Pixelation Occurs When Exported from Illustrator

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
November 30, 2022
5 replies
8361 views

When file is exported out as JPG or PNG, the beer cans are pixelated.

INFO:

-- Illustrator 2023 (creative cloud)

-- iMac M1

-- OS Ventura 13.0.1

FILE BUILD:
-- The base art is vector with photos imported and placed into the file.

THESE SOLUTIONS WERE TRIED:
- resaved the beer cans in Photoshop with smaller file size

- changed the position of artboard so that its XY axis is on whole numbers

Looked all over the internet trying to find a solution. Any thoughts would be great. Already spent 3 hours searching and trying. Thanks!

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Ton Frederiks

495 pixels wide by 147 pixels high is really small and your image are scaled a lot. Exporting at 300 ppi or higher will improve the result. Have a look at View > Pixel Preview to get the idea of the export.

Met1

Legend

I missed this before: "495 pixels wide by 147 pixels high at 300 dpi" - that's VERY small, not a lot of info you can pack into 147 pixels...

33delawareAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thanks Met1. I think you are right. It is a size given to me to use. Will keep trying and post my final solution...if any.

Met1

Legend

You're can image is 665pi, so you're throwing out 500 before you've even scaled it!

MegaTorque-01

Inspiring

It appears to me that you may be using the export for screens to output these files correct? If so, this problem has never been fixed. The solution is to select your artwork, and run the filter called "Rasterize". This is just a filter that you can turn on and off in the appearance panel. Set the DPI to whatever you are working on, select the art optimized option and now when you export, the image should look perfect.

33delawareAuthor

Participating Frequently

I export it from Illustrator and select "Export as..." Attaching screenshot here of that dialog box.
When you say, run it through the filter "Rasterize", do you mean Photoshop or Illustrator? If you mean Illustrator, do I just select the image from Illustrator and run it through Effects/Rasterize? If so it didn't do anything.

Wondering if there is a problem with the image? Attaching one of the image below here too just in case it is helpful

MegaTorque-01

Inspiring

Hi! So what I am saying is in your artboard with everything set up the way you want, you can select the images of the cans specifically and go to effects -> rasterize and if its for print, do 300 and for screen do 72 and select art optimized and transparent background. The images of the cans will then be rasterized (not permanently! Just for the purpose of exporting this graphic) Now when you go to export through the "Export As" you will see the image looks perfect.

I know this because if you want to compare, just go to File - Export - Save for Web and look at your graphic in that window. Chances are, you aren't seeing the pixelation anymore because the whole image is rasterized. Try and it and let me know.

Met1

Legend

Show us a screenshot of a can selected and the Links panel...

33delawareAuthor

Participating Frequently

I'm including several screenshots below. This is so perplexing.

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

This does not look good, are the links still OK?

What size is your artboard and at what PPI do you export the file?

33delawareAuthor

Participating Frequently

Yeah it looks pretty bad. Attached some screenshots of the document links and images.

The size of the board is really small -- 495 pixels wide by 147 pixels high at 300 dpi. The links look like they are linking.

I have used an image on top of a vector graphic in the past so I don't understand why it is not working now.