Illustrator files importing at 10% size

[Matthew Severin]

I have AI files where both layer content and artboards are 1920x1080. But when I import them into After Effects both comps and footage come in as 192x108px documents. I have done this type of importing for years and I've never seen or heard of this. Each Illustrator file I import was previously exported from a master AI with numerous artboards. The outputted AI files that I'm importing only have 1 artboard each.

[Rick Gerard]

Double-check the document settings and Artboard size in AI. It should be 1920 X 1080 Points or Pixels.

I'm not seeing any problems on my end. OSX, latest builds of AE 2019 and 2020. Can you share a sample file? Here's one that I just made: AI Test 2.AI

It works perfectly.

[Matthew Severin]

Hi Rick I've renamed and linked a sample file. The files I've been working with are using pixel units. I tried both AE2019 and 2020 on both OSX and Windows, same issue. My workaround for now is creating a new AI file and pasting the contents in. Seems to work. I wonder if there's some weird setting that happened when I exported the multi artboard AI file into a series of individual AI files...

[Rick Gerard · Accepted solution]

You may have found a bug. When I tried to save your AI file to Legacy AI I got this warning:

Somewhere hidden in the file is the large size canvas info so when you saved the original artwork using each artboard as a separate canvas you got exactly what the warning is talking about. 

I would have to do some more testing, but the only way I can get your sample file to import correctly is to start a new AI document, then copy and paste or drag all of the artwork into the new document.

[Matthew Severin]

Ha, nice find it illustrates exactly what's happening. Thanks for troubleshooting this!

[defaultmknbocar6a0g]

I just encountered this bug a year later using the latest version of Illustrator. So this issue is not solved.

[Warren Heaton]

It's not a bug.

It's just that Illustrator's Large Canvas Size is not supported directly.  Or more specifically, After Effects has not been updated to read the scale.  As such, you get the same scaling in After Effects as you do in a reader app or a browser.

Adobe Illustrator User Guide > Large canvas size | FAQs and known issues
https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/large-sized-canvas-troubleshooting.html

There's a feature request for After Effects to support this on the Adobe User Voice page, but it only has two votes.

https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911311-after-effects/suggestions/41445442-import-a-large-ca...

But maybe it'll have a few more votes after people read this here?

[Sam-Kelly]

Damn this is happening to me today, I always use the same workflow and never encountered this 😞

[Warren Heaton]

Illustrator's Large Canvas Size is not supported directly in After Effects.

Work in a standard canvas in Illustrator or scale the artwork up with Continuously Rasterise enabled in After Effects. 

[Sam-Kelly]

I use this workflow all the time and I've never had an issue so I'm assuming it's a bug or glitch..
When saving an Illustrator file with multiple arboards out as individual files, then importing these into After Effects as compositions. Instead of bringing them in at 1920x1080 it bought them in at 192x108

I had to create a new illustrator file for each artboard and copy everything in to each one to get around it.

[Warren Heaton]

Artboards, if tiled (which they usually are), are not supported.

If designing with tiled Artboards in Illustrator, we have to use the "Save each artboard as a separate file" option in the Illustrator Options dialog box.

[Claire27646682ww8n]

I saved as "each artboard as a separate file" as I usually do, and still 10% scaling on 2 of my files. Not all of them, though. Just the 2. I thought this issue was solved as I haven't had it for a couple of years, so I have to assume this new designer is using an old version of AI or something.

[Claire27646682ww8n]

I'm having this issue again too. I haven't had it for a year or 2, but I got some files from a new designer and suddenly BAM 10% scale. But only on their 1088x1080 files. I believe what I did last time to fix this was to scale the AI file 10x which is ridiculous. The idea that AI & AE aren't 100% compatible is offensive considering they have been major Adobe programs for literal decades.

[Warren Heaton]

@Claire27646682ww8n 

While it's certainly frustrating if you are unfamiliar with what's happening, the programs are compatible.

When Illustrator added multiple Artboards, it added the option to save Artboards to separate files in the Illustrator Save Dialog box for After Effects and any other application that does not support multiple artboards.

When Illustrator added Large Canvas, they took an approach that maintained compatibility with the current file format (.ai) rather than creating a new file format like Photoshop did to accommodate large Photoshop document sizes (.psb).

if I could change anything, the FAQ on the "Get started with large canvas" would specifically include After Effects with "Why does my large-scale artwork (.ai and.pdf) shrink when opening in a reader app or a browser?"  

- Warren