Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One

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PRINTING AND EXPORTING

Figure 12-1.

NO APPLICATION is an island, and Illustrator users

probably understand this better than most. Graphic artists who

painstakingly craft artwork inside Illustrator usually have

a destination beyond their computers in mind from the

outset.

This lesson will help you safely get your artwork where

it needs to go—to set it free if you will—like our long-

suffering friend in Figure 12-1. Whether you are sending

your illustration off to a commercial printer, printing it on your

local device, posting it to the Web, or using it in projects involving

other applications, Illustrator has the tools and commands you’ll

need to make sure it arrives at its destination the way you intended

it to be seen.

Illustrator has always offered a highly sophisticated set of printing

options. Starting with the familiar File→Print command, you enter

a world where you can set up virtual bleeds, define crop boundar-

ies, output an array of printer marks, print color separations for

commercial reproduction, overprint black, define the flatness of

curved paths, tweak color management settings, and adjust how

your transparency effects get flattened, all from inside a single Print

dialog box.

In addition to Illustrator’s printing capabilities, we’ll be exploring

other means of output, like saving your vector artwork for the Web,

exporting it as layered Photoshop images, and creati ...