Expert: Amy - 7/19/2007

Question
I have a cover page for a client in Illustrator CS2. I want to make a jpeg to go into a Word document. If I do a save for web, I get a jpeg and I insert it into word and everything is perfect except for the low resolution.
If I try to export to a jpeg from CS2 and place the jpg into word, I just get a big black box. Any thoughts?

Answer
Hi Erin

The big black box might be Word's fault, so let's make the Save for Web work for you!

In Illustrator, select all your artwork.
Double click the Scale Tool in the Tool Window/Palette.
Type in Uniform Scaling, maybe 300%, and check Scale Strokes & Effects.
Basically, you're enlarging your artwork 300%.

Now do a Save for web. Your new jpeg will still be 72 dpi but it will be 3x bigger than you need it.

Import into word, then use Word's format Image to reduce it by 33%.

Your results should be better and you should be able to keep the file size in check by playing with the Quality/Compression settings when Saving for Web.

The only downside of this method is that the results will be RGB. If you ever needed a CMYK image, this wouldn't work.

Let me know if this works for you!
Amy Pace