How to save unfinished work in adobe illustrator. Final Savings Protocol. Try a previous version of AI
Illustrator provides us wide opportunities for drawing, but the more complex the tools used, the greater the risk for printing. To prevent this from happening, you need to follow simple rules when creating and saving vector files for further use in creating printed products.
In this lesson on Adobe Illustrator we will not go into anatomical details like color profiles and printing in five colors. Our task is simply to learn how to decide how to save the image, depending on the drawing technique.
So, even the simplest vector image requires some nuances to be taken into account immediately at the stage of file creation. If you prefer not to convert strokes to objects, so as not to increase the number of nodes and, accordingly, the processing time of the file, do not forget to check the box in the transformation palette, which will allow you to scale the strokes along with the image. The same goes for brushes.
If there are black outlines in the illustration, they must be 100% black, without impurities of other colors. The thickness of the contours should not be less than 0.1 mm, and it is better to set from 0.15 mm and above. A large area of the image filled with black, on the other hand, must be "blended", that is, contain other colors than black, otherwise the background will be dull. The total density of composite black depends on the profile of a particular printer, and when the artist is unknown, it is customary to stay within the sum of 300%.
If the work is created for replication and contains a background that fits to the very edges of the pasteboard, then it is advisable to slightly extend the background beyond the boundaries of what was intended: as a rule, 3 mm along the perimeter. Otherwise, the illustration may simply be cut off, the fields for graphic images in modular grids are not always present. At the same time, you don’t need to fence any garden with rulers and guides, Illustrator makes it possible to easily make departures for the cut lines and save the trimmed format by writing PDF with the appropriate settings.
How to work with blues and greens in print preparation
As a rule, illustrators with little experience in printing have problems with green and blue fills. These colors, their shades, lose their appeal the most when printed in CMYK mode. Below you can see an example of what happens with blue and green.
How to be? You just need to be able to deceive the human eye. The fact that the same color looks different on dark, white and low-contrast backgrounds has been known to every artist since their school years. Think carefully about your color scheme. In addition, and their skillful use will make a person "think out" graphic information and see your illustration brighter and more attractive than four-color printing shows. When your chosen graphic style allows you to apply gradients - use it.
If a technically simple image can be written in EPS or PDF format and easily printed, then the use of transparency in combination with gradients, artistic brushes, patterns, transparency masks, bitmap effects requires more thorough preparation. When the printing house is known in advance, all the nuances can be found out from the technologist. Ideally, you will simply accept a finished illustration written in EPS version 9 and higher or PDF 1.4. Saving files in these formats allows you to open them through Illustrator in their "original" form and edit them easily. BUT modern equipment and software are loyal to transparency.
But when it is impossible to trace the further fate of the file, many prefer to play it safe. The old, good, barbaric way to write such an illustration is to save it in EPS version 8. In this case, even radial gradients will be saved as masks in which the bitmap is placed. If this phenomenon does not bother you, feel free to use it. With this it will be difficult to create something not only on RIP, but in general anywhere else. However, be sure to keep the original vector image.
Another way, more sparing for the vector, is to reduce transparency. When flattening, overlapping areas will be extracted as independent objects. Schematically: instead of two intersecting objects with transparency, you will get three opaque ones, the object resulting from the intersection area will be painted in the corresponding color. When preparing a file, it is desirable to enable the Overprint Preview function (Veiw menu).
Flattening affects both the objects with transparencies themselves and those on which they are superimposed. What is a layer above is not subject to reduction. When using artistic brushes, textures, text, patterns below transparent areas, you must first execute the Expand command to avoid possible distortions. Please note that this operation increases the number of nodes, which affects the file weight not for the better. Next, we execute the Flatten Transparency command. Watch the settings carefully, Raster\Vector Balance should be in the extreme right position.
But when the file has gradients one on top of the other with blending modes, don't be fooled by the Raster\Vector Balance engine twisted towards 100% vector: complex areas that defy PostScript description will be rasterized. What else is rasterized? Using Gaussian Blur and Radial Blur, Drop Shadow, etc. will result in rasterization of some of the objects.
