Participating Frequently

Question

Add the ability to scale the canvas beyond it's archaic 227 inch limits.

Forum|Forum|14 years ago
May 12, 2012
33 replies
134200 views

Make working with large format designs at 1:1 possible. In other words add a size function for the canvas to be scaled beyond 227 inches. Of course this would allow scaling the artboards beyond that size as well. Not sure if there woudl be implications to allowing it to be unlimited. Us large format print and design companies are annoyed at this daily. Vehicle template packages are at 1/20th scale. Finish the design for the 54 foot trailer and ready to print, scale 2000%. Nope sorry, cant do that. Export the file and open it in some other vector app for the final scaling then export from that to the RIP.

Was really hoping to see this in CS6. Sadly not happening.

Feature request

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C

cuzzo0524

Participant

The canvas size limit is a pain, I like to do my racing vinyl wraps in 1:1, I can do this in Corel Draw no problem. I would rather use Illustrator instead as I have alot of Graphic Styles setup and like to use them on my wraps, it's a hassle going from one piece of software to another and having to rescale since Illustrator can't do 1:1 for the size i'm working with.

aTomician

Inspiring

That's another thing that annoys me - Adobe maintain that increasing the canvas size will make Illy to slow and laggy, but no other design program seems to have these limits, and they are generally not much faster or slower than Illy. Coreldraw? fast as anything, not a problem, serif programs? nothing to worry about... Inkscape? Xara Xtreme? Skencil? Gimp?.... ok these programs may be lacking in design capabilities, and may not have the vast amount of options and tools that Illy has, but they doln't have stupid canvas limits which means you have to scale anything you do that's too big... Thought Illy was the best vector design program out until I came across this limitation.

Like if you agree

Regards, aTomician

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

While there's room for improvement, Illustrator's still the vector illustration application to beat for numerous reasons.

For one, you can do math in the text fields and mix units of measurement.

Mark__ddrt_

Participant

Real world example:

PSD file needs a 1" white, contour cut, margin around it and it needs to go up on a wall. I can't add the contour cut at 1:1 because the size is too large. I can't create it at 1:20 because the jpg image will degrade going from small to large.

There's no rational argument against making it so we can't work in large format.

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

Hi Mark:

Have you tried switching to PSB instead of PSD? I would have mentioned that earlier, but I didn't want to open up things to additional topics. The PSB format is a "really large Photoshop file" and was specifically introduced to accommodated the larger images sizes we're seeing (mostly from DSLRs).

I'm curious? Why are you using JPEG?

As far as a high quality print goes, you simply need your DPI to be 1.5 times your LPI and you're good to go. If working proportionally and at a lower print size, increase your DPI proportional to how much you've decreased the width and height.

If you're not sure you're getting the numbers right, ask your service bureau for a template file.

-Warren

Mark__ddrt_

Participant

Image is actually a PSB but if I said “PSB” in the thread someone would have corrected me and said ‘PSD’ (has happened so many times).

I

’m using jpg because the image was downloaded from a stock website and has a difficult outline (it’s a few colors of ink dropped into water and it looks like smoke or something). Our wide format printer needs the image to stay as rgb (it’s to reduce color loss when the roland printer interprets the colors to cmyk) so it’s just a huge photoshop file but basically a jpg (for all intents and purposes). In addition PS CC automatically sets your file type to PSB once you reach a certain threshold for filesize/image size etc. That happened with all four images I’m trying to work with.

We need a vector item with a joined-path stroke, we need to add our the roland versaworks spot color to get a contour cut. The printer outputs the image and then we feed it again to get cut, after it dries. I can’t achieve this inside of photoshop because PS is raster, not vector.

I think I can work with 150dpi so at 1:20 scale I think I can place a 300dpi image into the ai file. However, the rip for the roland printer we use doesn’t have great proofing measures for quality before output and we’re trying to reduce un-needed waste.

Thanks for your time.

I

illustrationperfectionist

Participant

May I just add my support to all of the above, particularly Tomy-Rex and Doug-s. We have constant issues when editing the fine details in vector artwork for maps and heraldry with high level of detail. It appears Adobe is failing to answer or even acknowlege bug fixes that are inconveniently outside of the needs of mainstream consumers. However our costs in time are substantial. Please can we have somebody senior at least address this conversation? I would like to be proven wrong about this

aTomician

Inspiring

Hello Mr Illustration perfectionist!

Thanks for continuing to update this discussion. For everyone's interest, i messaged one of the support team directly and she replied to me saying that -

"By making the canvas infinite, there is a great chance of making an adverse impact on application's performance. Users can work on something smaller in dimension, then print at a larger output dimension. Many designers work with a percentage of the final dimension, like 25%. Also, the larger your scale, the more likely you can reduce the PPI, a billboard at 300ppi would not be necessary. File sizes get rather large at that point.

Illustrator caps the artboard at 227.54” W/H which is, I believe, around 18 feet and it has been limited to that for as long as I can remember. The request isn’t new but there’s more to a change than just changing the max # range. Performance is a big one."

- i received this reply within a couple of days of sending, so i don't know why no-one in Adobe has responded to this thread which was started in 2012. I'm following up as it doesn't really make sense - i have a high end desktop PC with about 20GB of RAM... don't thikn making the artboard size bigger is going to have a massive impact on it's performance LOL

Tom

Regards, aTomician

Qwertyfly___

Legend

There are many things that will impact performance.

mine are normally extremely detailed textures and meshes.

if I get a little to carried away it will cause major slowdowns.

even with 24GB ram

this is all on an A4 page.

so on the thought process offered above by the support team, maybe we should drop the canvas size to A5. and we should all just work at scale for everything.

what a cop out.

