Basics in Adobe Illustrator: A Deep Dive into Exporting

1. Introduction: I've been using Adobe Illustrator since 2015. When I started out with digital art, I was an Adobe Photoshop girl all the way. Seriously, I never thought that I would enjoy Illustrator, let alone that it would become my favorite digital art program. It's not exactly the most user friendly or intuitive program out there. Right? Learning Adobe Illustrator is a lot like learning a language. It takes time and practice in order to become proficient at it, or in other words, fluent. By this point, I feel as though I am fluent, an illustrator. I am extremely comfortable in it. I love it. I've taught multiple classes on it. It is very fun and usually easy for me to use. However, I recently submitted artwork to a company that required that I send it to them in PNG format at specifically 144 DPI or ping. 144 DPI is not one of the standard Illustrator export resolutions. So I Googled how to export it at a specific resolution like that. The answer is actually pretty simple, and I cannot believe that I didn't already know about it. I've been using this program for close to eight years now and I still had to look up something like that. Now there is a very real possibility that it could have been included in a class I've taken in the past and I just don't remember, but I'm not sure. And I do know that it was not included in any of my own classes. This mind boggling realization is what inspired me to make this class. It is another addition to my series of bite sized Adobe Illustrator basics classes, in which I take a deep dive into specific Illustrator functions. In this class, I cover everything you need to know about exporting artwork from Adobe Illustrator. So if you're already somewhat familiar with the app, there will probably be some overlap for you. But I encourage you to watch the whole class anyway. Because the more you know about exporting from Adobe Illustrator, the better. Trust me, it is so frustrating to realize that you don't know how to do something as simple as exporting a PNG at a specific resolution. How did I not know? Just trust me. Come join me in this super quick class. Learn how to do the thing so that when you submit artwork to a company or a competition or what have you, you won't have to look up how to do it. 2. Setting Up Your Workspace + Keyboard Shortcuts: If you're brand new to Illustrator. I'm here to tell you from personal experience that it can take a while to become comfortable using the program. It's now my favorite Adobe program that I use, despite the fact that I've been using Photoshop for much longer. But I didn't feel at ease in the program for a good two or so years. That being said, I wasn't using it consistently during those first couple of years. I do have friends who felt comfortable using it much more quickly than I did. The point is that illustrator can feel like an overwhelming program to learn for good reason. But with practice, consistent usage and practical application, it can become such an amazing tool for you. I really think that anyone can learn it if they put their mind to it. I'm using Illustrator CC or Creative Cloud if you have an older version and there's a tool that I use that you don't have. I'm sorry. I don't think there's anything except for maybe the puppet warp tool might not be in older versions of Illustrator. I'm not sure. But for the most part, I believe everything I demonstrate can be done in older versions of Illustrator. Anyway, I'll just click Create New. And I'm going to go ahead and keep the 118.5 settings as is, because I can always change my artboard or add artboards later. Illustrator is a vector based program, so all of the artwork created in Illustrator is made out of vectors, Whereas programs like Photoshop and Procreate are raster or pixel based. Raster graphics are also often referred to as bitmap graphics and could be described as raster images containing pixels or pixel data. I've linked to a much more informative article on the difference between raster and vector graphics under the Projects and Resources tab in case you are confused and, or interested. For now. What you need to know is that it's relatively easy to resize things in Illustrator because vectors are infinitely scalable. The quality of vector drawings won't change depending on the scale. Which is why you don't have to worry so much about the resolution or canvas artboard size in the beginning unless you know the canvas size you want to use going in of course. But most of the time I don't. If you're used to working in raster programs like Photoshop, where you do have to think about resolution and canvas size from the start, It's a pretty novel concept. I'll show you how to create an artboard at a specific size once you've opened up a document in Illustrator, I like to work with a white background in Illustrator. If you don't know how to set your workspace up like that, go to Illustrator Preferences user interface, and then by canvas color, you just select white. And okay, I created a custom workspace called Surface Pattern Design that has all of the different tools that I use, the most often set up in my workspace for me to access quickly. As a part of my custom workspace, I have various different menu set up over here on the right that I use often including character glyphs, brushes a line, pathfinder image trace stroke, transform links and artboards. There's one menu that I like to have in my workspace that is