Expert: Amy - 2/21/2008

Question
In my business I often need to look at Adobe Illustrator files before passing
them on to someone else. But I never need to alter them. What is the least
expensive software I can get to do this? I cannot always ask the creator of the
file to "save as" something else so I would need to see their file regardless how
they saved it. Thanks for the advice.

Answer
Hi Tim,

Acrobat Reader versions 7.0 and later can actually open most AI documents created with PDF compatiblity.

Other than that, I used to use a program called GhostScript. It worked pretty well but was difficult to configure. The authors keep it updated, last release being late 2007... so that might be your best bet for docs that won't open with Acrobat (people can, in fact, save AI docs without PDF compatibility and older version of AI do not have compatibility options built in).

http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/index.html

There's the link!

Good luck!
Amy