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.