Vector Images in Illustrator

[Abid Raza]

Hi,
Recently we received a School book for Printing, from one of of Clients. It includes a lot of Complex Vector Images on Multiple pages. That is making our work much slow. We have to wait for every task to complete.
System is in good Performance. having RAM of 24 GB and Video Card of 16 GB.

What is the possibility, to make work faster remaining the same scenario.

Regards,
MARH

 

[VanCleef]

Vector images can bog down a system when they have too many points in the paths. Often users will vectorize complex images in Illustrator using tools like Live Trace, this can result in messy path work with too many points. The only way to reduce the processing time for these images is to clean up the path work and significantly reduce the number of points in the vectors. If you are printing from a PDF you may be stuck unless you export the pages as raster images and then reformat into a book which, unfortunately, will rasterize your text as well. The other option is to ask the people who provided the artwork to rasterize the links before importing into their layout or simplify the vectors in illustrator. Someone else here may know of a work around in Acrobat to flatten the pages if you're printing from a PDF, I am not aware of an easy fix for this if you need to print from a PDF other than exporting the pages as individual images then reconstructing the book in Indesign then creating a new PDF. Best practice would be for whom ever did the layout to clean up their work and resubmit the art. I've consistently been surprised at the poor path work coming out of creative agencies over the years. Graphic artists who produce clean vector work are suprisingly rare.

 

[SheetSqueezer]

…Graphic artists who produce clean vector work are suprisingly rare.

Substitute ‘artist’ with ‘professional’.

 

[Dov Isaacs]

Exactly what do you mean by “making our work much slow?” Are you referring the time required to process the job on the RIP or DFE?

As previously noted by @VanCleef , overly-complex vector artwork could be the root cause of this. The problem is that anything you do to “fix” such performance issue may be:

1. Potentially “lossy” in terms of required output detail, color, etc. This could result in significant loss of print output quality that may be rejected by your client.
   
2. Require more of your professional time to “fix” than you lose due to the slow rendering performance. Remember that “time is money!”

I would recommend that if you plan to do further work for this client that you point out these issues such that they may be addressed at the time the book is designed.

 

[YourCastle]

rasterize it

 

[Dov Isaacs]

rasterize it

Unless you know the exact requirements of the RIP/DFE in terms of resolution, color space, and halftoning, manually rasterizing this artwork may significantly degrade quality. Furthermore, that rasterization process may take just as long as (or longer than) the RIP/DFE processing time.

 

[YourCastle]

Unless you know the exact requirements of the RIP/DFE in terms of resolution, color space, and halftoning, manually rasterizing this artwork may significantly degrade quality. Furthermore, that rasterization process may take just as long as (or longer than) the RIP/DFE processing time.

he's the printer. if he don't know, then it don't matter

 

[Repro_Pro]

If you have availability - try to Normalize with Prinergy.
I was amazed how much lighter an atlas full of heavy vectors got "slimmed down".