I cannot scale an image.

[John Johnson 10]

I am having an impossible ability to scale an image. I open an eps file, and I try to scale the image to 800 pixels x 800 pixels to export it as a TIF image. But, no matter what I do, including changing the X and Y boxes in the transform menu to 800 pixels, when I export it as a TIF, the TIF is about 2500 x 2500 pixels. I have read the help info on Adobe, but it just does not work. I have gone around in circles over this. I need a step by step procedure, and I mean step by step. Open this, click here, click here, click here, etc. In the transform menu, why are there X and Y boxes, and Width and Height boxes? X is the same as width, and Y is the same as height. This is VERY confusing. Why in the save procedure does it also have a set of boxes to state the size in pixels that is different from the transform size boxes? This is horrifyingly user unfriendly. Do not have so many different damned boxes that state the size. Just one set. One size menu that states what you want the size of the scaled image to be, in pixels, points, or whatever the user needs, and it should remain that size when saving as a TIF or any other image format.

[Ton Frederiks]

The X and Y show the position on the Artboard.

Work in pixels.

Use the Width and Height to specify the size.

Export the selection at 72 ppi to get the same size in pixels at the export.

[John Johnson 10]

I cannot find any menu to set the 72 ppi. When I click export there is no menu to set it. Where (exactly) is the menu to set the ppi in the export?

[John Johnson 10]

I finally found a menu to change to 72 ppi, but this is what the image looked like. The image was in the bottom left corner of the artboard with the rest of the artboard being white.

Whoops, cannot paste in an image. It ended up smaller than the 1000 x 1000 pixel size I entered into the W and H boxes.

Fortunately just using a screen shot of the image increased to full screen using the ctrl + buttons gives me something reasonable to paste into my photo software (Photoshop does not let me paste a screen shot so I use something else). But trying to scale the image in Illustrator has failed miserably. Horrid user friendliness. I am trying Affinity Designer now to see if I can scale images there and get what I want at Export. If it works, adios Adobe subscription. Affinity Photo is a good substitute for Photoshop. Both are about $25 each right now.

[Ton Frederiks]

You can try this:

Select what you want to export.

In the Transform panel change the width and height to the size you want.

Choose: Object > Artboards > Fit to Selected Art

Choose: File > Export > Export As... 

Click > Use Artboards an choose TIFF

Change the resolution to screen 72 ppi

[John Johnson 10]

It worked, but the steps are not exactly as you said. I selected the art, changed the H and W to 1200 pixels. Instead of Export it had to be Export Selection. I selected Artboard, and as a PNG. There is no option for TIF. Then I changed the destination to the folder where I wanted it to go and selected Export Artboard. But, anyway, it then worked perfectly. I checked the exported artboard PNG and it was 1200 px by 1200 px. That is easly converted to TIF or JPG. Thank you very much.

If I tried to use Export instead of Export Selection, I was only presented with a folder where it would have gone, and I could choose TIF, but that was the same as the problem I had yesterday, no solution. There was no menu to select 72 dpi. But, using the method I outlined above, it was not necessary to choose any dpi number.

[John Johnson 10]

Now I am having a new problem in saving the images. The saved image is transparent in the white areas. This did not occur before. My illustrations are useless if they have transparent areas. Other images in the Photoshop stack show through the transparent parts. How do I turn off transparency when saving the image, or turn it off in the Illustrator desktop when the EPS file is open? This software is much too complicated. There are too many features, with the result being that there is a too high chance that something will go wrong in use. I want to turn off everything but just the few features that I use. I would like to re-install an older version that was simpler and worked much, much better. No uploading of new versions.

[John Johnson 10 · Accepted solution]

Fixed that problem. I had to merge the layers in the image. I don't know why there are layers, but there are.