Do not forbid yourself to use transparency, you just need to know all the Adobe Illustrator tools well and not be afraid to experiment: sometimes it is enough to use the Blend Tool to create the same shadows.
In general, it should be noted that the vector is not an end in itself, in the end, the image is still rasterized for printing, but the machine will do this incomparably clearer and better than handmade. Therefore, the vector should try to save as much as possible. However, there are cases when the size of the printed product is already finally known and scaling is not required, and the image is an outrageous number of nodes and textures or a blurry abstract background. It is obvious that in such cases it makes no sense to cling to a vector, it is more reliable to save a high-quality raster.
A special case: luminous abstract backgrounds, which are more convenient to create in RGB, lose half of the information about colors, transparencies and are no good when simply converted to CMYK, and rasterization allows you to save the image, although with losses, but not so serious.
You can export your work from Illustrator to TIFF format by specifying the desired model and resolution. And you can rasterize by opening the file in Photoshop, and the modern editor does an excellent job with both PDF and EPS, and with the .ai file directly. One caveat: when requesting for rasterization, in order to avoid loss of color information, the color model and color profile in which the vector file is recorded must remain (Photoshop itself offers them when opened by default). And only then the file is translated into the desired color space.
This method is useful for large format printing when TIFF format is required and Illustrator does not allow you to create and export an image of the desired size. When creating illustrations for exhibition stands or outdoor advertising, interior decor, we can easily work in vector at the scale that is convenient for us. When opening a file in Photoshop, simply specify the desired resolution and size in metric units (we act in that order).
If offset requires a resolution of at least 300 ppi (the same default value is usually set for laser printing with reservations), then a wide format does not need a large ppi value. Modern plotters will print a high quality outdoor file saved at 24 ppi. For interior printing, you do not need to set a value higher than 150 (usually 96-120) - it will not add a higher quality value, but it will increase the file processing time.
The result is not a big article, but in general terms this is the minimum that it is desirable to know when doing work for the printing industry. Good luck to all readers!
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Saving to EPS is easy!
1.Why do you need to properly save files with vector illustrations in EPS.
It is very important to save the file correctly. The first step is to save to EPS. Saving the file incorrectly can either result in a huge file size or your file simply won't be accepted.
In order to save the file in EPS, you need to go to the Adobe Illustrator menu, select - file - save as ... (File - Save As ...)
2.How to name a file
They have different requirements for the vector file format / Let's consider - common to all.
Set the file name in Latin letters, for example, Galaktica, select the file type EPS (Illustrator EPS) below, click Save.
File names can be anything, you can use numbers, but not Russian letters.
For convenience, and so that your files in your archive of works lie in their place - and as the works are written, I always call the files NUMBERS. This will make your life easier. I have folders with work themes, and I name the files in ascending order from 1 - to .... infinity. In this case, you will avoid confusion on your computer and there will be no difficulties with downloading (because one name is required for the vector and a preview for it)
3.EPS settings when saving
ATSelect Illustrator 10 EPS version
In the column - Format preview- default is - TIFF (color 8-bit)
Select - NO.
In the column Transparency - should be - no. If the button became active - Custom
Then you click on this button and move the Raster Balance slider and vector graphics- 100% vectors. Put - OK.
The rest is left by default. We press - OK.
4. How to save the file to view the vector illustration
Preview to a vector is a normal jpeg file, created from EPS by rasterizing it, with exactly the same name.
That is, if we have a vector file called Galactica , then the rasterized copy should be called Galactica.jpg.
Consider our version with a digital name. Our preview should be titled "49 jpg"
And set the image size to at least 15 megapixels. Those. so that the result of multiplying the height by the width is at least 15 million.
For example - at least 3000x5000.
Different microstocks require different size images, but the largest one is for Fotolia. Therefore, in order not to save in different sizes for different sites - let's save our JPG file - in the maximum size.
And immediately we put our two files - vector and Jpg - in one compressed folder, which is required on some microstocks, such as Fotolia and Depositphotos.
