EMF Export problems in Illus. 9

[Alexander Kogan.]

Chris,

AI9 (dont know about 10) has somewhat roughly implemented the export of WMF/EMF files. It boils down to some rule like "the smaller the form is, the rougher it will look in metafile".

CorelDraw is known to export metafiles of much better quality, so if you have it, you may as well export your icons as EPS, read them from Corel and export as metafiles.

Another thing would be to scale the icons down after exporting them from illustrator, but you would have to use some other program to do it...

[Chris Onstad]

I have an .eps file (a simple line-art illustration of a pair of eyeglasses) with all the lines converted to outlines, and when I export it to an .emf file, the lines look fine.

However, when I scale the image down to 25% (uniform) and then export it to .emf, the lines in the resulting .emf are no longer uniform, but look to have "melted" somewhat. They look sort of hand-drawn.

Is there a solution to this problem? I need to scale down a suite of 250 icons and export them to .emf ...Thanks!

[Chris Onstad]

Thanks for the tip Alexander. I downloaded the trial version of CorelDraw11 but unfortunately experience the same problem when exporting .eps files from CorelDraw, sometimes even to a worse degree.

I wonder why Illustrator corrupts its object information when exporting to this format? What an awesome way to spend a Friday afternoon...

[Ian A. Wright]

Chris:

The problem isn't that, "... Illustrator corrupts its object information ..." it's that EMF is extended metafile format. The whole range of metafiles were designed for use with office-level applications. If you examine many (not all) WMF or EMF files at very high resolutions, the curves are often made up of small straight line segments. I believe it's because that's how plotters worked in the very early days.

Anyway, if you create in Illustrator and import as .EPS into CorelDRAW! you should get a very nice image. Then use CorelDRAW!'s export to WMF/EMF. Since CD uses metafiles as its internal language, it is better able to handle the translation from the PostScript-based language used in Illustrator.

[Chris Onstad]

Ian,

Thanks very much for the advice. I saved an .eps file in Illus9, Imported the .eps into a CorelDraw11 document, and the lines were already slightly corrupted! (I had turned all the paths to outlines, so that wasn't the issue) The .emf I then exported looked worse yet. I wonder if postscript levels are affecting any of this...

Anyhow, I've been told by some that the smaller your original image, the goofier it will look when exported to .emf. This sounds odd because these are all vector files and I thought that meant "infinitely scalable." Larger original artwork (say, 5cm x 5cm, paths stroked between 1 and 3 points then expanded/turned to outlines) exports fine. My images, which were originally about that size but then scaled down to 1.5cm x 1.5cm, look goofy as the dickens when exported. It looks like I'm back at square one...I do appreciate your help though.

[Ian A. Wright]

Chris:

What are you doing when you, "...turned all the paths to outlines ..."? You should not need to do anything to an Illustrator image other than save to EPS format. That stuff about large and small images is a large load of manure. Vector images -- unless rasterized -- can be scaled at will. but remember that you'll never see an EPS file on screen -- unless you have a PostScript video RIP like my ole NeXt machines.

[Chris Onstad]

Here is a response I received from a professional icon designer:

"There is a loss of fidelity when you export EPS data into EMF data. EPS and
PDF are both based on Postscript, which has a very rich imaging model based
on points, lots of control over the vector artwork, etc.)

"EMF, on the other hand, is based on Windows GDI -- which doesn't have as
many features as Postscript. The result is that your artwork won't look as
good as it does in Illustrator or Freehand.
"There's not much you can do about it, unfortunately. You probably won't get
any complaints from your client either -- Windows users are used to
"imperfect" vector artwork."

[Ian A. Wright]

Chris:

I'm glad you got confirmation of message #3 in this thread. You still haven't explained when you, "...turned all the paths to outlines ..."?

[Chris Onstad]

Sorry if my terminology was incorrect.

I read that in order to convert illustrator artwork into .emf files, you have to first take all stroked lines (paths, yes?) and either Object > Expand them, or Object > Path > Outline Path. (As far as I can see, these two commands do the same thing to a stroked line).

I received the following contradictory information from an engineer who purports to have written an editor for EMF and WMF files:

"To my knowledge, there is nothing wrong with either the WMF or EMF file formats. The
only problem tends to be poorly written export filters. EMF and WMF are basically "the
only game in town" for vector-oriented picture formats for Windows.

"There is third-party software (e.g. Hijaak Pro) that can convert EPS and other formats
to EMF. This might be one solution."

Either way, Illustrator 9 does a better job than Illustrator 8 in exporting artwork to EMF files, but it's still imperfect.