Adobe illustrator cs4- P18 pps

CHAPTER 14: SAVING AND EXPORTING FILES 484 Saving and Exporting Artboards One of the most highly requested features in Illustrator has  nally arrived in Illustrator CS4—multiple art- boards (see Chapter 1). And just as you can create single  les with multiple artboards, so can you save and export  les with them as well. Choose File > Export, and choose your desired  le format. In the Export dialog box, select Use Artboards (Figure 14.22), and specify All or a range of artboards to export. When Range is selected, Illustrator will export separate  les for each artboard speci ed. File names will be appended with a 01, 02, 03, and so on. If the Use Artboards option is not selected and your  le contains multiple artboards, a single  le will be exported with the artboards converted to a single, “conjoined” artboard (Figure 14.23). With the Save and Save As commands, the Use Artboards option is automatically selected for the native Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Illustrator Template, PDF, SVG, and SVGZ  le formats. You have the option of selecting or not selecting the option with the EPS and FXG  le formats. Figure 14.22 Choose to export, or not export, multiple artboards. Figure 14.23 Illustrator then creates a separate  le from each artboard (left) or a single  le from multiple artboards (right). EXPORTING FILES FROM ILLUSTRATOR 485 The Bitmap (.bmp) Format Bitmaps are raster-based fi les and are often used in older computer applica- tions. The bitmap format is also used by some applications for displaying logos or bar codes. When exporting a bitmap, you can choose one of three different color models: RGB, Grayscale, or Bitmap. Bitmap creates a fi le that contains only black-and-white pixels (Figure 14.24). Additionally, you can specify the resolution for your image and choose whether to antialias the art. The Targa (.tga) Format The Targa fi le format is a raster-based image format used mainly in video applications. For example, you might use the Targa fi le format to add Illustrator artwork as masks in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. When exporting a Targa fi le, you can choose one of two color models: RGB or Grayscale. Additionally, you can specify the resolution for your image and choose whether to antialias the art. The Portable Network Graphic (.png) Format The PNG fi le format (pronounced “ping”) was originally formed as an open standard format to replace the need for the GIF image fi le format, because of legal complications with those who developed the compression technol- ogy used in the GIF format. Figure 14.24 Many applica- tions (including Illustrator and QuarkXPress) allow you to change the color of a bitmap  le that uses the Bitmap color model. CHAPTER 14: SAVING AND EXPORTING FILES 486 As you learned in Chapter 13, you can also create PNG fi les from Illustrator using the Save for Web & Devices feature. However, the PNG format also appears as an export format because the Save for Web & Devices feature is hardwired at 72 ppi. To export a PNG fi le at any other resolution, you need to use the PNG export function. The PNG format is a raster-based image format and is used for web design, for icon and interface design, and as a general image exchange format. In fact, the Apple operating systems Tiger and Leopard (Mac OS X versions 10.4 and 10.5) create a PNG fi le when you take a screen shot. PNG fi les can support 24-bit color, but more importantly, the format also supports 256-level alpha channels for transparency, meaning you can give images soft edges that fade to transparent (unlike the GIF format, which supports one- color transparency only). When exporting a PNG fi le, you can specify your image resolution as well as the background color. You can choose a transparent background, or you can choose Other to select a color from the Color Picker (Figure 14.25). Additionally, you can choose to turn on antialiasing and interlacing. Figure 14.25 You can specify any color as a back- ground color for a PNG  le, including transparency. EXPORTING FILES FROM ILLUSTRATOR 487 Exporting Art for Use in Microsoft O ce Applications One of the most di cult things to do is create artwork in a professional design application (such as Illustrator) and have that same artwork display and print reliably in a business application such as Microsoft PowerPoint. Finding the right  le format for this work ow is di cult because JPEG images don’t support transparent back- grounds and EPS  les don’t display well onscreen. In addition, EPS  les require the use of a PostScript printer, which most business professionals do not have. After much research, the folks on the Adobe Illustrator development team discovered that the PNG format was perfect for placing art from Illustrator into Microsoft O ce documents. Because the format supports transpar- ent backgrounds and displays beautifully on computer screens, a PNG  le set to a resolution high enough to also print well, resulting in great-looking art in O ce documents. To save time and make it easier to quickly export a  le from Illustrator to use in Microsoft O ce, choose File > Save for Microsoft O ce. Illustrator saves your  le as a PNG  le set to 150 ppi with antialiasing turned on. Once you’ve created the PNG  le, you can