Illustrator Trees on Trail Map

[siney]

Hey Everyone - I've been designing Trail Maps for years using the Spray Tool. This method really uses TONS of memory as each instance of an individual tree is replicated. I'm trying to change up the style a bit so that I can avoid creating such huge files; as well as try something other than the Spray Tool. I'd love to hear your suggestions and ideas on how to create a painterly-looking trail map that features tons of treed areas / forests, etc. Thanks in advance!

[tqrtuomo]

I've had a similar problem when doing boardgame maps. Symbols are helpful for many things, but if you're using a lot of them, then yeah, your file size can still blow up. 

Ultimately what worked best for me was to rasterize sections of my map. Even if you rasterize to a high dpi, if you take a bunch of symbols and boil them down to a rasterized image that's embedded in your file, you're going to save space. Especially if you're doing a lot of pixel-based effects like blurs and drop shadows.

[siney]

Thanks for your response! I have indeed tried to rasterize various sections as I go and that has helped a bit. But man - still difficult to work with such large files, long save times, etc. I just had to Force Quit Illustrator when just moving the artboard around a bit and it froze up. Upon relaunching and reopening the file, Illustrator had FLATTENED my layers! Never seen that before! So any additional thoughts sure are welcome 🙂

Thanks!