missing, and that is the asset export menu. All of these menus can be found under window To add them to your workspace, just go to Window. Scroll down to the menu that you want and make sure that it's checked. Once you click it, it shows up as a separate window that you can then minimize to a thumbnail and drag on the right hand menu bar, like so. You can click the two arrows at the top of the tool bar on the left to toggle between two columns or one. You can also change the scale of the user interface, text and tool symbols by going to user interface within Illustrator preferences and adjusting it here. I believe it prompts you to hard restart Illustrator. In order for that change to take effect, I'm just going to leave it as is. I also have a few different custom keyboard shortcuts that I've created. If I tell you a shortcut and then it doesn't work for you, it might be that I've just forgotten that I've made a custom shortcut. If that's the case, just let me know in the class discussion section to create keyboard shortcuts, go to edit keyboard shortcuts. Then you can choose tools or menu commands. You can search the specific tool that you're looking for. I'll type in puppet puppet work tool. Puppet work doesn't have a keyboard shortcut. Normally is set up for the mesh tool regularly, apparently. But I use that tool rarely. I don't mind changing it. You can try typing in a bunch of different things to see if there's anything that's not in use. Or just do what I did and ignore the warning and overwrite it first. It's asking me if I want to save the keyset file, which you do. Just give it a name. I'm calling mine custom. And then click okay. Then in menu Commands, I also have a convert to artboards, custom shortcut that I use a ton. I use command nine or control. If you're on PC, I'm pretty sure that that wasn't used by anything. Yeah, it wasn't. You can just type that in. Then it asks you if you want to overwrite the keyboard set that you made, you can click, okay, because it will keep the previous shortcut you made along with this new one. Now that we know how to create custom keyboard shortcuts, I just quickly wanted to address the fact that since I am a Mac user, I will be saying command and option instead of control alt for any PC users. Just know that controls replaces command and a replaces option. Artboards are important because they are essentially how you indicate to Illustrator what area of your workspace you want to export as a Jpeg, PNG, PDF, et cetera. You can shift command H to hide your artboard and shift command H to bring it back or go to view show art boards or hide artboards. You can create more artboards by turning an object into one. If you double click with a rectangle tool, you can input the exact size you want, then go to object artboards, convert to artboards. I have a custom set to command nine on my keyboard because I use it regularly. Now there are two art boards. You can create more than one at a time if you want to as well. I'll create another rectangle. Duplicate it with both selected hit command nine. Now I have four in the artboards panel. You can title your art boards. If you double click on any of them, it will zoom into that specific artboard. To delete an artboard, you can drag and drop it to the trash can or just click the trash can symbol to delete it. Now I want to turn the green background square of this pattern tile into an artboard. Since I want to keep the green background, I want to select it and hit command C to make a copy of it and command to paste it behind the original square. You can also hit command to paste in front. It doesn't matter if the square you're going to transform into an artboard is in front or in back. But this way it pastes it directly behind or in front of your original square. If we look in the layers panel, you can see there are two squares now with one of them selected, Go to object artboards, convert to artboards, I'm deleting the first artboard that I don't need anymore. If you click on the artboard tool next to the zoom tool, you can click on an artboard and drag it to move it. Much like with objects, you can drag it, hold down Shift to keep it aligned and option to duplicate it. You can exit the Artboard tool by hitting V to switch to the selection tool or by clicking on any other tool. That's how I easily create documents like this with multiple color ways of the same pattern. I just click and drag while holding Shift End option to copy them and then change the colors. 3. Save, Save As, & Save a Copy: Before you do any exporting, you need to save your Adobe Illustrator document Ini format, which allows you to continue editing it and to export other file types from it. This is the main file from which all of your other file types can be exported. You can also export artwork in a variety of file formats for use outside of Illustrator. These formats are called non native formats because Illustrator will not be able to retrieve all of the data if you reopen the file in Illustrator. Hence, why it is recommended that you save your artwork in AI format until you finish creating it and then export the artwork to the desired format. Illustrator documents end in which stands for Adobe Illustrator, unless you're saving your Illustrator file as a Cloud document, which end Inc, which I'm assuming stands for Adobe Illustrator Cloud. If you subscribe to Adobe Creative Cloud, then you have the ability to save your files to the Cloud, which is Adobe's online storage