What's the difference between Save As vs Save a Copy in Illustrator?

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104 lessons / 10 hours 33 quiz questions 31 projects Certificate of achievement

Overview

Hey there, I'm Dan Scott, an Adobe Certified Instructor with over 16 years of design experience under my belt, I'm part of the Adobe Expert program, and my online and in-person classes have been attended by more than a million people, just like you! Join me as we dive into the exciting world of Adobe Illustrator Advanced! In this course, you're not just leveling up in Illustrator, you're transforming into an Illustrator SuperHero!

In this course you will work on a bespoke brief designed to ignite your imagination, coupled with immersive course videos, you'll be crafting jaw-dropping graphics in no time. Throughout our journey together, you'll flex your creative muscles and construct projects that will elevate your portfolio to new heights. So, let's dive in and unleash your creativity!

You’ll learn:

  • - How to use artificial intelligence to boost your creativity in ideation. 
  • - The quick way to take hand-drawn sketches and vectorize and color them. 
  • - The building blocks needed to set you loose on a huge variety of beautiful effects and techniques.
  • - To make beautiful charts and graphs for your documents. 
  • - Color mastery to make quick color adjustments, Pantones, and blend it all together beautifully.
  • - How to master images inside of your illustrator workflow. 
  • - To harness all the secret gems that'll help you level up your typography skills. 
  • - All the tricks of the trade for drawing complex shapes easily. 
  • - To double your creativity with the Transform and Distort section. 
  • - To speed up your personal workflow to get the most out of your creative day.

Explore the full course outline for a comprehensive list of topics that will expand your Illustrator prowess beyond imagination.

If you're already comfortable navigating the basics but want to  unlock the true potential of Illustrator, then this Illustrator Advanced course is your ticket to becoming a master of Illustrator! So join me and the ranks of design superheroes and let's embark on this thrilling journey together.

Requirements:

- All you need is a copy of Adobe Illustrator, you can get a free trial from Adobe here to get started.
- A basic knowledge of Illustrator is required. I recommend watching my Illustrator Essentials course prior to embarking on this epic adventure.

Who this course is for:

- Creative adventurers who already have a basic understanding of Illustrator.
- Self-taught Illustrator enthusiasts yearning for structured guidance.
- Graduates of my Illustrator Essentials Course, hungry for more knowledge and skills.
- Visionaries who have developed their own unique Illustrator approach but crave exploration of the vast universe of tools, updates, and time-saving techniques.

What you'll learn:

- How to use Text to Vector Ai
- How to use Text to Pattern Ai
- How to use Generative Recolor
- When to use the Scissor Tool, Eraser Tool & Knife Tool
- Advanced Shape Builder Uses
- The differences between the Pathfinder Vs Shape Builder
- How to use the Join tool & Joining Path Ends
- Advanced Pen Tool Tricks
- Width Tool Advanced Techniques
- The Curvature Tool
- How to master corners with corner widget effects
- How to work with Compound Paths
- The difference between Expand & Expand Appearance
- How to create Graphic Styles
- How to make Symbols
- How to use the Smooth Tool
- Advanced use of Simplify Path
- What Live Shape Effects are for
- How to make Repeating Grids & Concentric Circles
- How to make Random Objects
- Advanced Keyboard Shortcuts in Illustrator
- How to add a Gradient on a Stroke
- How to add a Gradient in Text
- How to use the Freeform Gradient tool
- How to use Advanced Color Swatches
- How to use Global Color Swatches
- What is the difference between RGB vs CMYK color modes?
- How to proof colors
- How to use Pantone Spot Colors
- Recolor Artwork & Changing all colors at once
- How to use Blending Modes
- How to work with Images & Blending Modes
- How to make Black & White Images
- Learn Advanced Workflow Tricks
- All the Super Selection Mastery
- How to use the History Panel
- Advanced Fonts Tricks & Tips
- Use Retype to know what Font is being used
- How to put Text Inside a Letter or Shape
- How to use the Touch Type Tool
- How to add a Connected Stroke Around Multiple Shapes
- How to Offset a Stroke with Text
- How to make a Bar Chart in Illustrator
- How to make a Pie Chart in Illustrator
- Layer Power Moves
- Advanced Artboard & Pages Tricks
- How to Unlink vs Embedded Images
- How to Crop Images Rather than Mask
- How to Mask Inside Text & Multiple Shapes
- How to you use the Puppet Warp Tool
- How to use the Distort Envelope Shape & Type
- How to use the Envelope Mesh
- How to blend lines together
- How to make a Linocut Effect
- How to make 3D Gradient Lettering Blends
- How to spin text into a ring
- How to turn text into a 3D donut shape
- How to make a Duotone image effect
- How to make a Roughen Stamp Vector Effect
- How to make a Neon Sign Glow Effect
- How to use a Halftone Effect using Plugins
- Advanced Exporting Assets Tricks in Illustrator
- How to use the Dimension Tool