Select both files with the name 49, move the mouse cursor over them and click right key With the mouse we call the menu, in which we select -send - another submenu will appear - we will select - a compressed zip folder.
If your task is to keep High resolution JPEG in Adobe Illustrator, and he treacherously gives you this: Unable to export at this resolution. Please lower the resolution and try again. Then you have come to the right place :) Because now we will solve exactly this problem. jpegs from high resolution 300 dpi (300 ppi) may be needed for printing. Also, such files are great for microstocks, if the JPEG sizes are about 25 megapixels. They take them almost everywhere, even the picky Fotolia. If you still don't know how to prepare and save vector illustrations for microstocks, then you are here -
It is clear that the screen resolution will also work for the drain 72dpi with large pixel dimensions in width and height. In this case, you can simply save the JPEG via Save for Web (Alt+Shift+Ctrl+S). This option has fields for entering the width and height of the output image. But for those who still want a high resolution JPEG of 300 dpi, this method is not suitable. Remains File > Export. This is where you can choose the resolution. But it often fails if Adobe Illustrator considers that there is not enough RAM to complete the operation. That's when you might see such a warning.
I'm trying to export a fairly simple picture in Ai CC to a high-resolution 300 dpi JPEG. By the way, CS6 illustrator swears in the same way. For example, if the artboard in illustrator is 1200x1200 px, then exporting to 300 dpi will result in a high resolution JPEG with dimensions of 5000x5000 px.
I can suggest two ways to get around this moment, and still save a beautiful high-quality JPEG at 300 dpi.
1. Try a previous version of Ai
Everything is simple here. If your version of illustrator refuses to export to JPEG, then we take any other version and try through it.In my case, Adobe Illustrator CS5 was more accommodating.
2. Rasterize Ai file via Adobe Photoshop
Throw ai into photoshop. Don't forget to post 300dpi, smoothing Anti-aliased and all other settings you need.Photoshop will render the vector file. You will most likely have to wait a while while it works.
I do not rule out that there are more tricky ways :)
If you know of any, please share in the comments. We will exchange experience.
Roman aka dacascas especially for the blog
Any illustrator working through a microstock or photo bank understands the importance of vectors, which allow you to achieve better financial results due to their popularity with designers. They allow scaling to any desired size, and also contain fully editable elements, which allows you to use the most original and bold designer ideas. However, to achieve an optimal result, it is necessary to understand how best to preserve the finished product in order to make it more attractive to the buyer. To do this, we have collected some helpful tips on properly preparing your vector files for saving.
Avoid font conflicts
Remember to always convert the font to curves. Otherwise, the file will open correctly only if operating system computer will be the character of the font used in the image. Creating your type outlines simply transforms each letter with editable shapes. After converting text to curves, you will no longer be able to edit it, so before performing the operation, make sure that the text meets your requirements. Press Ctrl + A to select all text objects. Then select Type > Create Outlines.
love cleanliness
Keep your files in order! A dirty file is as unattractive as a dirty desk, who wants to work with it? Keep clients coming back for more by spending a few extra minutes getting your illustrations in order.
To check for reference paths, hidden lines, or open paths, use the zoom magnifier around the illustration. To eliminate the listed defects, use the following commands: , and Adobe Illustrator will clean up the illustration itself.
Other questions
Try to keep your artwork neat within the desktop and always check within the drawing area for lone dots and open paths. All illustration components should be neatly organized and labeled in folders. Use the layer palettes to present illustrations to your microstock buyer more effectively.
file size
Reduce the size of the illustration. To do this, select File > Document Setup and set the frame size. Select the images by pressing Ctrl + A and then Alt + Shift drag on one corner of the bounding box to resize your artwork on the artboard.
Disable previews generated by Adobe Illustrator. Rasterized previews lead to an unnecessary increase in file size. When saving the file, in the EPS dialog box, select the "None" option for the preview.
Delete unused symbols, graphic styles, brushes and swatches. If your working palette is not active, choose Window > Actions. Scroll down until the Delete Unused Palette Items option appears, select that action, and click the Play button at the bottom of the window bar.
