (wide) and 3.0 meters (build up). In "Setting up document" I entered the values in centimeters.
The problem is when I want to move the red rectangle in the Navigator, the desktop, canvas layer moves completely uncoordinated only in one direction.
The only thing I can do is to scroll with the scrollbars or the mouse-wheel. As I have to zoom in, this kind of workarround is realy bad for me.
Who knows the problem and has a solution? I use Illustrator CS4.
Thanks for your help.
Best regards,
emusik

Hi Laary,
thanks for your answer.
Problem is, that I can´t reset AI with the shortcut: Shift+CTRL+ALT+Double-Click as Windows opens the register for relation to the AI.exe.
I´ll upload the file. Perhaps you can check it for me.
https://www.wuala.com/emusik/ai-problem?key=c1sBpNiGuG6X
Or could you let me download an ai-document of you with 120cm 300cm?
My colleague has the same problem with the file. We both use AI CS4 14.0.0
Thanks a lot and best regards.

Photoshop to illustrator sizing problem

Hello All,
This should be fairly simple, but I haven't had this problem before. I have a photo that I need to increase the size of the canvass and add a black vignette around, then update this file in illustrator where it is placed. Every time I change the canvas size in photoshop and update in illustrator the photoshop image shrinks instead of getting bigger (I have not changed the dpi or anything else except the canvas size). I've adjusted many images in photoshop and brought them into illustrator with no problem. This is very strange....anyone have any ideas?
Thanks!
H

You can scale an image to whatever size you want in Illustrator. If you take an 8x10 image and scale it down 50%, no matter what you do with the image in photoshop, the graphic element in illustrator will stay as a 4x5 dimension. It's not often one would want the parameters they have designed in one piece of software to be affected by what they do to the elements in another piece of software!
Instead of simply updating the link to the image that is already placed in illustrator, you should place the image again (File-Place), and it will come in at 100% of it's (new) size, same as any other image.

Sizing Issues with Illustrator CS4

When I drag the ellipse/rectangle tool in Illustrator CS4 on Windows XP, instead of just resizing the object when I drag, it creates multiple ellipses/rectangles until I have reached the size I want. How do I get this to stop so that there is only 1 object?

Is your Tilde key stuck?
JET

Sizing PSDS for After Effects / Preparing Illustrator files for After Effects

3 questions
For the longest time I have been told when importing PSDs to
After effects, in order to keep circles circles (proper ratios) I had
to make a 720 540 PSD file and then crunch it down to 720 486. Then import the file to a D1 NTSC 720 486 after effects comp and everything works fine.And it does and always has
I have now been told otherwise. People claim they view in DV NTSC view
in Photoshop at 720 486 and then just import to a 720 486 DV1 After
Effects comp and everything is fine.
That view mode in Photoshop is for viewing purposes only though so this
confuses me. Sure you can sit there and stretch your picture to look
right in that mode but that doesn't make sense. Going 540 to 486 is
quicker.
But one weird thing I noticed is if you save your PSD with the NTSC
view mode turned on it will automatically import to After Effects with
DV NTSC comp settings. Otherwise it will import into a Square Pixels
comp.
So to simplify my questions are the following.
1. Is there a way to avoid creating a 720 540 PSD and then crunching
down to 486? And somehow keep circles circles and photographs not
stretched.
2. Why does the DV viewing mode in Photoshop effect the importing into
After Effects if it's just for preview purposes?
That said I like that viewing mode in Photoshop because when I do my
720 540 to 720 486 crunch I can see that everything will look fine.
If anyone can help it would be much appreciated. I've been fine doing what I'm doing but for the last couple years I have been told there's a quicker way and haven't found anyone who knows.
And my final question #3 is
How do you import an illustrattor file into After Effectcs with
layers? I know how to bring sa photoshop file in with layers but everytime I import an illustrator file in , it comes in flat as one layer.
Thanks very much to those who can help.
J.

>Is there a way to avoid creating a 720 540 PSD and then crunching
>down to 486? And somehow keep circles circles and photographs not
>stretched.
Not really and then "crunching down" is very much a matter of point of view. The real question is: Can you accept the variations e.g. in antialiasing introduced by creating your work with non-square pixels in Photoshop. Apparently doing so will affect horizontal sampling more than vertical and as there is a difference in how AE and PS deal with these matters, the result would be different. It also extends to the matter of how practical it would be to work with such files if you need to move them to applications that don't provide PAR correction...
>Why does the DV viewing mode in Photoshop effect the importing into
>After Effects if it's just for preview purposes?
It doesn't. The people told you only half the facts. Photoshop's PAR correction is just for viewing purposes, that's true, but it does not mean that PS itself would be unable to deal with non-square pixels. Whenever you create a files based on such presets, PS will correctly embed that information for saving, hence programs like AE that are able to extract that information, will use it to correctly interpret items.
>How do you import an illustrattor file into After Effectcs with
>layers?
You can't. In the strict sense Illustrator has no layers, only objects and groups and since they can be infinitely combined in the funniest ways, it's a hell of a thing to read them right. Maybe in CS5 after all these years... (or even later).
Mylenium

