Expanding Dashed Lines in Illustrator 9

You probably know that you can turn a stroke into a filled object by choosing Object>Path>Outline Path. This is useful for many reasons, such as being able to "fill a stroke" with a gradient. It's also a good idea to outline paths when you've completed a logo. Why? Because in Illustrator, there's an option to "scale line widths". If this option is not on, scaling your logo will change its appearance.

There's one thing that Outline Path was never able to do though – outline dash information. When you specified a stroke with a dashed line, running the Outline Path function on it turned it into a solid line. So how do you outline a dashed line? First, make your line, then specify the dash information. Then open the Transparency palette and give the object a transparency of 99.99. The choose Object>Flatten Transparency. You're done!

"Not Enough Memory to Open Illustration" Errors in Illustrator 9

Some people may have experienced an error in Illustrator 9 where they tried opening a file created in Illustrator 9 but get the following message "not enough memory to open illustration". This is a bug that occurs when you save a file when the document window is collapsed (double-clicking on a title bar of a window on the Mac collapses the window, showing only the title bar). To avoid such errors, make sure you do not save a document when the title bar is collapsed. To open a file which already has been saved with the window collapsed, open a new blank document, and then place the other file into it (using the Place command in the File menu)

Loading PC Fonts in Illustrator 8 or 9

Do you know that you can use PC fonts (TrueType & Type 1) inside Illustrator even if you are on a Mac? This is a cool way of opening AI files sent by someone else that come from the PC, if you don't own one. All you have to do is put the (.pfm, .pfb, .ttf) inside the fonts folder that is in the AI folder (AI8 or 9 folder > Required > Fonts). Then relaunch AI and you will be able to use those "foreign" fonts in your AI document on your Mac. In fact, any Mac fonts dropped into this folder will automatically load in the active open doc, but for PC fonts you need to quit AI and relaunch it. Sorry, but this is only for the Mac, you cannot put Mac fonts into this folder on the PC side. Oh, don't forget to convert all your fonts to Outline if you intend to save your AI doc to EPS to be printed in another application...

CONVERTING COLOR ARTWORK to GRAYSCALE (especially for Color Gradient and Pattern)

Sometimes you need to convert a color AI doc to a grayscale illustration. When the artwork does not contain any gradients or patterns this could be easily done (AI8 and AI9) using the Filter > Color > Convert to Grayscale. But when you have some gradients/pattern in the doc, this method does not work since this filter does not change color in those elements. So what can we do.... Here are a few ways to work around it for you:

A) You can use the Export Command and Export to Photoshop 5.0 using the Grayscale color mode setting (this will results in a pixel based illustrations).

B) You can use the Object > Rasterize command using the grayscale color mode (don't forget to check the Create Clipping Path options if you intend to place the illustration in others application).

C) If (and only if...) the color used in creating the Gradient or Pattern was built with saved Swatch set to Global, you can just edit all those custom swatches (double-click on them) and in the Color Mode Pop-up change it to grayscale. This will change the color to grayscale to any applied object, gradient stop color, and pattern.

D) In AI9 only, you can use the Rasterize Effect with Graycale as Color Mode (not the filter!) to create a live nondestructive grayscale conversion.

E) Or, you can (in AI9 only) Group all the artwork, then draw a black only shape behind the artwork, select all (the group and the black shape) then go in the new Transparency Palette, and from the Option menu of that Palette choose Create Opacity Mask, and the check the Invert Mask check box. This will do the trick if you don't place another object behind this or don't need to place the illustration above other elements in a page layout. If you need to put some elements behind the results or place it as EPS above other elements in page layout apps, You can use the Object > Expand Transparency command to really get the vector conversion to take place. Notice that by using this command all the fill/stroke on a single object will be split, and don't forget to delete the extra white box surrounding your drawing.

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