Illustrator FINALLY increased canvas size by 10x

[victor bogdanov]

gone is the 227" (or whatever) canvas size limit in AI v26, now can go 10x bigger to 2270"

Found this out by accident and can't believe this is actually true.

Just finished my first 1200" mural without scaling and other stupid workarounds the previous limit and all went well.

I'm sure others will be happy.

Save times were still crazy long, I think about 3hrs to save the file on a Top Spec PC.

https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/large-sized-canvas-troubleshooting.html

The only way to get into the "Large Canvas size" is to create a new file and add artboards that exceed the standard canvas size

 

[victor bogdanov]

i almost purchased corel draw on the blackfriday sale to see if it can handle large projects better but last second came accross the adobe update

 

[James Burke]

Hey, I think it gets even better....

Unless my math is wrong, it's actually 100x bigger. (Ten times larger each direction means 100 of the old art boards can fit in the new Illy).


JB

 

[victor bogdanov]

Hey, I think it gets even better....

Unless my math is wrong, it's actually 100x bigger. (Ten times larger each direction means 100 of the old art boards can fit in the new Illy).


JB

Yes correct 100x bigger area. i guess I was thinking in terms of linear width 227 to 2270 instead of the area

"Large-sized canvas lets you create multiple artboards with larger dimensions. It provides an increased canvas area of 2270 x 2270 inches, which means you get 100x more working space than the default canvas."

 

[victor bogdanov]

Ok though about it some more, to me it is 10x bigger. Before my limit was 227" wide, now the limit is 2270". So 10x bigger in wall width or trailer length. But fingers crossed I get something to test out the 100x area increase

 

[James Burke]

Ok though about it some more, to me it is 10x bigger. Before my limit was 227" wide, now the limit is 2270". So 10x bigger in wall width or trailer length. But fingers crossed I get something to test out the 100x area increase

Technically, we're both right. I was looking at total art board real estate (area).



JB

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

This is great news... we updated last week and hadn't noticed this yet. Will be much easier than scaling designs from now on.

 

[ikarasu]

If you use plugins be careful. Cutting master specifically reads the file as 1/100 scale if large artboard is selected... Even if your artboard is 12x12 cm4 will cut it very tiny!

Not sure about other plugins...

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

They Didn't actually increase the artboard size, they are using pdf scale trickery... which as mentioned by Ikarasu can cause issues with legacy PDF tools, rips, and machine drivers.

 

[FireSprint.com]

This news seems bittersweet.

The offset/commercial print guys (Booklets, postcards, etc) don't know how good they have it. I'll bet they don't deal with any sort of problems at all.

 

[Bobby H]

This is old news. The large canvas feature in Adobe Illustrator was introduced in June 2020 with the ".2" update to Illustrator 24. I was more excited about the 24.3 update which introduced some font height options I had been hounding Adobe for years to include. Illustrator 25 had 3 point release updates and a bunch of minor updates. The current version is 26.0.1. To go through what features were added on various updates visit: https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/whats-new.html.

 

[brdesign]

I think read that the files with the larger artboards could come out as a different scale when opened in other programs or older versions of illustrator so that something to be aware of

 

[victor bogdanov]

This is old news. The large canvas feature in Adobe Illustrator was introduced in June 2020 with the ".2" update to Illustrator 24. I was more excited about the 24.3 update which introduced some font height options I had been hounding Adobe for years to include. Illustrator 25 had 3 point release updates and a bunch of minor updates. The current version is 26.0.1. To go through what features were added on various updates visit: https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/whats-new.html.

I need to pay attention to the release notes, would've been nice to know about this a year ago lol. But I've been searching for this for over a year and finally the adobe help page came up

 

[Bobby H]

I think read that the files with the larger artboards could come out as a different scale when opened in other programs or older versions of illustrator so that something to be aware of

If you save a large canvas Adobe Illustrator file down to a version earlier than version 24 the artwork will be scaled to 10% of its original size. In the Save As dialog box within Adobe Illustrator you can't pick specific CC versions down which to save. You can drop down to CS6 and several versions under, going all the way down to version 3. Like any graphics application, many newer features are not going to save down to older file versions. Artwork would have to be simplified accordingly to be compatible with that target file version. At least the capability to save back or way way back is there in Adobe Illustrator unlike freaking CorelDRAW.

 

[petepaz]

one thing that always baffled me was that photoshop also made by adobe would go larger on the art board and most of use these programs hand in hand but then illustrator didn't have that capability.

 

[Bobby H]

Photoshop is a fundamentally different kind of application. It has had its own image/canvas size limits. I'm pretty sure the current limit is 300,000 X 300,000 pixels (or 90 billion pixels). That should be more than enough unless someone is working on an insane-level "gigapixel" design.

With the new capability of being able to place editable Illustrator objects (complete with fills, etc) on their own layers in Photoshop it will be interesting to see if that runs into any odd size limits that go beyond what Illustrator can support in its large canvas mode.

 

[victor bogdanov]

Photoshop is a fundamentally different kind of application. It has had its own image/canvas size limits. I'm pretty sure the current limit is 300,000 X 300,000 pixels (or 90 billion pixels). That should be more than enough unless someone is working on an insane-level "gigapixel" design.

With the new capability of being able to place editable Illustrator objects (complete with fills, etc) on their own layers in Photoshop it will be interesting to see if that runs into any odd size limits that go beyond what Illustrator can support in its large canvas mode.

One annoying limitation of photoshop that I have to deal with is the size limit of the effects gallery, Don't remember the exact limit but anything around 200" at 150dpi the effects galley becomes unavailable (dpi can be lowered by affects how the effects come out when printed). To get around this I have to split the images, apply the effects and then stitch back together.

 

[Justin Danielson]

If you use plugins be careful. Cutting master specifically reads the file as 1/100 scale if large artboard is selected... Even if your artboard is 12x12 cm4 will cut it very tiny!

Not sure about other plugins...

This one always gets me when I go from a large size file back to a regular one and forget I have cutting master set to scale up 10x. I've had to jog across the room to cancel the cutting on a 2 foot tall set of DOT numbers a couple of times.

 

[CanuckSigns]

If you save a large canvas Adobe Illustrator file down to a version earlier than version 24 the artwork will be scaled to 10% of its original size. In the Save As dialog box within Adobe Illustrator you can't pick specific CC versions down which to save. You can drop down to CS6 and several versions under, going all the way down to version 3. Like any graphics application, many newer features are not going to save down to older file versions. Artwork would have to be simplified accordingly to be compatible with that target file version. At least the capability to save back or way way back is there in Adobe Illustrator unlike freaking CorelDRAW.

I run coreldraw 2018, and I can downsave all the way back to x3 I believe.

 

[Bobby H]

The current version of CorelDRAW (2021) can save back only as far as X5. And it can open files no older than version 6. The folks at Corel are slowly cutting off compatibility with older versions, completely ignorant of the needs of long time customers. Some of us have work files going back almost 30 years. That's not a problem if the files are in Adobe Illustrator AI or EPS format. But it is a problem with CorelDRAW. I have two installations of CorelDRAW on my work desktop due to that idiotic practice. As the version creep continues that will make it more necessary for long time customers to keep an old version of CorelDRAW "alive" on either a vintage PC or in a Windows virtual machine.