ERROR! can't open the illustration. the illustration contains an illegal operand. Offending operator '((((((((((((((((((((((( 1Gm

Hello, good people. Please help!
I am working on a project that consists of one .ai file that contains 27, letter sized art boards.
I am using Adobe cs5-Illustrator on a macbook pro.
I have opened and closed and save this file many, many times—I have been working on this for the last 2+weeks.
Today, when I tried to open the file I received an error message that read: "can't open the illustration. the illustration contains an illegal operand. Offending operator '((((((((((((((((((((((( 1Gm
A screen shot of the entire message is below. Can anyone please help me to ward of this "offending operator?"
Thank you in advance.

AAhlene,
It is strange that the offending operation is not shown in context within the message.
Are you saving to your own harddisk( see below)?
One thing often tried first is to create a new document and File>Place the (PDF contents, if any, of the) corrupted one to see how much may be rescued that way.
Here are some websites where you can see whether it can rescue the actual file, and if it can, you may pay for a subscription to have it done,
http://www.recoverytoolbox.com/buy_illustrator.html
http://markzware.com/adobe-software/fix-illustrator-file-unknown-error-occurred-pdf2dtp-fi le-recovery/
http://www.illustrator.fixtoolbox.com/
As far as I remember, the first one is for Win and the second one is for Mac, while the third one should be for both.
Here are a few pages about struggling with it yourself:
http://daxxter.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/how-to-recover-a-corrupted-illustrator-ai-file/
http://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/troubleshoot-damaged-illustrator-files.html
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/500/cpsid_50032.html
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/500/cpsid_50031.html
http://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/enable-content-recovery-mode-illustrator.html
External media: It is always recommended here to open/save from/to own hard disk, and to copy from/to networks and removable media. You may be lucky (for a while), but the chances of file corruption and other unpleasantnesses are immensely greater when you use anything but the harddisk, and it is better to be safe than sorry.
In addition to the (far greater) risk of file corruption, some issues are mentioned here:
http://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/illustrator-support-networks-removable-media.html
To have a network actually work may require some work.
If you transfer by external means it is always safest to zip/compress the file to avoid corruption.

How can I export an Adobe illustrator CC .AI file to a DWG or DXF file suitable for SolidWorks?

Hi
Can anyone help?
How can I export an Adobe illustrator CC .AI file to a DWG or DXF file, without SolidWorks enlarging the file & converting every curve into hundreds of short little straight lines rather than a single continuous line/s.
I have made sure the file is ungrouped or has any compound paths or colours.
Opening it in Autocad 2010 still converts the DWG file into hundreds of short little straight lines!
The file is needed to laser cut out an aluminium shape using SolidWorks 2008 (Metal soft)?
Formats they can handle are:
DWG, DXF, IGES, IGA
There must be a way to export it without re-drawing the whole design in Soildworks again!!??
Can anyone help?
INCA

Not really. This is a limitation you will have to live with. Unless you are extremely careful, most paths will be converted to polyline segments by AI and in particular in AI CC this is somehow busted, so it happens more often. You might have much more luck opening a native AI file in DraftSight or a 2D CAD program like TurboCAD and exporting a DWG or 2D IGES/ STEP file from there. The sizing issue is a different matter, but without knowing what units you actualyl used, nobody can advise.
Mylenium

Is there a way to get Illustrator to know how many pixels are in an inch?

Hi, this is my very first post so please be gentle!
I've scoured these forums and found no solution to this problem.
I'm using Illustrator CS5 to make graphics for print. I need to print said graphics at 300 DPI, but this seems impossible.
Illustrator has plenty of settings that tell you it's at 300 DPI, but it never ever is.
Here's the new file dialog:
In this example, I'm making an image that I want to print on a letter sized piece of paper. The example is square, but that's not important. 8.5 inches at 300 DPI is 2550 pixels. Watch what happens when I change the unit to pixels:
Despite the raster effects set to 300 PPI at the bottom, it thinks that 8.5 inches is 612 pixels, which is 72 DPI, NOT 300. Watch what happens when I choose the correct pixel resolution then switch it back to inches:
It actually thinks I want to print a 35 inch poster with horrible gif resolution.
You might say that the pixels are the only thing that matters when it comes to print, and you'd be correct, if I didn't want to print via a PDF. When I save a drawing like this at the correct pixel resolution to PDF, then try to print it at the actual size (300 dots to an inch), I get something like this because Acrobat thinks I have a 35 inch high document:
Well, you might say, why don't you just print it to fit and you'll be fine? Sure, I can tell my print dialog to fit it to the page, but it doesn't fit it to the actual page size, it fits it to the printable area, which is maybe an 1/8th of an inch smaller on every side of the page, which means my 300 dots will never fill an inch exactly on my printer. I could never in a million years print a usable ruler.
Before you ask, yes the Document Raster Effects Settings are also 300 PPI and it has no effect.
Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