place it into any Microsoft O ce application by choosing the Insert Picture function in Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, or Microsoft PowerPoint (Figure 14.26). Figure 14.26 To place a PNG  le into a Microsoft O ce document, choose Insert > Picture > From File when in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, and locate the  le on your computer or server. Because of a bug in the Mac version of Microsoft O ce, transparency in a PNG  le does not appear correctly at the default view setting (it does appear correctly when viewed in full-screen mode and when printed). For this reason, the Save for Microsoft O ce command sets the background color to white instead of transparent. If you are placing your art into Microsoft O ce for Windows, you can create a PNG with a transparent back- ground by using the PNG Export function. CHAPTER 14: SAVING AND EXPORTING FILES 488 The AutoCAD Drawing (.dwg) and AutoCAD Interchange File (.dxf) Formats The DWG and the DXF fi le formats are both used for exchanging fi les with computer-aided design (CAD) applications. These formats can be especially helpful when you want to send Illustrator artwork to architects, interior designers, or industrial designers. Both formats support vector and raster elements. When exporting a DXF or a DWG fi le (they both use the same export dia- log box; Figure 14.27), you can specify the version of AutoCAD you want your fi le to be compatible with and the number of colors in the resulting fi le. If your fi le contains raster elements (or if vector elements need to be rasterized), you can choose to have them embedded as either bitmap or JPEG fi les. TIP If you need some of the functionality that CAD applications have, you might look into the CAD tools plug-in from Hot Door, avail- able at www.hotdoor.com. Figure 14.27 Illustrator uses the same export options dialog box for both DXF and DWG formats. EXPORTING FILES FROM ILLUSTRATOR 489 Additionally, you can choose to export only the artwork that you currently have selected on the artboard. Selecting Alter Paths for Appearance modifi es paths, if necessary, so that they appear when opened in a CAD application. Additionally, you can outline all text to avoid the need to send fonts. The Windows Metafi le (.wmf ) and Enhanced Metafi le (.emf ) Formats The Windows Metafi le (WMF) and Enhanced Metafi le (EMF) formats were developed to move graphics between applications on the Windows platform. These two formats support both vector and raster elements but are severely limited with regard to the kinds of art they can reliably display and print (EMF is slightly better). Both formats can create only straight vector lines, not curved ones. To make up for this, curved lines appear as numerous tiny straight paths, which results in large fi les with many anchor points. If possible, avoid using these formats for anything other than simple artwork. You can’t specify any additional options when exporting WMF or EMF fi les. The Flash (.swf ) Format SWF is a popular web-based fi le format that supports both vectors and rasters. The Flash fi le format has become extremely popular because of its capability to contain interactive or animated content. You can use Illustrator to generate a SWF fi le that you want to upload directly to a website, use in a Flex framework rich Internet application (RIA), or even place into InDesign for creating interactive PDF fi les. The SWF Options dialog box contains “just a few” options for creating the SWF fi les that are right for you (Figure 14.28). Along the right side of the dialog box are options to save presets of SWF output settings, to preview your SWF in your default web browser, and to preview your SWF using Adobe Device Central. The SWF Options dialog box is actually split into two separate panels labeled Basic and Advanced, which you can access by clicking their respective buttons that appear underneath the Cancel button along the right side of the dialog box. CHAPTER 14: SAVING AND EXPORTING FILES 490 Basic Options The options in the Basic panel of the SWF Options dialog box are general settings that apply to most SWF fi les: • Export As. You can export Illustrator fi les in one of four ways: AI File to SWF File, which creates a single SWF fi le that contains all your Illustrator artwork; AI Layers to SWF Frames, where each layer is converted into a key frame, resulting in a single animated SWF fi le; AI Layers to SWF Files, where each layer in your Illustrator document is exported as a separate SWF fi le (useful when you are creating Flash scenes); and AI Layers to SWF Symbols. • Version. You can export a SWF that is compatible with any available ver- sion of Flash Player. The default is Flash Player 9, which many believe is present on more than 90 percent of computers that access the Internet. • Options. A variety of general settings appear in this section. You can choose to export your SWF at the exact size of your artboard or active crop area. If your fi le contains artwork that may not translate to the SWF format perfectly, you can select Preserve Appearance to expand or rasterize those areas to ensure the integrity of the appearance of your art. Compressing a fi le will result in a smaller SWF. You can choose to include all symbols in your resulting SWF (even if they aren’t used on the artboard), have your text converted to outlines, and ignore kerning that you may have applied to text. You can also choose to enclose metadata (from information you’ve entered using the File > File Info Figure 14.28 The Flash export dialog box in Illustrator has so many options that there’s a Basic button and an Advanced button that are used to tog- gle between two full panels. EXPORTING FILES FROM ILLUSTRATOR 491 function) and protect the resulting SWF fi le from being opened in Flash by applying a password. • Curve Quality. This setting controls the quality level for curved paths in the resulting SWF fi le. • Background Color. This setting allows you to specify a background color for the SWF fi le. • Local playback security. You can choose whether the SWF fi le can access local or network fi les only. Advanced Options The options found in the Advanced panel of the SWF Options dialog box are settings that apply to rasterized portions of a fi le and animated content: • Image Format. If there is raster content in your fi le (or if fl attening requires that content becomes rasterized), you can choose how those images are stored in your SWF fi le—either using a lossless format or a lossy format. If you choose the lossy format, which is JPEG, you can choose a JPEG quality and the Baseline setting. You can also choose the resolution you want your raster content to use (usually 72 ppi). The remainder of the options present in the Advanced panel of the SWF Options dialog box are specifi c to animated SWF content. There- fore, they are available only when choosing the AI Layers to SWF Frames option in the Export As pop-up menu in the Basic panel of the dialog box. • Frame Rate. This setting controls how fast the animation plays and is measured in frames per second (although in the context of Illustrator, they are actually layers per second). A lower value will slow down the animation, while a higher value will cause the animation to play faster. • Looping. Selecting this option causes the animation to repeat itself endlessly. • Animate Blends. If your Illustrator fi le contains any blends, select- ing this option will automatically animate those blends in the resulting SWF fi le. This setting allows you to keep blends live and editable in your Illustrator fi le and still get the desired animated result. Otherwise, you CHAPTER 14: SAVING AND EXPORTING FILES 492 would have to use the Release to Layers function in your Illustrator fi le to manually create the content necessary to create an animation. You can choose to have blends animate either as a sequence (each frame appears individually, one after the other) or as a build (each frame appears succes- sively, adding to the previous one). • Layer Order. By default, Illustrator animates layers from the bottom up, but you can alternatively select the Top Down option. • Export Static Layers. Static layers are those that appear in every frame of the animation. If you select this option, you can Command-click (Ctrl-click) any layers that you want visible throughout the entire ani- mation. For example, if you had an animation of a bird fl ying across a cloudy sky, you might set the layers that contain the sky and cloud elements to export as static layers. For an in-depth discussion of how you can create great-looking SWF fi les, including adding interactive hotspots and animations, refer to Chapter 13. The Joint Photographic Experts Group (.jpg) Format An extremely popular raster-based format, JPEG fi les are used mainly for exchanging photographic content and artwork. Although the JPEG format is used heavily in web design, it is also the format of choice for the elec- tronic delivery of stock photographs and for digital cameras. One of the rea- sons why JPEG is used for these tasks is because the JPEG format can take advantage of compression algorithms that can dramatically reduce fi le size. For example, a high-resolution image that is normally 10 MB in size might be only 1 MB in size when saved as a JPEG. However, the JPEG format uses a lossy compression algorithm, and some- times a JPEG fi le may exhibit artifacts or loss in detail because of this com- pression (Figure 14.29). A lower compression setting enhances image detail, at the cost of a larger fi le size. Although you can save JPEG fi les from the Save for Web & Devices feature in Illustrator, you can do so only at 72 ppi. Using the JPEG Export function, you can specify a custom resolution for your fi le, which allows you to create high-resolution fi les. EXPORTING FILES FROM ILLUSTRATOR 493 Besides choosing an image compression level for your fi le, you can also specify the RGB, CMYK, or grayscale color model. Format methods deter- mine how the image appears when viewed in a web browser. If you choose the Baseline setting, the image loads completely and is then displayed at full resolution. The Progressive setting (similar to interlacing) allows the image to appear immediately at a lower-quality setting; it then appears in full qual- ity once the entire image is loaded (the number of scans determines how many passes are done until the fi nal image is previewed). Illustrator also gives you the options of antialiasing the art, embedding a color profi le, and including a client-side or server-side image map. Refer to Chapter 13 for more information on how to defi ne image maps and the dif- ferences between client-side and server-side image maps. The Macintosh PICT (.pct) Format Much like the WMF and EMF formats, the PICT format was developed to move fi les between applications on the Macintosh platform. The format Figure 14.29 When saving a  le as a JPEG, using the Maximum setting results in a  le with fewer artifacts, but doing so also results in a larger  le size. [...]