Expert: Tom Rouze - 6/12/2009

Question
QUESTION: Hi,
all of a sudden my objects and fonts in Illustrator look very low-res. you
draw a circle, and the edges aren't smooth, the eye can see the pixel edges.
i'm not in pixel preview mode, nor outline, so am slightly confused.. i don't
notice any resolution change in any other program, and the PDF made from
the illustrator file seems 100%, just not the screen image i see of my file.
thanks for help.

ANSWER: Hi Angela,

I personally have not had this problem but it sounds like it may be a preferences issue. If you are on a Mac: go to User>Library>Preferences>Adobe Illustrator preferences and drag to trash.
If PC let me know and I'll get instructions for you. I don't remember off hand and will speak to my IT person.

That may work. I hope that helps.

Thank you,

Tom

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

QUESTION: appreciate the help Tom. yes, i am on a Mac and unfortunately "trashing" the
preferences wasn't a success. i'd like to ask you if there could be any
connection with this... just yesterday i hooked up a Dell monitor to my
macbook pro, a fairly low level monitor and quickly returned it after i noticed
how poor the resolution was. so it was connected to that other monitor for a
few hours. now i am back to solely working off the laptop monitor, but am
wondering if some setting coule have been damaged or changed as a result
of that Dell monitor connection..?
again, thank you!!! i am beyond confused, and am worried about the low
resolution screen quality of my Illustrator files :-(
angela

Answer
Hi Angela,

I apologize for the delay with the follow up but I was called out of town. It sounds like the display settings were set to a lower resolution but I'm assuming you checked your display setting to make sure you're at millions of colors, etc.... However the part that gets a little confusing is your other programs work fine. I'm sorry but this has me stumped. I spoke to my IT person and he suggested the same preferences advice. The only other thing I would suggest since it's only Illustrator that's affected is reinstall Illustrator.

If I find out more information I'll pass it along to you. Sorry I couldn't be more help.

Thank you,

Tom