Coming late, and maybe it's covered, but I noticed this earlier quote: ""I use Save As, then choose PDF from the dropdown menu. The actual size of the PDF will be 72 PPI. I can try printing to PDF, and see if it makes the same giant PDF..."
I think you may be getting hung up on resolution when there isn't one. PDF files DO NOT HAVE A RESOLUTION. Like Illustrator files, they are a vector format.
A PDF file might contain no images at all, then it is impossible to talk of resolution at all. Or it might contain images, but these might all be different resolutions. Sometimes, it so happens that all the images have the same resolution, then it is just about possible (but not necessarily useful) to talk about resolution. A number of utilities claim to report the resolution of a PDF but just make it up! Where did you get the 72 dpi figure?
Another common error is to think of "100% scale" as being a universal thing, and expecting something viewed at 100% to be the same size in all apps, so to think something is wrong when they are not. This is simply an error: each app has its own different idea of what 100% means and you cannot compare apps this way.
If you want to know the size of a PDF, first realise each page COULD BE a different size, though they usually aren't. Open in Acrobat and hover the mouse in the bottom left corner until the size appears. This is in inches/mm; remember there cannot be a size in pixels.

When printing, how can I spool/process on the printer itself, rather than process the job in Illustrator?

Is this related to setting up a PPD?
We are using an HP Designjet T7100 plotter to print out large wall maps (108"x108") with incredible amounts of detail (about 30 layers, with varying transparency, and everything from mid-sized polygons and lines to thousands of points). It's an enormous job, I know, but certainly possible. The workflow involves creating EPS layers, and running them through Distiller to create PDFs which are obviously the map layers.
In the past, we have been successful in printing out high-resolution maps. We are now experiencing "Out of Memory" errors if we try to print from InDesign, and Illustrator takes well near an hour to process a map.
This morning, we printed a 42x60 map in low-res - the map printed successfully, albeit in about 20 mins. After printing, I went to the plotter, selected the job from the front panel, and re-printed it from there. It took 30 seconds to print.
Obviously, the job was already processed on the plotter and that made printing easier. My question is, is there a way to get the plotter to process jobs rather than Illustrator? How can I set spooling to be handled directly by the printer? Illustrator is using 2GB of memory just to process jobs - absolutely ridiculous.
I appreciate any feedback! Hopefully from Adobe
Thanks,
C
EDIT: I also wonder if this is a network issue?

Hello there! Welcome to the forums @kmmo
I read your post about how you are trying to cancel a print job from the printer. I would like to know if you see an "X" on the printer display screen while the print job is in progress, and if so, try pressing the "X" and that should cancel the job.
Let me know your findings
R a i n b o w 7000I work on behalf of HP
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“Thanks” for helping!
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How do you find the pixel dimensions of a photo to embed in Illustrator CC?

We recently upgraded our software from CS3 to CC. I'm having trouble determining the pixel dimensions of the photo I want to embed in Illustrator. In our old work flow, we simply clicked on the object in Illustrator, and then opened a new document in Photoshop, and it would retain the dimensions at our document size in Illustrator. It was then a simple matter to paste the photo into the box, position and crop and save as a PSD file and then place in Illustrator. That does not work any more in Creative Cloud. The object downsizes to 72 DPI while retaining the resolution setting. We need to keep our Illustrator files to the minimum, so embedding larger than needed files is not possible.
I've researched a bit and I see others with similar problems, but I haven't seen a workaround or a way to determine the pixel size. Document info in Illustrator gives the 72 dpi pixel settings, even though the document is set to reproduce at 200 dpi.
This is something that used to be so simple I didn't think much of upgrading. Now my workflow is horrendously long. I have to rasterize the entire graphic and then crop what is the inset photo. If there is a simpler way, please tell me. All the literature is backwards, about placing an already sized PS image into Illustrator. I need the other way 'round.
Thanks in advance for any help.

I think I have a workaround: Make sure the clipboard settings are on 72 by cutting and pasting a 72 dpi file in PS, as it seems Illustrator images are seen that way, no matter what the output resolution is. Click on Photoshop and start a new document. It will retain the proportions of the Illustrator image in 72 dpi. Then open image size and make sure the resample box is checked. Change the resolution to the desired, in my case 200.. Then place and crop your photo, and save the PSD file. Open Illustrator and place the PSD file. This works for me.

Sizing in Illustrator

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