I'm hearing it more like:

"the setting that limits the canvas size is buried so deep in the programs code that we don't know where it is. we have not really changed anything that deep in the core structure since 1989 when we had to port it to windows. we hope we never have to as we don't really know how it works. that code was written over 25 years ago."

but its ok in photoshop.

I just created a 10 x 10 Meter Document at 300DPI.

its a little laggy but would be fine to stitch some smaller images together or something.

why can photoshop handle it, but illustrator can't?

T

thomasc11484006

Participating Frequently

I agree. This is a feature I would love to see too. I am doing landscape design. Another option would be a calculator tool that would display your lines and objects into whichever conversion you want (i.e. 1 inch of artboard displays 8 feet in the calculator tool).

TAteam

Participant

I'd like to see an option to increase the canvas size, I work with the large files at times and this can get pretty bloody annoying to work at 50% or 10% of full size... Getting team members to remember, or to read notes at the RIP to enlarge has caused problems in the past. I'd be happy if the Canvas size doubled or even tripled its current size, even if this was option when creating a new document. Just a thought.

TAteam

Participant

This is one of my biggest annoyances, pasting from one document to another and getting this error...now I have to spend time thinking of a solution to something that shouldn't even be a problem.

Qwertyfly___

Legend

try ctrl+f for paste in place, this will eliminate the error you are seeing about objects falling of the drawing area.

I'm not saying its not annoying and it should not be an issue, but it may stop you from getting too annoyed!

B

billygunn1111

Participant

I agree, my team converts large plot plans CADs in to AI for oil refineries with lots of detail and we need a much bigger artboard. It seems silly that there is this restriction.

We have to create several artboards and then stitch it back together in Photoshop for the diagram. It is a really inconvenient way to work and we would like to see this restriction lifted soon.

aTomician

Inspiring

i agree, we want the option to edit the artboard size... when creating wallpaper that is several metres wide and tall, it is impossible to get it on Illustrator. Course, Adobe doesn't really care about that what their customers think, they just worry about trying to look good, and if they can't look good then they don't seem to want to get involved.... so probably not a lot of chance any of the staff will be getting involved in this discussion, i suppose, let alone getting anything changed - even though this thread was started in early 2012!!!

I've been thinking about getting our software guys to decompile the software and change it manually, i'm sure there must be a way to do it somehow. Would make it a lot easier if Adobe just responded to their customers though, and even if they can't do something, they could at least explain WHY they can't do something... instead there is this dire silence from the Adobe quarters, and as usual nothing happens. I found a bug a while back and got Adobe on the phone and went through it and they couldnt't be bothered to try and fix it, they just showed me a different way to get a similar result.

seems such a small thing yet it makes the whole of Adobe look bad, even though it may be just one person not doing their job

Regards, aTomician

B

bsbeamer

Inspiring

Interestingly, I just found this thread when reporting on an issue I'm experiencing when trying to animate large size Illustrator artwork within After Effects CC 2015. AE CC 2015 is chopping the edges off of an AI CC 2015 file and the 227x227 limitation could be a contributing factor. If I could "expand" the canvas and artboard size to 250x250, maybe the edges wouldn't be cut off? (This file only has 1 artboard and it's maxed at canvas size.)

There are workarounds to this issue, but they all involve breaking apart the artwork and re-creating within AE to some extent.

V

vrangel3

Participant

The limitation of 227 inches is annoying! And why 227 inches? Why not 225 or 230 LOL. So freaking random. Anyway, I am an artist that does large scale murals and paintings and it would help to scale in real world. I have done the ratio conversion of 1/6, 1/4, and 1/2 scale YES I can do it but I find myself worrying about the accuracy rather than the design. and I have gotten burned by my own mishap calculations. Some artist are not very good with math such as myself. Go ahead and call me stupid for not understanding basic math , (I don't care) but the reality is that some of us cringe at calculating ratios!.....

In 93 at work I had almost run out of storage space and was asking for more Gigs. I had an computer engineer tell me that I should never use more than 3 Gigs in my life time on my PC. That the problem was I should manage my file sizes in a better way. "You artist don't understand HOW big a Gig is." he stated. I believed him because he was a computer engineer even though my gut told me otherwise. Occasionally I talk to him and sometimes remind him of 1993. He grumbles and changes the subject.

Qwertyfly___

Legend

And why 227 inches? Why not 225 or 230 LOL.

its not 227 inches.

I think you will find its 16384px

16384px / 72 = 227.55555......

and why 16384px?

my guess would be something to do with the following sequence.

4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, ....

on that note, I still have no idea why we can't just go to the next number in the sequence.

Qwertyfly___

Legend

my bad...

its 16383px

227.541666 inches

phlvx

Participant

I am in the sign industry and while most of what I do can be done 1:1, larger projects require scaling. Yes there are work-a-rounds, but the bottom line is that in this day and age I find no practical reason for this limitation.

Glen Charles Rowell7855424

Known Participant

It would just be nice if the software got updated like the company promised personally to me. I was told and promised to that there would be some updates to bugs but I'm still waiting. I hope it wasn't just lies. I trust Adobe is still working on the bugs.

G

gubaba

Participant

Agreed with MixManSC1. Please adobe, allow 1:1 scale. Us large format designers are really frustrated with this maximum artboard size limit in illustrator. I work with billboards and large scale environmental graphics and hate dealing with printing errors when printers accidentally scale artwork incorrectly (not to mention the maths involved).

rossul

Participating Frequently

+1. Yes we need to lift this silly limitation. We use AI for US and we currently we hit the limits at ~60 screens, which is nothing for a CRM software. Add on top of that variations of the same screen.

Scaling doesn't work. We need rules, units and the pixel grid to act normaly, not to mention Align to Pixel...

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