server that you can access directly from the apps in the Creative Cloud suite and on the Adobe website. Once you log into your Adobe account, it's the same thing as, for instance, Dropbox and the Apple Cloud. I love the cloud because I can easily access my Illustrator documents on any computer As long as I'm logged into my AdobCC account. I will show you how to save your work to your computer and to the Cloud. I have a new document open and if I go to File and click on Save, the keyboard shortcut for that is command S. This may be the default window that pops up for you. It seems like it changes every time I download the latest version of Illustrator. It either pops up this menu or this menu, but it's very easy to switch back and forth between them by clicking on your computer from this window, it's Save Cloud Document. From this menu, you are saving your file to the Adobe Cloud. I'm going to rename this up here at the top. Then if I click Save, it will save it to the Cloud. Up here in the file name, you can see that the document ends in. If I were to click command S to save this, it will save any updates I've made since saving it the first time, but it won't open the window again. To open the window again, I will now need to go to file Save As. Then to save this directly to my computer, I can click on your computer, find the folder on my computer that I want to save it to. The format is set to Adobe Illustrator by default, I just need to click Save. Now it has been saved as a file. I can go to the folder on my computer. There it is, now I have a copy on the Cloud. And on my computer, I usually save my work to the cloud first and then wait until I'm done with the artwork to save it to my computer as well. Because once you save it as either type of illustrator document, any changes you make after that will only be saved to the last file type that you saved, which in this case is the file that I've saved directly to my computer. If I make a change and tap command S to save it. If I were to open up the Cloud document, that last change that I just made wouldn't be applied to it. I could save this newly edited AI file as a cloud document like so. I can save over the old one so that those new changes are applied. You see what I mean? It adds more steps to your workflow that aren't necessary. This applies to all file types that aren't image files. If I were to save this as a PDF, for example, any changes I make after that would only be applied to the PDF version of that file. Start by saving it as a cloud document, Edit, edit, edit. Then once you're done, save it to your computer. If you don't subscribe to AdoBCC, don't worry. All you need to do is save it directly to your computer and any other digital file storage services that you may use. Don't forget to tap command S to save it to your heart's content. Do that. No matter what file you're working on, even if you have it set to automatically save in the background, I recommend getting into the habit of hitting command S to save it as often as possible. To make sure you have those settings that I just mentioned checked, go to Illustrator Settings File Handling, and make sure that Save in background is checked. I also like to have automatically save recovery data checked. And I like to have it set to every minute because I make a lot of tiny changes and sometimes Illustrator crashes. It's just something that will happen with any digital art program. I have learned the hard way that not saving often can result in many a tear shed click okay and you're good to go save As and save a copy. Windows have the same file format options. If you cook on the format drop down menu, you can choose to save your document as an Adobe Illustrator file, An Illustrator EPS, an Illustrator template, A PDF and SVG or G compressed. These formats I EPS IT, PDF and SVG are called native formats because they can preserve all illustrator data, including multiple artboards and vectors. The save a copy option is essentially just a quick way to save a copy of the same file to the same folder. It automatically adds copy to the end of the file name so that you don't have to do anything but go to file, Save a copy or tap option command to bring up the window and hit Save. You can do pretty much the same thing with the save as option. With the difference being that you need to change the file name if you were to save it to the same folder. Because if you just click Save without making any changes to the file name, it would ask you if you want to overwrite the file of the same name, you can choose to overwrite that file, which is something that I do quite often when I want to update a certain file in a certain folder or what have you. But the point of save a copy is to save a copy, I think you get me. One good thing to know is that file names with an asterisk in the document tab are documents that have not been recently saved. It's Illustrator's way of warning you that you should probably save a document. As you can see here, there's an asterisk at the end of this file name. And if I tap command S to save it, give it a second to save, the asterisk disappears. If you open up an older file that you haven't edited in a while, you may come across this warning. Legacy format refers to documents that were created and saved with an older version of Illustrator. By default, when you save new Illustrator documents, they are saved in the latest Illustrator version. But if you choose to save documents in an earlier version, you may lose some data because legacy formats don't support all the features in the current version of Illustrator. It warns you because I've opened this artwork in the latest version of Illustrator, it's just automatically warning me because it doesn't know that I made this in an earlier version. There's no real risk here because everything that I was able to do in an earlier version of Illustrator will translate to the latest version. It's just that automated warning also applies to old files opened up in the latest version. I can re save this via save As and it will select the latest version by default. Now this updated version has overwritten the legacy version and I shouldn't get that warning anymore. 