Expert: Kevin Stohlmeyer - 5/21/2009

Question
I used illustrator CS to create fashion drawings.  I start using the pen tool to create the garment.  Next I fill the garment w/ a JPEG of fabric that I have scanned.  Next, the garments, are filled with details that I create using everything from fonts, to images I create using another illustrator file or photoshop, etc.  The result is an enormous file.  When I am finished creating the garments (all in separate files) I paste them into one file that I used to present.  This files ends up so large that it will shut illustrator down, take 5 minutes to save, and even cause the printer I use trouble.  This happens even when I save the file as a PDF.  What am I doing wrong?  Help!

Answer
Hi Valerie,

You are not doing anything wrong per se, rather you are correct that the file size is probably huge. My guess is that you are do not have enough RAM allocated to Illustrator CS to effectively handle files of this size. You should make sure that everything else is turned off, double check your available RAM, and see how many active fonts are running on your computer. All of this, partnered with the larger file sizes can cause the exact issues you described. Its not really a user error or application problem.

I would export each file out as a jpg (file>export) and then bring those files together into one presentation. This will avoid combining into a massive file.

Thanks

Kevin