Thanks for the reply Mary.
I agree. Illustrator creates fantastic vector art, until you export it to
WMF. Then the vector art in the WMF looks rough or wavy on sceen and in print.
If we use J0195812.WMF from the clip art library as a reference (it is a man
in a suit holding a giant light bulb) you can see how the curve of the light
bulb is smooth and perfect on screen and in print. The same is true of the
man's hair and suit (the edges).
If I open that WMF into Illustrator (say to make edits to it) it looks
perfect. Then I export it back to WMF and that's when things get nasty. The
result is that the curve of the light bulb is slightly wavy as if it were
hand drawn. The man's hair is slightly wavy and his suit looks like it needs
to be ironed.
The same thing happens with original artwork created in Illustrator. If I
create a perfect circle and then export it to WMF the circle in the WMF is
wavy (almost a hand drawn look). Clearly the problem is how Illustrator
creates WMF files. I submitted a bug report to Adobe about it.
So until Adobe fixes that (I haven't tried CS3 yet) I'm looking for
alternatives for creating vector based WMF files. Per your reply I'll install
Publisher and see what I can do with that. Maybe I can get my artwork from
Illustrator into Publisher in a nice way (suggestions? EPS? Copy+Paste?) and
then save WMFs from Publisher. I think we also have a copy of CorelDraw that
I'll locate and try.
To give you more context. My colleagues and I are graphic designers (we use
the Adobe products all day) and we are working on an identity project to
create clip art (logo, watermarks, etc.) for Word 2003 templates. We are
finding that all our nice vector artwork in Illustrator looks terrible in
Word on screen and print after exporting to WMF.
Post by Mary SauerIllustrator ought to create great vector art. What does the art look like when
you print? I personally use CorelDraw.
You can create vector art in most of Office applications, not easily, but it can
be done.
I wrote an article on how to make clipart look different in Publisher, but it
will work in other programs as well
Make clip art look original in Publisher
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/publisher/HA011196801033.aspx
--
Mary Sauer MSFT MVP
http://office.microsoft.com/
http://msauer.mvps.org/
news://msnews.microsoft.com
Post by ChadWhat program should I use to create vector clip art (.wmf's) for use in
Office? I've tried using Illustrator CS2 and noticed that the WMF files
Illustrator produces are a little rough rather than smooth and crisp like
Microsoft's Clip Art.
I think I've singled out Illustrator as the problem because I can take a
perfectly good WMF from the Clip Art Library (such as J0195812.WMF), open it
in Illustrator, export it as WMF, and when I place it in Word the once smooth
lines and arcs are a little rough. The WMF is definitely still vector based
(it didn't get rasterized). Any suggestions?
Also, what program does Microsoft use to create the vector clip art (WMFs)
in the Clip Art libraries?
Thanks!