4. Save For Web: You can also export artwork in a variety of file formats for use outside of Illustrator. These formats are called non native formats because Illustrator will not be able to retrieve all of the data if you reopen the file in Illustrator. These formats include but are not limited to, Jpeg, PNG, Gift, Tiff, et cetera. It is important to note that you cannot save non native file types to the Adobe Cloud. There are a few different ways to save said file types. In this lesson, we'll go over the save for Web function. Save for Web is in the export menu. Go to File, Save for Web. The keyboard shortcut for that is a bit of a nightmare. It's shift option command. I do actually use it so often that I haven't memorized though or well, my hand has it memorized, I suppose is more accurate to say it's more muscle memory than anything. I had to look it up to make sure I was writing down the correct keys. Anyway, save for web is exactly what it sounds like. It is the export option that is ideal for the web. You can use it to quickly save image files in the most commonly used image formats, Jpeg, PNG, and Gift Sideenote. Gift can be pronounced with a soft or hard. I just happen to prefer the hard pronunciation because gift technically stands for Graphics interchange format, and that just makes more sense to me. But either pronunciation is correct. This argument has been going on for decades. Okay. Don't at me anyway. When you save an image through Safer Web, it is automatically saved at 72 DPI. You cannot change the image resolution within this window. It will always save at 72 DPI because that is the typical resolution recommended for use online. It's generally high enough that you don't lose much image quality, but low enough that it makes it more difficult for artwork or photography to be stolen, quite frankly. Which doesn't stop people or AI, but that's a whole other topic. Dpi stands for dots per inch. Sometimes it is also referred to as PPI, which stands for points per inch or pixels per inch. But they all essentially mean the same thing. The more dots or pixels per inch, the higher the quality of the image. But wait, Melissa, isn't this a vector based program we're working with and not a pixel based program? You may be wondering that is a perfectly understandable and reasonable thing to feel confusion over. Yes, we are working with vectors and illustrator. But when you export those vectors as any of these image file formats, I non native file formats, they are compressed into these file formats which are all pixel based. Again, this is why it is important to always save your documents as AI documents so that you can keep the vectors intact. If I were to only save this as a Jpeg, I would then only have a pixel version of this artwork. It gives you a preview of your artwork. Over here under preset is where you can choose Jpeg gift or PNG, depending on your computer's graphics or display capabilities. Web images often contain colors not available on all computers. Computers use a technique called dithering to simulate colors that they cannot display. Dithering uses adjacent pixels of different colors to give the appearance of a third color by putting them in a mosaic pattern. Most computers nowadays have high quality display capability. It's generally not something you need to worry about all that much, but it's a good thing to know, and it doesn't hurt to choose the dithering options. I most often use Jpeg high PNG, 24 PNG's are generally a little higher quality than Jpegs. But the main benefit is that you can save transparency in a PNG. If you want your background to be transparent, select P and G and make sure transparency is checked. I'm pretty sure it's checked by default. Here is where you change the size, the dimensions are locked by default. But you can unlock it and only change one at a time. Why you would want to do that, I don't know, But there you go. I'd like to go here and just pop it up. I always click into these boxes to make sure that the percentage change I just made applies. Because if you type it in and hit Enter on your keyboard, it will bring up the save menu before the size change is applied, cancel that. And I personally always use art optimized over text optimized even when I'm saving a text heavy graphic because I think it looks better most of the time, the preview defaults to optimized, but you can also choose original. Usually I can't tell the difference. But one thing that's cool about optimized is that you can preview what the dithering may look like on a different display. But again, really not something you need to worry about. Two up shows you original and optimized next to each other. Once you're happy, click save, make sure it's in the right folder, and click save again, and