Effects in Illustrator

[ScottyAdams]

Hey Guys,

I have a question about using effects in illustrator (drop shadows, glows, etc.).
Of course I know these can have very odd results when sent to print. My question is...is there anyway around this besides simply designing in Photoshop. The issues I have is I have another sign shop that does all of their printing through us. They do not design in Photoshop and send all of their work to us in illustrator format and quite often use these effects. I can sometimes flatten the files but occasional I get an error saying the file is too large and there is not enough memory to flatten. With flattening I also run into the issue of not being able to use spot colors....which they quite often ask for. Does anyone have any solutions on how to get around these issues I'm having. Someone must be able to do so because when I let them know of this issue they usually get it printed somewhere else for that one job.

 

[synergy_jim]

I think Caldera RIP is very proficient at dealing with Illustrator effects. You might look into that. We will be switching to it real soon.

 

[MikePro]

fullscreen, screen-shot, enlarge in photoshop, print.
...or reinsert enlarged photo back into illustrator to layer the vectored spot colors prior to print.

 

[peavey123]

I'm thinking it's just a RIP issue? I'm using onyx right now and sometimes I have to perform a colour replacement on certain files to fix this. Normally, I just convert illy files to TIFFs if I don't have to worry about spot colours.

OR

What MikePro said.......wait...no, that's messed up man...

 

[Border]

OR

What MikePro said.......wait...no, that's messed up man...

Yea sounds like quick way to ruin nice artwork, especially in large format stuff.

 

[Flame]

Tell them to quit using dumb *** illustrator effects. That's what I do. Bevels and drop shadows...I'll only accept them if they're a flattened raster image. Otherwise, too much effort to dink with.

 

[Mainframe]

Export the file full size at 125 dpi as a .jpg or tiff. print and be done with it.
Works every time for me.

 

[ScottyAdams]

Export the file full size at 125 dpi as a .jpg or tiff. print and be done with it.
Works every time for me.

the 125 dpi trick worked to save the file at full size flattened. Was quality noticeably different when lowering like this?

 

[P Wagner]

the 125 dpi trick worked to save the file at full size flattened. Was quality noticeably different when lowering like this?

What resolution have you been rasterizing to?

 

[JLD984]

This is an easy one, I had the same trouble for years before figuring it out. Just select the object/s that have the shadow, glow or whatever, then go to the object menu and expand appearance. All the best.

 

[Mainframe]

the 125 dpi trick worked to save the file at full size flattened. Was quality noticeably different when lowering like this?

I am surprised how well things print when rasterized at 125 dpi. I am from the print world initially and we always had to have everything 300 dpi.

 

[4R Graphics]

This is not the old school print press world you can get nice prints with only 72 dpi if the printer is setup really well.

 

[CINCO-CUATRO]

You can save the AI files as PDF and then Open them with Photoshop and save as JPEG at 150dpi.

Then you can compare the JPEG with the original AI file.

 

[Tim Kingston]

My suggestion would be to select the artwork, copy it, paste it into Photoshop as a smart object. That way you still have your vector artwork intact to re-edit. Also, before copying I would set my raster effects to high quality, just in case they applied some Photoshop effects in Illustrator before handing it off to you.

 

[Dennis422]

You can just expand the effects in Illustrator, that way you get an embedded image of the effect already in the file.