2 simple ways to reduce filesize in your Illustrator art
Here are 2 simple ways you can dramatically reduce filesize of your Illustrator production files:
Step one:
Before exporting your Illustrator file to another more universal format (such as EPS), or even if you are sharing the .ai file you can remove unused swatches, brushes etc from your document; these unused components add to the size of your document!
This step is super-easy too – open your Action pallet by clicking on Window -> Actions:
Now, in the actions panel, scroll down until you see an action for “Delete Unused Panel Items.” If you expand this option you can see it actually removes quite a lot!
Press the Play button and Illustrator will go through each step and remove (like it says) all the unused components in the list!
Step two:
When exporting your Illustrator file to EPS format for sharing purposes, there is one little option which makes all the difference in file size – turning this off can reduce the size of your exported file 50% or more!
So, the typical export: File -> Save As, choose EPS and then Illustrator is going to ask you some questions in the “EPS Options” dialog box; this is where you want to make your change. Under Preview Format, the default is “TIFF 8-bit Color” Click the dropdown and choose None instead – boom, you just drastically reduced your EPS’ file size!