there it is. 5. Export As: If you need to save an image file at a higher resolution, you have a couple of options for years, I have only used export As, which gives you the option to export your images at 72 DPI, 150 DPI, and 300 DPI. If you go to file Export Export as the default keyboard shortcut for that is option command E. But I customized mine to shift command to make it more similar to the save as keyboard shortcut shift command, it helps me to remember both of them more easily. If I remember correctly, shift command E is not used for any other keyboard shortcut. By default it's an easy change. It brings up this menu and if you click on the format menu, these are all of the non native file formats you have to choose from. This is where you can save your AI document as a Tiff or Photoshop document. I most often use it for high resolution PNGs and J pigs. I'll keep it on PNG. You can choose artboards, which constrains the PNG to just the artwork on one or more artboards, depending on if you choose all or a range of them. If you were to uncheck, use artboards, everything on your workspace would be saved as one big image. If you choose range, you can type in just one specific artboard or choose multiple by typing in say, one through three. If you have more than three art boards, just artboards one through three will be saved as three separate PNG files. I'll keep it on all click and a PNG options window pops up. This is where you choose Resolution. Click here and choose 702150 or 300 DPI, or actually it's PPI here, apparently random. But sure for PNG's, this is where you choose background color or transparency. If you were to save this as a J Peg Jpeg options menu is a little different. You can change color mode, quality, compression method resolution and anti aliasing which I keep at art, optimized nine times out of ten Embed ICC profile is checked by default which you generally don't want to uncheck because including ICC profiles basically makes it so that color appearance is more easily automatically managed on different devices. It's a little more complicated than that, but that's the basic gist of it. Click Okay, give it a second to save. Then you have a peg saved at 300 DPI. I chose all boards. I have two Jpegs. Each file format is going to give you a different options menu With a PSD file, you have the option to export it as a flat image or preserve the layers. Again, I usually work with Art over text. I always come in here and switch it to Art optimized. 6. Export for Screens & Asset Export: When asked to submit artwork at 144 DPI specifically, I was like, well, how in the heck do you do that? The answer, my friends, is export for screens. How did I not know export for screens was a thing? How I ask you, it is wonderful and I know that it's been around since at least 2017 and it could have been earlier than that. I'm just not sure because Google did not provide me with that answer. But whatever the case, it's been a feature for a majority, if not the full time that I've been using Illustrator. What's wild is that I've known for a few years now that asset export is a thing. But I didn't realize it was connected to export for screens that they go hand in hand. Export for screens allows you to be really specific with your export options and is a way to generate assets of different sizes and file formats in one action. It gives you the ability to quickly export, which makes generating image files like icons and logos and clip art, et cetera, much simpler and faster. Go to File Export Export for screens. The keyboard shortcut for that is option command R. You can click here to choose which art board or art boards as the case may be that you want to export. Click to change the artboard names, these names will become the file names. You can click Full Document if you want to export everything that's on your workspace. Here's where you can choose the folder on your computer that you want to export it to. If you're working with a PDF file, you would have the option to choose whether you want to save it as a single file or multiple files if you wanted each artboard to be saved as its own separate file. The best thing about export for screens, in my humble opinion, the formats section, this is where you can input a specific DPI like 144. Click on Scale and click Resolution. And then type in the resolution you want. Click into Format to choose PNG, Jpeg, SBG, et cetera. You cannot save gifts here, that's unique to save for web. But if you need to export something at a specific DPI, it's almost definitely going to be requested in Jpeg, PNG or Tiff format anyway. The number next to J Pig, I believe indicates the quality of the J Pig 100 is 100% You can add another in a different format or same format, different scale, One X is two scale, two X is two times the scale of whatever your artboard is, and so on and so forth. The suffix is optional and it's added to the end of the file name. This will save as Poppies Brown at two X dong. When I'm saving something at a specific resolution, I like to add that resolution to the end of the file name. Up here, I'll add 144 DPI. You can also add a prefix. Say, I wanted to submit multiple pieces of art with my name. In all of them, I could add Melissa Lee plus a space here. When I hover over the suffix box, it gives me a preview of the file name here next to the prefix box. If you keep open location after export checked, it will automatically open the folder on your computer that you're