... experience, but it wasn’t always that way in Adobe Illustrator Prior to Illustrator CS, getting a file to print correctly often meant opening the Page Setup dialog box, the Document Setup dialog box, and the Print dialog box When Adobe released Illustrator CS, however, it updated the Illustrator printing engine and interface and modeled them after the Print dialog box in Adobe InDesign Ever since that version,... options when exporting a PICT file The Adobe Photoshop (.psd) Format As you learned in Chapter 12, “Working with Images,” you can export an Illustrator file as an Adobe Photoshop CS4 file and preserve vital information in the file This makes it easy to start work on a design piece in Illustrator and then bring it into Photoshop to add the finishing touches Bringing Illustrator art into Photoshop is also... for moving files from Illustrator into page layout applications However, with the ability to use transparency effects in your Illustrator files, the limitations of EPS become apparent For example, as a designer, you know that Illustrator creates vector-based files that can be scaled infinitely because they are resolution independent You have always been able to save a file as an EPS from Illustrator, place... printer-specific settings such as resolution Illustrator makes an educated guess about the right PPD file for your selected printer, although you can override it and choose your own if you want (however, if you’re not familiar with PPD files, it’s best to leave this setting alone) You can choose a PPD only when an Adobe PostScript device is selected as your printer PRINTING FROM ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR CS4 501 Figure 15.1... setting to create final film or plates from your artwork • In-RIP Separations When you choose the In-RIP Separations setting, Illustrator sends a single composite of the artwork to the RIP so that the RIP can perform the color separation instead of Illustrator All PRINTING FROM ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR CS4 507 the Document Ink Options and separation-specific settings become available so that you can still control... to Process Spot Color PRINTING FROM ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR CS4 Previewing Separations Before You Print The great news is that Illustrator CS4 has added a Separations Preview panel The bad news is that you won’t be getting much more than a bare-bones implementation of this productive feature Like the panels found in InDesign and Acrobat, the Separations Preview panel in Illustrator enables you to preview... BOUT TR ANSPARENCY Illustrator contains several features that use transparency, including the ability to specify blending modes and opacity masks with the Transparency panel and via effects such as Feather and Drop Shadow Transparency as a feature in Illustrator (and InDesign as well) requires closer attention when it comes to printing documents In fact, Illustrator, InDesign, and Adobe Acrobat all... print service provider can output Illustrator files with confidence Illustrator supports three printing modes, each of which is used for a different workflow (Figure 15.6): NOTE A raster image processor is the software in a printer, imagesetter, or platesetter that converts all art into dots so that it can be printed • Composite When you choose the Composite setting, Illustrator sends a single composite... have to think of an EPS file from Illustrator as you would an EPS file saved from Photoshop—you need to limit how much you can enlarge a graphic Although this is a concern only when your file contains transparency effects, keep in mind that many effects in Illustrator introduce the need for flattening (these are discussed in detail in Chapter 15) On the other hand, native Illustrator files (that contain PDF... This option prints your last artboard first and your first artboard last • Ignore Artboards If you do not select this option, Illustrator will print each of the artboards in your document If you select this option, Illustrator will not print separate pages for each artboard Instead, Illustrator will treat all artwork as one single large artboard (determined by the total bounding area of all the art), as . Save As commands, the Use Artboards option is automatically selected for the native Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Illustrator Template, PDF, SVG, and SVGZ  le formats. You have the option of selecting. PRINTING 500 PRINTING FROM ADOBE ILLUSTR ATOR CS4 Printing a fi le should be a straightforward experience, but it wasn’t always that way in Adobe Illustrator. Prior to Illustrator CS, getting a. Print dialog box. When Adobe released Illustrator CS, however, it updated the Illustrator printing engine and interface and mod- eled them after the Print dialog box in Adobe InDesign. Ever since