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I am looking for a convenient way to export every images found in an AI file. I don't know the AI file format specification, but I guess that if a place a PNG image in an Illustrator Layer the bitmap data of my PNG is still there somewhere.

Is there a tool / SDK / API that you could recommend to perform this operation without opening manually every file ?

For the record, I have over a 100 AI files representing product packages from which I must extract every images found in it in there highest quality.

Thanks again,

Patrick

PBelanger
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  • Since the scripting answer suggested by Rubesto does not seem to work on my machine, we reverted to use a human to export each image. How ? 1. Open Illustrator on one screen 2. Open Photoshop on the other 3. Create a new image in Photoshop, transparent background 4. Drag the selected image from Illustrator toward Photoshop in the new empty image 5. In Photoshop, select menu option "Reveal all". This will extend the canvas to fit the full size of the bitmap found in the AI file. Voilà ! Those will be some fun hours... – PBelanger May 28 '10 at 11:32

2 Answers2

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The bitmap data of your PNG is "still in there somewhere" if whoever created the file embedded it. Otherwise not.

You can use Adobe's ExtendScript Toolkit to do this kind of thing, but I'm pretty sure you have to have a copy of Illustrator.

Warning: ExtendScript is not exhaustively documented.

Robusto
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There's a script made by John Wundes that answers your prayers.

And together with this technique you can run it with Mac.

Though you need to open the AI files you need to export their layers on.

Community
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DawnBlaze
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