Illustrator 10 .EPS file size question

[2NinerNiner2]

I recently did a rather small layout, the graphic size is 9.4" x 3.0" in a letter size document, and it has a few effects; drop shadows mostly. When I went to save as an EPS file, Level 3 Postscript (so ColoRIP would "see" the CutPath) it took forever to save. When I looked at the resultant file size, I was flabbergasted to see it as over 263 MB!!! I did a search here but wasn't able to find anything similar so hoping it is just something simple that I overlooked in the job or settings. The native AI file, when saved, is a bit large too, I believe, for a graphic this size; 4.5 MB. BTW, it is all vector; no bitmap/raster elements. An interesting side note is that when I imported the 4.5 MB AI file into CorelDRAW 12 and saved, the resulting CDR file is only 1.56 MB ... go figure!

 

[iSign]

nope... simple vector art wouldn't be a large file. Something is wrong. Re-open, copy the layout & save in a new page. Convert text to outlines... It should be a small file.

 

[2NinerNiner2]

Thanks Doug ... did that and now it is "only" 76.7 MB! as an EPS I do, however, get a warning in the EPS save as dialogue that there is artwork that requires flattening; but when I do so, it of course, loses it's transparency, which is not the effect I was trying to achieve. Open to suggestions

 

[iSign]

send the cutpath as an eps file & the rest as a rastor image. It may be vector, but if you are using transparency to create it... you're cheating :Big Laugh
If you have made new colors & new shapes through transparency... you could do the work to create a flat file with those new colors figured out as solid fills of new closed contours... but otherwise, IMO... you might as well consider it a rastor image & export it as one.

 

[2NinerNiner2]

Thanks again, Doug Yeah, I suppose I am 'cheating' a bit there, but I never had to give this any consideration when using CorelDRAW for similar work. I have been trying to get back into Illustrator of late, not really having used it much since when it first came out ... as " Illustrator '88 " ! ... and for the Mac only, and of course, no colour! B&W only back then! So when this cool little program for Windows 3.0 came out, called CorelDRAW 1.0, and did colour to boot ... well, I now have 12.0 and am waiting for my X3 trial to expire before I upgrade But I may have found another way to do this; save it as a PDF. This may have been a lack of knowledge on my Roland dealer's tech guy's part, but he had told me the only way to get a cutpath to show up in ColoRIP was to use an EPS Level 3 file. After your earlier suggestions, I tried this and lo and behold, there were my "marching ants" in the RIP from a PDF! Cool! And as a bonus, the colours were more on the mark!

 

[Mason]

The larger par of the problem is that Illustrator10was never really that great along with its predescesor Illustrator 9,when you use effects or filters in Illustrator you are using Photoshop filters which require transparency, which as you discovered does not allow you to save in an eps format that is suitable to send to your rip.(if you want to cut anything) anyway it seems like you got it worked out.. good luck

 

[The Vector Doctor]

Those drop shadow effects are in fact raster even though the shapes they are applied to are vector. You did not mention what other effects were applied, but all of those things add quite a bit of code to your eps file.

 

[2NinerNiner2]

Thanks, 'Vdoc' .. I kind of thought as much, but wasn't expecting such a large file from such a small graphic. The other effects were also raster, glow and emboss, but again, on a graphic that is only 9.4" x 3"

 

[Creations]

Though this was interesting...

Reducing Bloated Illustrator Files
==========================

Each new version of Adobe Illustrator adds at least a few new palettes,
each with its own presets to get you started, like the ones in Graphic Styles,
Symbols and Brushes. Unless you explicitly delete those presets before you save
your Illustrator file, the default options come along for the ride, increasing
file sizes and leading to the malady known as Illustrator Bloat.
Illustrator Bloat can get in the way when you're emailing files, when you're
running out of hard drive space, when you're creating hundreds of small Illy
files for inclusion in a layout program or as web graphics.
It wasn't always this way. I remember I once designed a tabloid-sized, CMYK
magazine cover in Illustrator v6 and the final .eps file was 92K. And then
I put it on a floppy and walked ten miles through a blizzard to deliver it
to the client, because that's what we did before e-mail, dadgumit.
As a comparative test, try this: Open a recent version of Illustrator and
create a new letter-size CMYK document. Drag out a plain old rectangle somewhere
on the page using the default settings (1 pt. black stroke, white fill). Save
the file in native .ai format using the default settings as well.
On my Mac running OS X, creating this with Illustrator CS (the latest version)
results in a file that's 468K. For a rectangle!
Turning off PDF Compatibility in the Save dialog doesn't help, in fact, it increases the file size, even if you keep "Use Compression" turned on. (My rectangle grew to 536K when I tried it.)
To slim down your files, you could tediously go through every palette menu, choose Select
Unused, and click the trash can icon to delete them.
Or if you have Illustrator CS, you could run a built-in Action meant for just this task:
1. With your bloated file open, open the Actions palette (from the Window menu).
2. Select the tenth one down, Delete Unused Palette Items, and Play it.
3. If you've already saved the file, do a Save As and overwrite the previous file.
Running this action and overwriting the file reduced my original rectangle.ai file from
436K to a far more palatable 120K.

Woo-hoo!

Thanks for this tip MORDY G. of designResponsibly.com !!