Illustrator CS scaling question

[lucl2000]

Hello,

Let me start off by saying that I am a complete newbie to Illustrator CS. I am trying to scale a vector image of the world ( which I purchased ) so that I can crop out individual images ( which will be saved as gif ) of countries.

The end goal is to have 240'ish country images at aproximately 300 width ( pixel ) gifs... all sourced from the same world map Illustrator file.

ie: I scale the small Illustrator map upwards to make madagarcar larger ( 300w pixels ) and would save this new image.

This seems doable by using the scale tool then cropping the country appropriate area and doing a "Save for Web" ... the problem I am having is that for small countries like some small Pacific Ocean islands, I need to scale the base world map up 2500%. The problem I have is I eventually hit a limit where Illustrator refuses to scale any higher ( 2500% is the max ) making it not possible to scale for the real small countries ...

The second problem I am having is that although I can crop out a given section of the Illustrator using the Crop menu option, I need to make note of the X and Y offset from the base map 0,0 to the new crop area top left x and y... which I have no idea how to do.

In Photoshop, simply moving the mouse over a given point will tell you the x and y values for it but I don't know how to do it in Illustrator.

Please help!
Luc
lucl2001@hotmail.com

[leonievs]

Hi There

You can go to Window in the top menu and then click on transform. A new small window will appear with your X and Y information.
Hope this helps.

Greetings

Leonie

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[lucl2000]

Thanks this does help but the reference points seem to be from a black box which surrounds the map image ( to be honest I have no idea what this image ) ... The black box unfortunately is not exactly enclosing the map. It's a portrait sized black box which seems to be an illustrator control object ( ie: not a vector but something to do with Illustrator. )

Any thoughts on how to change this so that the x and y offset and shown from the actualy vector image and not this box?

Thanks!

Originally Posted by leonievs

Hi There

You can go to Window in the top menu and then click on transform. A new small window will appear with your X and Y information.
Hope this helps.

Greetings

Leonie

Accept Online Payments
MultiCards Internet Billing
www.MultiCards.com

[Mac 5]

the X Y axis point can be moved to anywhere you want. View/Show Rulers if they are hidden. In the top left corner of your screen where the rulers intersect there is a small square. Click in that box and drag X Y axis to desired place on graphic.

You can also group all of your art and in the transform pallete click on the little diagram and it will show the X Y cooridinates. For example if you click the top left corner of the diagram in the transform pallet type in 0 X and 0 Y the art will move to that position. Now when you click on objects in Illustrator it will give the X Y position in relationship to the new X Y you set.

I'm not sure exactly what you are trying to do with the map. If Illustrator isn't letting you scale any larger, it's probably because there are objects going off the paste board. You could use the pathfinder filter to break the large graphic into pieces that could be enlarged more. It may not be the cleanest method, for example draw a box 2 inches square fill and stroke of none. Step accross 2" and down 2" to make a grid. Select all use the divide pathfinder filter. With the arrow with the plus, you can select square grid areas to delete or copy paste them to a new document. Then you can enlarge that grid area any size you want.