So what're you waiting for? Let's start the course now!
Daniel Scott

Daniel Scott

Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor

instructor

I discovered the world of design as an art student when I stumbled upon a lab full of green & blue iMac G3’s. My initial curiosity around using the computer to create ‘art’ developed into a full-blown passion, eventually leading me to become a digital designer and founder of Bring Your Own Laptop.

Sharing and teaching are a huge part of who I am. As a certified Adobe instructor, I've had the honor of winning multiple Adobe teaching awards at their annual MAX conference. I see Bring Your Own Laptop as the supportive community I wished for when I was first starting out and intimidated by design. Through teaching, I hope to bring others along for the ride and empower my students to bring their stories, labors of love, and art into the world.
True to my Kiwi roots, I've lived in many places, and currently, I reside in Ireland with my wife and kids.

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Check out the How to earn your certificate video for instructions on how to earn yours and click the available certificate levels below for more information.

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Transcript

Everyone, uh, exporting from Illustrator, there's lots  of different options and I just wanna clarify them all  because you're like, there's a save As. Why is there a safer copy? It seems to do the same uh, thing  and you're like, Ooh,  what is this magic one that I've never clicked? I'm gonna show you that one next as well. And then you're like, should I be using export  or save as all will be revealed in this video? Let's jump in.

Alright, let's start with uh,  packaging documents. This is useful when you're sending a file. I'm using exporting. Do ai. If you wanna open it up and I've actually just brought it an  image separately and it's linked. Okay?

So instead of having to embed all the images,  packaging's quite handy  'cause you can go to file, go to package  and you can say, actually put them in this folder. Okay? And I want you to copy all the links  and any fonts that you use. Fonts don't really work 'cause it says except Adobe Fonts. So all the fonts that you used are not gonna get exported. They just don't want you sharing them around.

So that's not that helpful. What is helpful is it'll copy out  all the links into a folder. Lemme show you. Let's click package gives you a warning  about not sharing fonts. Dokey, let's click show package. And you can see it's exported my AI file,  but all the links have been brought out.

Now your file might be a lot bigger with lots  of different links and it just chucks 'em in a nice little  folder, nice and tidy. You can email it, zip it. It's just a handy unknown feature in Illustrator. Another unknown feature in Illustrator for exporting is um,  let's say I'm using my libraries panel, okay? And I am adding images or icons or artwork to it  and somebody asks you for it. You don't have to go and find the actual file.

So let's close it all down, okay? And let's say somebody's asked me for the donut  and you're like, Hmm, which file is the donut in? You know, what's in your CC Libraries? They're like, how do I get it? Okay. Often you end up back at Learn or Home or some file  and you're like, how do I get to it?

You can actually just go to window  and open up the library, okay? And find the library you're working on, okay? Whichever one it is, okay? And you can go to it  and you can actually just double click it and open it  and you open up that actual file. Then you can go to file Export. Okay?

So you don't actually have to I guess find  the file that it was in. Do you get what I mean? Sometimes it's easy just  to open the library, find the file,  and then just export it directly from Illustrator rather  than finding the originating file. Next is this conundrum. What is the difference between save As, save a Copy export? Let's look at these two.

Basically they do the same thing. If I go to save As You use, save As and save a copy. When you are working on like the working file,  you're not exporting it for the printer  or the website, okay? This is the working version, okay? And this little dropdown gives you different options for it. Most of the time it's best just leave it  as Adobe Illustrator.

There's a few formats  or a few post-processing things that require epss. They're big, they're not very uh, editable. If you save a template, it ends up being something  that other people can open, okay? But they can't replace. It's just something that creates a new document. PS we know about in SVGs it is better going out via export.

So, so the save As  or save a copy is for the working document  and basically leave it as AI if you can. What is the difference between Save As and save a copy? The difference basically is  What happens afterwards. So if I save as, lemme put it in a file. Let's call this one Save As. So I'm giving a new name and if I hit save  and I click okay, can you see what happens?

The original file's still there. Okay, the exporting to ai, I've done a save  as it's opened this new file. So there's two files going on. The original one that I left behind  to now have this new one. If I use save a copy, let's do this, save a copy  and I say actually let's open the original  one so not get confused. So I'm at exporting.