saving it to. If you keep create subfolders checked, it will export it into a subfolder titled with the resolution, size or format type, depending on if you choose scale or format. Since I have both of these checked and I've chosen format, when I click Export Artboard, it pops the folder open. Here are the two file type subfolders. Looking at the J pegs, you can see that it has added Melissa Lee to the front and 144 DPI to the end of my file names. Amazing. Wonderful. I love it so much. One more thing in export for screens that I want to show you is if you click on these format buttons here, IOS will give you optimization presets for IOS devices and same for Android Select to add the preset file output types generally required for IOS projects or Android projects. If you click the gear here, you can change the default settings for each of these formats. If I click on J Peg 100, I can switch this to Art Optimized, and click Save Settings. Asset Export can be found via Window Asset Export. Remember how we added it to our workspace in the first lesson? For me, it's down here. You can also access Asset Export via the export for screens. Window file Export Export for screens. Then up here at the top is Asset Export. But we don't have anything in the Asset Export Panel yet. I'll click Cancel. I'm using some of my own branding content to demonstrate. This is a file that I've made with my logos, brand colors, and fonts, some spot graphics, et cetera. My main branding color used to be the desaturated blue. Then the more patterns I made, the more I realized I liked to design with purple quite often. A few years ago, I changed my main branding color to the desaturated plum purple and peach. Literally, this peach right here is what I used all these years. This one next to it is the 2024 pantom color of the year, fuzzy peach that worked out for me. I decided to switch it over because I was like, why not they're so similar? I might as well, I actually do like the slightly yellower tone of fuzzy peach more than the pinker version I used before. Because I think it's right in the middle of sunset, orange and pink, which I like. But anyway, I'm getting distracted. Before I knew about export for screens and asset export, I used to think that every single little icon needed its own art board. But that's not true. Asset export is an amazingly convenient way to export elements of something without having to create an artboard for it. You don't need artboards. These are the social media icons that I use for my e mail signature and newsletter. And had I known about asset export at the time, I wouldn't have felt the need to create a tiny art board for all of them. All you need to do is drag an object or grouped objects over to the asset export panel like so. Or right click and choose collect for export as multiple assets. Boom, This Facebook icon is just one object. This Instagram icon is multiple objects grouped together. If I were to select this rectangle and the text next to it and drag them over into the asset export panel, As you can see, they are separated into separate assets. This is because they are not grouped. I'll undo that if I select them and tap command G to group them and then drag them over. Now the asset export panel reads it as one asset. If you want to control everything from here, you can. As long as you're not using art boards, the format section is exactly the same as it is in the export for screens window. But controlling where things export two is a little different. If you click the upper right hamburger menu, you can click to check open location after export. And create sub folders if you so choose. The only things you can't control from here are the prefix and whether you want your assets to save to sub folders that are organized, named by format or scale. I like having them organized by file type or format. You can go to File Export for screens, or you can click this little window button down here at the bottom to launch the export for screens dialog box. It keeps the last export settings you used as well as the prefix. I've still got it set to create sub folders by format. You can change the format settings like I did before. I only have asset five selected. So if you want to save all of them, you can click all assets up here to select. All right, now it says Selected five, Total Export five. But if I were to add another format scale by clicking the Add Scale button, it changes to selected five, total export ten. You can change the names of the assets by clicking here or here. One thing you can do in this window that you can't in the export for screens window is you can click this hamburger menu next to IOS and Android and save your current format settings as a preset. Once you're happy with your settings left click here, click Save Us preset. You can rename it if you want to, then you can find it in the same hamburger menu down at the bottom. Boom, It will keep all of the settings you made in the export for screens window, make sure the assets are selected. If I click Export, one cool thing to know is that when you save to the same folder with existing subfolders, it adds new image files to the folders you've already created. Rather than creating a second folder, it also does not overwrite the images that are already in those folders. I'll click Choose, and if I open up the PNG folder, here are the new assets. I used asset Export to quickly and easily save all of the pop up graphics I used in this class. Let me tell