Illustrator -> Windows Files

July 27, 2004 12:43 PM

I have a collection of illustrations that a client wants to use in MS Word. I have them in their original Illustrator 9 format, as well as .psd and low-res jpgs.

Is the best option to convert them to Windows metafiles? (They'll need to be resized depending on newsletter content.) How do I do that?
posted by Mayor Curley to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Best answer: Export as EPS -- encapsulated Postscript -- from Illustrator. Word can cope with EPS images, and they will scale far more gracefully than bitmaps like PSD or JPEG.
posted by majick at 12:56 PM on July 27, 2004

Response by poster: Thanks, Majick! And a big "DUH!" to you, Mayor Curley-- I had convinced myself that EPS wasn't a valid Word graphic format. Or maybe that's what THEY want me to believe. Either way, the re-ducation was success.
posted by Mayor Curley at 1:27 PM on July 27, 2004

Note that on non-Postscript printers, Word prints EPS using the embedded low-resolution raster preview image. This can be bad if the image is large. I believe that WMF is the only vector format Word can print in full rasterized resolution on any printer. What's wrong with the WMFs that Illustrator exports?
posted by zsazsa at 1:42 PM on July 27, 2004

Perhaps I spoke to soon. It seems that EPS can have a WMF embedded in it as the preview. If that's the case, then you're fine. An EPS I exported from Illustrator 9 prints out nice and smooth with no jaggies on a PCL printer.
posted by zsazsa at 1:56 PM on July 27, 2004

Response by poster: What's wrong with the WMFs that Illustrator exports?

Mine look like cree-ap lately. But that's probably another thread...
posted by Mayor Curley at 2:41 PM on July 27, 2004