Some VECTOR files are HUGE time suck

[Dottonedan]

Some VECTOR files are HUGE time suck.  I'm sitting here with my art time Locked up while I wait on a function to finish up in Illustrator.
I'm sure that if it were done in Corel, to expand the outlines and fills of this complex image would be taking just as long in Corel.


Man-O-Day!   This is where it's just more feasible to do the art in Photoshop or at least (do the art in vector, then manually separate Photoshop. Sheeesh.. It's flat art, solid colors, but 4 colors of very thin line swirls that overlap. So breaking them up, adding an under base is just too time consuming in vector for this stuff.


And another!  When people have colorized raster files placed into Illy that goes on dark garments. Oh boy! How do they think I'm going to under base that and choke".   Bringing it back into Photoshop....again.

[Sbrem]

Agreed, too often it's just much faster in Photoshop. However, I got a copy of VectorFirstAid from Astute Graphics, and it really helps with SOME files like this. The first time I used it it cleaned up all sorts of background and hidden elements. Fantastic! The next project, it didn't work on it, so I ended up doing it in PS to avoid going down the "Why doesn't it work?" rabbit hole. Check it out, they have a trial.

Steve

[3Deep]

LOL, so if you do all your art in PS then you send it to Illy to print, now if you do your art in Illy you send to PS to sep, lucky I know just a little bit to understand this stuff LOL. but know what you mean Dan I've been in that position waiting on a file in Illy to finish it's calculation's.

[Sbrem]

Whatever it takes... I agree, that is kinda funny. There are lot of self described "designers" putting together Illustrator files that are so convoluted, that they are so time consuming to take apart, that yeah, off to Photoshop with it, then send it back to Illy to output.

Steve

[inkman996]

With Corel and I am sure illy has the same functionality I often use find and replace functions. With it you can specify any object attribute or outline attribute once you hit find all it will find all objects based on what you set for a filter and then you can do what you need with them, such as group or change color etc. But when I get something that has 10 million objects or some crazy complex problems I just export the image as a high res TIFF and trace it with vector magic.

[cleveprint]

LOL, so if you do all your art in PS then you send it to Illy to print, now if you do your art in Illy you send to PS to sep, lucky I know just a little bit to understand this stuff LOL. but know what you mean Dan I've been in that position waiting on a file in Illy to finish it's calculation's.

Id like to know if someone has a tutorial on this as well. We always get tons of vector files from our customer that has layers and layers of hidden objects that need to be removed before we can button it up. Mainly when we are going in to underbase files and such.

[Sbrem]

I'll recommend VectorFirstAid again, they have many videos on it at astutegraphics.com.

Steve

[Chadwick]

I've seen ALOT of vector files that almost made me wish for a jpeg.
You start looking at it closely and just shake your head.
I just export em to PS as Dan mentioned.
One silver lining; at least a gong-show vector can still be exported as something crisp.

[Dottonedan]

LOL, so if you do all your art in PS then you send it to Illy to print, now if you do your art in Illy you send to PS to sep, lucky I know just a little bit to understand this stuff LOL. but know what you mean Dan I've been in that position waiting on a file in Illy to finish it's calculation's.

I actually don't send psd files to Illy to print. I know of some people that do. The bring in a PSD files into Corel or Illy to print to film from there.  Why, I never understood why.  Some say they just don't know any other way and are comfortable where they are. Other say they do their vector or small type and fine line work in vector and combine with raster.  Cheers to them, but I can't see the need. If you start at a high rez and you are "creating your own art", or starting with a psd, then you need no vector. But again, I'm not knocking them. Old habits are hard to break.

I like sending to film (or DTS) (in the program I started or created the work in).   Like if I built an art file in Vector, I'd not take it into photoshop just to print. LOL   I can't see it. and just like that, I can't see printing Phoshop files from a vector program.   I know though, I can wig some people out if they only know Corel or Illy and I send them a multi channel sep file with all color channels in one file.


For Vector FirstAid, I will give that a try. But I think for the most part it sounds like it does the conversion of what I would normally do in Illy.
Things like EXPAND, DIVIDE, TRIM etc.

Inkman,  For Illy, we have Select same  (options). Same color same stroke weight, same tint, and I use this a lot and typically use it for uniting colors after I have broken them apart and have taken the colors out from behind it.

The thing is, I'd expect this Vector FirstAid filter to take a long time because what it needs to do to the files I have (Huge ugly files), would normally take a long time to process (in Illy). But I'll check anything out that can speed it up.  A lot of this stuff that they do in vector really should have been done in Photoshop to begin with. It just gets to be way too much of a vector file.

[Sbrem]

For us, outputting from Illustrator is how we learned to do it over 25 years ago. At the time, computers couldn't handle really large files all that well, so the raster image was separated in PS, then imported into Illy, bring all of it's spot channels into the Illustrator pallet as spot colors, and the vector text just came out cleaner. Well, with all the templates set up ready to go, especially using registration color for the marks, it's just quick and easy. An old habit that doesn't need to be changed... Vector FirstAid has a free trial, so it can't hurt to give it a shot. And if you have a trace that has a billion nodes, one click will clean it up in about three seconds.

Steve

[IntegriTees]

might look at the new Separation Studio 4.  it separates vector work and all of the daunting steps you mentioned dissapear.  Its saving me loads of time in just the underbase generating.

[Sbrem]

might look at the new Separation Studio 4.  it separates vector work and all of the daunting steps you mentioned dissapear.  Its saving me loads of time in just the underbase generating.

All of the separation packages will separate a vector file, it just won't be vectors anymore, unless there is something new that does that...

Steve

[3Deep]

Sepping a vector file is pretty easy being that you are the one that created the art to start with, now sepping someone else vector files well