Flatten the transparency to a high resolution so that the stock doesn't reject your work. To do this, use the Object > Flatten Transparency option. Make sure you do NOT rasterize your work as this will not leave it truly vector.
Final Savings Protocol
Congratulations! You have created a vector artwork. Before downloading, there is one more important step - saving!
Please note that microstock requires all vector images to be saved for Adobe Illustrator version 10 or higher. The reason for this is as follows. Let's assume that one of the users, using Illustrator 10, is trying to open an Illustrator CS2 EPS file that has been uploaded to an image bank. In this case, the user will receive an error message warning that the opening given file only possible in updated version Illustrator. File incompatibility is unfortunately a problem for many users, so microstock's policy is to standardize all vector images like Illustrator 10 or greater early versions(the so-called Legacy file).
How to transfer an illustration, website design or UI from Illustrator to Photoshop without copying as a smart object? Thus it would be desirable to keep objects vector after transfer. This should help standard function export to PSD, but is it?
In Illustrator, in the menu File → Export → PSD, there is an option “Write Layers” with the item “Maximum Editability”, but the result is random raster layers that vector objects turn into. Doesn't look like "maximum editability" in Photoshop.
Despite export options, two squares became one raster layer in PSD
Finding a solution
It is necessary to fight the developers of Adobe with injustice. I am looking for Russian-language, Western articles (I come across an interesting 2011 from Turbomilk), lessons, videos on YouTube. Almost everywhere it all comes down to grouping objects in an illustration, sorting by layers (the order in layers is useful for work, and not just for exporting) and further manual rasterization via Object → Rasterize in Illustrator itself or automatically during export. But I want to keep the objects as vector in PSD.
Export from AI under article Turbomilk. Order in groups, layers, but everything is raster
Requires Illustrator CS6 and above
The script checks all objects in the document, regardless of what layer or group they are on. When it finds an object with a solid color fill, it applies an Action to it with the Make Compound Shape operation. To save vector strokes to objects, you need to apply Object → Path → Outline Stroke.
If you have a group of hundreds of small objects, for example, hair, wool, or text converted to curves, it is better to combine such elements in a Compound Path before executing the script Cmd keys+ 8 (Ctrl in Windows) so that the script does not process each object separately by letter.
Exceptions
If the file contains objects to which Photoshop effects are applied (shadow, glow, noise, etc.), then they must be manually rasterized in Type Optimized mode before running the script.
Due to the specificity of some types of objects (gradients, patterns, meshes and a number of others), according to the test results, not all of them can be exported from AI to PSD, remaining vector, but they can be made into separate raster layers without long sorting into groups and layers in Illustrator. For this, another trick is used, the script separately makes a separate group from each such object.
2 squares in AI in separate groups after export to PSD
Brief summary
- When exporting from AI to PSD, we save transparency parameters, layer blending modes.
- Applying Make Compound Shape allows you to save vector objects in PSD.
- Gradients, patterns, meshes, objects with raster effects, shapes with strokes are rasterized.
- Converting each rasterized object into a group allows you to save it after exporting as a separate layer in Photoshop.
- Flat icons, UI elements, illustrations - after preparation, you can get them in PSD file completely in vector form.
- Preparing the file with the Ai2Psd script helps reduce the amount of manual work for files with large quantity objects.
Mateusz Nowak: "Thanks for Ai-to-Psd script!"
Dilyana Aleksandrova: “ai to psd saved my ass at work man, thank you for sharing it!”
Weyn Cueva: This is amazing! I've been looking for something similar because I work more in Photoshop. thank you."
Maggie Stilwell: This is awesome! A great timesaver. Thank you for sharing it.”
WashIrving: "looks pretty damn useful. thanks bro"
zmotion: "Great script. I am sure for many, including for me, it will be very useful!”
And for example, a vector illustration that was processed by a script and was exported to PSD format.
173 objects in AI were processed in 40 seconds. In the final PSD, all layers are vector shapes