Saving artwork, About saving and exporting artwork, Save in illustrator format – Adobe Illustrator CS3 User Manual
Page 270
ILLUSTRATOR CS3
User Guide
264
Saving artwork
About saving and exporting artwork
When you save or export artwork, Illustrator writes the artwork data to a file. The structure of the data depends on
the file format that you select.
There are four basic file formats—AI, PDF, EPS, and SVG—to which you can save artwork. These formats are called
native formats because they can preserve all Illustrator data. (For PDF and SVG formats, you must select the Preserve
Illustrator Editing Capabilities options to preserve all Illustrator data.)
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. For
this reason, it is recommended that you save artwork in AI format until you are finished creating it, and then export
the artwork to the desired format.
Note: You may receive an error message when saving artwork that includes linked EPS files, if those files were saved in
binary format (for example, in Photoshop's default EPS format). In this case, resave the EPS files in ASCII format, embed
the linked files into the Illustrator artwork, or save the artwork in AI or PDF format instead of EPS format.
For a video on creating mobile content in Illustrator, se
or a video on saving for the
web, se
or a video on exporting content from Illustrator, including an overview on
different formats and when you should use them, see
See also
Save in Illustrator format
1
Choose File > Save As or File > Save A Copy.
2
Type a filename, and choose a location for the file.
Note: To display Version Cue options in the Save As and Save A Copy dialog boxes, click the Use Adobe Dialog button.
3
Choose Illustrator (*.AI) as the file format, and click Save.
To create a file that is compatible with a previous version of Illustrator, set the Version option at the top of the
Illustrator Options dialog box.
4
In the Illustrator Options dialog box, set the desired options and click
OK:
Version
Specifies the version of Illustrator with which you want your file to be compatible. Legacy formats don’t
support all the features in the current version of Illustrator. Therefore, when you select a version other than the
current version, some options for saving aren’t available, and certain kinds of data will be changed. Be sure to read
the warnings at the bottom of the dialog box so that you are aware of how the data will be changed.
Subset Embedded Fonts When Percent Of Characters Used Is Less Than
Specifies when to embed the entire font (as
opposed to just the characters used in the document) based on how many of the font’s characters are used in the
document. For instance, if a font contains 1,000 characters but the document only uses 10 of those characters, you
may decide that embedding the font is not worth the extra file size.
Create PDF Compatible File
Saves a PDF representation of the document in the Illustrator file. Select this option if
you want the Illustrator file to be compatible with other Adobe applications.
Include Linked Files
Embeds files that are linked to the artwork.