The latest release of Illustrator (24.2) comes with one of the most requested features, a larger canvas with 100x more space to keep all your assets organized in one project.
Now whether you need room to design or create wall art, billboards, advertisements, and more, you can expand your canvas area without worrying about the artwork dimensions, precision, and scale.
Illustrator 24.2 offers a canvas size of 2270 x 2270 inches which lets you create multiple artboards with larger dimensions. You can also use these updated units in the Units drop-down: Feet, Meters, Yards, and Feet & Inches.
To ensure that the new document is created with a larger canvas use the following settings in the New Document dialog:
- Specify the artboard size of more than 227 inches (default canvas size). You can also choose the specified units in Feet, Meters, Yards, or Feet & Inches.
- Large canvas allows you to accommodate more artboards than the default canvas size.
An alert sign is displayed at the bottom of the New document dialog indicating that the specified dimensions are bigger than the default canvas size and the new document will be created on a large canvas.
Check this link for more details about this feature.
Large canvas FAQs:
Can I copy artwork from a large canvas to the default canvas?
- Yes, you can copy-and-paste artwork from large-sized canvas to the default canvas. However, if the large-scale artwork does not fit in the canvas or hits canvas bounds, the artwork is automatically scaled down to fit into the canvas size.
Can I save large-scaled artwork as a PDF?
- Yes, you can save your artwork as a PDF. To view your artwork in actual size, use Acrobat 1.6 or later.
- When you save the large-scaled artwork with the PDF version 1.5 or below, the artwork is scaled-down and appears ten times smaller on opening the PDF.
What happens when I Open the large-scaled artwork in a previous version of Illustrator?
- When you save or export the artwork created on a large-sized canvas in Illustrator version below 24.0, the artwork will appear ten times smaller so that it gets accommodated in the default canvas size. Note that it may also disable some editing features and change the text layout.
What are the Supported formats for export and limitations?
- Currently, the following formats are supported if you export a large-sized document: PDF, PNG, JPEG, PSD, TIFF, and SVG.
- The Slices and Save for web features do not currently work with large-size canvas. If you are using Actions that involve these features, steps related to them will be skipped.
Check this link for more FAQs and known issues.
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I suppose what I'm saying is that from a design point of view I want to use the large canvas to design artwork at full size, and have the flexibility to be able to export sections, or individual elements out as print PDFs with marks without the need to rescale. Which ostensibly is what this feature is supposed to facilitate.
By @whistlerpro21
Why? If you are sending files off to another company to do the print work you are creating needless amounts of extra work for them just to print the job.
The technie nerdy crop marks stuff is not needed at all for large format print jobs. That extra stuff takes up space and wastes material when printed. That translates into it costing more to print. The client will get billed for that. If possible we'll open the file to eliminate that stuff before printing. Or we'll print a client-provided PDF as-is, especially if it has a bunch of embedded fonts and other stuff that makes it more tricky to open and edit the file. The crop marks will be included in the print and the client will be charged for the larger than expected area consumed by the print job.
I rarely ever use multiple art boards in Adobe Illustrator, and when I do it is usually done as a "dirty" way to build a multiple page document (rather than creating it within InDesign). I can position numerous sign face elements on a single giant-size artboard. The sign faces and graphical elements inside them can be easily selected and exported individually or copied into other documents if need be. For things like building sign projects I often have to include portions of the building or the entire building elevation in the design. That makes it all the more necessary to compose the sign design on an actual editable object rather than use an art board to represent the sign face.
Okay, but let's really think about for just a minute.
Why was this "feature" created?
My guess is so guys like me could design vehicle lettering, signs & murals, and be able to work at 100% rather than to scale, where "HARD" measurements are required. Like the side of a truck IS 88" x 262" and there are State Imposed letter size requirments, and tranfering those measurements to scale can create a SUPER DUPER costly error. And since we are human and by our very nature imperfect, eliminating a step that WILL get F#$@ed up, trust me I have gotten dozens of files from designers working to scale that needed to be fixed. That's why I design large format in FlexiSign, and I sometimes need to export oversized PDF files.
Not to get off topic, but I used to do some of my design work within FlexiSign Pro and CASmate prior to that, due in part to the larger art board sizes they allowed. It is much easier in a sign production environment to design files at full size, especially if other people will be opening those files to print jobs or rout/cut sign parts. Sometimes a project will force things to be designed at a smaller scale, such as 50% of actual size or 10% of actual size. When elements are reduced to a certain scale there is always a risk someone else accessing the file will forget to scale artwork elements back up to full size before taking the art into production. I'll always include big red notes in the file denoting the scale, but no matter how yelly someone gets with the notes it's always possible for another staff member to have a brain-fart and overlook the warning.
I quit using Flexi back in the 2000's for design purposes due to its extremely outdated type engine. We still have 3 licenses of Flexi in my workplace. Two are installed on production computers connecting directly to routing tables and/or vinyl cutters. One of my co-workers has the 3rd Flexi license installed on her machine. I personally don't need it on mine. CorelDRAW has a max art board size of 1800" X 1800". That worked well for most general purposes. From the early 1990's I've relied on Illustrator for specialized tasks, such as getting vector paths into Photoshop. When OpenType was first developed Illustrator was one of the first applications to take advantage of the capabilities. It took another decade for Corel to incorporate a proper OpenType engine into CorelDRAW (at version X6 in 2012). Now we have OTF Variable Fonts, which sort of ressurrects the Multiple Master concept from Postscript Type 1 MM fonts. Illustrator was well ahead of CorelDRAW at incorporating that. And Illustrator is the only major vector drawing application that supports OTF SVG fonts. Meanwhile Flexi is still stuck back in the 1990's with its type handling, among other things. Firing up Flexi feels like going back in time 20+ years.
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