Expert: Kevin Stohlmeyer - 2/22/2008

Question
QUESTION: I have designed a brochure utilizing Illustrator CS3. I opened a template in illustrator to make the brochure. I placed some pictures from photoshop, added copy and design and for some odd reason I cannot get it to save a PDF. Also, if I want to print from Illustrator, in the print window, I have to scroll down to Print All Layers in the print options. When I went to Kinkos to get it printed, the Illustrator file wouldn't even show the brochure when the file opened up on my thumb drive. I've not had this problem in the past...except when I made my last brochure, and I saved in PDF, it would show the thumbnail of the PDF and not the whole image, however they were able to open at Kinkos. Now it doesn't even show a thumbnail of PDF image. I have no clue as to what is going on. Can you help please? Thanks Much!

ANSWER: Hi Karen,

What OS are you running on? Be sure to run all updaters from Adobe and Mac (if you are on that)

I need some more information on your setup before I can determine what is going on.

Also, try setting up a very simple document- 1 photo, two words, and a color box, and try to run it through your workflow and see if you get the same error.

Let me know some more specifics and I can see what I can do.

Kevin



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hey Kevin:
Thanks for getting back to me so soon. I'm using Windows 98 OS. I did make a simple print doc. and it saved the PDF. I believe this must have something to do with using the template option as I made another design using the template named blank brochure and it did the same thing...would not save the images and copy in PDF. Does that help? I really think that it has something to do with that template option because before when I made my brochures I just utilized a vista print brochure layout and copied it to a print project. This time I used the blank template layout that is in Illustrator. Hmmmm?

Answer
Hi Karen,

Not being a wise*** here, but if templates are giving you issues, then don't use em!

Seriously though, Im not sure why your template options are being problematic, I researched this and could not find any bugs or tech docs on this except for the fact that Windows 98 is NOT recommended for CS3. The recommended minimum is XP, so it could be an issue with that. The adage - just cause you can, doesnt mean you should comes to mind....

For now, I would avoid the templates and use the vista print docs as a resource. You dont need to copy and paste into a new document however, just resave it out as something new.

Thanks for the follow up and good luck!

Kevin