you, it saves me so much time. 7. Illustrator Templates (AIT): It files, or Illustrator templates are files that are used to create multiple Adobe Illustrator files. They hold the different components of an Illustrator document, including the images, settings, and layout. And are useful when working with projects that should have a similar pre formatted design, like brochures, business cards, et cetera. If you have multiple people working on a project and you want to streamline the look of the project, you can make an Illustrator template for everyone to use. Because AIT files are a native file format, they are created through the save As menu. When you go to create a new document, there's a free templates section on the right appear. All of these templates created by Adobe are AIT files. One cool benefit to an AIT file is that when opened, Illustrator makes a copy of it so that you're not editing the original, therefore, not overwriting the template with new information. In other words, when you open an AIT file, make changes and then go to save it, you'll be prompted to save it somewhere as an AI file, not an AIT file. This also means that you can't make changes to an AIT file as quickly as you can with an AI file. That said, if you do want to edit the template, you can save it as a new file, but choose the AIT file extension instead of AI, which will overwrite the existing AIT file if it has the same name and is being saved to the same folder. Another option would be to use the file save as template option. It's the same menu as save as, but it defaults to AIT rather than AI. 8. Exporting PDFs: Pdf stands for Portable Document Format. Adobe.com describes PDF as a universal file format that preserves the fonts, images, and layout of source documents created on a wide range of applications and platforms. Adobe PDF is the standard for the secure, reliable distribution and exchange of electronic documents and forms around the world. Pdfs can be created and edited outside of Adobe products. Adobepdf is just their way of branding it. More specifically, this is the Illustrator document for the Adobe keyboard. Shortcuts PDF that I created for all of my Adobe Illustrator classes, including this one. Since PDFs are a native file format, you use the standard save and save as Windows go to file, Save or Save As, depending on whether you've saved it already or not. Select Adobe PDF in the drop down menu. You can save any of these native file formats in the cloud as well. You can't save non native file formats such as J Peg, PNG, et cetera. I'll click on PDF. Again, with PDFs, it's automatically set to use Artboards, but you can still choose to export all artboards or just arrange click Save, and it brings up the Adobe PDF options menu. For the majority of my PDFs, I use the Illustrator default preset in the description here, it gives you a very handy summary of what the preset entails and when to use it. If I switch it to smallest file size, for example, the description changes, It says, use these settings to create Adobe PDF documents best suited for on screen display, e mail, and the Internet Created. Pdf documents can be opened with Acrobat and Adobe Reader 6.0 and Liter. I use this preset when my PDFs are too large to upload somewhere online. That said, the PDFs I created for this class were created with the Illustrator default preset. Because they were small enough to save with those default settings, I personally always use Illustrator default settings, and then if it turns out to be too large, I'll come in and resave it with smallest file size settings. Some of these preset options are specific to certain projects and requirements that may come up on a project to project basis. Or if you are someone who works with PDFs, quite often open PDFs and Illustrator with all of the vectors and fonts intact. You must keep the Preserve Illustrator editing capabilities option selected to preserve all Illustrator data. In other words, if you want to be able to reopen and edit the PDF file in Adobe Illustrator. The same is true for SVG formats as well. Embed page thumbnails. Embeds a thumbnail preview for each page in the PDF, which does increase the file size. If you need it to be smaller, you can uncheck this optimize for fast web view does what it says. It optimizes the PDF file for faster viewing in a web browser view PDF, after saving opens the newly created PDF file in the default PDF viewing application, in my case, it would be Adobe Acrobat. Hence, boy, I usually keep this unchecked because I generally don't want to open acrobat every time I save a PDF. In case you're not aware, acrobat is Adobe's PDF viewer and editor. Create acrobat layers from top level layers. Saves illustrators top level layers as acrobat layers within the PDF file. Which allows Adobe Acrobat 67.8 users to generate multiple versions of the document from a single file. Finally, preserve hyper links, preserves any links you may have included in your PDF. There are about 1,000 different ways you can customize your settings. And instead of explaining them to you, I've provided a link to Adobe's Help article on PDF options under the Projects and Resources tab. Okay, once you're ready, click Save PDF. I'll double click to open in Acabat, I added a link here and in my logo. And when I click them, the links are intact. 