Expert: Laith Ibrahim - 11/20/2007

Question
Hi Laith!
This is probably the most ridiculous question, but this is my first time using this software. I made a postcard in Illustrator CS on a Mac, and it always appears as it's actual size in Illustrator. This postcard will be sent to customers via email to help advertise for the Christmas season. I converted the file to a .pdf, and when it's opened as a .pdf, if automatically opens at 163% on any computer. Is there any way to preserve it's actual dimension size for universal viewing??

Answer
Hi Christa,
How did you create your PDF, using "Save as" which you should use or "print to PDF"?? If you used the 1st option then Illustrator will preserve the size. Using the 2nd will give you different sizes. This depends on the options you selected. You probably used the "Print to PDF" and had the option "fit to page" selected and the resulting PDF was bigger because your default paper size was bigger.
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If by saying "opens at 163%" you meant the "zoom" aspect ratio then this also can be fixed in Acrobat not in Illustrator. After saving the PDF file (Use the "save as" command) open the PDF file in Acrobat and go to file/document properties/initial view and change the "magnification" to any size you like and save the file. The file will always open at the size you specify.
Please let me know if my answers helped and which of the 2 cases described above is your case.
Best regards,
Laith