If I go file save a copy, okay? And this is the save a copy version. Okay, look what happens. I've got AI exporting open, okay? And I hit save a copy and I click save and I click okay. Can you see I've still got that original open there is  that new version called Save as a copy.

It's on my machine, okay? It's like a creating like a version of it,  but it's left me with the one that I was working on. That's the difference. It's weird. You might find that useful. What I find I tend  to do is just save to the cloud 'cause there's a history,  but there'll be people that need one or two of those.

Now one of the common save as is file, let's go  to save As or save a copy. Remember it doesn't really matter is people will go  to PDF, okay? There's a couple of ways of getting PDFs. I'm gonna show you the save as version  and the exporting version. There's no real difference so it doesn't matter. It's probably more common going file save  as A PDF for my printer.

Okay, I'm gonna put mine in my exporting folder  and I'm gonna hit save. The big thing to know when you are in here is this option. This option. Leave it on  and it basically will be an illustrated file with huge,  like all the Editability, okay? It's nothing real different, it's just an AI file,  but it's called A PDF  'cause it's preserved all the editing capabilities. The trade off is that your printer probably won't like it.

Why? Because they don't want all the Illustrator stuff. They probably don't use Illustrator  or some ancient version of it,  or they're using Corral or something else. They don't want all this extra stuff. So turn it off. If you are exporting A PDF, that's going out to print.

Or if somebody's asked you for A PDF. Now we're not gonna go through all the presets here,  but generally a really good kind of default,  if you're unsure, it's just high quality print, make sure  that's off hit save. So a lot of people will use that for the file save as. And the one other version is file save as  and we can go to Illustrator, but let's say we do this one. I'm gonna give this a new name. I'm gonna say  exporting legacy.

Okay? And a hit save. And  before I kind of finish this part,  you can go back to this one here. That's the, like if you're sending this  to say like in my office here,  I've got some old stuff like a, like a vinyl cutter plotter,  you know, um, embroidery machine. There's lots of old technology  that don't want fancy new Illustrator files. They'll accept legacy stuff.

And that generally is the,  if you're finding your illustrator files not opening  or working on some machine that is maybe a bit simple  or it's just a bit old, just go to file save as,  give it a new name and just go to CC Legacy. It shouldn't break much. There will be some new stuff,  an illustrator that it won't like. So if you are doing some fancy stuff,  like remember the freeform gradient  that won't work in older versions of Illustrator, okay? It will convert to something usable,  it just won't be editable anymore. So you people use file save ads for that.

Next, let's look at the one that I use the most. Okay? It's the export, okay? And we'll look at export for screens. Export for screens is basically a really good alternative  for save ads, okay? For most uh, use cases.

So let's go to file export for screens. And in here we've got these two options. We're gonna stick to artboards  and in the next video we'll do assets. So in the artboards you can say, all right,  this whole art board I would like to export  as uh, down here. Okay, I want to go to PDF. So it doesn't really matter whether you use this PDF  or file save as I just do this one here  because there's a bit more control in here.

It's simpler, but there's no real difference. Okay? And if I go to export board  and I stick it in there, I've got this PDF here, okay? And it's just kind of guessed it for me, not guessed it,  but it's done a really good job at like deciding  what the PDF should be. If I go to file and you want more control over that export,  export for screens, you're like, Hey,  tell me all about the PDF. You can go into here  and see this like little, uh, which one options?

Is it one of these two? Let's click both. Nope, this one here, the cog. You can go into here and say, all right,  when I export PDFs from here, I want it  to be not the default for small file size. I want it to be maybe high quality print. Okay?

Or some new one that you've made  or imported from the printer  or the one that you like the most. Maybe it is press quality that you like using, you can save  that and that will be the export setting for  that PDF, right? So that's the differences between  exporting from Illustrator. That's why this one can be a little confusing. Save as basically keeping a working document  or exporting A PDF. And basically these do the same thing except one keeps the  original open and one will keep the new version open.

Either way you get two options,  just what's left open for you to work on. Okay? The other one is export and export. For screens they call export screens. I don't know, it's a great way of getting actually PDFs,  but also going through  and adding what they call scale button here. Maybe it's not a PDF, you just want a big giant jpeg,  a really good quality one at 80 K and you can export that.

We'll get into this in a bit more detail in the next video  'cause it's a bit more  appropriate when we're dealing with assets. So that is it confusing,  but hopefully we know now which to use where. And I'll see in the next video.
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