How can I preserve the size of the canvas??

[MADubs]

I have had wonderful success using convert and mogrify to save my .ai files as .tif files; however, I just noticed a couple of odd things about the output that ImageMagick is giving me. I convert my .ai files to 1200 dpi tiffs in IM. When I open the outputted tiff in Photoshop, it tells me it is 72 dpi, and the dimensions are about 100x larger than the dimensions at which I created the image in AI. But when I drop the tiff into a Word document, the dimensions are correct and all looks right. Does anyone have a clue why this is happening? Thanks in advance!

Here is my code for reference:

mogrify -format tif -depth 8 -density 1200 -flatten -compress lzw -alpha off -auto-level *.ai

[snibgo]

Probably the .ai file has Photoshop-specific metadata, which IM won't change but will pass unchanged to the .tiff.

You can put the files somewhere like dropbox.com and paste the URLs here. Then someone can take a look.

[fmw42]

Does the same thing happen with convert with one ai image?

I think TIFF keeps its density in some special place. Check EXIFTOOL to see what it says about the density.

I am not an expert on AI format. But I think that ai has no real density, since it is vector format (unless you have some imbedded image). IM will rasterize the image according to the density you specify.

If you want to upload one of your ai image to somewhere like dropbox.com (public folder) and put a link here, we can test out this issue and see if it is behaving correctly.


EDIT:
snibgo and I have cross posted as we often do. But seem to be on the same wavelength here

[MADubs]

I'm back! Here is the Box link to the files: https://app.box.com/s/da9an59yulbnchzgrrih . I added the .ai file as well as the Photoshop rasterized version (PS) and the IM rasterized version. You'll note that the IM version is many fold bigger and reads as 72 dpi in PS. Thoughts?

[MADubs]

It is also worth noting that there are some strange artifacts in the IM version, such as the text appearing noticeably "thinner" and vertically stretched compared to the PS version. I have no idea why that's happening either, but I'm guessing the two issues are related. Any insight is appreciated! Thanks!

[snibgo]

You have a link only to the tif from PS.

[MADubs]

My apologies! Here are all three. I couldn't figure out how to simply share the folder...
https://app.box.com/s/da9an59yulbnchzgrrih
https://app.box.com/s/9dzaw63altfetdy7k37q
https://app.box.com/s/icwny5lzebknx5rq3wxl

[snibgo]

This seems to give the closest result to the PS result:

Code: Select all

convert -density 300 FQ68DTFT_Fig2.ai -background white -flatten x.png

The characters are very slightly different. I guess the Ghostscript fonts are not identical to the PS fonts.

[MADubs]

Bumping to see if anyone knows why a vector saved as a 1200 dpi TIFF in IM reads as a 72 dpi image with grossly inflated dimensions when opened in Photoshop. I'm so confused about this and I need to get it resolved because I have to return files to my customers at precise dimensions and resolution. Thanks again!

[fmw42]

I believe that Photoshop keeps density in different location than IM. So there are probably two different densities stored in the file. PS will read its own density and not IM's. One of the IM developers may know more about this.

[MADubs]

Interesting. This must be true because and independent software I use to check them image specs reads them as 1200 dpi. And they do in fact paste into other programs (e.g., word docs) at the appropriate dimensions. So strange.