9. EPS and SVG: Eps stands for Encapsulated Postscript. To quote Adobe.com virtually all page layout, word processing, and graphic applications except imported or placed, encapsulated postscript EPS files. In other words, EPS files are a universal vector file format, meaning that they are widely compatible between different operating systems, design programs and printers. They can be opened in other vector programs outside of Adobe. As such, it is the standard vector file format for the print industry, although it could be argued that other native formats like AI and PDF are slowly replacing them. That said, if a client or licensing partner were to ask you to provide them with a vector file, they would most likely be asking you to export your Illustrator file as an EPS file. You can always ask for clarification on that. Their wide range of compatibility is why most creators on creative market will upload EPS files over Adobe Illustrator AI files. Because EPS files are based on the postscript language, they can contain both vector and bitmap graphics. Which means that EPS files can be opened in programs such as Photoshop, but the vectors will be rasterized. Svg stands for Scalable Vector Graphics. When you export an SPG, it does not compress into a pixel or raster graphic, and instead produces a vector format that acts as a high quality interactive web graphic. Making it ideal for websites because it will scale based on what device you're viewing a website on and always maintain its resolution. You don't have to worry about SVG images losing their quality in certain browsers or when you resize them to appear in different places. Svg is not recommended for printing. It is, however, compatible with a lot of programs like Silhouette Designer Edition Cricket design space, et cetera. What sets SpGs apart from other vector files is that they use the text based XML programming language. Which can be read by search engines like Google. This can help with SEO, which makes Pgs particularly useful for graphic design on the web. I am currently in the process of exporting some of my graphics as Spgs from my website. For these reasons, EPS and SVG are the file formats most often used for cricket silhouette and other cutting machines. Though PDF and DF files are also sometimes used depending on the program or machinery used. Both EPS and SVG are native file formats and thus can be saved via the save as menu in Illustrator. Much like with PDF, When saving SVG formats, you must select Preserve Illustrator editing capabilities to keep all Illustrator data so that you can edit them in Illustrator. Since SVG files are ideal for the web, you can also export them via the export for screens and asset Export menu. There are entire classes on EPS and SVG files. I don't actually save these file types very often. I've linked to a couple of recommended classes under the Projects and Resources tab. Rather than try to explain it all myself, I also linked Adobe.com article on file types with comparisons between image file types. Their explanations here are a lot less tech jargon heavy and easier to understand than some of the info on Adobe's help site. 10. Closing: Now it's time for you to practice exporting from Adobe Illustrator. And post your results in the class projects. Post a Jpeg or PNG of any project you may be working on currently or download the Illustrator file I provided, titled Saving and Exporting Practice, which can be found at the bottom of the Projects and Resources section. There's also a keyboard shortcuts PDF included that you can download and print out to use for reference as well. Friendly disclaimer, any artwork made from my motifs is for educational purpose only and may not be further used or sold, including in professional portfolios. Sharing here on skill share in a project, or on social media with clear and obvious credit is totally fine, though. I've also linked to additional resources, including my recommended skillshare classes in the main body of the projects and resources tab. When you're ready to share your project, just click that big blue Submit Project button. And from there there's a button that says upload Image, which is the cover image. Uploader, not where you upload full sized images. Below that there's a project title box as well as a box that says Project Description, which is where you'll post the majority of your content. There's an add more content section directly below that. And this is where you can click to upload full sized images including screen caps into the main body of the project. One important thing to note is that you can only create a class project via a desktop computer or laptop. You cannot create one via a mobile device or the Skillshare mobile app. If you get stuck or come across any issues, please post your questions in the discussion section of this class. And I will do my best to answer them as quickly as possible. I hope you enjoyed this class and found it valuable. But regardless, please leave a review so you can help me and your fellow students out. You can do this by going to the Reviews tab, then click on Leave A Review. I really cannot express how grateful I am to people who leave reviews. I enjoy reading all of them. If you want to stay up to date with what I'm posting here, like if you want to know when my next class is coming or when I post updates to old classes or do membership giveaways, Don't forget to hit the Follow button. You can also follow me at Melissa Design on Instagram or sign up for my quarterly newsletter on my website, Melissa Design.com Thanks again for joining me. I really hope you found this class helpful.